Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Murder in the Mews

By Agatha Christie.

This consists of four short stories featuring Hercule Poirot. I'll avoid spoiling in the descriptions:

• "Dead Man's Mirror": Poirot gets a summons from a high muckety-muck, Gervase Chevenix-Gore. Upon Poirot's arrival, it's found that the guy shot himself...uh, suspiciously, given the look of the mirror. Gervase was very concerned with being the last of his line, and at the time of his death was plotting to change his will so that his adopted daughter/biological niece Ruth would have to marry her cousin Hugo--even though Gervase couldn't stand Hugo. Who was motivated to kill for this?
• "The Incredible Theft": So what happens when you invite a notorious spy to dinner with a bunch of folks, some of which are high up in the government? Naturally, some crucial plans get stolen, and Poirot gets called in to figure out whodunit.
• "Murder in the Mews": Barbara Allen's recently shot herself. But why? The case seems to revolve around her roommate Jane and a Major Eustace, who seems to have been blackmailing Barbara.
• "Triangle at Rhodes": It's one of those love stories again. Beautiful aging vamp of a woman on her fifth husband puts the mack on a young married man while on vacation. Her husband grumbles, his wife is miserable, all the other guests just wait around watching the explosion. But there's a twist...

I thought 2 of the 4 plots were pretty inventive in their own way. I could figure out one mystery, but mostly that just was wrapped up quickly with a summary. As for the fourth one, I thought it was kind of obvious/weak, but...eh, it's a short story and they can't all be pearls.

Three and a half stars.

Lord of Scoundrels

By Loretta Chase.

Hoo boy, this book is fun. Too short, but FUN.

Our hero, Sebastian Ballister, Marquess of Dain, had a thoroughly nasty upbringing and it's made very clear that the kid was a super-woobie. His dad married a 17-year-old Italian girl and was shocked, shocked! to find out that a 17-year-old Italian girl loved sex. So as soon as he got an heir off her he refused to sleep with her any more and treated her like shit to the point where she eventually gave up and ran off with another man...leaving her son behind since she couldn't take him anyway. Young Sebastian was utterly abandoned, since his dad made it clear he hated the kid. He also had a big nose and dark skin and everyone made it clear to him that they thought him fugly. Once kids started abusing him at school, Sebastian learned to fight back, and eventually learned that the way to survive is to be the biggest, baddest ASSHOLE in the vicinity of everyone. His well-earned nickname is "Beezelbub." And yet, you feel for the dude, because given his total abandonment and abuse, he did the best he could to survive.

Jessica Trent is a spinster by choice. The lovely granddaughter of a notorious femme fatale, she inherited the looks...but just hasn't liked any suitors. She's a shrewd lady after having pretty much raised a ton of younger boy relatives. She comes to Paris to extract her thoroughly stupid brother Bertie from the clutches of his new pal, the Marquess of Dain. She meets Sebastian in a shop, where he's totally captivated despite himself when she buys a pornographic watch for her grandmother's birthday present--and also gets a gorgeous icon off the owner for ridiculously cheap. Jessica's unperturbed by Sebastian's devilishness because god knows, she will fight and shoot back. Sebastian is like a moth to flame when she's around, which amuses the hell out of Parisian society. He ruins her in public, she shoots him in public, he proposes marriage...yup, it's a crazy-ass relationship, but SUPER HOT. Like I've said before, I'm usually bored with reading sex scenes by now, but not with this one. Hoo boy, they're hot. And the characters are super fun to read as they battle and come together, adorably. Jess does a good job of figuring out Sebastian's abandonment issues and dealing with them in the context of a romantic relationship too.

The latter half of the book (since we're kind of at "happy ending" anyway for them early) deals with Sebastian's 8-year-old bastard son by a whore, who Jessica wants to rescue from the clutches of his dimwit mother. The son is the spitting image of Dad, and Jessica sensibly wants to head off a repeat of the same problems. Sebastian is eventually talked into dealing with the situation and he learns to handle it well. I was actually sad the book ended around the end of that resolution, because seeing the home life of these folks together would be hilarious. I kind of hope someday the kid gets his own sequel.

