Sycamore Row by John Grisham

While my iPad is still awaiting a battery transplant, I started reading Fee's copy of Sycamore Row.  This novel takes place about three years after the events in A Time to Kill, and Jake Brigance once again finds himself with a big case.

Seth Hubbard, in the last days of terminal cancer, makes a new and controversial holographic will, which he mails to Jake and tells him to ward off any attempt to have the will thrown out.  Seth then drives into the country and hangs himself from a sycamore tree.

The new will cuts out Seth's children and leaves 90% of his large estate to his black housekeeper Lettie Lang.  Naturally, the will be contested.  

Was Seth in such pain and under such heavy medication that the will could be considered invalid?  Was he unduly influenced by the housekeeper?  Why would a man who had a perfectly normal will in tact (that protected his estate from 50% taxation) make a new will that would give an additional 3 million dollars to the IRS?  Especially an astute businessman like Seth Hubbard.

In a poor Mississippi county in the 1980's an estate of upwards of twenty million dollars was simply astounding.  Lawyers and relatives are coming out of the woodwork.  The scene is set for a highly anticipated court battle with everyone in the county offering opinions and preparing to be entertained with some high drama.  

The book is a little slow, especially at the beginning, but that doesn't mean it is uninteresting.  Tensions mount, race is involved, sex implied, greed rules, and lawyers are determined to get as much as they can from the estate.

I have not read Grisham in years and years, but Sycamore Row certainly held my attention. the surprise twist at the end isn't really a surprise if you've noted a couple of throw-away sentences, yet it carries an impact.

Courtroom Drama.  2013.  466 pages.

Huh?

I demonstrated impressive self-control when I went by to check to see if my iPad was ready.  They had not called on Friday or Saturday, but thinking the bad weather across the nation might have caused a delay, I wasn't especially concerned.  ARCs were arriving in the mail, and I was finding books in my stacks that had been shelved and forgotten.

However, when I got there and asked if my iPad was ready, my name wasn't even in the system, and they couldn't, initially, find my iPad--well, my patience began to erode.  

This was not the young man who had helped me on previous occasions or the woman who took my name and phone number and said she would order the battery.  It wasn't his fault.

They finally found my iPad, but of course, the battery had not even been ordered.  I was devastated.  

Now for the good part:  When Fee came home, he gave me an early Christmas gift, a Kindle Fire HDX.  I immediately registered and all of my books appeared!  Love that man!

Stella Bain by Anita Shreve

 I've mentioned that I've read a couple of early books by Shreve that I liked, but didn't love.  When I was offered this ARC, my expectations were not really that high, but perhaps because this is set in a period that has long interested me, I was pleasantly surprised with Stella Bain.

My interest in WWI began in adolescence when I fell in love with the poets of the time, especially Sigfried Sassoon, e e cummings, and Wilfred Owen.  Owen definitively captured the horror of that particular war and the obscenity of mustard gas, and his Dulce et Decorum Est is, for me, the ultimate description of the abomination and waste of trench warfare.

I have also enjoyed the Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries by Charles Todd and the Maisie Dobbs mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear that cover not only the appalling loss of a generation of young men, but the terrible aftermath on both soldiers and civilians.  Both series have focused on the effects of shell shock, the disfiguring injuries, and the emotional burdens of soldiers, doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers....

The total number of British killed and wounded in the Great War:  2,367, 000 --from a country about the size of one of our states.

The total number of U.S. killed and wounded:  321,000(via Casualties of World War I)

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So...on to the review.  Enough of the digressions.  

Stella Bain  is a novel of WWI and of a woman's attempt to gain control of her life. When an injured VAD is brought to a field hospital in France without any identification, her uniform reveals that she is a nurse.  The woman, however, has lost her memory and has no recollection of the circumstances of her former posting, her injury, her name, or her past.  

She decides her name is Stella Bain, but she isn't certain.  Her accent is American.  After her recovery in her new location, Stella's duties as nurse and ambulance driver resume, these activities she has implicit memory of performing, even if conscious memory fails to return.

In her search for herself, she returns to England on leave with an obsessive desire to visit the Admiralty.  She believes that the answer to her identity lies there, but she has no knowledge of how or why.

