Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

License to Ensorcell

By Katharine Kerr.

This one's kind of a mixed bag.

Nola O'Grady is a psychic working for some strange anonymous government agency (it's so secret we can't tell you the name), where the only supervisor she has is a guy named "Y" that she can only contact via going into trance. She does that a lot. She also has random saints and angels pop in from time to time to give her hints about stuff. Her job is to be an agent of Harmony, combatting the crazy-ass forces of Chaos. She gets forced to work with normal Interpol Israeli agent Ari Nathan, who's investigating a guy who goes around killing werewolves. Nola figures out early on that this must have been the guy who killed her lycanthrope brother Pat. At the same time, her little brother Michael comes into his powers (magical powers REALLY run in the O'Grady/O'Brian/Halloran family trees) and disappears into some kind of alternate universe. It's an interesting premise, albeit kind of sketchy and vague to me a good chunk of the time. I'm not sure why the bad guys did what they did, but there's a twist toward the end that interested me.

Nola uses a lot of acronyms for what psychic processes she's using, which on the one hand, kind of amused me, but on the other hand, might not amuse others so much AND they do all tend to blend together until all you think is, "she's doing some other kind of psychic thing."Well, yeah.

And I have to say that for a detective, Nola doesn't exactly have a whopping amount of distinctive personality. (At one point she says she has a hard time mentally staying in her body without getting laid regularly, and you do believe it.) Neither does her boyfriend, especially. I can't say either of them stand out as distinctive personalities compared to say, Nola's entire family, who are far more entertaining and quirky and distinct as individuals. I would have enjoyed a bit more conflict or personality in how Nola and Ari get together, but it's pretty much "huh, no, I'm not gonna fall in love with him no matter what you say, tarot reading" to "let's boink" without a whole lot of drama. Just kinda happens. Again, it's not a particularly memorable pairing, though I did kind of feel for Nola in how she was refusing to get attached to Ari because all of her boyfriends dump her once they get away from her relatives.

Nola's biggest personality trait, other than being magic/from a magic family, is that she has an eating disorder. The comments on Amazon mentioned that it's not so easy as having her boyfriend force her to eat--well, no, it's not. The fact that it's an eating disorder actually kind of crept up on me since this is from her POV and she mostly just claims to "forget" to eat. (I was rolling my eyes at that.) Ari forces her to eat at meals, though she starts hiding food/feeding it to the nearest chaos creature. But when her family started commenting on this ("Wow, you want to eat the lasagna? Last time you dissected every possible calorie in every layer."), then I was all, ohhhhh, this isn't just me thinking it, then. I'm not sure what to make of this, exactly. It may seem like an easy fix to have Nola choke down some pizza or whatever when her boyfriend's around, but since she keeps doing what she wants when left alone, I dunno.

So: Nola and Ari as protagonists = not the best. The case = somewhat confusing, somewhat interesting, it kind of goes all over the place. However, her relatives and that story = very interesting. I'd certainly like to hear more about Michael and what he gets up to (I'd read a spinoff of his talent, because there is so much potential in that), and heck, even the rest of the family sound like fun to get to know even when you only see them briefly.

I think overall this new series may have potential, but at the moment, falls kinda flat in a lot of the major places. I may read the next one, or not, I don't know. It's not bad, but it could be better.

Two and a half stars.

The Vampire Vivienne

By Karen E. Taylor.

This is the fifth book in a series, apparently, but I'm not sure it was a big deal to miss the previous four. The title character is a sweet girl, kinda stupid, but with a good heart. About 3/5 of the book talks about her life during the 1700's in France, right around when the beheadings started. Vivienne runs a nice whorehouse and takes in injured strays, like Monique, a girl who'd been beaten after having a baby. She falls in love (in a shallow sort of way) with a human doctor, who naturally loses his head. She has conflicts with her maker and another vampire, mostly about how she's ignoring the French Revolution and still going about throwing parties. Oh yeah, and there's definitely something dubious going on with Monique.

That's most of the novel right there, which the back of the book doesn't mention. Like reading Bond of Fire, most of the plot really takes place in the past, except in this case it really takes a LONG ASS TIME to get back to the modern era. You really don't get much of the supposed plot of this book even when you get to the present time, when some group called the "Others" is going around killing vampires.

I will say this: there's a hell of a plot twist that finally explains everything, AND makes you think, "oh, holy shit!"... and it comes in around the 280-page mark. Out of 300 pages. On the one hand, it made me go, "yay foreshadowing." On the other hand, dear god, I wish the modern era AND the plot twisting had come in a lot earlier. Mostly the book boils down to Vivienne having a pleasantly good time and there's not much plot to it before the end. Sheesh.

I suspect this book is supposed to be a romance, but IT IS NOT. Seriously, it is not. The second love interest in the book is barely even mentioned in it, so why should you care? I didn't.

This would get an even lower review, were Vivienne not a pleasant (albeit shallow-ish) narrator to read. If not for the tone of voice, I would not have stuck with finishing this piece o' fluff.

Two and a half stars.

The Sleeping Doll

By Jeffrey Deaver.

Kathryn Dance, an expert in body language, gets called in to interview Daniel Pell, a Manson-esque killer who's now suspected of another murder entirely. She figures out that he's planning on breaking out, but not quite soon enough to prevent the escape. He's set himself up to be rescued by a girlfriend, and then he goes on the rampage again, killing, boinking, and looking for reunions both good and bad. Kathryn gets the idea to reunite Sam, Linda, and Rebecca, the female members of Pell's Family, to get them to give her insight into Pell's behavior. She also looks to talk to Theresa, the "Sleeping Doll" who got missed when Pell and his one male Family member killed the rest of her family years ago.

I'm not sure what else to say about this. It's certainly a Jeffrey Deaver book: on the one hand, awesomely devious plot twists that nevertheless fit with what you've read in the plot previously. I especially liked how the Pell stuff went down. On the other hand, somewhat overexplainy writing style, and you don't really care about his main detectives because they don't have nearly the amount of personality that say, Daniel Pell or his girlfriends do. Kathryn is a pleasant enough personality compared to the grumpy-ass Lincoln Rhyme, but I don't know how much feeling I had for her when it came to her own personal life. She wants to date, her son doesn't want her to, so she holds off on dating, and yet is interested in men... but eh, I don't know enough about any of these people to care so much.

Three stars. Interesting story, not so much interesting when it comes to the continuing world.

Spun by Sorcery

By Barbara Bretton.

Previous book here.

I finished this book awhile back, but didn't get around to writing the review right away. Part of that is because I had a home disaster for awhile and thus was rather distracted (I haven't read too many new books lately), but also, I'm just not sure what to say about it.

I can't discuss this one without spoiling the ending of the last one, so it's spoiler cut time. Overall, it gets 3 stars. It's an okay book, but could have been improved with some length.