Four stars. Fun, fun stuff.

Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move

By Katherine Lanpher.

Katherine Lanpher was a Midwest girl, born and bred. She started out in newspapers, eventually moved to radio, and eventually met Al Franken. In 2004, he asked her to be his cohost on his new Air America show in New York City. Katherine had planned on staying in the Midwest for her entire life--hadn't even considered moving-- but this was a huge opportunity. And since her life at home hadn't gone the way she expected it to--she got divorced from her husband because he was obsessed with his theater job and she turned out to be infertile--well, why not take a leap? On Leap Day, no less?

And that kicks off "Leap Days," a series of essays, around half of which deal with Katherine's move to New York and how strange it was for her to move there. It's a different culture. No cars, everyone wears black, you're supposed to tip everyone--but not EVERYONE, that's crazy!--and here, she's considered "too fat" to be able to buy clothes in stores. Plus there's the adjustments to being broker than usual so you can live in a tiny apartment. I quite enjoyed the musings on the weird world she'd moved to. I can't say I ever plan on living in New York myself and what with the lack of colors and the "fat" thing and the weather I don't think I'd like it so much, but it seems to grow on Katherine. And I liked reading about the experience of doing something drastically different in middle age, even when it throws you off.

The latter half of the book is less focused on her move. She talks about her upbringing with her parents and her brother's death, feminism, how she got into newspaper work and radio, infertility, and marriage, before coming back to the theme of moving in NYC. While she eventually left Air America, saying she wasn't quite as diehardly liberal as everyone else there and she seems to have felt weird about it--she elected to stay in this strange city rather than move back home.

It's a thoughtful book. Even if you weren't into listening to Air America as much as I was in the 2000's--coincidentally, I quit around the time Katherine Lanpher left the show-- you'll enjoy spending time with her and seeing how her new world runs. Four stars.

Blackout

By Mira Grant.

Previous book here. Entire review will be below the spoiler cut. Note that I'm kind of generally spoiling around the ending without mentioning specific details, but you kind of get the drift about how things may be going in this one. Four stars.

Wild Magic

By Tamora Pierce.

This is the first book in a second series taking place in the Tortall universe, and takes place maybe 15-20-ish years(?) after the Alanna series--or at least she's all grown up by now. This series features a teenage girl named Daine who moves to Tortall after her entire village was massacred. Daine's an unusual girl-- she doesn't have the traditional Gift that people in the previous series had, but she has "wild magic," which is something different entirely. What it seems to boil down to is that Daine can communicate with and heal animals and her powers work differently from other folks with magic. It's implied that her father wasn't human and neither is Daine uh, somehow. Animals seem to consider her one of their People, anyway. Well, if you've never met your dad, it'd be hard to say.

Daine gets a job helping to take care of the royal horses, and falls in with Alanna, Jonathan, his wife, his wife's soldier trainees, etc. through that. She makes a lot of new insta-friends, including a powerful shapeshifting mage named Numair that she uh, hits it off with on some level.

And then come the Immortals. Well, they don't seem to be immortal, but they ain't from this realm. All those magical creatures you don't normally see hanging about in the world have suddenly flown in. Some don't have evil intent, are just in distress, lost, what have you. Others, on the other hand, are looking to do a takeover of Tortall. Specifically the Stormwings, which seem to be the obvious villain of this story. Especially after Daine kills some, one of them in particular targets her. While everyone else is saddling up to go to war while magically neutralized, Daine has to (a) figure out how to work her powers better, and (b) figure out the ethics of the situation. Once she meets/bonds with an animal, she considers it a friend, and she doesn't feel good about asking/ordering animals to die for her. But her friends are all, "Hey, their home is being attacked too, they might have a vested interest in this themselves." So a war goes on.