Exhausted and ill, Stella is discovered in a park by Lily Bridge, whose compassion compels her to bring the physically and mentally overtaxed woman into her home.  Stella's illness develops into pneumonia, a deadly threat in 1916, and her convalescence is slow.

Augustus Bridge, Lily's husband, is a cranial surgeon, and he begins to take an interest in Stella's loss of memory and her determination to discover who she really is.  After discussing her case with psychiatrists, he decides to implement talk therapy.  Stella is a talented artist, and her drawings are part of her therapy as she seeks to understand what the drawings mean. Fascinated by the drawings, Bridge becomes even more invested in Stella's recovery.

I found myself deeply immersed in the story and the twists and turns of Stella's memory. Anita Shreve covers the horror of the field hospitals, the terrible injuries, the effects of shell shock in a graphic, yet compassionate manner.

After Stella's memory returns, the trail leads back to America.  Stella confronts much of what led her to volunteer in the war and works to regain her life in full.

For me, the best aspects of the novel are those dealing with the effects of the Great War; I'm less sure of the custody case in America.    

After reading some reviews, it appears that Shreve's fans are divided about this book.  I thought it was a layered and compelling work.

This was an ARC from Tandem Literary Publicity & Marketing.

Historical Fiction.  2013.  272 pages.

Red 1-2-3 by John Katzenbach

Red 1-2-3 

From the book description:  Three women. They have nothing in common. They are different ages, come from different background, and lead drastically different lives. The only thing that binds them together is their red hair--and that each of them has been targeted for murder.

How does a novelist who writes murder mysteries develop his plots?  In this case, he commits murders and, with a little adaptation, writes about them.  Although as murderer and novelist, the man has been inactive for years, he makes a decision to write one more murder mystery,  a spectacular last fling in his dual role as author/killer.

Taking hints from the original and more frightening version of Little Red Riding Hood (definitely not the Disney version) in which the woodsman does not save Little Red, the killer sends letters to the three women telling each that she has been selected to die, using the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood as metaphors.

He has studied the three women for months and believes he knows how each will react to his letters.  Amusing himself by predicting each one's behavior in a variety of circumstances, he delights in his ability to taunt and terrify "his" Reds.   

The Reds, however, don't always react according to his predictions.  As frightened and despairing as Karen, Sarah, and Jordan become, each one discovers a component to her personality that has not been previously needed.  And they find each other.

Not only are there incidents that the Big Bad Wolf doesn't predict, there are quite a few that kept me unsure.    These are small turns of events, but they change the game plan, and they prevented me from feeling certain of the outcome.  A good thing in a mystery.

Although there were several little details that niggled, indulging in this alternate version of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf is a puzzle with several surprises, and a villain whose predatory and egotistical nature is disguised by his bland appearance.  The wolf in grandma's clothing.  

Katzenbach has combined two neat plot devices and produced an intriguing mystery.  Think I'll look for more by this author.


NetGalley/Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press

Mystery.  Jan. 7, 2014.  Print version:  400 pages.

Strong Spirits by Alice Duncan

Strong Spirits   is the first in in the Daisy Gumm Majesty mystery series, originally published in 2003, and recently republished as an e-book.

Set in the 1920's, the book provides an interesting look at an earlier time when the Spiritualism movement was still going strong.  

The beginning was slow (too large of an information dump) that established the background for Daisy Gumm and her foray into her life as a popular local medium.

Daisy knows that she has no connection to the spirit world, but views her profession as a spiritualist as bringing solace to those who attend her seances. 

Daisy must support her family, especially since her young husband Billy Majesty has returned from the war a victim of mustard gas.  Billy, however, doesn't approve of Daisy's profession.  Daisy does her best to keep upbeat, but her life with Billy has many difficulties.  

A wheelchair-bound husband and a nineteen-year-old bride affords an imaginative glimpse of what life was like for young married couples after devastating injuries in a horrific war. Daisy manages to handle the situation with a combination of gumption, despair, resilience, compassion, frustration, and understanding.  

