More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Three Not to Finish – Two Mysteries One Fantasy

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Normally I give a novel at least a few pages before deciding it’s not for me. Two of these I read about half but the other fell off my lap after about 20 pages. All three of these books had great reviews on Amazon and Barnes and Noble but they just did not work for me.

Pies and Prejudice (A Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery) felt like a rerun. Heroine Ella Mae runs from her cheating husband back home to a small Georgia town and starts a pie shoppe. Of course her arch enemy from kindergarten on through high school shows up, her former crush shows up and she is suspected in a murder. With me so far?

Ella Mae makes pies to fit her mood and the person and bakes a bit of enchantment into each one. It’s a little like Garden Spells but without the charming eccentric characters and real-feeling fantasy element.

Despite Pies and Prejudice having 4 1/3 stars on Amazon I simply could not finish. Characters, setting, plot, dialogue were flat, uninteresting.

I got further with Mark of the Mage (The Scribes of Medeisia), over half way through. I was not particularly enjoying the story but it wasn’t so bad that it made me get up off the couch to read something else. At least not until my tea mug ran out and I needed a refill!

Mark of the Mage (The Scribes of Medeisia) isn’t a bad book, it just didn’t have enough oomph to keep me reading. This one also has 5 stars on Amazon so my blah feeling might have been me not the novel.

The second murder mystery, Leave No Stone Unturned (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 1), was the best of the lot, good enough that I could have finished had there not been something else to read. The story is a cute combination of suspense and romance, with late 40s widowed Lexie Starr concerned about her daughter’s new husband, Clay. Lexie doesn’t like the guy but is determined to put a happy face until she stumbles across a newspaper article that he is the prime suspect in his first wife’s murder. Lexie’s daughter doesn’t even know Clay had been married before.

Lexie makes up a story for her daughter about meeting up with a jeweler she met online and takes off for Schenectady to research the murder. This is where Leave No Stone Unturned lost me. Lexie tells the police detective she’s writing a novel about the case and that she could help. Really. No police detective who ever saw a single episode of Murder She Wrote or any of its imitators is going to be too excited about that and a clever woman like Lexie could surely come up with a better reason to talk to him.

The romance is sweet without being maudlin and is the best part of the story. It just was’t good enough to keep me reading the rest. Leave No Stone Unturned has 4 1/3 stars on Amazon too, so once again my opinion is the minority. I’d give it 3 stars.

Have You Ever Read a Book Where You Didn’t Like ANY of the Characters?

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Normally I have to like at least one character or else the book ends up in the did-not-finish pile. Somehow I got interested enough to actually finish Bear is Broken (Leo Maxwell Mystery) despite the fact every single character was an immoral sleaze.

The scary thing is the (Leo Maxwell Mystery) part of the title. Does this mean we get more books starring this clueless, inept, morally bereft lawyer wannabe? Can you tell I was not impressed with character Leo? Let’s see. He falls for a girl whom he thinks might have shot his brother, or who might be shielding her brother. He drinks and drives while drunk, smokes dope, stumbles around looking for clues, and lusts after his brother’s ex-wife. Definitely not someone you want to spend time with.

So why did I even finish it? Good question. In a way it was well written. Dialogue was good, characters were consistent (repugnant but consistently repugnant), setting well drawn.  On his Amazon page author Lachlan Smith, who is also a lawyer, says the realistic part of his book is “the drama of idealism colliding with the moral ambiguity of criminal law”.  Maybe that’s why the book is compelling.  The characters are nasty but we can also see hints there is far more going on than sex, booze, murder and drugs.  Those are just the setting and the real story is the way Leo must come to grips with the fact he is now an adult – always hard – and that there is no pure black and pure white in his chosen profession.

On the other hand the plot was overly complex with at least three murder cases all circling around each other and with clueless Leo in the middle. I never learned what the title meant nor do we have any idea how the characters will play out their next acts, other than they will be miserable. And so will I be if I spend any more time thinking about this sad novel. Well done as it is, I shan’t be looking for more about Leo.

Kind of Cute, Kind of Short, Kind of Pompous The Frog Prince Fairy Tale Retelling

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The Frog Prince (Faerie Tale Collection) sounded so good. A retelling of the fairy tale “The Frog Prince”, this story by Jenni James had a fun twist on the story of the prince spellbound into a frog. Our hero, Prince Nolan, has been engaged to Princess Blythe since both were infants, but he’s pretty sure she’s a rather nasty piece of work. To find out he has himself turned into a frog (talking of course) and transported to Princess Blythe’s favorite pond in her mother’s castle grounds.

Princess Blythe meanwhile has despaired of ever being loved or finding someone to love. Nolan’s stilted letters show him as a conceited, obnoxious bore and she’s not interested in marrying such a man. Of course she and Nolan-the-frog end up having a great time together and fall in love.

