Author: Werner Lind

Sheriff Bride: Rob’s Story, by Joi Copeland

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

This is the last (and at 120 pages, slightly the longest) book in the Sheriff Bride series, each installment written by a different author, which my wife Barb and I read together. (She appreciates these books much more than I do.) Here, our focus is on the youngest Hardin sister, Rob (Roberta); and three years have passed since the opening of the first book, so she’s now very close to 18, and probably is 18 by the end of this installment. (In western Texas in the late 1870s or early 80s, she would be viewed as of legitimately marriageable age –and the series title is a clue that this might be a relevant consideration.) While I don’t go so far as to recommend the series to most readers, if you do read it, I recommend doing so in order; you need the understanding of the situation and the characters as these have developed over time in the earlier books in order to properly experience this one.

Joi Copeland is a more prolific author than any of the other three in this tetralogy, and stylistically a somewhat more polished writer, with less of an aversion to pronouns than her colleagues (though there are still places where she under-uses them). This book is also free of editorial issues. Otherwise, its general flavor is pretty consistent with the previous books; plot-wise, it’s distinct from them in two ways. One of these would involve a major spoiler (though the reader learns it fairly early on). The other is that it’s the only one of the four to feature a sustained, multiple-combatant gunfight, with – for this series – a high body count. (It has the highest kick-butt quotient of any of the four books.) However, it has to be said that the author doesn’t handle action scenes very well. With this one, we actually come in on the action only when it’s almost over; then the part we missed is later recounted by a participant, in no great detail. So a lot of the dramatic potential here is simply thrown away. And although the neon lamp wasn’t invented until 1902, when I read the reactions of two characters to each other’s looks in the first chapter, I commented to Barb that we have a flashing neon sign that they’re a couple-to-be. :-)

For me, the main factor that pulled down my rating was the marked implausibility of the plotting, all through the book. Yes, I can see why it’s necessary for Rob to have a new deputy, given that the one in the third book (where we were never even told his name; here we learn that it’s Pedro) had to move to take care of his “ailing” parents. But the misunderstanding surrounding that hire would never have been allowed to occur in real life. Copeland doesn’t explain why Leslie needs the deputy job badly enough for that character’s desperate suggestion to seem realistic. Travel between Waterhole and neighboring Buford, Texas is initially shown to take nearly all day; but it can suddenly be accomplished in vastly fewer hours when the plot needs it to be. Given that all of the Hardin sisters are supposedly very savvy gunfighters, two of them make a ridiculously dumb tactical decision here, and Rob acts at one point with a really amateurish recklessness which even Barb, who’s more inclined to be lenient in judging these books than I am, considered out of character. And though I liked the basic gist of the ending, and though I consider myself an equalitarian feminist, another factor was my feeling that it’s irresponsible for a pregnant woman to insist on being in a physically dangerous situation if it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Ardent fans of Western romance, who like the genre enough not to be too critical, can enjoy this series. But I don’t recommend it to readers who want more accomplished and textured writing.

Author: Joi Copeland
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Sheriff Bride: Dan’s Story, by Cheryl Williford

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Despite the fact that all of the books of this series are written by different authors, they exhibit a lot of similarity in style, and also in literary quality. Since the quality tends to be wanting, that’s not a good thing. (My wife Barb really likes these books, which is why we read them together; and even I find the premise novel and intriguing. But it suffers from mediocre and even amateurish execution.) However, Williford has a bit smoother, less pronoun-averse and a trifle more textured prose style than her colleagues, and also a more realistic and less “vegetarian” approach to the realities of lethal force in law enforcement than the first two books displayed. There are situations that can arise where killing a determined aggressor is the only way to protect innocent lives; and she recognizes both the fact that a decent person doesn’t want to do that and may be severely torn up by the pain of doing it, and that neither the reluctance nor the pain change the moral necessity of doing it at times. In fairness to the author of the first book, Teresa Ives Lilly, her heroine realized this as well, but was able to make a decision to disable rather than kill in the particular case she had to confront. But circumstances may not always provide that option…

How much time has elapsed since the previous book isn’t explicitly stated at the outset; but there, the oldest Hardin sister Sam was newly pregnant and here she’s full term, so we can infer about nine months. Here, the focus is on the third-oldest of the quartet, Dan, who’s the sole viewpoint character – though, as always in the series, narration is in third person. Mutual attraction between her and circuit-riding preacher Joshua Plain was already established in the first book, so the romantic focus in this one is predictable, to the readers, the Waterhole townsfolk, and Dan’s sisters; she’s the only one with doubts about it, centering on whether or not her affection is returned, and on whether she’s cut out to be a preacher’s wife. The short length of the book keeps the angst over this from getting too repetitive and wearing.

There’s no single overall conflict here, so even with just 104 pages the plot has an episodic quality; attention passes from Dan’s venture of opening a café on the side, to allow scope for her cooking talents (Joshua, with 19th-century prejudice against women in business, is very opposed to the idea –though he’s had to admit that she and her sisters are very qualified peace officers!– and to her credit she sticks to the idea anyway), to Sam’s pregnancy and delivery, to the problem of a couple of newly-arrived underage saloon girls, and to the conflict with a tyrannical local rancher. And sometimes we shift back and forth among these. Williford doesn’t really develop the latter character enough to make his motives, and his drastic escalation of the conflict, really credible. On the other hand, the character of young Native American woman (and Christian convert) Morning Glory gets to shine here. Though I’m still not buying the secondary romantic thread provided for her! The role of prayer and Christian faith in God’s guidance in the main characters’ lives is treated positively, and I appreciated the point that combative fighting over Bible interpretation doesn’t please God. The Apostle Paul would agree!