When her Mrs. Kincaid, Daisy's best client, has difficulties, she depends on Daisy to see her through.  When the story begins, Mrs. Kincaid and her family have several emergencies, and Daisy gets caught up in all of them.  She intensely dislikes Mr. Kincaid and the spoiled Kincaid daughter, but is grateful to the generous Mrs. Kincaid, and quite fond of Harold Kincaid, the son with an alternative life style.

Then with the theft of bank bearer bonds and a disappearance that might be murder, Daisy finds herself sparring with the detective in charge.

Have to admit that after a doubtful beginning, I found myself gradually pulled in to the story because of the characters.  I like the spunky Daisy, but my favorite character is, again, a secondary character.  Harold wins Daisy respect and gratitude, and as her fondness (not romantic) for Harold grew, so did mine.  

There really isn't much mystery, but I enjoyed the novel, and will read the next in the series--hoping that much of the information dump will have disappeared.

By the way I got this e-book from Amazon for free.  I do love free books.

Historical Mystery.  2003; 2013.  Print version:  274 pages.



            

Frustrated

My iPad, which has my Kindle,  had to go to the i Doctor.  Worse, the necessary battery had to  be ordered.  In the middle of two books that I can't read, with several more in line that have been eagerly calling me, I was most vexed.  Fortunately, a real book was available, Stella Bain by Anita Shreve, an ARC that has managed to captivate me so far.  

I've read a couple of books by Shreve that I liked, but did not love, so finding myself so quickly immersed in this story set during WWI has been a nice surprise.  Still, I feel bereft with the temporary loss of my iPad and books in progress.

Bad weather moving this way.  From 79 degrees yesterday to 43 degrees and dropping today.   Rain, sleet, ice predicted.  Hope nothing interferes with my iPad being returned tomorrow!  That is my major concern.  I'm so petty, so trivial, but I NEED my books.

The Mile Marker Murders by C. W. Saari

The Mile Marker Murders  follows Ty Bannister an FBI agent in two story lines.  In the first, a friend of Bannister's, a CIA agent, disappears and there are questions about concerning the possibility of defection.  Bannister insists Caleb Williamson would never betray his country.

The other story line has to do with the threat of a biological weapon being released if extortion demands are not met.  

There are parts of the FBI investigation scenes that feel real and authentic, and these are the best part of the novel.

What detracted from an interesting plot was the lack of a believable motive, the implausible behavior of the villain, and an unconvincing love story.   

NetGalley/BQB Publishing

Suspense.  2013.  Print version:  302 pages.

Witchfinder by Ruth Warburton

Witchfinder  is a captivating YA novel set in Victorian London.   

Luke's parents were murdered by a witch, and when he reaches eighteen, he is ready for his initiation into the Malleus Maleficarum,  a secret organization whose goal is the elimination of witches.

Luke passes his first two tests, but his third test will give him problems he never expected.    

Rosa Greenwood, daughter of a witch family that has suffered financial hardship, is being strongly "encouraged" to marry for money that would help restore the family fortune.


Simon Knyvet, handsome, rich and powerful, and interested in Rosa.  

The characters have personality and the plot moves quickly, yet does not feel rushed.  The budding romance has an innocence at odds with the danger and cruelty of parts of the story.  The mystery aspect of who killed Luke's parents and why is an underlying current that is occasionally hinted at, but not given prominence is this book.  

Since this is meant to be a trilogy, the idea that, among the many problems the young people will face in the next novel, the mystery of Luke's parents will be developed.

Found on the author's Pinterest page.
Via Wikipedia

The Malleus Maleficarum was written in 1486 and was a treatise on the identification and prosecution of witches.  It provides Warburton with a perfect title for the secret society whose goal is to kill witches. 

I liked the pace of the novel; it kept me involved and interested, but still managed to give a good deal of information that helped establish the locations and societal customs.

NetGalley/Hatchette Children's Books

Fantasy.  Jan. 2, 2014.  Print Length:  384 pages.

Deadline by John Dunning

Deadline was originally published in 1995, and this recent edition contains an interesting preface detailing how and why Dunning came to write the novel.  I won't go into it, but it really is a glimpse into the background of the novel and why Dunning was able to write it so quickly.

Deadline is a stand alone novel and not part of the Cliff Janeway series, which I have enjoyed for years, but it a fascinating mystery nonetheless.  