I don't feel strongly about this story one way or another. It's okay, I guess. I don't want to say that Daine is a Mary Sue exactly, but she seems a bit too well-liked by everyone immediately for it to seem like she's a real character to me. (Even Alanna has run into problems with the occasional person not liking her.) She fits in immediately like a glove, which also seemed a bit too easy. I dunno...I guess other than her backstory, it doesn't seem like Daine has a ton of personality or plot going on quite yet beyond the animal stuff. Which is almost all of the plot anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. But despite the plot, I guess things seem a little...simple and easy to me here, somehow. I think this might be the whole "this story feels too young for me to be reading at the age" thing again I ran into with the previous series.

I'll give it three stars, and say that most people will probably love it more than I did. But at worst, it's a pleasant read.

Taming A Sea-Horse

By Robert B. Parker.

In a previous book that I haven't read (Ceremony), Spenser dealt with a teenage hooker named April Kyle. Apparently April was so...badly off or something...that it was determined that it'd be best to just have April keep on hooking. I don't even know what to make of that. But anyway, Spenser seems to have had her sent off to some exclusive hooking establishment, which 3 years later, April has now left. She's left for love...er...well, whatever...with a new pimp who goes to Julliard. Naturally, this sounds kind of stupid and fishy, so Spenser's on it. April makes one brief, sullen, bratty appearance in the book and then disappears, so Spenser goes all over the place and even leaves the country trying to track her down.

What with the chasing-after-the-lady plot and all, I was reminded of Looking For Rachel Wallace. Except we saw more of Rachel and I actually found her interesting. I honestly do not give a shit about April Kyle, so I didn't care if Spenser found her or not. Heck, the new character I did care about more died early on--then Spenser adds "look for the asshole who did her in" to his list of search topics. (Though for the few pages she's in the book, Suki the St. Thomas hooker is pretty amusing.) So for most of this book, I wasn't exactly entranced by the search for a little annoying brat girl or much of anything else going on that didn't involve pitching woo to Spenser's girlfriend.

But it did get better, as Spenser embarks on a campaign of sheer annoyance on a bad guy to get him to fess up to who someone is. I'm talking signs held up on the streets, and telegrams, spraypainting hair of the bad guys, and faking an assassination attempt. That kind of stuff perked me right up.

Overall, I'm giving it two and a half stars. The main plot character is a giant "who gives a fuck if you find her or not", but it gets a half point more than it would for the amusing annoyance techniques.

In The Hand Of The Goddess

By Tamora Pierce.

Previous book in the series here.

This book does a little one, two, skip a few from the end of the last one, fast-forwarding by about a year. I was unthrilled with that, as the events described in the middle--the aftermath of the ending, Alanna's dad dying (convenient, now he can never out the kids!),  Alanna's friends going through their knight's ordeal and freaking her the hell out-- would have been cool to have seen. So I'm a little annoyed at that. Anyway, Alanna starts out around age 15 here, squire to Jonathan and ...well, hormones are kicking in. For her two best guy friends George and Jonathan, at least. Alanna's career goal is to be a knight errant upon hitting age 18 and finishing her training--she figures as a girl-in-disguise, she'll have to get the hell out of Dodge once she comes out of the closet anyway-- and the last thing she wants to do is settle down with a dude. George says he'll wait. Jonathan...is another story. (I will say that if you gotta have a love triangle, it's nice when both guys are worthy fellows and friends.) Anyway, when the story starts out with Alanna meeting with a goddess and getting a token and a magic psychic cat and the goddess says don't swear off love... you get the drift. Alanna's Chosen One-ness is determined, though not so much of a major factor in this book.

Most of the plot revolves around Duke Roger, Jonathan's cousin and Alanna's enemy at first sight. She suspects Roger wants to get the entire royal family killed--and yeah, it's very obvious what he's up to, but he's also very good at covering his tracks. Again and again Alanna thinks this guy is bad news, especially when there's now threats to her own life. But does she overly plot against him? Eh....Well, I'll say that that is annoying from a reader's POV, but it's eventually justified in text. As the book leads up to Alanna's ordeal test, she finally becomes determined to out Roger once and for all, not to mention out herself. That's an...interesting...scene.* (More discussion below the spoiler cut.)

It's still a pretty good series, and if I ever come across the other two in the quartet I'll read them, but I'm still not overwhelmed by it--I know it's for young readers, but it's still rather simple for my tastes and my mind has not been blown yet. So, three and a half stars.