There are a number of editorial issues here that simple proofreading and minimal attention to detail would have corrected, and that frequently took me out of the story. The rancher’s last name changes unaccountably from Dunner to Norton, and then to Newton, in different parts of the book, and sometimes between paragraphs. (Rolls eyes.) We’re told at one point that a circuit judge will arrive tomorrow; but that doesn’t happen, and a prisoner remains in jail with no realistic follow-up. Then near the end, a “district judge” from Dallas makes a quick appearance in response to a telegram. Dallas is in eastern, not western, Texas, and it’s not likely that Waterhole would have been in the same judicial district. We learn here that Morning Glory’s grandmother was of the Comanche tribe, kidnapped and raped by an Apache, among whose people Morning Glory and her mother were raised. But it was said in the second book that she was from Wisconsin, which is quite far north and east from the Apache homeland. There are several other clashing details, that show poor attention to the writing craft. Despite all of these issues, I do like the Hardin sisters as characters; I just regret that they weren’t blessed with more competent chroniclers!

Author: Cheryl Williford
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance, available from Amazon, as a printed book or for Kindle.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Helsing: Demon Slayer, by Liane Zane

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

Full disclosure at the outset: the author kindly donated me a paperback copy of this book in return for an honest review.

In the climactic novel of the author’s Elioud Legacy trilogy, The Draka and the Giant, former U.S. Army Ranger Ryan Helsing, a decorated and physically formidable veteran of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, was introduced as a relatively minor character (I didn’t remember him until I read this book; it’s been a couple of years since I finished reading the trilogy). And as I recall from the prequel series, Unsanctioned Guardians, it was mentioned in the first book there, The Covert Guardian, that title character (and major figure in both series) Olivia Markham had a younger sister. These two people serve as co-protagonists of this new novel, intended as the opening volume of The Dragon’s Paladins, a projected spin-off series from the original trilogy.

As reader’s of the latter know, Zane’s premise is that, from antediluvian times on down to the present, there have been some sub rosa matings between angels (mostly fallen ones, but occasionally celestial ones as well) and humans, and that the children of these unions walk among us, sometimes aware of their heritage, sometimes not. These Elioud have (latent, or more developed) super-human abilities from their angelic genes; and in the ongoing cosmic strife between God and Satan, they may be knowingly enlisted on one side or the other, or just imagine that they can ignore spiritual realities and be neutral. (This premise is taken for granted in the present novel, which should definitely be read after at least the original trilogy, if not necessarily the prequel; the reader needs that to fully understand the situation and to really know some of the important characters.)

Our main setting is the Balkans, in the very near future, about six months after the final events of the Draka and the Giant. Dianne Markham is now a 29-year-old “social media marketing consultant” (and yes, that’s an actual job). Secular-minded and not very close to her sister, in the past she’s been something of a playgirl type, and cultivated a loose lifestyle along that line; but more recently, she’s been aware of her biological clock ticking, and been feeling (and even acting on) some impulses towards a more serious and mature outlook and more responsible behavior. She has no clue about her family’s bloodlines, or that Olivia and her husband, Mihail Kastrioti, are two of the Archangel Michael’s top warriors and commanders.

But they are; and Olivia, warned of danger by her “spidey sense” (which we’ve come to recognize as Divine prompting) is taking measures to gather her birth family into the relatively greater safety of the Kastrioti fortress compound in the Albanian mountains. When we first meet Dianne, she’s on an Adriatic cruise, now winding down, with a bevy of her shallow “friends” (though Germaine Grimes is one she reckons as an actual friend). However, Olivia has sent our title character to secretly watch over her sister on the voyage, and to bring her to Olivia as soon as they dock in the Croatian port city of Split. That may be a long and dangerous trip (especially after the registering of the largest EMP phenomenon in history), and their interpersonal dynamics may get interesting….

In its stylistic and other qualities, this book has a lot of the same trademark characteristics the author displays in her six preceding books. Narration is in third-person, past tense; the H/h alternate as viewpoint characters, with occasional scenes from other viewpoints as needed. While this is definitely in the supernatural fiction genre, centering on combat between demons and demi-angels and their human pawns or allies, much of it also reads like descriptive fiction action-adventure or an espionage thriller (and Zane’s prequel trilogy actually is in the latter genre). This entails a lot of physical action and use of high-tech weaponry and communications. The development of nanotechnology here, and its tie-ins with “harmonics,” the energy frequencies underlying all reality and all living things, including people, which angels and their descendants can perceive but ordinary humans usually can’t, is in the realm of the science-fictional (and probably already was in at least the last two books of the first trilogy, though my knowledge of nanotechnology isn’t great enough that I could tell that on my first reading).

Zane sets a very brisk narrative pace, with a gripping intensity that makes this a real page-turner (I read it in less than two weeks, despite the 353-page length, which is fairly quick for me; and I always hated to put it down when I had to.) As in all of her work, she displays a detailed grasp of the settings and real-life locations, derived partly from Internet research and partly from her own travels. Given the cover art, it’s no surprise that Ryan Helsing is a highly capable action-hero; Dianne (who’s depicted on the back cover, but just with her face) doesn’t start out combat-trained, but she’s got guts and determination, and grows naturally into an action-heroine role. Both characters are developed well, in three-dimensional fashion. Their romance (that’s not a spoiler –Zane’s imprint is Zephon Romance, after all!) develops very quickly, but being thrown together closely and continuously under mortally dangerous and stressful conditions that demand constructive responses will bring out people’s mettle very quickly, and make it both easy and natural to assess and appreciate personal worth in a comrade-in-arms. Romance enhances the story and is a big part of it, but doesn’t swallow it whole.

Demonic possession of humans is taken seriously in the New Testament as an actual reality (borne out in other nonfiction literature on the subject), but the biblical writers don’t present us with a detailed theology of it. It’s a major plot element here; but here (as in some of the other books), how it works is a bit murky, and that’s probably my major quibble here. It’s sometimes suggested, plausibly, that the possessed are usually willing vessels of evil, or that all those outside the actual protection of Christ through faith are under some risk for it (and there are New Testament texts that could indicate that). But we also have a case of apparent possession of a human who doesn’t fall in those categories; and just as the St. Michael medals worn by some good characters here and in the other books have protective qualities, the demonically-cursed physical talismans here worn by some characters exert a malevolent spiritual influence.