Dalton Walker is an investigative reporter whose work won a Pulitzer, and even years later, his presence on a newspaper staff is considered a coup.  He has just begun a new job at a local paper.

Assigned what appears to be a fluff piece about an Amish girl who left her home and religious strictures behind to become a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall, Walker is not particularly pleased.  Walker is only one of several reporters who has tried to get an interview with Dianne Yoder, and when he, too, is turned down, he plans to abandon the piece.  His interest in Dianne Yoder, however, he pursues on a personal level.

The story that he is chasing on his own time involves an eight-year-old child who died in a fire at a circus.  Walker happened to be on hand at the time, and when no one claims the child's body his interest becomes overpowering.  Who would take a child to a circus and then not claim her body?

His interest in the case continues to compel him, and eventually, he does discover a clue to the child's mother.  His investigation leads to the FBI becoming involved, and then to a journey that may cost him more than his career.

Dunning is whetting his talent in this novel, and many don't feel that it compares to the Janeway novels, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it very much and that the preface about the unique way he created the outline for the novel is fascinating.

NetGalley/Open Road Media

Mystery.  1995 & 2013.  Print version:  224 pages.

A Study in Ashes by Emma Jane Holloway

I thought this was going to be a trilogy, but A Study in Ashes leaves the door open for more.  I suspect the focus will be different, perhaps on the repercussions concerning Tobias Roth and Alice.

A Study in Silk introduced Evelina Cooper, niece of Sherlock Holmes and practitioner of magic.  Reviewed here.

A Study in Darkness is certainly a darker book and continues the adventures of Evelina, Nick, Imogen, and Tobias.  Reviewed here.

A Study in Ashes finally resolves The Baskerville Affair.

What I liked:  the interesting take on Holmes' The Hound of the Baskervilles; the school teacher's character development; the introduction of the sinister Moriarty.

On the other hand, I had some serious reservations with this last book.

As this series continued, it did get darker and more sinister, but the darkness was not necessarily an improvement as it was too unremitting--too much about the evil characters and not enough about the good ones.  The light touch in A Study in Silk was a pleasure that worked with the good vs evil theme and shouldn't have been abandoned so completely.  

--The Magnus arc was unnecessary and so rushed that it served more as distraction than resolution within the major story line.

--The steampunk elements overcame the narrative in the very lengthy section about the war. 

--In my opinion, the Imogen plot shouldn't have happened.  She deserved a larger role based on the first novel, but not this role.

The end was followed by another section that felt like the end...and so on.

I really enjoyed the first book, but felt let down by this one.

NetGalley/Random House/Del Rey Spectra

Steampunk/Paranormal.  Dec. 31, 2013.  Print version:  352 pages.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Another fairy tale pastiche, Cinder is the Cinderella story cast in the distant future.  The quirky spin on this YA novel:  Cinder is a cyborg.

There is a selfish, avaricious stepmother, one good and one egotistical stepsister, an evil queen, and a handsome prince. 

Of course, Cinder and the prince are immediately attracted to one another.  This is a retelling of a fairy tale, after all.  It is easy to understand on Cinder's part-- I mean, what teenage girl would not fall into fandom with a handsome prince who seems down t0 earth and unassuming.  Not that Cinder doesn't try to deny her insta-liking; of course, she does.  She is fully aware that if poor and socially unsuitable isn't enough to put off any male (much less the PRINCE), the cyborg factor would be a game changer.

The cyborg device makes for an interesting twist to the familiar tale, an ill-fitting prosthetic leg instead of a glass slipper.  However, several things bothered me, and some areas felt either repetitious or unnecessary. The plague aspect didn't work for me; it felt unreal and glossed over, used as a convenient plot device, but never generating the fear and panic such a deadly plague would create.

A lot of potential, but everything felt very surface, which is, indeed, a characteristic of fairy tales.  

Cinder is the first novel in The Lunar Chronicles.  Young readers who want a fast read and enjoy a fairy tale romance will enjoy this novel.  In fact, it seems to have been extremely popular and most reviews are very positive.  It isn't that I disliked it, but it didn't have the "je nais se quoi" that Megan Whalen Turner, Jane Yolen, Robin McKinley, and Donna Jo Napoli have in their books.

