Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Lightborn

By Alison Sinclair.

Previous book here.

As you can guess from the title, this book focuses more (about 50%) on the Lighborn folks we didn't see in the first book.

On the Darkborn side, Balthasar and Ishmael are not in the book whatsoever (except for a very brief check in), and they are missed. It's very weird to not have them around at this point and hear on the side what's happening to them. Mostly the book focuses on Telmaine's dilemma as she's magically bodyguarding (more or less) the archmage's brother. The situation there starts getting more and more awkward, and her life gets way threatened. Especially when she finds out that something bad is going to happen.

On the Lightborn side, I am pleased to finally find out some of how their world works. Now you know why it's okay for the Lightborn to have mages-- they have to. Because they don't have electricity- the light that keeps them alive has to be sun-powered. So all Lightborn indoor lights have to be charged with sun power during the day via magic. (Now I seriously wonder what happens on cloudy days, winters, rainstorms that last for days or weeks... Does everyone just hope their lights don't burn out until the storms end?) Also rather ominous is that these folks apparently can't even tolerate shadows without pain/burning/some kind of issue. Holy crap, that's dangerous. Almost makes me worry more about Lightborn safety in general in this world.

Anyway, on the Ligbtborn side of things, we finally get to meet Floria, food taster/bodyguard to the Lighborn prince. (Though frankly, we don't get to see as much of her as I would have preferred, especially since she spends most of the book locked in.) After someone manages to magically extinguish the lights in the prince's room, killing him, Floria suspects she's been ensorcelled to do it because she remembers dreaming that she brought a gift from Balthasar to the prince's room. She calls on a mage friend, Tammorn, to investigate the situation. (She and the new prince know he can be trusted because years ago he saved Prince Fejelis' life when he was poisoned, even though it went against the Temple rules to do magic on someone without a contract.) Tammorn is a "sport"-- he manifested being magical out of the blue rather than inheriting it. He and his sport mentor figure out that they can sense Shadowborn magic, but those born to a magical lineage can't. 

The new prince, Fejelis, just turned of age yesterday and relies on Tammorn, but feels that he'd better arrange for Floria to be arrested for a few days while they figure out what's going on. Seeing at least one of her pursuers wants to shoot her, Floria somehow goes to the Darkborn palace (and hides out in their execution room!) for sanctuary, leading to some awkward/interesting conversations with Telmaine, who's clearly jealous of the love-that-can't-be between Floria and her husband. (Floria, to her credit, is all, "Calm down, it doesn't mean he doesn't love you just because we love each otherr," and leaves it at that.) While Floria investigates the possibility of ensorcellment, Fejelis and Tammorn wonder which of Fejelis's family members is trying to take the throne.

It's a very interesting plot, and I enjoyed going back and forth between the two worlds, something that couldn't really happen in Darkborn. While I missed certain characters and wished Floria had been more in the story than she actually is, I did enjoy the new characters of the prince and Tam. I look forward to book 3.

Four stars.

Rereleasing

A Little Ray of Sunshine and The Fortune Quilt are being rereleased. Just figured I'd give a plug.

Saltation

By Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

I love the Liaden series. And years ago I was excited to see that the authors were finally going to followup on the last minute "what the hell?" moment that they slipped in at the end of I Dare. And so the authors wrote a book, Fledgling. And then they wrote ANOTHER book, Saltation, because they still hadn't even gotten to the point of explaining how their new lead character, Theo, had to come to the delm with a "kind of complicated..." problem yet.

I love this series and I hate to give a bad review. But the thing is, I could not, for the life of me, finish Fledgling. DEAR GOD IT WAS DULL. For a series that is known for the swashbucking space battles and adventurous characters and love stories, the adventure was almost entirely nonexistent. Ditto the plot. As I recall, the story featured a teenage Theo Waitley, daughter of career academics Kamele Waitley and Jen Sar Kiladi. (Those of you who read the Liaden books know who that fellow originally is, and while Theo never finds out within the two books, her true heritage and lost family kind of hang over everything like an anvil.) She's spent her entire life on Delgado, a planet that seems to be entirely made up of a college. It's very safe, very dull, and very conformist.