Related to this, although like all of the author’s books, this one has a strong good vs. evil orientation which is explicitly understood in Christian terms of God vs. Satan, there’s not a strong note of necessary personal decision to repent of self-will and turn to Christ in salvation. (Granted, Christian conversion is typically a gradual process of internal changes in response to moral and spiritual influence; but there does come a distinct tipping point in which personal loyalty flips Christ’s way. We don’t get a real sense of that here; Dianne starts out as essentially a heathen, albeit one who’s having a bit of a moral awakening; but insofar as she changes spiritually, the change appears to be more about her relationship to Ryan than to Christ.)

Some of this is probably influenced by the author’s Roman Catholic faith, though none of her books harp on denominational distinctives; Catholic (and Orthodox) sacramental theology attributes real spiritual influence to physical objects or actions, where other Christian believers wouldn’t go that far, and the former traditions place less stress on an actual, real-time decision for Christian conversion. (Many Christians, myself included, also wouldn’t consider the whole idea of modern-day demi-angels fighting physical battles against demons as really plausible; but it has to be recognized that the author isn’t necessarily claiming that it is. We should just regard the premise here as a fictional literary conceit that serves metaphorical functions, or allows the author to spin an imaginative story, not as a serious theological treatise.) It could also be argued that the climactic resolution of the conflict is too easy, though I didn’t consider that a serious flaw.

Even though both Ryan and Dianne use a certain amount of bad language (realistically, given their backgrounds) there’s no profane abuse of divine names nor actual f-word use here, and there’s also no explicit nor implied sex. (There’s no doubt that our H and h are strongly attracted to each other physically, but there’s also a sense that the attraction is also, and more importantly, to each other’s qualities of character.) Like the original trilogy, this can be recommended to readers who like clean romance (if they don’t mind what movie reviewers –and this would make a great movie!– would call “some sensuality”) and those who like action adventure, both male and female. It can also appeal to supernatural fiction readers who like the angels vs. demons theme, but the appeal wouldn’t be confined to Catholic (or general Christian) readers; I think many secular readers could enjoy it as well.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Romance, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Sheriff Bride: Jo’s Story, by Brooksie Cox

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Literary rating: ★★ Kick-butt quotient: ☆

This is the second in the tetralogy of novellas originally marketed as the Sheriff Bride series, from the small press Lovely Christian Romance, and each written by a different author. It follows the fortunes of the four firearms-capable Hardin sisters; the first book explains how they came to share the position of “sheriff” (actually, town marshal) in the fictional western Texas community of Waterhole in the later 1870s. From the beginning, it was predictable that each book would focus on one of the sisters’ finding her life partner; and the identity of those partners for the middle two sisters, Jo and Dan, was already adumbrated in the series opener. (The books definitely need to be read in order.) Our story here takes place a bit over six months after the preceding one. In terms of both general literary vision and prose style, the two have a lot in common, although the editing and proofreading is much better here –there were no continuity issues, and no bracketed editorial comments surviving into the printed text. There’s little information available online about Brooksie Cox, but this seems to have been her first publication, and one of only two (Goodreads lists four, but two of those are omnibus editions that apparently each include one of the other two). With no author’s or publisher’s note(s), we don’t know the genesis of this series and its unusual multiple-author structure; but I’d hazard the guess that the idea may have come from the much more prolific author of the first book, Teresa Ives Lilly (who seems to be the publisher’s mainstay house author, and maybe the actual owner), and that Cox modeled her own prose style on that of the more experienced Lilly. Given that the latter’s is verbally repetitious and averse to using pronouns where they would make the text smoother, the reproduction of both of these features here isn’t felicitous. :-( Second-oldest sister Jo (Josephina) is an avid animal lover, and the most tender-hearted of the sisters. (Though she’s a good shot, her hunting was often hampered, to her father’s great displeasure, by her reluctance to pull the trigger on an animal.) Waterhole’s storekeeper, Tom, is similarly soft-hearted (the first book let us know that he prefers to catch a fly by hand and release it outside rather than swat it!), and it wasn’t surprising that he and Jo were attracted to each other. By the time of this second installment, she’s running an impromptu amateur animal hospital from the back room of the store. Here, there are two intertwining plot strands: one involving Tom’s younger (and much more spoiled and self-centered) brother Henry, who’s been a trapper in Canada for years, but shows up early on with a young Indian woman, Morning Glory, in tow as his personal slave, and the other involving a pair of not-very-bright would-be train robbers. My rating for the first book was two and ½ stars. Several aspects of this second one, though, don’t work as well for me in terms of realism, and I wasn’t able to give it more than two stars. First, while (for at least some Native American peoples) tribal law may have allowed the fathers of young women to sell or gamble them away as slaves, by the late 1870s U.S. law didn’t countenance that. So the community’s project of buying Morning Glory’s freedom was unnecessary. Given the long warfare between Texans and the Comanches, and the ill-feeling of many whites in that era towards Indians, as well as Texas’ secession in the previous decade with defense of slavery as one of its officially-avowed reasons, the community’s unanimous sympathy with Morning Glory also seems a bit of a stretch. Though it’s true that slavery was much less entrenched in arid west Texas than in the east Texas cotton country; and Jo’s mother was apparently Northern-born, since her two brothers died fighting for the Union. Second, it’s a standard romance-genre trope that at least one party to the romance has hang-ups to overcome, but Tom’s here seem sort of contrived. Yes, his previous fiancee broke their engagement because she didn’t want to live in a place like Waterhole; but it’s patently obvious that Jo doesn’t have that problem, and by now the community is becoming more female-friendly than it was then. His fear for her safety in a potentially violent job is more credible (if she has a problem shooting a deer, might she not also have a fatal hesitancy in shooting a human, even with her life on the line?), but the denouement here doesn’t actually discredit that fear. That brings me to some issues with the denouement. In the first book, I had no trouble believing that a sober woman with quick reflexes, who’s trained and experienced with a pistol, could outdraw a partly-drunk male, even if he and a bunch of cowed townsfolk thought he was pretty hot stuff with his gun. It was said in the Old West that, “God created men and women, but Col. Colt made them equal.” But here, I did have trouble believing that a woman could tackle and physically overpower a presumably bigger and stronger armed male; and not much respect for her intelligence in trying it, when she could easily have covered him with her own gun from behind and demanded his surrender. Her two armed sisters didn’t display much smarts there, either. If I were Tom, that incident would have exacerbated my concern for her, not laid it to rest. The outcome of the tale here also depends on believing (which I’m not certain that I do) that it can automatically be assumed that every cave in west Texas is inhabited by a swarm of bats which will emerge at sunset; and we’re also asked to believe that Jo’s love for animals makes her the only Hardin sister who would know this, when all of them are wilderness-wise. I also had a problem with our heroines letting an arrested petty thief just walk out of jail, even on the condition that he leave the area, in exchange for a tip leading to the arrest of bigger prey. Finally, although I give Cox credit for treating inter-racial romance positively, the secondary romance here came across to me as implausible and unconvincing. All of this said, I did finish the book (my wife and I read it together – and she liked it much better than I did, her taste in Westerns not being nearly as critical), and it held my interest. Cox’s characterizations aren’t deep, but most of the characters are likable. Like the author, the main characters are evangelical Christians, and there’s a positive portrayal of the role of faith in their lives. We also see the effects of Christian conversion in a couple of cases, though we’re not privy to the scenes/conversations where those conversions take place (so there’s no lengthy evangelistic exposition). The series can appeal to fans of Westerns, Western romance and “Christian fiction” who don’t expect much depth and just want some harmless, time-passing entertainment. A brief word about the cover art is in order. It’s a nice bit of action-heroine iconography, and does depict an actual scene from the book (a rifle-shooting contest). But while the young lady here has lovely brown eyes, we’re told in the books that Jo and all of her sisters are green-eyed; and the kind of colored nail polish this markswoman is wearing didn’t come into vogue until the 1920s. So, no awards for accuracy here! Author: Brooksie Cox Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance Press, available from Amazon, both as an audio book and a printed book. A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Sheriff Bride, by Teresa Ives Lilly