YA/SciFi.  2012.  

In the Stacks, in the Que, on the Wishlist

Yes, I WOULD like to live here!

By Peter and Donna Thomas via One Lucky Day.

Busy days, and I've fallen behind in my reviewing.  I have twelve books scheduled for review closer to their release dates, but I keep putting off the incomplete drafts--consisting mostly of title and author and MAYBE a paragraph or two.

I'm in good shape with reading material, 'though.  

In the stack by my reading chair are the physical books:  

Stella Bain by Anita Shreve
Social:  Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman
The Vanishing by Wendy Web

E-book que: 

 Deadline by John Dunning
Red Chrysanthemum by Henry F. Mazel
 The Sleep Room by F. R. Tallis
Where Monsters Dwell by Jorgen Brekke
Aurora: Pegasus by Amanda Bridgeman
The Two Mrs. Abbots by D. E. Stevenson.

Currently, I'm reading Lake of Tears by Mary Logue.

Recently finished:  

The Mile Marker Murders by C. W. Saari
Time of Attack by Marc Cameron
Cinder by Marissa Meyer


New on my wishlist:  Rochelle Jewel Shapiro's Kaylee's Ghost, recommended by Ruchama Feurerman.  You can read her review here.

Time to see if I can complete a review on one of my recently finished books.

Check It Out...

A few days ago, I reviewed The Emperor's Blades, an excellent high fantasy novel, the first in a trilogy.

Tor and Goodreads are having a give away of 9 copies.

If you are interested, you can enter here.

Great Quotes

via pinterest

via pinterest

The Stone Boy by Sophie Loubiere

The Stone Boy  is a strange and fascinating novel about mental illness and parent/child relations that leaves the reader with shifting perceptions about truth.

I thought I knew what it was about and updated my opinions several times with new information, but truly, I never had a clear perception and had to work through each new situation.  

The book is difficult to review because to appreciate it fully, it has to develop for each reader.  I want people to read this book, but I also want them to be able to navigate the plot in the circuitous way the author presents it.  Recognizing and puzzling over each bit of information, changing your mind, getting little bits of back story, making suppositions, experiencing a sense of dread...

The beginning is a bit slow and did not particularly engage me, but I am so glad I stuck with it because I became completely immersed in the novel.  I will not soon be forgetting The Stone Boy.

Sophie Loubiere won the Lion Noir Prize and the Ville de Mauves-sur-Loire Prize for The Stone Boy.   Norah Mahoney did a great job with the first English translation.

Highly recommended.  

(After a period of books that were not so good, many of which I did not finish, I'm having an unprecedented run of luck with my ARC choices!)

NetGalley/Grand Central Publishing

Psychological.  Oct. 2013.  Print version:  304 pages.

These Broken Stars by Meagan Spooner and Amie Kaufman

These Broken Stars   is a successful YA collaboration for Spooner and Kaufman.

A "massive great big" (phrase from a British guide on a tour many years ago that I have appropriated) spaceliner is suddenly pulled from hyperspace, the evacuation to the emergency pods is chaos.

Tarver Merendsen sees Lilac LaRoux fall and rescues her.  In turn, Lilac leads Tarver to one of the crew pods and with surprising skill manages to strip wires and persuade the pod to detach.  Others, some 50,000, were not so lucky. (See, it really was a "massive great big" spaceliner!)

The relationship between the two is rocky.  Although initially attracted to each other, Lilac is the daughter of the wealthiest man in the universe; Tarver, a decorated war hero, but in no way suitable.  Lilac knows what her father is capable of doing to unsuitable suitors and cruelly dismisses and humiliates Tarver.  What a difference a day makes.

Then, of course, they find themselves alone together in the pod, and the only survivors when the pod crashes onto an unknown and deserted planet.

The story becomes a survival story as the two travel toward the crash of the massive spaceliner.  They must learn to depend on each other if they want to reach the crash site where they hope for eventual rescue.

I have to admit that I was originally put off a bit by the lovely, but oh, so romantic, cover, but quickly found myself immersed in Tarver and Lilac's struggles.

