books

Shana Abe’s second Drakon book, The Dream Thief, didn’t seize me quite as nicely as The Smoke Thief did. This one picks up some years after the first one left off, with Lia, one of the children of the first book’s protagonists, impulsively joining Zane, the human thief who’d adored her mother when he was a boy working with her in thievery, on a quest to recover a fabled diamond said to possess the power to control her people. Lia is, of course, quite in love with Zane–and against his better judgement, for her people will doubtless never accept him as a mate for one of the Alpha’s daughters–he reciprocates her feelings.

All a fine core concept for the story. But in its execution, it fell down a little bit for me. There’s much made of Lia’s ability to foretell the future, and she has quite a few rather dark-themed visions about her future with Zane that ultimately and unsurprisingly do not bear fruit. Accordingly, they lose quite a bit of their impact and don’t really add much to the story for me as a reader.

Still, though, this was enjoyable enough, and the stage is clearly set for Book Three, Queen of Dragons. For this one, three stars.

Y’all may recall that I was fortunate enough to win a copy of the ARC of Dawnkeepers, Book 2 of Jessica Andersen’s “Final Prophecy” series, earlier this year. And I liked it well enough that I decided it was necessary to go back and pick up Book 1 to see what I missed. Survey says, I’m very glad I did!

As with Book 2, so with Book 1: we have ourselves a decent ensemble cast here, and although sure yeah fine the plot is set up to faciliate the pairings of various interesting couples, the driving force of what’s going on is the Nightkeepers having to rise from the ashes of their own destruction in order to combat the likely end of the world in 2012. Things get underway with the focus on Striking-Jaguar, a.k.a. Strike, the son of the last Nightkeeper king. Strike thinks he and his sister are the only survivors of the massacre of their people. He is, as none of you should be surprised, wrong.

Complicating matters is Miami detective Leah Daniels, who’s busily investigating the cult that brought about the death of her brother, a cult based on Mayan beliefs, and whose leader seems dead set on acquiring power he thinks Leah has. Strike must not only bring together the other survivors of the Nightkeeper massacre and forge them into a team, he also needs to rescue Leah–and figure out fast why a woman with no Nightkeeper heritage whatsoever is showing every sign of being a Godkeeper. And his own destined mate.

All in all good strong fun. The sex scenes are kept down to a minimum, and there’s plenty of action and tension as Strike, Leah, and the Nightkeepers get their magic on. Four stars.

The second Simon Canderous book, Deader Still, picks up fairly soon after the first installment left off–and this time around, on top of dealing with the challenges of what may be his first long-term steady relationship and suddenly outranking his own mentor, Simon’s got to deal with what may well be a vampire outbreak, a psychotic ex coming back to ask him to commit one last crime, and a hapless archivist who is a lot more effective out in the field than he thinks he is (and who under pain of death cannot be told exactly what he has going on!).

So yeah, there’s a lot of lighthearted fun here. The story didn’t quite click as well with me as with Book 1, mostly because the relationship drama between Simon and Jane wasn’t my cup of tea. But to balance that out, I really like the whole plot arc with Godfrey the archivist, and I’m looking forward to seeing what might happen with him later. Plus, there’s interesting developments in the partner relationship between Simon and Connor, and of course, a lead-in to the next adventure at the very end.

For this one, three stars.

It was a bit of a challenge for me to read In the Bleak Midwinter–in no small part because I didn’t much expect to go for a plot involving a female Episcopalian priest who falls in love with a married man. And yet, although I had additional challenges coming in from reading this thing in ebook form (and therefore in scattered bits and pieces on my computer since I have no reading device), I found that I did in fact rather like the story.

Clare is certainly not the stereotypical image one might bring to mind for a priest, even a female one. I quite liked that she was very down-to-earth, and that her faith was not particularly in-your-face; it was important to her, clearly, and that was subtly and nicely portrayed to the reader. It was also quite cool that she had military background, and that was she was a former pilot before feeling called to join the church. The beginnings of her relationship to Russ, the sheriff of the small town where she’s come to live, is the driving force of this novel, and I found it less angstful than I was fearing. Rather, it seemed a natural depiction of two people who initially get along very well together under crisis circumstances, and who only realize later on that attraction is beginning to sneak up on them.

The crime that Russ must investigate, and on which Clare joins him, is the abandonment of a baby and the later murder of the baby’s mother. It’s fairly low-key stuff for a murder mystery, yet entirely appropriate for the small town setting. Spencer-Fleming does a decent job portraying the impact of the abandonment and murder on the lives of the connected parties–and, I was pleased to note that the ultimate culprit was neither immediately obvious nor brought totally out of left field.

This story was interesting enough that I’ll probably be checking out book 2, since I acquired a free ebook copy of that as well. Four stars.

Man, what can I say about Angels & Demons that hasn’t probably already been said by thousands of other people before me?

I can at least say that as with The Da Vinci Code, there’s a bone structure to this story that I halfway like; it was at least interesting enough to keep me reading. That bone structure, however, is sadly bogged down by writing that for the most part just doesn’t work for me as a reader. There’s an argument to be made for Brown’s short, choppy style being what you want for a thriller–after all, the emphasis here is supposed to be on the action and the clues that Langdon uncovers, not the elegance of the wording. Problem is, that style isn’t generally snappy enough to deliver the tension that it should.

Sometimes it does work, I’ll grant. The bit I actually like the best is a sequence where Langdon’s trapped in a sarcophagus, which triggers his claustrophobia: a scenario that felt a lot more personal and scary than the later, over-the-top climax where our hero pulls the most ludicrous escape from an aircraft since James Bond. And I’ll also allow that the camerlengo is an effective character–usually. I’ve got issues with his big God Good Science Bad diatribe that he delivers not long before the climax, as well as with some of the assumptions behind his entire set of motivations.

All in all, A&D as well as its sequel strike me in a very odd place for books. Which is to say, bad enough that I’m definitely not impressed, and yet, decent enough light amusement and the printed equivalent of MST3K fodder. Two stars.