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Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

This short (107 pages) novel is the series opener for the Sheriff Bride series. (The latter has more recently been marketed as the Brides of Waterhole, Texas series, which includes additional books; but my interest is just in the original tetralogy.) Each of the four books (all written by different authors) focus on a different one of the four Hardin sisters, whose unique situation is delineated in the first book, set in the later 1870s. (No date is actually given, but there’s a passing reference to a wanted poster for the notorious outlaw Sam Bass, who was criminally active in 1876-78.) Raised in eastern Texas, the sisters were reared in the Christian faith by their devout mother, who’s been dead for years. But their father was a physically abusive drunk, who resented the fact that they were born female. However, he was a tough customer well versed with firearms, and in his sober moments taught them gun skills, hunting and tracking techniques (he lived off the furs from their hunting, though he drank and gambled away most of the proceeds) and wilderness survival. By the time our story opens, his reputation for prowess at shooting has spread to western Texas.

The book opens with the text of a short letter from one Mark Carlin, banker and leading citizen of Waterhole (population 35 in the town proper, all male), accepting John Hardin’s application for their advertised position of first-ever town sheriff. (That’s actually an authorial error, since in most U.S. states sheriffs are elected to serve entire counties; a peace officer hired to serve just one community would be a town marshal, as opposed to a Federal one.) Having celebrated his good fortune with a drinking binge, however, the inebriated Hardin died in a fall from his horse on the way home. But Carlin had sent him a generous amount of cash for traveling expenses. At the suggestion of eldest sister Sam (Samantha), not having any money or other employment prospects, Jo, Dan and Rob, a.k.a. Josephina, Daniella, and Roberta, agree to join her in traveling across Texas to present themselves as willing to share the position. As readers will be well aware, the wild West of that day wasn’t a hotbed of equal employment opportunity ideals, so the prospects for the success of the ladies’ quest in the face of ingrained male sexism are daunting.

While this is an excellent and very original premise for a novella series, though, the execution of it here has to be called somewhat lackluster. Lilly’s prose style tends to be repetitive, both in language (and in using character’s names over again where a pronoun would serve her better) and in ideas, with points often being restated or reemphasized in the same paragraph when it’s not needed; she also has a tendency to tell when there would be more effective ways of showing. Some attempt was made at editing, but the proofreading was poor (there are only a few typos as such, but I finally deduced that the three or four bracketed repetitions of a sentence in different words were vestiges of textual corrections that weren’t edited out in the final draft!).

There are continuity issues that better editing would have corrected; for instance, in one chapter characters continue talking while waiting after knocking at a door, only to arrive at the door and knock after finishing the conversation; and while the sisters arrived in Waterhole by stagecoach, in a late chapter their arrival was said to be by train. (The town has no train station.) These tended to take me out of the story. In one scene, a doctor extracts a bullet from a gunshot wound in a man’s hand; but the average revolver in that setting fired a .44 bullet, which at the short distance involved there would never have been stopped by the relatively flimsy carpal bones of a human hand. ((On reflection, though, given the position of the combatants, this is actually plausible, given that the bullet had to first pass through the target’s clenched fingers and then through the handle of the gun he was holding. But in my opinion, that still should have been explained.)

On the positive side, the story held my interest, and my wife’s (we’re reading the series together –and yes, we do plan to follow it.) The theme of women proving themselves in a demanding and male-dominated profession that requires some combat skill comes through despite the mediocre execution, and appeals to readers (like myself) who admire action-oriented heroines and appreciate an equalitarian feminist message. (In the latter respect, the ending is also particularly good.) Given that the small-press publisher here is Lovely Christian Romance, it won’t be a surprise that Lilly (and the other series writers) is an evangelical author and that Christian faith plays a role in the tale. (One character is a preacher; Christian ethics underlies the discussions about lethal force, and there’s a serious appreciation of the redemptive power of the gospel.) It also won’t be a surprise that one aspect of the story (which doesn’t swallow up the other aspects!) is a clean romance, but for me that was a plus. (Given that the main storyline takes up a bit over two weeks, it could be faulted as a case of insta-love, but I felt it was plausible under these circumstances and in this era.)