The story alternates between Tarver's voice and take on the situation and Lilac's.  It works very well, in spite of the fact that it is more story-telling than dialogue.  At the end of Tarver's chapters, there is a short bit of an interrogation, so we know that Tarver survives, but the interrogation raises other questions.

Only two nitpicks:  First, I think the characters should have been older; they seemed way too young for the experience and skill each had.  Second, a vagueness about some situations near the end left me unclear about the nature of the situation, and the authors tied things up a little quickly.

Nevertheless, a fast-paced, entertaining novel with well-developed characters.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

NetGalley/Disney-Hyperion

YA/Science Fiction.  Dec. 10,  2013.  Print version:  384 pages.                 

The Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler

The Invisible Code  is both funny and serious.  Aging detectives Arthur Bryant and John May are part of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.  Well, there you go.  

Christopher Fowler describes Bryant and May as Golden Age detectives in a modern world.  Much of the modern world puzzles them, including technology, but they press on.

What qualifications are required for a crime to be designated peculiar?  The Peculiar Crimes Unit (fictional) was established during WWII to handle cases that might cause public scandal or public unrest.  These two qualifications allow for a lot of leeway, and when a young woman dies in a church for no discernible reason, Arthur Bryant wants the case. 

Denied that case, Bryant and May are summoned to the office of the man who wants to disband their unit.  Both are surprised and wary, especially when Oskar Kasavian asks for their help in discovering the cause of the strange behavior his much-younger wife has begun to display.

The beginning has lots of funny, witty remarks, but the situation soon turns more serious, and Bryant (with his false teeth clicking), May (the smooth talker), and their team find themselves investigating more than one murder, uncovering secrets, and  hindered by those in power.  

Favorite characters:  Arthur and his friend Maggie Armitage, the white witch (although her role is very small).

This is my first of the Bryant and May series, but I really liked the characters.  Has anyone else read this series?

NetGalley/Random House Publishing/Bantam Dell

Mystery.  Dec. 17, 2013.  Print version:  368 pages.

Sunday Thoughts

Believe me, I appreciate NetGalley.  Getting books for free is a wonderful gift for readers, and I'm well aware of that.  While there are cycles when the books don't really appeal to me after I begin reading, there are cycles when I have an excess of good books and hate deciding which to start next.

Sometimes I discover new-to-me authors that I enjoy and can order other books they've written with more confidence.  This is especially nice if the author is prolific--lots of good reading in the offing.  

Sometimes a debut novel introduces an author that just nails it from that first effort, and I know I'll be following that author, waiting for his or her next effort.  But this can be frustrating if it is a series, because I hate waiting for the next installment.

Another frustration occurs when I have to schedule a book review up to six months or more away.   If I really like the book, I want to talk about it NOW.  And this has just happened with two books:

The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley is an excellent fantasy novel.  Great characters, well-written, and engrossing, but it won't be published until next May. 

 I will have to schedule the review for April.

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Just received an email from Brian Staveley and the book will be released Jan. 14, rather than in May.  :)





Bred in the Bone by Christoper Brookmyre is part of a series (so I can go back and pick up two earlier books and/or some of his other novels).  A complex police procedural set in Glasgow, Bred in the Bone kept me completely involved.  Another May release. 

The Braque Connection by Estelle Ryan

The Braque Connection 

I very much enjoyed the two previous books in this series.  This latest in the series is  less satisfying.  Not terrible, by any means, and I still enjoy the characters, but beginning to feel forced.

Has Ryan painted herself into a corner with the artist titles?  :)  OK, OK.  Forgive the pun.  Nevertheless, the mysteries have become self-confined by connections to great artists and leave the reader considering new titles like  The Rembrandt Connection, The El Greco Connection, The Van Gogh Connection and wondering how many murder mysteries an insurance agency can encounter.  

(Spoiler) -- At least we can eliminate one villain from the scene.  Kubenov disappears from the picture.  These are not deliberate puns; it seems that artistic terms apply easily to different genres.  Kubenov as the villain had certainly run his course; however, an accomplice survives and disappears.

I understand that with Genevieve's ability to decipher and interpret patterns, the use of complicated patterns are part of the charm of the novels.  The complicated pattern of the under paintings, however, stretches my view of plausibility.  

