Ordinary Day

I am very, very glad that I finally got around to reading Morgan Howell’s King’s Property, Book 1 of his Queen of the Orcs series. The idea of a fantasy series with an emphasis on orcs for once sounded like a winner to me, even if it has to take the route of a young human woman being the protagonist rather than an orcish character.

Dar is a girl of the hills conscripted into serving the King’s army, a harsh and bitter existence, one in which she quickly learns that a woman’s only chance of survival relies upon her ability to secure the favor of a soldier who will provide for her. But the thought of abasing herself thus to any man–especially when she learns that the commander who’s interested in her is cruel and heartless–horrifies her. Instead, she takes the radical step of befriending a few of the soldiers of the regiment of orcs who are fighting alongside the human army. This puts her severely at odds with her fellow serving-women as well as the male soldiers, who are all pretty much convinced that she must be having sexual congress with the orcs. But only Dar makes any attempt to learn their language and rudiments of their culture, and to see them as anything other than brutal fighting machines.

And I’ll say this, it is quite a refreshing change of pace to see orcs be the good guys here, even if the orcish words Howell employs keep making me think they’re Japanese; this is what he gets for using “hai” as his orcish word for “yes”. There are times when I find their culture a little hard to swallow, though. These are orcs who, sure, deserve their rep as brutal fighting machines. In battle, that’s what they are. Outside of battle, though, there’s a lot of the orcs being surprisingly willing to go wherever humans lead them, to the point that they’re eventually willing to give Dar the same status that they accord females of their own species, and accept her orders accordingly. Soon enough the whole situation comes across as “the innocent orcs are being manipulated by the nasty humans”, with a heaping side dose of “human males suck and the only trustworthy ones are the orcs”.

But, that said, Howell doesn’t go completely in that direction, and for that I’m grateful. Some of the orcs do complain quite loudly at the influence that Dar has upon their commander, and one sympathetic human male not only gets Dar’s attention but starts contributing towards her eventual efforts to escape the army. And overall, I’m quite intrigued by the bigger picture Howell has set up here with the situation not only between the warring human nations, but how the orcs and their current queen play into it.

This is not a cheerful world, be warned. Quite a few dark things happen in it, including rape and needless murder, but to Howell’s credit he handles a lot of the darker events in an understated fashion. And even if I had some quibbles with specific details, overall I very much liked the story and am very much looking forward to taking on Book 2. Four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I’m sure that people with more archaeology clues than me could find all sorts of issues with Nora Roberts’ Birthright, wherein much of the plot is driven by finding a several-thousand-year-old burial site near the small town of Woodsboro. But really, this is all background to the main plot of this story: Callie Dunbrook discovering that the parents who raised her are not really her parents, and that in reality, she was born to different parents entirely and kidnapped from them when she was a baby.

Callie’s investigations into her background are joined by her ex-husband Jacob, her long-lost brother Douglas, and the lawyer Lana. As is pretty much expected with Nora, the romance that re-kindles between Callie and Jacob as well as the new romance between Douglas and Lana are the driving forces of this book. And, as is pretty much expected with Nora, they’re all reasonably engaging people who have to figure each other out in the process of discovering the truth behind Callie’s abduction–and whether the perpetrator committed the same crime with other children. Meanwhile, Callie must learn how to cope with having a whole extra set of parents, and there’s a lot of emotional interaction involved with that that happily never descends into hostility between her birth mother and the one who raised her.

All in all, nothing truly outstanding but a good solid read nonetheless. Three stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

And Only to Deceive, first of the “Lady Emily” series by Tasha Alexander, is one of the “lady of the nobility solves mysteries” milieu, and it’s a decent addition overall. This time around the noble lady in question is Lady Emily Ashton, recent widow of Lord Philip Ashton, who must come to grips with the alarming idea that not only might her husband have been dealing in illicitly obtained antiquities–but he might have been murdered.

I’ll say right out that the big appeal of this for me was Emily taking a sadly belated interest in her husband’s work in ancient Greek artifacts, by way of trying to cope with the fact that she never really knew him before he died. This gives her an opportunity to develop her own intellectual pursuits, and I’m always a fan of a plot that lets a woman pursue education just because she likes it, and never mind that it’s in defiance of the expectations of society. There’s some fun here with Emily’s studies bringing her all too close to fruitlessly falling in love with the husband she might have had, too, which causes her no end of consternation. Especially when the possibility is raised that he might actually still be alive.