The plot idea is cute, the story nice and short so why is this just a so-so read? Maybe it’s the 10 pages of pontificating at the end, or Blythe’s too-perfect nature or her oft-repeated desire to have someone “see her”. I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but I found the first 30 minutes OK and the last 10 tedious. Yes, that’s right. This is well under an hour read. And by the time I finished, I was glad not to have wasted any more than 40 minutes.

The Frog Prince has a 4.5 rating on Amazon with almost all the reviews complimenting the humor, plot and characters. It is not listed as a YA fantasy, but would appeal to romantic minded teens.  It didn’t work for me.

Two Fantasy Novels I Did Not Finish: City of Dark Magic and The Rithmatist

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Sorry, I could not finish either of these.

City of Dark Magic: A Novel

I had more fun reading about the Lobkowicz family and the Prague castles on Wikipedia than reading City of Dark Magic: A Novel. Nothing really wrong with the book, except there wasn’t much to it. The historical back story was interesting; the characters and their problems were not.

I got about half through, decided it was pretty boring and skipped to the end because I was curious about the senator and her role in the mix. Got the answer, closed the book. Yes, I am interested in Prague but not enough to read the rest of the novel.

The Rithmatist

For those who love Brandon Sanderson’s work, this will be heresy. But I have not yet found a book by him that caught my imagination and made me want to spend a couple of hours with it. Mistborn was OK, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to look for the sequels.

The Rithmatist is listed as a YA title and the main characters are teens. I found the book dull because the characters were not interesting.

The back story was intriguing. Why would a high class school spend so much time and energy educating Rithmatists when supposedly their creations did not affect the real world? Is the study only good for dueling or is there a practical use? Why is the North American continent a bunch of islands? How did the chalkings go wild?

This novel didn’t get to these questions. Instead it was true to the YA market and focused on Joel and his desire to be a Rithmatist.  Some days a good coming-of-age story hits the spot, but not today.

The Circle of Sorcerers, Mages of Bloodmyr Fantasy, Brian Kittrel

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About all I can say about The Circle of Sorcerers: A Mages of Bloodmyr Novel: Book #1 is that I managed to read it in a couple of hours.  My Nook said it had 629 pages, but each page was only one Nook screen; I’d guess this would be 300 pages in a real book.  It was a fast read but not a good read.

There wasn’t anything really wrong with this, just there wasn’t anything very good either. The world building was mediocre; characters were bland and dull; plot was interesting but sketchy.

The main characters are 16 year old men from a small village.  The hero Laedron is off to learn to be a sorcerer under the tutelage of Ismeralda. The backdrop to the story is a religious controversy that spills into war. Ismeralda is murdered by leaders of the Heraldan church, Laedron escapes and joins a militant order of mages and knights. He meets up again with his friends from his village who coincidentally also are in the same order and they are assigned to assassinate one of the church leaders.

The plot has promise but it never really works out and I could not get interested enough to care about the characters. The odd thing was Kittrel only sketched the plot and back story, but spent paragraphs describing the food they ate. I almost stopped reading after the first two page description of Leadron’s mom’s cooking. It felt like the author got paid by the word and it was easier to describe food than characters, setting or plot.

I got this after seeing many highly complimentary reviews on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  In fact both sites have this at a 4 star rating. I would give this a 3, decent, not great. It was free of those obnoxious grammatical and spelling errors we see in so many free or low cost E books, and had been edited. The biggest disappointment was to get to page 629 and realize the book just stops. It is apparently the first of a trilogy (of course, what else). I don’t intend to read the other two books.

A Diamond in My Pocket, Lorena Angell, YA Fantasy, First In A Series

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I have been reading a lot but not writing reviews; it’s time to get back into blogging.  One way I find new authors is from the “people who liked this also bought” links at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  Another is from the site BookBub.  They send a daily newsletter with books in your preferred genre that are free or heavily discounted.  Since I like books and don’t want to spend a fortune, this is a good thing.

Today’s book, A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), came from BookBub. It was free and frankly, I am glad I didn’t pay anything for it.

There isn’t anything wrong with A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), it just isn’t very good. It features 16 year old Calli Courtnae who suddenly can run like the wind. She develops even more powers after being entrusted with a magical diamond to carry in secret to deliver to the Death Clan.

I think you can see the problem right there. “Powers”, “magic diamonds”, “Death Clan”. I don’t have a problem with ideas like this – after all fantasy is my favorite genre and we know fantasy novels are full of nutty sounding stuff. But the constant repetition about “powers” got tiresome. Couple that with a typical 16 year old girl’s normal worries about cute guys and you have a book that teens will love and we adults, sadly, not so much.