Will I read the next in the series?  Certainly.  I still like the characters and can hope for a bit of expansion in the format.

Mystery.  Sept. 2013.  Print length:  376 pages.

Traveling with the Dead by Barbara Hambly

Traveling with the Dead , the second novel in this series, picks up in 1908.  James Asher, ostensibly the mild-mannered Oxford don, but in reality a former spy, happens to glimpse an old enemy, Ignace Karolyi with vampire Charles Farren, Earl of Ernchester.  This meeting can promise no good to the Empire, especially with all of the troubles that are already boiling over in Eastern Europe. 

James follows the pair to Paris, hoping to discover what reason an enemy spy and a dangerous vampire could have for teaming up.  And there is someone else on their trail.  From Paris, the journey leads to Vienna, and finally, to Constantinople.  

Lydia, worried about James, eventually seeks the aid of Don Simon Ysidro and takes off on the trail of her husband, but she is not the first to be following James.  Danger and death always accompany a vampire, and added to that are the machinations of the world of spy craft.

As in the previous novel, the writing is excellent and the characters well-drawn.  Hambly is able to create fascinating characters and a convincing atmosphere of the years that presage WWI as she casually drops in some of the events and conflicts that are building in Europe:  German Nationalism, unrest in Slavic countries, the call for social reform.

I am grateful to NetGalley for introducing me to this series with Hambly's latest James Asher novel The Kindred of Darkness, due to be released in March.  It was this ARC that instigated my interest in the series, and I will be scheduling that review for some time in February.

Now that I've read Those Who Hunt the Night and Traveling with the Dead, I'll certainly be seeking the next in the series soon.

James Asher, Vampire Novels

Those Who Hunt the Night (Locus Award winner for Best Horror Novel in 1989)

Traveling with the Dead (Locus Award nominee 1996, winner of the Lord Ruthven Award 1996)

Blood Maidens (2010)

Magistrates of Hell (2012)

The Kindred of Darkeness (March 1, 2014)

(Only two left for me to read in this series, so maybe I will give it a short rest, then, maybe I'll try one of Hambly's other series.)


Mystery/Paranormal/Vampire.  Orig. publ. 1995; republ. by Open Road 2011.  361 pages.

The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince by Robin Hobb

I'm a fan of Robin Hobb, especially of the trilogies associated with the Farseers in some way:  The Liveship Traders, The Farseer Trilogy, and The Tawny Man Trilogy.   When I saw the novella The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince was a prequel to The Farseer Trilogy, I was eager to read it.  

The truth, however, is that I am not a great fan of novellas.  I prefer the layered depths of a novel to the efficiently concise narrative required of a novella.

If the purpose was to reveal the prejudice against Witted individuals, the novella served its purpose.  On the other hand, it did not engage my sympathies on an emotional level.  All characters were treated rather like in a fairy tale, with that surface depiction that allows the author to concentrate on the cautionary message:  the world is full of peril.  Power struggles, jealousy, torture, and betrayals, both intentional and unintentional, abound. 

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Sometimes we assume a "fairy tale ending" is a happy one, but that certainly isn't true of older versions of fairy tales.  The endings are often unfair, tragic, full of sorrow.  Although some fairy tales reward the triumph of goodness, courage, and persistence,  others (in their original forms) lack a happy ending.

In that sense, The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince  reveals that sometimes evil triumphs, not only through the persistence of the villain, but through the flaws in the "hero."  Really, there is no hero in this novella, but a character with whom we can sympathize.

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The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince does serve to explain why the Witted were hated and hunted, but it does not provide the depth, adventure, and excitement I usually love in Hobb's work.  I am very fond of fairy tales, their history, purpose, and analysis, but prefer Hobb's long, involved novels with characters that live and breathe and tackle the impossible with occasional success to a fairy tale version.

Fantasy/Fairy Tale.  2013.  85 pages.

The Night Is Forever by Heather Graham

The Night Is Forever is set in Tennessee on a horse farm that functions as a therapy center.  When Olivia Gordon discovers Marcus Denby, owner and founder of the therapy center, dead in a ravine, she is grief-stricken; when Marcus actually appears to Olivia and tells her that he was murdered, the shock causes her to faint.