The big dramas of the book are (a) due to Kamele's burgeoning academic career, she needs to move out of Jen Sar's cushy house outside of "The Wall" and move into "The Wall" where all of the academics live. Theo is not happy about this. She also gets a reputation for being "clumsy," which is A BIG GIGANTIC ANTISOCIAL EFFING DEAL OMG OMG. It's also a big deal that when Theo turns 16, she will have her "gigneri," in which she (a) finds out officially who her father is (though uh, she's been raised by him her entire freaking life, so in this case it is NOT a secret or anything!) and (b) can lose her virginity now. Frankly, the plot just didn't pick up from there. (Note: here is a review that explains Fledgling better for you.) I LIVE in an academic town, so you'd think I'd find that interesting, but it was not.

Checking to see if it got any better, I looked on the Amazon page. On the Amazon reviews, it's either totally loved or totally boring the shit out of people. So, hm. My favorite review was this one by Kevin L. Nenstiel:

"Theo's story requires nearly 400 pages, but I never stop feeling that our authors are clearing their throats. This book reads like the extended Act One from Hell. Entire chapters serve no purpose. Characters are introduced who go nowhere; plot threads are launched but forgotten; settings that should require maybe thirty pages suck up over a hundred. Reading becomes excruciating."

So I gave up on Fledgling. But I heard that Saltation had more plot to it, so I gave it a shot.
Disclaimer: I am pretty much going to spoil almost the entire book in this review. I am doing this because this book kind of needs to be reviewed in two different sections. Basically, the ACTUAL PLOT doesn't start until very late, but it's crucial to me as a reviewer to tell anyone pondering reading this that that actually happens.

In this book, Theo has been allowed to leave Delgado to go to piloting school on Elyot. To be honest, for about 5/6 of the book there is not a major amount of plot either, though it still beats Fledgling for interest factor. Theo goes to school, she's recognized as being talented, and she gets into fights. See, Theo's had a whopping amount of self-defense training, and if someone tries to pick a physical fight with her, she unconsciously goes all River Tam on their asses... and then gets blamed for it. Um, what? This is one of those books where people tell the heroine that she comes off as too confident/arrogant (Theo, raised Terran, comes off as someone who will follow through if you pick a fight, I guess) and needs to be brought down to earth with more socialization and dance classes, or else people will think bad things of her. She's also only barely aware of the political drama that's starting to erupt on Elyot, where a "locals only" policy is starting to develop that may drive out anyone at the school who isn't local. At one point her roommate tells Theo that her lack of socialization (uh, hello, she's kinda busy? school and all?) is making people think she's a SPY and that the roommate will need to find someone else to live with because Theo is making her look bad and nobody believes the roommate when she says that Theo is okay.  If Bully Broads existed in this world, Theo would be being sent to this. Which is odd considering that unless you poke her with a stick, Theo is a fairly mellow personality.  But people telling her all the time that she's "dangerous" even when she's not getting in a fight is weak and really "tell, don't show" more than anything else. Especially since Theo doesn't actually ACT so offensive that we can see.

Theo still corresponds with (and sees occasionally) her friend/sorta-boyfriend Win Ton from the previous book, though he has to go do a mandatory contract-marriage for awhile. Which, btw, lead to a really confusing bit for me. Theo finds out from Win Ton he has to go do this marriage at (I think) the end of her first year of school. Then Theo is shown getting a local summer job, which has a weird explosion moment that is left as a cliffhanger and goes unresolved. Then somehow there was a one, two, skip a few moment and Theo's uh, somewhat later on in school, getting a letter from Win Ton saying in polite Liadenese the equivalent of "I just got done with my contract marriage and DEAR GOD, IT WAS SO BORING, all my wife cared about was making a baby and tea." And I was all, um, what? Over a year has passed by and nobody's MENTIONED that? Not so much as a "one year later" anywhere?! Grr. There's a lot of "one, two, skip a few " moments in this book, but that was the worst of them. (Also odd: Theo is more obsessed with tea than English people are. Like, geez, woman. I guess compared to Win Ton's wife she at least has a few other interests in life besides it.)