A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered) has over 4 1/2 stars on Amazon and is #3000 in the Free Kindle section. I’m not sure quite why it is so popular. It’s reasonably well written, without terrible grammar that plagues so many free E books. The plot is interesting and the characters are so-so. I read it to the end and was reasonably entertained, but it left too many strings hanging and is obviously set up for a sequel.

Mostly I just got tired of the “powers” stuff and how Courtney could peek in someone’s head and see their future. Courtney tried different decisions in her head until she found an outcome she liked. Gee, that’s handy. Yoda said it best: “Difficult to see is the future, always in motion.” Courtney had no problem at all. Not only could she see the future but she could play around with it, make a different decision in her head, and see a different future. That got silly.

I’d give it 3 stars for the dangling strings and over-the-top “powers”.

Beautiful Day: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand Nantucket Romance Wedding Story

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Beautiful Day: A Novel is the first book I’ve read by Elin Hilderbrand. It is set on Nantucket, a location I found fascinating in Island Girls by Nancy Thayer. When I browsed Island Girls on Amazon this book, Beautiful Day came up as a “if you liked” recommendation.

I had a like / not-like reaction to Beautiful Day. I found the relationships and emotional conflicts interesting, especially in the oldest sister Margot’s guilt over her affair with her father’s partner and her betrayal of a job seeker.

But – and this is a big but – I didn’t like the characters. Bride Jenna is spoiled and silly. Supposedly she is dedicated to helping people, environmentalism, ethical mining, so on and so forth. In reality she spent $180,000 on her wedding. Really? I believe people have the right to spend their money as they choose, although I would never spend even a tenth of that on a single day, but is it consistent with a true champion of the poor? No, it is not.

Doug, Jenna’s dad, is unhappy. He is married to a woman he doesn’t love, Pauline. He misses his dead wife Beth so much it prevents him from being happy with someone else or even growing up enough to face the consequences of his rather aimless agreement to marry Pauline.

The rest of the group are no better. I didn’t like the characters and found the plot silly. There are other missteps.

For example, bride Jenna is a teacher at a low income school. She invited several of her fellow teachers to her wedding and they came. Yes, they managed to afford a 1) boat or plane trip to Nantucket, 2) a dress to fit in with a very rich crowd, 3) a hotel room on Nantucket in July on a weekend. Nope, I don’t buy that. Unless all her friends are the same as she, little rich girls playing at solidarity with the poor, it’s ridiculous.

Margot’s supposed lover, her father’s partner, turns out to have a very young real girlfriend. He used Margot and Margot, supposedly a super smart woman and great judge of character, fell for it.

Margot’s and Jenna’s mother Beth wrote Jenna the Notebook before she died with directions for her wedding.  It’s a lovely sentiment but the wonderful, loving mother that all seem to worship came across to me as careless, obsessed with material perfection and manipulative.  She suggested Jenna could wear her dress, but of course she didn’t have to, although she, Beth, was crying just thinking how lovely her little girl would be.   If Beth had been alive she would have been ghastly.

Lastly over half the bunch were cheaters.  Newlywed girl cheating with the best man.  Groom’s dad cheating with a woman, having a child.

Even the lovely Nantucket was scarcely shown.  Instead of seeing the gorgeous island sun all we read about is the 40% chance of rain.

Maybe it’s me.  This is not the type of book I usually read, but I found Island Girls by Nancy Thayer so enjoyable and liked the light, fluffy relationship story so much that I borrowed several by Nancy Thayer and similar authors from the library. I thought I’d found a new genre and new authors to enjoy.  So far all have disappointed. Guess I’m just not into wow ’em weddings, fancy clothes, cheaters and whiny brides.

Two to Avoid: Greyson’s Grove and Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle YA Fantasy Novels

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I read two YA fantasy novels this week that just did not work for me.

Greyson’s Grove

In fact, let’s be accurate.  I gave up on the first one, Greyson’s Grove, after 200 pages.  I only got that far because I got fascinated with how obtuse the heroine was.  I had a small bet with myself as to how long it would take  her to realize her crush / secret boyfriend was really another elf.   She was surrounded by clues but unable to put together that basic fact?

Greyson’s Grove’s biggest problem was the umpteen bazillion pages spent being a teenager.  About the only cliche Greyson didn’t hit was worrying about her weight.

Most of the online reviews are favorable, and if you are a teen or tween girl you’ll probably love it.

I bought Greyson’s Grove after reading a short sample on Barnes and Noble.  The sample was interesting, with a might-be-fun premise, intriguing setting and characters.  Plus (honesty time) I had just gotten two B&N gift cards for my birthday and wanted to buy something. This was a waste of $2.99.

Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle

The other book would be fun if you were 10 or so. The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle is written in the first person with cute characters and what might be a fun plot. The illustrations are interesting and I especially liked the feisty-looking young lady on the cover.

Alas. I’m not 10, or even under 20 and this was terminally cute. I stopped reading it after about 15 pages. If I were in a different mood I might like it as a light diversion but I’m not feeling that mindless today.