Olivia, one of the therapists at the center, refuses to accept the verdict that Marcus fell of the wagon and took the drugs that killed him, but is can only assert her belief that after 30 years, Marcus would not have fallen back into addiction.  She can hardly explain that his ghost told her that he was murdered.

Olivia contacts her cousin Malachi--a member of the Krewe, a special FBI unit that deals with ghosts and the supernatural--and asks for his help.  

Special Agent Dustin Blake is sent in to investigate.

Lots of ghosts, puzzling murders, plenty of possible suspects, and a little romance.

The Night Is Forever provided a light and entertaining mystery.  It is part of a series about the FBI unit, The Krewe of Hunters, but I did not realize that, and the book functions perfectly well as a stand-alone.  

NetGalley/Harlequin

Paranormal/Mystery.  Sept. 2013.  Print length:  363 pages.

A New-to-me Series

The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly is an ARC I received from NetGalley.  It won't be released until March 2014, but I liked it enough to read and review the first in the series.

Those Who Hunt the Night (James Asher, Book 1)  was the Locus Award winner for the Best Horror Novel of 1989.  Open Road Media republished it in 2011. 

 The series is named for James Asher, apparently a mild-mannered professor of Linguistics and Folk Lore at Oxford, but in reality a former spy in Her Majesty's secret service, acquainted with violence and subterfuge, a necessary skill set for the novel.  

Although the series is named for James, his wife Lydia often holds the spotlight.  An heiress, Lydia caused a family uproar when she insisted on attending Oxford and most scandously, on becoming a doctor, then risked being disinherited by marrying James, who lacked the appropriate social standing.  (After James married Lydia without the promise of the money, Lydia's father dis-disinherited her, but the entire family still disapproved.)

The vampires that Hambly imagines are neither sympathetic nor sexy; they are skilled predators who, despite their quickness and strength, are strangely vulnerable if their true identities are revealed.  The sex appeal of the vampire is only a hunting mechanism, a means of luring prey.  They survive not only by blood, but by the psychic element of swallowed death...so to speak.  No nice vampires choosing to drink cautiously, because blood alone in not enough.

When London vampires are murdered, Don Simon Ysidro (a vampire since 1588) approaches James and, with the threat to Lydia, forces James to aid in the search for the killer.  

With Lydia as James' hostage to fate, Don Simon and James pursue through the killer through the London of 1907.  

Don Simon is a fascinating character:  Old World, cultivated, intelligent, and snobbish, but he retains a little of the character of his former self, and he works well with James.  Without Don Simon's knowledge, James has enlisted Lydia's help with research while trying to keep anyone from being aware of their contact.

Although I wasn't as pleased with the revelation of the source of the evil stalking the vampires (and that evil took more human lives than vampire lives), the novel provides hours of good reading and three compelling protagonists.

I read Hambly's Renfield:  Slave of Dracula for the 2007 R.I.P. Challenge, and I liked the way Hambly expanded on Bram Stoker's Dracula.

I liked The Kindred of Darkness enough to begin reading the series, and I liked Those Who Hunt the Night enough to continue with the next in the series.

Mystery/Supernatural.  Orig. publ.  1989; republ.  2011.  350 pages.

The Murder Tree by Alan Veale

The Murder Tree was inspired by a historic murder in Glasgow .  Veale employs the concept of both genealogical research and some psychic experiences that affect descendants of the victim/murderer.

The theory works well, but the rather convoluted and supernatural way that Chrissy Fersen is drawn into genealogical research failed to allow me to enter the story thoroughly.  You know the feeling of reading and following a narrative from a great distance, processing, but unable to truly make connection?  

The David Abram influence resulted in my being unable to jump into the story with both feet, even though it takes a while for his influence on events to be revealed.

Although the concept of researching the family tree only to find that an ancestor was either a murderer or a victim is intriguing, the lack of character development and the inability to suspend disbelief kept me from becoming genuinely involved in this novel.

NetGalley/Troubador Publishing.

Supernatural.  Oct. 2013.  Print version:  238 pages.