2009 book log

After Sarah Langan’s most excellent novels The Keeper and The Missing, I was very much hoping to hit the proverbial third-time charm with her new horror novel, Audrey’s Door. Survey says? She didn’t hit it quite out of the park like she did with the first two; Audrey’s Door has some issues, but it’s still a good solid read.

Audrey Lucas is a woman with a whole hell of a lot of neuroses on her plate: she’s escaped a destructive relationship with her psychotic mother and more or less established a life for herself in New York, even to the point of being engaged to be married, but her victory hasn’t come without cost. She’s got OCD, enough that it’s driven a wedge between her and her fiance Saraub, and when the book opens she’s elected to move out of the apartment she shares with him–and into an old house called the Breviary, infamous for its Chaotic Naturalist architecture. The fact that a gruesome murder occurred in the space she renting almost puts her off. But as this is a horror novel, “almost” is as far as she gets.

The Breviary is of course haunted like you would not believe, and soon enough the place begins exerting its influence. Something in it is very aware of Audrey, and it insists that she build it a door of mysterious purpose. Nor is it above driving her mad to get her to do it, and threatening the tenuous life she’s established for herself.

There’s decent creepiness in this book; the residents of the Breviary, ancient husks of men and women who have long been warped by their residence in the place, are truly unnerving. But a whole lot of the book’s early mileage is spent on developing the backstory for Audrey, her traumatic childhood with her mother, and her not-terribly-healthy relationship with Saraub. A good stretch of that I found to just be depressing rather than creepy, because of the seemingly unending litany of ways in which poor Audrey’s life and mind were screwed up.

Not until the last act of the book does Saraub rise above his unsympathetic portrayal, and unfortunately, Audrey never quite manages to pull off the same ascent. The ending therefore felt strangely tacked on to me. Overall, three stars.

I’m going to hit all of these in one big post since they’re a series of related Harlequin Intrigue novels, like you often get with romances. I actually picked up the last of them, Internal Affairs, on the strength of it being a) written by Jessica Andersen, whose work I’m quite liking with her Nightkeepers novels, and b) it’s an amnesia plot. Okay, fine, I’m a sucker for an amnesia plot, what can I say? *^_^*;;

Anyway, all six of these books are set in a fictional Colorado town, and fall fairly neatly in two trilogies. The first trilogy, Ricochet, At Close Range, and Rapid Fire deal with our three heroines being hired into the Bear Claw Creek PD as the new forensics department, a move that’s pissed off most of the force as they resent these newcomers taking the place of the much-respected expert who’s suddenly retired. So each woman has the hassle of trying to fit in with her new job as well as the obligatory male lead with whom to clash, and on top of it all, there’s a conspiracy going on that’s aimed squarely at destabilizing the police department.

Trilogy #2, Manhunt in the Wild West, Mountain Investigation, and Internal Affairs, broadens the scope and sets up Bear Claw Creek as the target of a terrorist mastermind. I found this one less entertaining than the first one, mostly because the whole idea of using terrorists as the bad guys struck too close to real life for me; this made it a bit difficult to enjoy the books as escapist fare. Nor did it help that the terrorists were very, very stock characters and had only We’re Evil Because We’re Terrorists going in terms of motivation; the one potentially interesting character, a former federal agent who turns traitor, is not explored at all.

But since I mostly read these things for the suspense and the romance, I will at least allow that I got them in spades. The various female and male leads all followed predictable patterns of establishing their relationships, but I did like that in general, there weren’t any Great Big Misunderstandings used as plot conflicts, and the women were right there taking on the bad guys alongside the men. There was a satisfying amount of things going splody, one not-too-over-the-top sex scene per book, and more than one “Oh no I’ve been a flaming idiot I need to go rescue my woman now” epiphany on the part of the menfolk. What was more interesting to me was establishing all of these characters as a tightly-knit network of friends and colleagues, and how the events in one book played into the next.

As for the amnesia plot, aheh, it hit all the appropriate points, and as the conclusion of the latter trilogy, was the strongest of the three. All in all though I quite prefer Andersen’s Nightkeeper books; in those, she has a lot more room to exercise her prose and bring characters to life. Three stars each for the books in the first trilogy, and two stars for the first two of the second, but three for Internal Affairs. For the series as a whole, three stars.

Sacred Sins is one of Nora Roberts’ late 80’s-era novels, and for me at least, it falls somewhat flat compared to her later work. The elements are certainly in place for a nice suspenseful story: a killer’s on the loose in Washington D.C., a killer the media dubs the Priest for his habit of leaving his young, pretty victims arranged in pious repose and notes reading “her sins are forgiven her”. It’s the same sort of murder formula she’d put to good use later in the J.D. Robbs, but here, the plot feels rougher and less polished.

Most of the fault for this lay for me in the too-simple characterizations of the cast. I got the feeling that the leads fell in love with each other mostly because they were the leads and it was their job to do so; they made a big deal at each other about how he hated psychiatrists because one had failed to help his brother, tormented by his service in Vietnam, and she was so put off by police work because it was full of violence and death. There was a lot of needless conflict as well with the hero accusing the heroine of not being interested in proper justice, since as a psychiatrist she was (or so he believed) more interested in treating the killer rather than getting justice for the victims.

I think the Nora Roberts of ten years or so after this novel could have pulled off this plot nicely, but the Nora Roberts of 1987 didn’t feel like she was quite there yet. Two stars.

Nora Roberts’ Hot Ice, one of her older standalone books from the late 80’s, is a halfway decent caper novel. Thief Douglas Lord, betrayed by the man who’s hired him to steal valuable papers pointing the way to a lost treasure from the French Revolution, is thrust across the path of the young heirness Whitney MacAllister–who promptly decides that teaming up with Doug will be the biggest adventure of her life, and never mind his occupying the shady side of the law.