Anyhoo, after a freaking mob comes after Theo and she injures them about as much as they injure her, she gets labeled a "Nexus of Violence" (I think it's more like a chaos magnet, myself, shades of Cantra yos'Phelium in the the Crystal duology) and thrown out of school, and since she can pretty much pilot already by now, she starts her career. Then she gets an urgent message from Win Ton needing to see her RIGHT AWAY.

And THAT, folks, is when the actual story of Theo's problem begins. Seriously, the entire plot of Theo's life and what her "problem" is does not start until around page 370-ish out of 444 pages. But when it starts, IT IS A GIANT FREAKING WHOPPER. Suddenly, there is a great deal of impending plot that drops upon Theo's head, and it's REALLY GOT POTENTIAL FOR AWESOME. I'll leave the rest of this below the spoiler cut (okay, so I didn't spoil EVERYTHING), but this is what you've been reading the book series for, and this is what will get you to buy the sequel to this book and I Dare, Ghost Ship, when it comes out. Because HOLY COW THAT'S GONNA BE AWESOME.*

This leads me to quite a problem doing the review. Had things not finally gotten started on page 370-ish, this would be a two star review. I truly do not understand why the authors felt like they had to do 1 novel plus 5/6 of another novel doing what boils down to THROAT CLEARING before they started the plot. I've read "coming of age" stories before that had more plot than these two books, so it can be done. But frankly, I don't love Theo the way that I do other characters in this series so far, though she seems pleasant enough. I mostly kept reading just to find out WHAT WAS GOING ON THAT WAS SO DIRE. And when you finally get there, it's worth it, but... I truly don't know why they had to lag through telling this kid's entire back story in such a slow manner. I think it could have been vastly improved if they'd changed how they told the story and where they started it from, but I'll get into that in the spoiler cut. **

So my review is going to be two and a half stars. But if you're a fan of this series, even if you are so far just not into the Theo Waitley books like I am, you're gonna have to get book 3.

Must You Go? My Life With Harold Pinter

By Antonia Fraser.

In 1975, author Antonia Fraser was "happily married" (which is to say, on friendly terms with an unaffectionate husband who didn't care if she had affairs to get affection here and there, as far as I can tell) with hordes of children and had no intention of leaving her husband. Playwright Harold Pinter was unhappily married to an alcoholic at the same time. Antonia went to the first night of the play The Birthday Party and then the dinner party afterwards because her brother-in-law directed it. As she was about to leave, Antonia approached Harold for the first time to tell him that she liked the play. His response to her "Wonderful play, marvellous acting, now I'm off," is "Must you go?" Antonia thinks of all of the kid-related stuff she has to do, the writing she has to do, how tired she is...and then says, "No, it's not absolutely essential." That kicks off an all-night conversation during which the two fall madly in love and stay that way for the next 33 years.

"We sometimes speculated later what would have happened if I had in fact answered: 'Yes, I really must go.' Harold, convinced by then that I was his destiny, would gallantly reply: 'I would have found you somehow.' But we had few friends in common: Edna O'Brien was one, and the producer Sam Spiegel another. But fundamentally we lived in different worlds. The night of 8/9 January was the chance and our chance."

Anyway, their relationship is an instant thunderbolt. After a couple months, Harold tells his wife. She does not take it well, files for divorce and then drags it out for the next five years. Antonia had no intention of leaving her marriage, especially when her husband truly didn't seem to give a crap if she loved somebody else or not, but Harold presses the issue and she eventually does get a friendly divorce. (How their respective kids take it, on the other hand, isn't mentioned.) They're quite the scandal for their day, since they're famous in literary circles. But anyway, they shack up together happily until they can get married, they write works of art, they hang out with famous friends. There's a lot of name-dropping, but not in an insufferable way. And they remain schmoopily in love the entire time. Eventually Harold gets cancer and is sick for the last seven years of his life, but still manages to get an amazing amount of work done during that time.