Alanna: The First Adventure

By Tamora Pierce.

I got ahold of the first two books of the series, which I'd never seen IRL but had heard of on TV Tropes. I'm not sure why it's such a big deal. It's a good and pleasant story so far, but I can't say I find it drastically different from any other young fantasy Chosen One-y sort of story.

Anyhoo: Alanna and her twin Thom have no mom and a neglectful dad, who is insisting on sending them away to school at the age of 10. Alanna is off to be a lady at a convent, Thom is off to learn to be a knight. Thom wants to be a sorcerer and has no interest in knighthood. Alanna has zero interest in being a lady (as anyone sensible would) and wants to be a knight. At this point in life they look alike, and Thom can forge his dad's handwriting...so they switch places. Thom can learn sorcery at the convent area (okay, I'm not sure how this works, but okay) and Alanna--now Alan-- goes off to be a knight. Despite being the shortest one of the pages around, s/he learns very well, gets it down how to fight, manages to trounce the bully picking on her, and generally becomes a kickass short page. She also has two good friends--Prince Jonathan and George, King of Thieves. You can pretty much figure these two will be love interests once puberty hits. Well, serious puberty, I mean--the inevitable "what happens when you're hiding as a woman and hit age 13" problem does come up.

It's a very nice story overall, albeit I was ready for the story to go on a little quicker. And the villain of the story might as well start toying with his mustache for all of the subtlety the book gives him. Once he walks on, he's OMG PURE EVIL BUT NOBODY SEES IT BUT ALANNA...but since this is the "the first adventure," the plot doesn't go too far with this other than he gives Alanna the bad vibe.The ending is a good one, though I was sorry it cut off where it did. I would have been interested to see the aftermath of it!

I'll give it three and a half stars. I wasn't as super-wowed as I was expecting to be for the reputation these books seem to have, but it's a pretty good story anyway (albeit not that original yet) and I moved on to book 2 quickly.

Midnight Pleasures

By Amanda Ashley, Maggie Shayne, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Ronda Thompson.

This is a collection of four paranormal romance novellas.

"Darkfest" by Amanda Ashley: Darkfest is an immortal wizard lord/werewolf (okay, at least he turns into a wolf all the time). Channa Leigh is the beautiful blind girl in the nearby village he's secretly in love with.

...Okay, I have to start out by saying that I hate the names in this book. Someone really named their precious baby boy "Darkfest?" As for "Channa Leigh," it kinda sounds like "Shanda Lear." Also, it didn't exactly sound like a name someone would make up way back in the past (note that the book takes place in"a distant land before recorded time") , and sounded more like the kr8tiv spelling some folks come up with. "Channa Leigh" is repeated many times on each page and it did not grow on me with repetition. So regardless of the rest of the plot, I felt sorry for characters named those things and I don't like having to call them by their actual names here because it makes me feel ridiculous.

Anyhoo: Darkfest discovers that when he's turned into a wolf and Channa Leigh is touching his wolfiness, she can see. Despite being a guy who can heal anyone he effing well wants, he can't figure out how to heal her blindness and is stumped as to how his wolf form fixes it. The plot kind of goes "Beauty and the Beast"-ish when Darkfest heals Channa Leigh's sick mom and asks for her to live with him for a year as payment. Channa Leigh has a token fiance, but she doesn't give a shit about him and was settling, so whatever. Darkfest then takes her home to have her work as his serving girl, where she can totally prepare him a meal after she just moved into his place where she doesn't know oh, anything very well. Call me crazy, but I find it hard to believe that a blind chick can make a meal without injuries, burning, problems, etc. in The Land Before Time, but especially not when she's been plunked into a new environment. I've read "I'll Take Manhattan," a book that goes into great detail as to how a blind character can learn to cook in the 1980's, so I find it pretty difficult to picture this poor girl doing all the cooking with rudimentary tools, open flame, not knowing the layout of the house like the back of her hand, what have you.