A final point that could be made is that while we’re told that Rob, the youngest sister, is only 14, we aren’t told the older ones’ exact ages, and I’d like to have been. (Their mother was married for 25 years, and died when Rob was fairly young; but we’re not told exactly how young, nor how long it was into the marriage before she bore Sam. Sam could be anywhere from her mid-30s to her very late 20s; I picture her as about 29, and the other two ladies in their mid-to-late 20s.)

Author: Teresa Ives Lilly
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance Press, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Overturned Heart, by A.W. Hart

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

A. W. Hart, the nominal “author” of the Avenging Angels series of western adventures featuring a twin brother-sister pair of bounty hunters in the post-Civil War West, is actually a house pen name; the books are all really written by different authors. (The writer here, Paul Ebbs, though working in a quintessentially American genre, is an Englishman, but a long-standing Western fan.) Barb and I were introduced to the series because the author of one of the books, Charles Gramlich, is one of my Goodreads friends. Before starting on this one, together we’d read and liked three of the books. But, because it’s a long, episodic series (in which the books after the first one don’t have to be read in order), and I was impatient to see whether one romantic connection and another possible one set up in the first book would really come to fruition, I suggested that we make this concluding volume our next read, and she agreed. (To avoid a spoiler, I won’t say whether or not my hopes on that score were fulfilled.)

No exact dates are given here; but since the first book began in 1865 (the next book would have to have been set in 1866) and judging from the number of intervening adventures, I’d guess the main storyline here to be set no earlier than 1870, making co-protagonists George Washington (“Reno”) and Sara Bass in their early 20s at least. But the book opens with three short Prologue vignettes, the first dated “twelve months ago,” from the viewpoint of an unnamed female pushed off of a bridge to a 40-foot drop into a raging river, followed by two more dated, respectively, three and two “months ago.” None of these give us much information; but we are told that she survived, that her brother Robert Stirling-Hamer was a wealthy Arizona copper-mining magnate who has been murdered, and that his accused killer “Don” was in turn killed by bounty hunters (guess who?), but that Don’s brother in New York has now gotten an anonymous letter claiming that his brother was innocent.

Our main story opens with the Bass twins in a tight situation in West Texas, in danger from a psychotic fugitive who’s already murdered his own parents and set fire to a schoolhouse full of kids. But they’re soon to learn that there are now wanted posters out for them, claiming that their killing of Donald Callan eight months previously was an unauthorized murder. From there, the present narrative is periodically interspersed with flashbacks to “eight months ago,” doling out strategic memories of the earlier events (which will finally come together with the present), and at times some short scenes from an omniscient third-person narrator describing present goings-on in Robert’s town of Dry Mouth; but none of these fully explain what actually happened with Robert’s murder. and may at times deepen the mystery.

Ebbs writes very well, with a gift for apt and fresh (but not overdone) similes and vivid turns of phrase. He also brings the varied Southwestern landscape to well-realized life. The publisher and writers have always tried to make this series Christian-friendly; but where it’s clear that some of the authors had only vague knowledge of Christian beliefs, Ebbs actually does explicitly refer to Christ’s sacrificial death for sin in one place. A unique feature here (at least, compared to the other three installments we read) is that all of the chapter titles have biblical or hymnic cadences, and epigraphs that I’m guessing come from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Although the book is very violent (as usual for this series), bad language is scanty and not very rough, and there’s no graphic sexual content and little reference to sex at all. (A Catholic priest is a sympathetic character, Reno’s search for God’s guidance here is a realistically-treated and important theme, and the Bible he inherited from his dad plays a big role.) Reno and Sara’s character portrayals are in keeping with the earlier series books we’ve read (except that Sara’s ruthless streak, at one point, cranks up a notch that even startles Reno).

There are a few nits to pick here, mostly with a number of places where typos in the form of omitted words, negative statements inadvertently expressed as positives or vice versa, etc. change the meaning of sentences; but I could always tell what was meant. A statement early in the book seems to suggest that Sara has lost her faith, but Ebbs subsequently back-peddles from that. Reno’s Bible at one point is described as a “Lutheran Bible,” so while the author knew about the Christian gospel, he obviously wasn’t much versed in church history. (Many U.S. Lutherans in the 19th century were still German-speaking, so would probably still have used Luther’s 16th-century translation; but any that were English-speaking used the King James Version, like all other Anglophone Protestants.) But these are minor quibbles. Overall, I found this an outstanding entry in the series! However, Barb did not; she greatly/exclusively favors linear plots, so she was VERY put off by Ebbs’ non-linear storytelling here (and also disliked the ending, though I didn’t), to the extent of being soured on the rest of the series. So, we’ll be abandoning it, at least for a while.

Author: A.W. Hart
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 12 of 12 in the Avenging Angels series.

 

 

Stepping Outside, by Theodore B. Ayn

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

This e-story (at 73 pages, it’s at the longish end of the “short” story continuum) by my Goodreads friend, new independent author Theodore B. Ayn, is one of several recently-published works to his credit, and so far the only one of them that I’ve read. (I’m hoping eventually to read the rest.) While I didn’t officially receive it as a review copy, I treated it as one (the author kindly extended a general offer of a free e-copy long enough to allow me to take advantage of it when I’d otherwise have missed out). When I started it, I’d intended to read only a short bit, and to return to it later; but I wound up finishing it in a single sitting. As that indicates, it was (at least for me) a page-turner, and a propulsively quick read.