Our hero and heroine journey from New York to Paris to Madagascar, staying the obligatory step or two ahead of their pursuers all the way. There’s some good descriptive passages of the country they trek through in Madagascar, and a lot of enjoyable snarky chemistry between the two before they finally give in to the inevitable and declare their feelings for each other. All of it is pretty fluffy, though, as is the villain, who we know to be evil mostly because Doug speaks of him in Suitably Ominous Phrases; unfortunately, we never really get to see the villain being particularly villainous on camera. Not too bad of a way to kill time, though, and I was a sucker for its vaguely Remington-Steele-ish flavor. Three stars.

It’s generally a good bet that whenever you’re heading into a Nora Roberts storyline with an ensemble cast, a good amount of the story is going to be devoted to who’s going to pair off with whom. Three Fates is no exception, even though it’s a single novel as opposed to a trilogy starring her interconnected characters.

This time around the story hinges on a trio of statues, the Three Fates, named after the beings from Greek mythology. The statues have been separated over the centuries, and much effort has been expended by collectors to reunite them; it’s said that the group, restored to each other, will be spectacularly valuable. One was nearly lost in the sinking of the Lusitania, and the survivor who recovered it, a petty thief, has passed it down to his descendants–who have in turn lost it to the machinations of a ruthless collector from New York who’s bent on acquiring the other two. The Sullivans are prepared to do whatever it takes to recover what they’ve lost, and to find their Fate’s missing sisters as well.

Naturally the other two are in the hands of the love interests that two of the three Sullivans pair up with, and eventually we get the central core of six characters teaming up against the antagonist. As is generally the case, Roberts’ lead characters are likeable in their various fashions, although in this case the women are more interesting than the men; Tia, in particular, is notable as a painfully shy and neurotic character who has the biggest character development arc as she conquers her various phobias and becomes a more confident woman.

It was a bit of a shame that the plot never really progressed past ‘likeable’, though. Antagonist Anita in particular was fairly cardboard and petty, and so the determination of our heroes and heroines to bring her down didn’t have quite as much weight and substance as it should have done. Three stars.

I never got into Richard Castle’s Derek Storm novels, because I try to avoid things that hit bestseller status–in no small part because I’ve had one too many instances of “bestseller” being code for “hamfisted writing”. Plus, there’s been all the media hype about how Castle’s such a ruggedly handsome jetsetter of an author, and the whole thing about him tagging along with the NYPD by way of the world’s longest publicity stunt to promote a new series, yeah yeah yeah blah blah blah but can the man actually write?

I had my doubts, I have to say, when I learned that the lead character of his shiny new series is named Nikki Heat. Let me emphasize that: Nikki Heat. Say what? C’mon, I thought that the romance genre was supposed to be the one with all the stupidly named characters. “Heat” isn’t even a name you’d see in romance novels. It’s more like something you’d see in badly executed porn.

If you can get past the godawful name for the character, you’ll get to a rather eye-rolling central personality concept for her: Nikki is the prototypical tough cop chick who really just wants to have a relationship and a life. Granted, she’s also got her share of being a competent detective going on, and she has plenty of reason to be devoted to her career. But did we really have to go down the route of “but what she really wants is a relationship?” And did this have to get more emphasis in her character development than the fact that she’s also got a lot invested in her career as a cop? While the book didn’t go overboard with this to the point that I wanted to smack it against a wall, it was still frustrating to see that kind of stereotypical portrayal for a lead female character. Nikki Heat is, I fear, no real match for Eve Dallas.

And, of course, Jameson Rook, our male lead, has “Marty Stu” written all over him. Having the love interest be a journalist tagging along with the NYPD was just not the right move, Mr. Castle, sorry; it’s like putting yourself into the story wearing glasses and a different jacket, and hoping nobody would notice.

Now, all this said? Aside from these big glaring flaws, the story’s actually not half bad. Despite her annoying name and central motivation, Nikki is a competent detective when the story lets her be, and she’s believable doing her job. Rook’s a Marty Stu, but at least he’s a likeable one, and I do have to admit that having a civilian involved with the police investigation does lend a feel to the reader of “really being there”. The murder mystery to be solved is decently suspenseful, and Castle’s prose, while never truly noteworthy, is nonetheless engaging and readable. Three stars.

Addendum: In case it’s not obvious, this review is written entirely in-character. If ABC can give us a novel from the Castle universe, I can review it as such! But I’ll also, out of character, give it an extra star just because the sheer fact that this novel exists makes me giggle and giggle. So the real ranking? Four stars!

‘s Rosemary and Rue, the first of her October Daye novels, introduces us to the half-human, half-fey October Daye, whose career as a detective and peaceable family life with her human lover and their child was shattered by a single magical spell. After spending fourteen years trapped in the form of a fish in a koi pond, Toby has wrestled her way back into the mortal world, only to find that her lover belives her to have run on him and their child, that her detective license has expired, and that both the mortal world and the fey have moved on without her. Toby’s willing to ignore both worlds as long as she must and focus instead on her survival–only the fey world isn’t going to let her go. Lady Evening Winterrose has been murdered. And moreover, her dying curse is compelling Toby to find her killer.

Rosemary and Rue doesn’t bring anything truly new to the urban fantasy table, but that’s okay. What it does bring is style and skill, and an unusual blending of creatures from multiple mythologies all existing together under the banner of “Faerie”. The book’s not without flaws; some of Toby’s actions through the plot seem unfocused, and the appearances of several characters are cursory at best, leading one to wonder whether their positions in the world at large will be better developed as the series progresses. All in all, though, it’s a good solid debut. Four stars.