Wolfy Darkfest (who she names "Magick") only shows up at night, so he comes to visit Channa Leigh all the time and she gets to see things and loves it. Eventually she wants to see the master of the house, who's conveniently never in his bedroom at night, so Darkfest figures out a spell by using his wolf's fur, which is put into a tight braid (how long is wolf's fur and how much did Channa Leigh cut off of it?!) and then she can see him for a day.  They go off to some local dragon to get some of his blood to try to come up with a blindness cure.

Okay, so I find a lot of implausibilities and the names are lame, so it's not really my sort of story and kinda twee by my tastes. But she does build the romance well, so there's that. By itself, I'd give it 2.5 stars.

"Phantom Lover" by Sherrilyn Kenyon: This seems to take place in the usual universe that this author writes in, featuring the same kind of dream world thing as in this book. I wasn't overly fond of the whole dream world plot thing back then and I don't think I am now either. There's a species of creature called the Skotos that just roams around your dreams being all nightmare-y and sometimes trying to eat your soul. Normal ol' human Erin is being plagued by 'em because she hasn't been using her creativity IRL--she got nastily shamed when she tried in the past. (All writers will wince.) She hasn't slept well in quite some time. While at work minding her own business one day, suddenly she uh, falls into dreamworld or something and is getting attacked by Skotos. A dream-creature-fellow named V'Aidan rescues her, and then they have tons of sex. They soon fall into a dream-relationship where Erin constantly wants to be asleep so they can get back to the dream-dating and the dream-sexing. Meanwhile, at least one of her co-workers is acting really suspiciously strange about the whole thing and refers Erin to see her shrink boyfriend, Rick Sword.

AGAIN WITH THE BAD NAMES. EVEN WORSE THIS TIME. I hate apostrophe names--this book also has M'Ordant and Krysti'Ana. And really, Rick Sword? That's only slightly more classy than "Dick Roman" on Supernatural this season. So yeah, HATING THE NAMES EVEN WORSE HERE.

Back to the plot, V'Aidan isn't allowed to have feelings and gets beaten all the time for just wanting love like everyone else, and he's going to get punished out the wazoo for falling in love with Erin. And...well, it gets weirder from there. Erin seems to be the point of a minor conspiracy and without going into spoilers for a novella* (okay, I'll mention below the cut), it's just pretty creepy. Sure, it ends happily**, but mostly I just found it all strange and kind of off-putting, and while it's part of the plot that V'Aidan is all "I am nothing without her!", it still felt kinda ick. By itself: two stars. 

"Under Her Spell" by Maggie Shayne: This was the actual GOOD ONE in the book. I actually got fed up with the first two and started skipping ahead, and had this one sucked too I think the whole thing would have been a "did not finish" with no review. Remember how when reading Stitches in Time I was totally annoyed with the lack of actual research done about witchcraft? Well, clearly the author Knows Of What She Speaks and is a giant research nerd at the same time, because she makes a point of going into great detail about how things are actually done. Maybe a bit too much detail for the idle romance reader, but I appreciated her sense anyway.

Melissa is a expert on witchcraft, teaches classes, has degrees, etc. and has been hired to be the technical consultant on a new paranormal TV show called "The Enchantress," which is losing viewers rapidly due to its cheesy badness--and presumably its total lack of accuracy. The show's creator, Alexander Quinn, knows it's got problems and wants to make the show right. But he also has his own creeping paranormal problem that needs help...albeit not maybe what he expected. Melissa and Alexander have the major psychic "you're the one for me" whammy going on, but she senses the Bad Dark Shit hanging around him--especially in the inverted pentacle around his neck.

Alexander seems to have inherited some magic powers from his father, who he never knew and only tracked down the house of after his father's death. Now Alex is living in the house and the housekeeper is working on initiating a transfer of power to him. However, Melissa does some research and finds out that Alex's mother ran away from his father and stuck him in an orphanage to get him AWAY from the guy. Dad was pure evil, and he's looking from beyond the grave to get his son too. But Melissa's determined to save his ass.