Ayn has an obvious admiration and respect for women who are both strong and muscular physically and who have a matching moral and emotional strength (an attitude that I share); and based on the cover art and descriptions, this is exhibited in all of his works, not just this one. (Arguably, the description of this one provides information that would be better picked up by the readers as the narrative goes along, though it isn’t a “spoiler” as such.) Basically, this particular story, set in a small Midwestern town that’s never identified in any more detail than that, pits brawny waitress Jeannie against even brawnier ex-biker gang member Clyde (no last names given for either) in a physical confrontation brought on by his sexism, arrogance, and hot temper. That description, however, is deceptively simple. This is a character-driven story which isn’t simple at an emotional level, and also isn’t predictable. (It should also be stated at the outset that it’s not an “enemies to lovers” romance; there’s no romantic element in the tale at all, let alone between the two adversaries.) Both main characters are complex, and developed in surprising depth.

The prose style here is straightforward and direct. Overall, Ayn prefers straight narration over dialogue, though he provides realistic dialogue where it’s needed to reveal character and move the plot. Technically, it could be claimed that, especially in developing his two lead characters’ back stories, he uses a fair amount of telling rather than showing. But within the constraints of the short format and of the centralizing of the fight itself as the outward core of the story (though inward developments are taking place at the same time), there’s no real alternative to that technique, and it’s actually well-suited to the kind of effect the author successfully creates. This is descriptive fiction, with no speculative element. I’ve characterized it as general fiction, rather than as crime fiction or action-adventure, because the characters are ordinary civilians, neither career criminals nor law enforcement professionals; no guns are involved, the setting is mundane, and the situation is one that could easily occur in everyday life. We’re in a very different atmosphere and milieu than that of, say, a typical Modesty Blaise adventure.

A word is in order about the art work here. While this isn’t a graphic novel as such, it’s greatly enhanced by, altogether, no less than 30 illustrations (some full-page) of particular scenes, in the same style as the cover art. These serve the same purpose that traditional book illustration always has, that of enabling the reader to more vividly visualize the characters and events of the story (and serve it very effectively!), but as the author confirmed to me in a personal message, they’re AI-generated. Personally, I would argue that such a use of AI to supplement the author’s creative vision is legitimate; it brings to life scenes he wants to depict in the way he wants them depicted, but with a draftsmanship he wouldn’t actually be able to create by hand. (Though the ability to use AI to create it also requires an expertise of its own.)

Unless a reader is scandalized by the sight of bare female arms or legs, there’s nothing salacious about the art here, and nothing suggestive or sexual about the story’s content. Bad language is limited to a couple of d-words. While this isn’t “Christian fiction,” it is fiction written by an author who’s a Christian; but it’s not “preachy” in any sense. (The lead characters are secular, and their spiritual state is only referenced in a single sentence.) It is, though, fiction that focuses on a rough, no-rules street fight between a man and a woman, with an antagonist whose moral code doesn’t include any scruples about hitting a woman, and a female protagonist who doesn’t see her gender as disqualifying her from slugging or kicking a man if it’s necessary. The author also has the kind of moral vision which can view a physical fight as an instrument, rather than an antithesis, of moral order. This story wouldn’t be recommended for readers who would be repelled or triggered by that type of imagery, content, or messaging. However, I’m not numbered in that group; and for me the story proved to be ultimately wholesome, emotionally enriching, and rewarding.

Author: Theodore B. Ayn
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, currently only for Kindle.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Eye of Ebon, by P. Pherson Green

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆½

Independent Goodreads author (and one of my Goodreads friends) P. Pherson Green has been writing since the late 90s, and has previously had short stories published in various venues. However, this novel, the opener for his projected White Sword Saga series, is his long-fiction debut. He graciously gifted me with a hardcover review copy; no guarantee of a favorable review was requested, or given. My wife and I read the book together, during the intermittent and usually short times we were both traveling together in the car; so the nearly two months it took to read is misleading. It would have been a much quicker read if I’d read it by myself, devoting all of my individual reading time to it.

This is a work of traditional epic fantasy, set (as most tales in this genre are) in a medieval-like setting resembling the Europe of that day, except in an invented fantasy world. (A helpful map is provided, though it doesn’t show every single locality a reader might like to locate.) It would be fair to say that most if not all English-language epic fantasy written from the last half of the 20th century on owes something to the inescapable influence of Tolkien’s monumental LOTR saga, and this novel is no exception. We have here, ultimately, a quest narrative involving an artifact of great significance (and great seductive power, of an unwholesome sort). The characters’ world is one with a very long history, involving elder races and cataclysmic wars which have consequences for the present. Two non-human races, the Allarie and the Groll, are respectively much like Tolkien’s elves and orcs.

More importantly, we’re very definitely dealing here with a conflict between good and evil, with domination of a world at stake; and the conflict is not simply one of “Us” (the “good” characters) vs. “Them” (the “bad” characters), but rather within “Us” as well, since all humans can be tempted by evil. And like Tolkien (who once famously characterized the LOTR corpus as a “Catholic work”) Green is a Christian author, who writes from a Christian conception of the universe. Neither writer makes any explicit reference to Christianity, and indeed both are dealing with a world in which Christ has not been born; Middle Earth is supposedly our world long before Christianity existed, and Green’s Silver World (he introduces that name only in a short note after the novel proper) is an entirely different world with a different salvation history. But like Tolkien’s Morgoth (“the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant”) the entity variously known here as the Shadow, the Wyrm, the Foul Pretender or the Dark Beguiler is recognizable as Satan; and the apparently pagan polytheism of the Silver World isn’t quite as polytheistic as it initially seems.

For all that, Green is his own person with his own literary vision and style; The Eye of Ebon is not a direct LOTR knock-off, in the way that Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shanarra is. A major difference, of course, is the distaff perspective. While Tolkien’s Eowyn is an action-capable female, she’s not the heroine of the saga; his major characters, and most of the characters who display any real agency, or play a direct role in defeating evil, are male. Here, the two viewpoint characters, protagonist Samiare (whom you see depicted on the book’s cover) and essentially co-protagonist Rugette are both female, and formidable fighting females who carry the brunt of the book’s down-and-dirty struggle against evil, and who make the key, crucial gut wrenching and difficult moral decisions at the climactic points. (I was already inclined to rate the book at five stars, but those were the moments that clinched it, and for me moved this tale into the ranks of great, rather than merely good, literature!)