 

The Selection, Strange Semi Dystopian Fantasy with Romance by Kiera Cass

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I liked The Selehttps://amzn.to/3RDkkXYction although I did not like the characters.  How odd is that?  I found the heroine, America Singer, whiny and all too immature.  Her two love interests, Aspen, a lowly Six, and Maxon the prince were OK, but I found it impossible to believe that Maxon could be as clueless as he was described.  (I could believe that Aspen was a sexist jerk.)

The Intriguing Parts

The most interesting parts of the book were the caste system, which was downright puzzling, and the idea that a big country (apparently a combination of the US, Canada, Mexico and part of Central America) could be governed by a king with a tiny lot of ministers.

The caste system allocated people to jobs by caste, into which one was born.  Apparently a woman could marry up and join the higher caste, but if she married someone below then she moved down.  People in castes Five, Six and Seven are poor with unpredictable livelihoods.  Eights are wanderers, homeless people.  Sixes and Sevens go to school while higher castes are home schooled / private schooled? / tutored.

The really goofy thing is that Fives are all artists. Huh? That makes no sense whatsoever. Sixes are servants. Fours work in factories or farm. I can go along with servants and factory workers being hereditary roles but artists? You either have artistic talent or you do not. The heroine’s brother has zero interest in art or music and wants to be a scientist. So in our mythical country he can’t be a scientist, however talented and good he might be, but he can be an artist, however untalented?

The government part was stupid. No congress or Imperial Senate or even a House of Lords, no governors, just the king and his family rule the country. No way, that simply would not work. There are hints that the Twos have political clout but no details.  When I read dystopia I want details:  How does it work, who gets what and why does it hold together.

I found it incredible that Prince Maxon would be so unaware of the realities in his country that he did not realize the lower castes went hungry. Then he announced that the girls in the Selection would get a lower allowance with the difference going to feed the poor for oh, maybe a week or two. He made an appeal on television for the upper castes to donate, but how long will that last?

Lots of Pretty Clothes and Hunky Guys

I think one reason I enjoyed this was that I read it when traveling in the evenings after long days of yucky business meetings.  Something light, fluffy and with lots of clothes and hunky guys filled the bill.

Another reason was that the book reminded me so much of two books I enjoyed, A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith and The Hunger Games. The girls compete as in The Hunger Games but losers don’t die, they actually get rewarded with higher status. The winner gets to marry our clueless friend, Prince Maxon.

Just as in A Posse of Princesses the contestants include the requisite selfish beauty, Celeste, the narrator/heroine, the heroine’s good friend. What we don’t have are any of the other characters or real interesting relationships. The characters act like sixth graders at their first school dance.

I enjoyed this while reading it, but as I was writing this review it struck me how incredibly silly it was and how very poorly written. None of the characters were believable and the dialogue was horrible. I will probably read the sequel, The Elite but I’ll wait for another business trip where I need something brainless with pretty clothes and hunky guys.

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All Else Confusion Gentle Romance by Betty Neels English Countryside Novel

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I mentioned in my last post how much I enjoyed romance novels by Betty Neels. They are gentle, friendly, easy reading with interesting characters. Sometimes the plots are a bit contrived, but that is true for most romance novels – it’s even true for romance in real life!

All Else Confusion uses one of Betty Neels’ more difficult plots, where the couple, Jake and Annis, marry before discovering or realizing they are in love. These are difficult because the author has to give some plausible reason for the marriage, has to provide some incident that shows to one or the other (or both) people that they really are in love, has to have some tension or challenge.

Plot Difficulties

If you think about it, there are four main variations on this plot.

  1. He thinks it’s convenience.  She knows she loves him.
  2. He thinks it’s convenience and so does she.
  3. He knows it’s love but she does not.
  4. They both know it is love but for some reason neither realizes the other feels the same way or is afraid to say something.

There are sub variations of course.  One of them could love the other but not know it, or one could have extremely good reasons to get married that cause the other to assume there is no love, etc and etc.  The main problem with these plots is turning the corner from “convenience” to “love” and giving a good picture of both characters and their feelings.

Character Limitations

Betty Neels tells the story from the female perspective and in some of her later novels she does a better job showing the man’s point of view and emotions than she does with All Else Confusion. She wrote All Else Confusion after she had been writing novels for over 10 years, but it reads like it was one of her earliest, more tentative stories from before she developed her sure voice.

In any case, we never get a sense of Jake’s true emotions. Does he love Annis from the beginning? Or only after they are married, and if only afterwards, what caused the change?

Overall OK Story

Overall I’d rate this as in the bottom half of her novels.  I did read it to the end but I don’t desire to read it again.  It was a little too simplistic and without the emotional depth that make romance novels so enjoyable.