I really liked this one- the romance is built well, the plot's a little predictable but still well done. I'm a little amused that accuracy of portrayal helped up the ratings, but...well, I guess that's the point of a technical consultant, so uh, whatever. I dunno about having Alex get involved with a girl who looks like his mother, but since he didn't get raised by the woman, I...guess...it's not so bad? Anyway, by itself, this gets 4 stars.

"A Wulf's Curse" by Ronda Thompson: Elise is a young woman running away from a shitty arranged marriage. She begs passage with a traveling troupe of performers (supposedly as the new naughty scarf dancer, but she doesn't end up doing much of this) and gets romantically involved with Sterling, the Beast Master. As you probably already figured out by the title, dude has...you know, reasons for hanging out with a troupe of weird people and thinks there might be a problem with getting romantically involved with anyone. Even those Elise somehow doesn't exactly become a performer so much, she gets along with most of the troupe. But there's still her evil uncle to deal with...

Now, I have some plot quibbles with this too. Not the names so much, thank god (I'll give "Wulf" a pass given the subject matter), but:
(a) The snake lady is just one-note predictable evil. Feh.
(b) The other troupe characters aren't overly done either. Most of Elise's social life with them is talking to the daughter of two little people, who is flat out ashamed of having short parents. Since Elise had no parents, she's all, "Hey, at least you have some and they love you." I totally agree, mind you, but it's kind of oddly preachy and brought up a lot.
(c) Elise's uncle is also one-note evil, who talks about like this: "Oh, yeah, I don't care if she's lost her virginity by now. Her future husband just loves to beat his wives." If I were this fellow, I might think a bit about saying this kind of shit to oh, anybody, even if it's another dude who you assume is totally down with the wife-beating. It doesn't motivate some folks so much to find your lost girl for you there, buddy.
(d) I can't help but wonder how well giant cats would deal with having a werewolf Beast Master. Wouldn't that be an...issue.. for them?

But despite all of those, it was still better than the other two stories. By itself, I'd give it three stars.

Overall, the book gets two and a half stars for being "kinda not so good" to "all right, I guess" for most of it.

When It Happens

By Susane Colasanti.

At the beginning of senior year, nerdy Sara has a crush on new (popular) kid Dave. She's hoping he'll ask her out, and he does! And it gets her into the popular crowd too! However, Dave himself starts to pall on Sara-- they aren't interested in the same things, Dave seems like kind of a follower, the popular people are shallow and annoying. Sara wants something real, and she's about to find it in music theory class.

Tobey is a diehard musician who has little interest in school. He does, however, have a mad crush on Sara and dislikes Dave ever since he overheard Dave beating up on a kid in the locker room. Tobey's plans for this year involve finally coming up with schemes and plans to win Sara's heart. Guess what, eventually he does! And then they date. And Tobey realizes that he needs to start caring about his grades for college now, thanks to her (or at least wanting to be in a school near her). Tobey's ex-fuckbuddy (for lack of a better word) kinda wants him back and this is vaguely threatening to his new relationship, since Sara thinks he's a virgin.

Erm...the book doesn't have a major amount of plot, really. It's just kind of living life. Sara hangs out with her friends, who have their own issues. Tobey hangs out with his friends, who do as well. Most folks in here are nice except for the popular people. Everyone worries about school--except for Tobey, who learns to worry about school. As a couple, Sara and Tobey are cute enough and work well together. It's a nice relationship.

(Though I did have a moment of weird when Sara and Tobey discovered that both of them hate cellphones and won't get one! I had to go check the date of publication: 2006. Oh, teen novels. I feel sorry for the authors of them these days because it's difficult to write teen books without the constant use of technology--you just plain cannot ignore it and you have to at least mention it--but at the same time the technology totally dates every book. This is a book that's written in a way that keeps the story feeling current even without constant mentions of phone/Internet use that you have to put into books now, but even that kind of threw me out of the story with its implausibility. I'm a phone hater and even I had to get one years before 2006, and I wasn't a teenager. I'm not sure why I"m mentioning this, other than it was odd and super unlikely.)

I...don't really have that much to say about this book. It's a pleasant enough read and a sweet romance, but it wasn't super memorable to me compared to the other book of hers I've read somehow. You'll probably enjoy reading it, though.

Three stars.