But of course, this wouldn’t be a period mystery without a primary love interest, and the gentleman filling this role is Philip’s best friend Colin Hargreaves. Colin and Emily have fairly standard but nonetheless engaging chemistry, with the obligatory sparks when Emily spends some time infatuated with another man as well.

Good fun all around, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading Book 2. Four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

As 2009 leaves us I wanted to get in one last gasp of ebooky goodness on the Fictionwise sale, so I’ve done a slew of buying tonight off of Fictionwise! And for the sake of thoroughness, I shall also count the books I’ve picked up courtesy of the shiny gift card that spazzkat gave me for Christmas:

• Pandemonium, by Daryl Gregory; fantasy
• The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie, by Jennifer Ashley; romance
• The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, by Lauren Willig; mystery
• The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, by Galen Beckett; fantasy
• Fall of Light, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; fantasy
• Consequences of Sin, by Clare Langley-Hawthorne; mystery, re-buy
• Wicked Game, by Jeri Smith-Ready; urban fantasy, re-buy
• Bad to the Bone, by Jeri Smith-Ready; urban fantasy
• The Silver Wolf, by Alice Borchardt; fantasy, re-buy
• Code of Conduct, by Kristine Smith; SF, re-buy
• Skinwalker, by Faith Hunter; urban fantasy
• Matters of the Blood, by Maria Lima; urban fantasy
• Amazon Ink, by Lori Devoti; urban fantasy
• Madhouse, by Rob Thurman; urban fantasy
• Unleashed, by John Levitt; urban fantasy
• The Family Tree, by Sheri S. Tepper; urban fantasy
• Deathwish, by Rob Thurman; urban fantasy
• Ghost Whisperer: Revenge, by Doranna Durgin; fantasy, media tie-in

The official final grand tally of books purchased by me in 2009 is therefore 210!

And for the record, the official tally of books READ by me in 2009 is 108. I am not caught up on book reviews but I will be writing the rest of them over this weekend and getting those posted for you all before I start the 2010 book log.

Hee, and solarbird adds that the official tally of books PUBLISHED by me is two! Here’s to 2010 adding to that tally. It’s been a great year for books, folks. Here’s to me beating all of these records in 2010.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

It’s a challenge and a half to try to write a sequel to no less august a book than Frankenstein, and for that alone, I must give my fellow Drollerie author Gary Inbinder props. I’m also pleased to say that although there were parts of the book that didn’t work as much for me, by and large, I feel he did an excellent job at his appointed task!

The opening of the book does ask you to accept the idea that sorcery of a kind exists in the Frankenstein universe, since the entire plot only gets underway when the monster, fresh from killing his creator, is taken in by an old Russian witch. In repayment for his working for her, she grants him his greatest wish: to be human and to be able to have a real life of his own. If you’re used to the version of the Frankenstein story more popularly depicted in the movies, the presence of magic may be jarring; however, my spouse pointed out quite correctly that the original story does heavily pursue the idea that Victor Frankenstein was dabbling as much in black magic as he was forbidden science in creating his monster. So it’s not too much of a stretch for me to allow for actual magic existing in this world.

But. This is really only the start of the plot, and the greatest portion of it by far is taken up by the creature–now calling himself Viktor Viktorovich–not only winning himself a life and a family in Russia, but achieving a meteoric rise to power. In fact, the vast majority of the plot is taken up with his participation in the wars against Napoleon. For me as a reader this had quite a bit of interest, but the real heart of the story doesn’t come until the final third, when the truth of Viktor’s origins begins to come back to haunt him.

And this is also where the story ultimately let me down a bit, since I was expecting more creepiness than I actually got, and one plot device in particular that was used as part of Frankenstein’s backstory struck me as quite unnecessary. But that said, overall I did find this a gripping read, and it’s worth checking out if you liked the original. Four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Undone is the first of rachelcaine’s new series Outcast Season, the offshoot from the Weather Warden books, and as series starters go it’s not bad. We’re introduced to Cassiel, a djinn who’s forced into human shape–and, as a result, forced to work with the Wardens on whose power she depends to keep herself alive. But when the Warden assigned to work with her is killed along with his wife, she must turn to his brother instead to track down their killers. And all the while she has to cope with the unwelcome side effects of prolonged incarnation in human form.