The author wrote this book right after her husband died, using her journal entries from the last 33 years to put the book together. She occasionally fills in background information here and there as to what's going on. Now, it's entirely possible that the author wasn't up to doing more given what she was going through at the time, and god knows not everybody is Joan Didion. However, as a journaler she is mostly rather short-winded, and I desperately wished that she'd filled in more details here and there, really set the scene, and made us feel like we were living through what they were going through. Alas, as a journaler she's more like, "Salman Rushdie called us up wanting to come over. Wow, he brought a lot of security guards over to the house. We had to have Harold do a reading for him because Salman can't go out in public. Salamn said next time he'd read one of Harold's pieces somewhere for him." Yes, that's some information there, but it's not as descriptive as I would have liked to have seen. (And this is ironic coming from me considering that I normally don't give a damn about description of anything!)

The short-windedness is pretty much the one major flaw. It also seems quite odd at what she leaves out, such as barely mentioning when ex-spouses die (and she mentions it long after the fact). And I have no idea as to say, what Antonia's kids thought about all of this stuff. Or for that matter, what they're all named. People that aren't her and Harold and their friends (i.e. the relatives) drop in and out of the story at random. This is understandable with exes, or with Harold's kid who eventually dropped him entirely for whatever reason, but it just seems odd with those who stuck around. The author herself points out that the book is more interesting when she's talking about how they met and got together and when Harold is dying-- which is true. Happy middles are hard to describe. But it's still interesting, even if not quite as schmoopy.

I'd give it three and a half stars overall. As people, these folks are quite interesting. I just wish there had been more to it. But it's kind of mean of me to bitch about to a grieving widow, isn't it?

Spellcast

By Barbara Ashford.

Maggie Graham's life just went to hell: she lost her job and her apartment's a wreck. So she takes off driving and follows a strange inner call that leads her to a summer stock theater in a small town in Vermont. Stopping off for a drink, she's urged to hurry, hurry, hurry, because auditions are about to end! Maggie gave up acting quite a while ago, but goes to the auditions anyway.

This is an... unusual... theater. For one thing, everyone gets into the show. And they're offered FREE ROOM AND BOARD. For another thing, most of the folks there aren't actors (Maggie is one of the few with experience). Speaking as someone who desperately wanted to get into a play growing up and uh...well, apparently I can't act... this sounds like heaven to me. But Maggie as an ex-actress can't help but wonder about some things, such as the casting. Some of it's dead on, while other casting is just plain weird. As for Maggie herself, she's annoyed that with her acting experience, she doesn't get any named roles in Brigadoon (she should have been Meg, darn it!) or The Sea-Wife, and the only part she got was Neille in Carousel. This is especially irritating because Maggie hates Carousel. I totally hate that musical too (oh goodie, a musical about an abusive dead jerk, that's awesome) and Maggie thinks the songs she has to perform are bad and lame and snarks on them a lot. "A very nice clambake? Really?" She also particularly can't stand "You'll Never Walk Alone," a song that she thinks is total bullshit. But that's part of the summer's tasks... getting cast for what part you need rather than what you'd want, and figuring out what's good about a character you're playing that you can't stand.

And then there's Rowan, the mysterious director. He's got some quirks, to say the least. (I ah... well, let's say it's pretty obvious to you early on that Rowan is no ordinary human bloke.) As Maggie starts to hang out with him more, some folks are pushing her to have a summer affair with him-- as long as she can manage not to fall in love, because the dude isn't up to it. As the two inch towards each other and Maggie unravels the mysteries of the Crossroads Theater, the ending comes to a place you don't quite expect.

And it's awesome. I don't know how the heck the author is going to do a sequel to it (yes, she's planning one), but I highly recommend picking this book up. Especially if you're a wannabe actor. Four stars.

Heartless

By Gail Carriger.