To be sure, unlike Rugette, whose combat skills, especially archery, result from rigorous training since she was in her early teens (I’d guess her to be about 30 here) and have been honed in years spent as a high-ranking warrior and scout fighting the Groll, Samiare, an untrained girl of 15, owes her prowess to a mysterious sword. At the very beginning of the main narrative, she lies dying in the snows of her homeland from cold and blood loss after being gang-raped by a band of Groll and renegade humans, who carved an obscenity on her belly, beat her and tortured her with branding irons, after killing her father and making off with her sister. When she cried out for deliverance “to the one god she knew –the one who watched over,” that sword was gifted to her by a glowing man-like being; and it proves to be no ordinary sword. But she still has to hold it and wield it –and make decisions about how she uses it.

The above paragraph suggests another difference from the Tolkien corpus; this narrative is much grittier, and gorier. While the gang-rape itself isn’t really directly described, we can tell it occurred; and while Green doesn’t make the brutalizing and torture here any more drawn-out than it has to be to make us feel it, he does make us do that. This sets a tone for a very violent book; there’s a lot of mortal combat action with edged weapons, and the Groll are an extremely sadistic and treacherous bunch, even to each other. (Tolkien, in a letter, once characterized the orcs as “almost irremediable,” but allowed that no being created by God is wholly irremediable. We get the impression here that the Groll may be; but even here, Green depicts them as having a claim to merciful treatment when they’re disabled in combat, which I regard as a plus.) So there’s a high body count, with quite a lot of humans and humanoids dying, often in nastily unpleasant ways. There’s no “pornography of violence,” but we do see the spilled entrails, severed limbs, split skulls, etc. However, there’s no quoted bad language, and no explicit sexual content. (In fact, the only reference to sex at all, besides the implied rape above, occupies a tastefully phrased single part of one sentence, in 230 pages of text proper. This would definitely not be characterized as a “romantasy.”)

Green has a serviceable, dignified and assured, naturally flowing prose style that holds interest well. Settings, scenes and people are described vividly enough to be pictured in the reader’s mind (and some of the scenes conjured rival those depicted by Robert E. Howard or A. Merritt for atmosphere and spectacle!), but not over-described. World-building is delivered along the way of the storyline, without info-dumps (there are a couple of roughly page-long appendices, “About the Silver World” and “The Four Lands,” which should be read). There aren’t many serious typos, the worst one being that “reigns” tends to be substituted when “reins” is meant (but that’s a quibble). We come to realize before long that the Prologue describes events taking place millennia before the main story, and occasional interspersed flashbacks set in the same time-frame aren’t distinguished by typeface or a heading; but the reader quickly comes to identify and understand these, and they do convey important information.

There’s no cliff-hanger here; the challenge of the main plot is brought to its conclusion. But it’s clear that the overall epochal struggle of the Four Lands is only beginning, and I’m invested in continuing the series!

Author: P. Pherson Green.
Publisher: Gold Dragon Publishing, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Accidental Keyhand, by Jen Swann Downey

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

In terms of my reading plans for 2025, mentally laid out at the end of last month, this read was a totally unexpected curveball. The book (and author) wasn’t one I’d ever heard of, and not one I’d have bothered to pick up even on a free rack; but it was a surprise Christmas gift from a library colleague, delivered early this month when we returned from Christmas break, and one that touched me deeply. As a gift from one librarian to another, it actually has a lot to commend it, being very library-centered and with a message very supportive of books and the importance of the written word.

Written for younger readers (ages 10-14, according to the Goodreads description), this is the opening book of what’s so far a duology. Author Downey describes the premise and genesis of the series in an answer to a question by another Goodreader, which is worth quoting from at length:

“I think the seed for the series was planted when I saw the phrase “Petrarch’s Library” scrawled on a notebook I found in our never-very-organized, and always-very-clutterful house. Everyone in the family denied being the scrawler, but the phrase ignited my imagination, especially after I looked it up and found it associated with a collection of books that the 14th century humanist and poet, Petrarch, had carried around with him when he traveled on the back of a donkey. That made me laugh, because the phrase had suggested some sort of grand magnificent library. But then I thought, well, even a small collection of books IS a sort of imaginary grand magnificent place because each of the books is a doorway into a different world of ideas, and knowledge, and story.

Suddenly I was imagining “Petrarch’s Library” as a solid, if sprawling building, made out of library chambers from different times and places knitted together by magic into one incredible super-library.

Since I was a kid, I always had the feeling that librarians were masquerading at doing something mundane while actually doing something incredible, mysterious and magical. It seemed reasonable that the work of librarians who staffed the imaginary Petrarch’s Library would defend and protect the flow of information in shall we say, some additional warrior-ish direct action ways!”

(That quote also answers the question of whether this is fantasy or science fiction; that would depend on whether the author intended us to view the speculative elements as enabled by magic –which, as noted above, she did!– or by natural phenomena/technology unknown to present science.) 12-year-old protagonist Dorothea “Dorrie” Barnes is a library-loving kid growing up in Passaic, New Jersey (I suspect this might be Downey’s hometown, but can’t confirm that), in a chaotic household with her inventor father, college instructor mom, 14-year-old brother Marcus, and three-year-old sister Miranda. (The family shares the house with her great-aunt Alice, who’s an anthropologist.) Dorrie’s a pretty ordinary tween, albeit one with a sense of justice and a liking for the idea of sword-fighting against villains; she’s got a blunt practice sword and takes a library-sponsored fencing and stage combat class. But when the book opens on the day of the library’s annual Pen and Sword Festival (a sort of low-budget Renaissance Faire), a succession of freak events will very soon suck Dorrie and Marcus into a most un-ordinary experience….