The story’s not without flaws, most of which are repeatedly played too heavily: how much Cassiel hates being human, the cute child insisting on calling her Cassie despite being told repeatedly that she prefers to be called Cassiel, how the Wardens keep assuming that if something goes wrong it’s clearly Cassiel’s fault, how Cassiel being incarnated into human form is part of a Greater Plan(TM). Taken individually, none of these quibbles are too bad, but as a whole, for me as a reader, I could have liked all of them toned down just a tad.

Also: the token appearance of David and Jo at the very beginning of the story honestly detracted from the rest of the story for me, and it really felt like a question of “let’s put them in here just to prove to the reader that this is the same universe as Jo’s stories”, since David and Jo didn’t really provide any other plot relevance to the story–and we’re not even told why Cassiel, incarnated into human shape, is dumped on David and Jo to begin with. Lewis has far more pertinent reason to show up at the beginning, since he’s the one that lays it out to Cassiel how it’ll have to go if she expects the Wardens to work with her. But much as I’ve enjoyed David and Jo’s story over in the Weather Warden books, they just didn’t need to be in this one.

All this said? There’s still a good solid story here. I liked the edgy interaction between Cassiel and Luis, still very much too edgy to be a proper romance yet, and hopefully it’ll be a relationship that takes a while to develop. The Big Bad of the story intrigued me, as did the backstory there between the Big Bad and Cassiel herself. And yeah, I’ll be checking out Book Two. For this one, three stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I haven’t read every single thing Cherie Priest has published quite yet, but I love me some Eden Moore novels, and I have a healthy respect for Fathom. But those other books? They’re just going to have to stand aside and make way for Boneshaker, because I mean, DAMN.

It’s got everything: alternate history! Steampunky mad science! 1880’s Seattle! Airships! Air pirates! A plucky young lad and his fierce and fearsome mother! And, which is what really pushed it over the top for me, zombies! What’s not to love?

Boneshaker is set in an alternate timeline where the Civil War has dragged out for an extra fifteen years and where the Klondike Gold Rush came early, spurring an earlier settlement of the Pacific Northwest–and a Russian-sponsored contest to build a mining machine capable of digging into the frozen ice of the north for gold. Dr. Leviticus Blue and his Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine would have had the contest in the bag. But his machine went horribly awry, destroying much of downtown Seattle. And to add horrific insult to already dire injury, the Boneshaker dug deep into the earth and unleashed the Blight gas that turned its victims into shambling undead.

Now it’s sixteen years later. Those who escaped the devastation of Seattle have erected a two-hundred-foot wall around its remains to keep in not only the undead victims of the Blight, but the continuing rising of the gas itself. Blue’s widow Briar Wilkes and her son Ezekiel are among those settled in the Outskirts around the wall, until Zeke gets it into his head to penetrate the city in search of evidence to clear his father’s infamous name. He is trapped within by an earthquake, and Briar must go in to save him.

I had a few quibbles with certain bits of pacing, but honestly? They’re small enough quibbles that I just didn’t care. Briar was too much fun as a heroine, cut from the same tough-mother cloth as Sarah Connor, only with a quieter, less desperate strength to her, and she was a lovely complement to the innocence and intrinsic bravery and goodness of her son. Many of the characters they meet within the Wall are equally memorable: Lucy the one-armed barmaid, whose single arm is mechanical; Jeremiah Swakhammer, clad in the best badassed armor a steampunk hero could ask for and armed with the best badassed zombie-stunning gun; and, of course, the mysterious Dr. Minnericht, who is said to be responsible for much of what holds what’s left of Seattle together and who is deeply feared nonetheless.

Moreoever, as a Seattle resident, I had great fun reading Priest’s descriptions of this alternate downtown Seattle. I walk these streets on a daily basis, and what really sold me on the realism was the mentions of the sidewalk letter markers to tell you what street you’re on. With that kind of detail, I kept catching myself looking out for “rotters” on my way home from work. More importantly, I burned through this book as fast as I possibly could and am quite anxious for a sequel! Five stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

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

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

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

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

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

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

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

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

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.