As per previous books in this series (last one here), I'll have to put the actual review below the spoiler cut.

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A great-with-child Alexia Maccon continues to get into investigations and the like in this book, despite being 8 months along. So cheers for her stamina!

Anyway: the vampires are still trying to kill her and her impending infant-inconvenience, so at the beginning of the book the men in Alexia's life come up with a plan to get them to stop: having her friend Lord Akeldama adopt her child. This seems... rather strange... to me, still, but in book logic letting a vampire be in control of the impending who-knows-what-the-hell-it's-gonna-be baby apparently will make the vampires no longer want them dead? I don't claim to get it exactly, but okay, I guess. Anyway, this immediately leads to the Maccons moving into the house next door to Lord Akeldama's, and building a secret bridge between the houses so they can still have secret access to the kid. This sounds like it has a lot of potential for fun in the future!

The plot of this one starts kind of slowly and then around halfway through the book, explodes. Alexia gets a message from a ghost warning her of someone trying to assassinate the queen, leading her down some false rabbit holes, sending Ivy to Scotland to investigate what the Kingair pack got up to (mentioned in Changeless), and finding out some more surprising details of her father's life. But in the end, the plot turns out to be going in a ... vastly different and surprising direction. And even though Alexia's hugely pregnant, she gets involved in a major action situation as she tries to save the lives of folks who, well... let's just say Alexia's a nicer person than most of us would be, by far. It is definitely an interesting place to take the action and the characters in this book. I'm not sure what to make of it all-- the red herrings were making me feel disoriented for the first part of the book. But the surprise factor in this plot (and hoo boy, ain't there a lot of that) is pretty important. So I don't know how I feel overall about the execution.

And finally... I deeply look forward to finding out what's going on with the baby. Having seen the cover of Timeless online already, I suspect a trip to Egypt is in order. I do wonder if there's going to be any kind of years-long time skip to see how that situation is going. I also now am deeply delighted at the spinoff potential that might come from that. I don't think the author would necessarily do that, but I wish.

Three and a half stars. Not at all bad, just a little disorienting to me this go-round.

Painted Ladies

By Robert B. Parker.

I like reading Spenser books occasionally (coincidentally, this happens when I go to visit my mom, who's a big fan). I think I end up thinking mostly the same things here and there: I like the folks in the books, and the cases are interesting, but some things about them are... repetitive. Like while I enjoy Spenser and Susan hanging out, must they always be having some kind of conversation about The Nature Of Spenser And Why He Does What He Does? Repeatedly? Within the same book? Every few chapters? Ditto Spenser having similar conversations with cops. I know people find it kind of hard to get ahold on a dude who comes off as a thug, but is literate and has a moral code, but... if you've known the dude for years, you probably shouldn't be surprised that he acts as he does. I guess after 39 books (and indeed, this is one of the last ones written before the author died, apparently) maybe stuff like that happens, but...eh....

Anyhoo: this case has Spenser hired to protect Ashton Prince, a professor/art expert who's trying to get back a rare painting that's been kidnapped for ransom. It's not spoiling (happens very soon in the book) to say that This Does Not Go Well, and Mr. Prince is blown up. It wasn't something that Spenser could have stopped, technically speaking, but since it bugs him to have not done his job, he returns his check and starts working on this pro bono. I will say that the case went to places I wasn't expecting: featuring a deranged poet, a mother and daughter, people being tied into the case in interesting ways, and the Holocaust. What? Wasn't expecting that last one. When the bad guys start trying to also blow up Spenser, it brings on many ah... repetitive conversations about What He Does.

The case is interesting, but overall I kind of felt like there was a lot of personal business retreading. And it was getting old. Two and a half stars.

The Healer

By Sharon Sala.