With 358 pages of actual text, this is a rather thick book; but it has fairly large script, and is a quick-flowing page turner. Given that it’s intentionally written for kids, it’s safe to say (and no disgrace to the author!) that it would appeal more to that group than to adults; and while it’s among those children’s books that can please adults, it’s much more towards the younger-age end of that spectrum than some. Probably its biggest problem is conceptual murkiness, which makes suspension of disbelief challenging (more so for adults than for most 10-14 year-olds). The circumstances behind the rise of the Foundation and later of its Lybrariad adversaries aren’t really explained, and neither is the power behind the magic of Petrarch’s library and why its details work the way they do (partly because the Lybrarians themselves don’t know or understand this!). Because the author conceives of time as fluid, with past events subject to change which can re-write subsequent ones, time paradoxes are a factor, and that’s definitely not my favorite time-travel trope. Also, Downey’s perspective is secular humanist, though the book doesn’t stress this. The issue of language differences in certain settings isn’t always handled convincingly, IMO.

However, there are definite pluses here as well. On the whole, the plot is a serious one, with real suspense and tension in many places and a definite potential risk of death at times, and there are some serious life lessons imparted and significant moral choices made; but the author leavens this with a good deal of both situational and verbal humor, which works well here. She’s obviously well-read and knowledgeable about history, geography, natural history, etc., and she constructs her plot well for the most part (though there’s a significant logical hole in the part played by one magical artifact). Dorrie’s well-developed and likeable; most of the other characters who get any significant page-time are well-developed also, though not always likeable nor meant to be. (Marcus is, though you might sometimes want to swat him! :-) ) A nice touch is the incorporation of several real historical figures, such as Cyrano de Bergerac and Greek philosopher Hypatia, as members of the Lybrariad, though their portrayal isn’t always necessarily realistic. (I appreciated the short appendices which identify most of these people, and give additional information about other real persons, places, books, and other items mentioned in the tale.)

Since Dorrie is only 12 years old, she’s not a very formidable fighter in serious combat. But within the limits of her physical growth and of what training she’s had, she actually does display some action heroine chops, albeit not until quite a ways into the book.

All in all, this is not deep fiction, and I don’t plan to seek out the sequel. But it’s an enjoyable romp on its own terms, and I don’t regret reading it. (Note for animal-loving readers: the pet mongoose who plays an important role in the storyline is not harmed in any way!)

Author: Jen Swann Downey
Publisher: Sourcebooks, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Guardian Initiative, by Liane Zane

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Literary rating: ★★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

Like the previous two books, this conclusion to the Unsanctioned Guardians trilogy (a prequel to the Elioud Legacy trilogy) was a generous gift to me from the author. (There was no pressure to write a positive review; the book stands easily on its merits, and she knew I’d liked the previous installments, as well as the original series.) Given their prequel status, it’s not really necessary to have read the Elioud Legacy books to enjoy reading these three; though if you have, it does give you more acquaintance with and understanding of the main characters (and conversely these books flesh out the background of the original three, and answer questions readers of those may have had). But the Unsanctioned Guardians books DO need to be read in order. Most of my general comments about the first two apply to this one as well; the premise builds organically on the preceding books, and the author’s style, literary vision and handling of content issues is consistent across all three books.

About a year has elapsed since the events of the previous book. CIA agent Olivia Markham landed on her feet sufficiently, after the events in that one, to preserve her career with the Company; but since then, at her request, she’s been moved to a desk job. For most of the interim, she’s been in charge of an agency safehouse in Montenegro, which fronts as a free clinic for the town’s numerous foreign refugees, run by an NGO that’s not aware of the CIA connection. (The clinic work is real; when she was recruited by the agency in the first book, Olivia was a college pre-med student, and she has EMT certification.) She’s also fallen in love with a French medical doctor at the local hospital; the two are living together, and will get engaged in the first chapter. But …she’s about to cross paths with an Islamic terrorist mastermind from the previous book. Meanwhile, Italian spy Stasia Fiore is still investigating the theft of a Predator drone from the Italian military; and Capt. Beta Czerna is soon to be approached by a desperate woman who needs help in rescuing her sister from the clutches of a Polish crime lord who’s into sex trafficking (among other villainous things). Circumstances are about to converge these plot strands, and bring all three ladies together for a violent, high-stakes thrill ride.

As before, Zane moves the action of the tale briskly through a variety of European locations and a trip to Morocco, in this case, making considerable use of Internet research to handle the physical geography of her scenes with photographic realism. Again, she demonstrates her strong knowledge of espionage tradecraft and modern weaponry, and handles action scenes well. The body count in this book is significantly less than in the previous one, but the suspense factor is taut and constant. There’s brief reference to loving pre-marital sex, as well as to off-screen sexual violence, but nothing explicit in either case. One short scene could be described as “sensuous,” but it consists of three sentences. Bad language is minimal, and within the bounds of reasonable realism. We’re still essentially in the realm of descriptive fiction, rather than the supernatural fiction of the first trilogy; but here there are a couple of brief incidents, not observed by viewpoint character Olivia, that suggest a bit of supernatural assistance, and readers of those original three books will readily recognize their old friend Zophie at one point.

My only minor criticisms were that in one place, we have a truck that apparently drives itself onto the scene, and nobody picks up on that fact; and in another, a character assumes knowledge of a location she wouldn’t know at that point. But that nit-picking stop me from greatly liking the book, especially given the strong emotional effect of the storyline. This is a wonderful depiction of the forging of a team that has each other’s backs, and of female friendship under fire (literally). Zane’s handling of Olivia’s moral and emotional growth here is also powerful and superb. All of these factors ably set the stage for readers to move on from here to the Elioud Legacy trilogy, if they haven’t already read it. The kick-butt quotient here takes account of the fact that we have not just one, but three gun-toting heroines racking up bad-guy corpses.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Romance; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a print book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.