Jonah Gray Wolf was LITERALLY suckled by wolves, as far as anyone can tell. He was dropped off by a wolf as a baby in the middle of a small Alaskan town and adopted, where he turns out to be a magical healer and Friend To All Living Things with psychic animal communication powers. Yes, really, but he's not insufferable about it. Unfortunately, Jonah saves the life of some rich evil bigwig named Major Bourdain at some point, and Major WILL STOP AT NOTHING to stalk the shit out of Jonah and send bounty hunters after him because he thinks Jonah may make him immortal. (Well, maybe. Doesn't seem like Jonah can cure aging or bring anyone back from the actual dead, but otherwise he seems able to fix any ailment that may come on.) He pretty much wants to keep Jonah in a cushy cage with a bunch of video games-- this is not the way to appeal to a country boy.  Nor is getting the guy's adoptive dad killed. So Jonah has been on the run ever since, basically siccing his animal pals on any bounty hunter that comes his way. After the latest one comes around, Jonah's on the run again right before the dead of winter, and he needs a quick place to settle down.

He ends up in a small town, where he makes some new friends and falls in pretty much insta-love with orphaned Lucia Andahar after he saves her dog's life. Lucia is being stalked by someone in town (once again, the Anonymous Pervy Narrator Who Just Wants To Fuck And Kill Her voice is used again... I'm so sick of people using this in every damn romantic thriller that I'm gonna go make a TV Tropes page on this), one of her customers at work. Jonah makes pretty quick work of finding her stalker, to his credit. Though as a mystery, I have to say that the handling of this is very weak. Like when the killer's name is revealed I was all, "WHO?" I can't even recall this person's name being used before. But the stalker plot is really there to kick off a media frenzy that announces where Jonah is to the world, just as a new bounty hunter is on his trail. I will say that compared to the handling of the serial killer, the handling of the bounty hunter was genuinely tricksy. It was foreshadowed and perhaps I should have guessed it, but I did not. So kudos to the author for surprising me on that one.

Overall, it's a pleasant enough book. Not a major "must read" or a total shocker, but if you come across it, you'll enjoy it. Three stars.

The Artist In The Office: How to Creatively Survive and Thrive Seven Days a Week

By Summer Pierre.

You can tell from the title if this one is for you or not, eh? It's about that mental battle that comes from wanting to do your own thing all day long, but instead you need to be able to eat. How do you reconcile yourself to that? Summer Pierre used to have that problem, until she learned how to focus on (a) what's good about the office, and (b) what kinds of artistic fun you can have while holding an office job. This is kind of a workbook, with lots of blank space for making lists and doing whatever you need to do to make your life more resolvable and fun to yourself. The drawings are cute and lively, and it's inspiring yet practical. I highly recommend it if you have this dilemma in your own life. Four stars.

Crystal Sage

By Kara Dalkey.

Joan Dark (yes, really) grew up on a ranch, but her parents sold it a few years ago and she's turned to being a cleaning lady to make ends meet. Her new assistant, Miriam, is a budding psychic whose dad was the one who bought the ranch. When they go on a job to clean the house of musicologist Gillian, they find a surprise... their client's experiment with summoning a fairy via magic has gone horribly wrong and she's been turned into a guitar. (And the way this works is interesting: Gillian can speak when she's played...makes for a rather cool sing-along.) Joan is a pretty no-nonsense personality, compared to Miriam's hippie-ness, but she believes what has gone on pretty quickly, and sets to work tracking down the summoned fairy to get him to turn her back. This turns out to be a pretty tricky thing, since the fairy (Amadan) is now a big shot who goes around preaching to hippie audiences to plant fairy-friendly plants to change the climate of Colorado to make it more amenable to his kind. Amadan eventually says he'll turn Gillian back IF Joan can find out what "crystal sage" is.Other magical beings come in to help (or not), things get destroyed, and it's a quest that this Joan has to take on without magic sword or voices in her head.

I found it to be an entertaining read, and a better book than I expected. (Even though this book was published in the late 90's and I am still trying to figure out why no character ever once tried to search for "crystal sage" on the Internet...hey, it'd be the first thing I would have thought of to try!) It ends a bit unexpectedly, but in a cool way. I sort of wish there was a little more to it, which is why it gets three and a half stars, but if you ever come across it, I'd say to read it.