Tag: novel

Rain Dance by D.N. Erikson

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

The saying, “You only live twice,” is supposed to be a metaphor, but for Eden Hunter, it ends up being very much a statement of fact. She’s a former con-artist, dragged back from beyond the grave by vampire warlord, Aldric. He puts her to work on a hidden island as his personal soul-harvester, with a strict quota per week. It’s not great work, but it’s steady – at least until Eden’s beach-front house is attacked by a werewolf with murder on its furry mind. She then finds herself seen by the FBI as their prime suspect after an old partner in confidence tricks turns up dead on her doorstep. But, wait! There’s more! She has to deal with the rain goddess – presumably, the source of the title – to whom Eden is also in thrall, and whose rules she just broke. A gang involved in robbing her boss of millions in gold bullion. Her dead sister. A serial-killer politician. Oh, and a talking cat.

Overall, the main problem is that this feels like Book 2, rather than Book 1. Rather than starting off at what might be considered the more logical point of Eden’s first death, it joins her career as a reaper, already well in progress, opening with the werewolf attack. There is a fair amount of information – and quite important data, at that – which is not provided to the reader until some distance into the story. As the paragraph above suggests, there’s not exactly a shortage of plot threads either: as a result, some of them inevitably end up feeling under-developed. The goddess, for example, seems to show up at the end, purely to provide an adversary for the heroine’s boss, and I’m still not sure about the point of the politician. Conversely, some things feel under-explained. The island is supposedly hidden… yet the FBI know where it is? Who delivers – oh, I dunno – milk to it? It has an awkward sense of being something which looked a good idea at the time, only was never thought through properly.

It’s probably not the book’s fault, but there was a sense of deja vu too for me. Only a couple of months ago, I read Fugitive of Magic by Linsey Hall. It was also a story told in first-person perspective, about a paranormal heroine accused of a murder she didn’t commit, who has to find the real perpetrator in order to prove her innocence. Having recently read that story, I didn’t find a revised version of it especially interesting. The main positive is Eden herself, who made for a decent central character. There was a nice moral sense of grey about her choices, with her trying to do the right thing, even though those choices were frequently constrained by the unfortunate circumstances which she inhabited. If we’d been brought along with Eden on her resurrection, rather than being dumped into the middle of it, this would likely have been a more worthwhile story.

Author: D.N. Erikson
Publisher: Watchfire Press, available through Amazon as both a paperback and an e-book.
Book 1 of 3 (to date) in the Sunshine & Scythes series.

Devour, by R.L. Blalock

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

Back when I was growing up in Britain during the eighties, I was a voracious reader of horror fiction. The two staples of my literary diet were the works of James Herbert, who occupied the more “literary” end of the spectrum, and Shaun Hutson, whose novels were about as subtle as a kick to the groin. This likely tends towards the latter end of the spectrum, being a straightforward tale of survival during the zombie apocalypse. It begins as Olivia Bennett is heading home from lunch with her husband, when the St. Louis freeway on which she is driving becomes one of the first killing zones.

With civilization rapidly imploding, and communications all but non-existent, Liv has to make her way through the increasingly dangerous cityscape toward Slag Stead, a farm on the outskirts which may (or may not) provide a safe haven, and where her husband may (or may not) be waiting. Making matters considerably more perilous, Liv also has to protect her toddler daughter Elli. On the one hand, Elli’s survival provides a considerable dose of maternal motivation. But on the other, she’s too young to understand that there are times when silence is not just golden, it’s essential for survival.

In the cyclical nature of horror, I can’t help wondering if we have passed Peak Zombie, as it were. The Walking Dead has now completed its eighth season, and seems increasingly to be struggling to keep things fresh. This goes back to the roots of the sub-genre: rather than man vs. man (or woman), against a zombie backdrop, the story here is almost entirely woman vs. zombie. Or, rather, zombieS, for the pack nature of the infected here is part of what makes them devastatingly lethal. They’re also fast, rather than the classic, slow-moving shufflers of the George A. Romero universe: zombie purists may be less than happy with that choice.

However, this approach does lead to a relatively repetitious approach to the story here: Sneak, slay, hide, rinse, repeat. There’s really only so many times you can describe Liv’s chosen weapon of a mallet, whacking a “feral” upside the head. While occasionally, Liv and Elli do cross paths with other survivors, I rarely felt that the subsequent interactions provided much in the way of additional depth: these additional characters felt dropped in merely to serve the plot. I did like Liv, and appreciated her relentless survival instincts – though for someone supposedly training to be a nurse, she seemed curiously squeamish, especially during the early stages [admittedly, she gets over it, and by the end is wielding that mallet with something bordering on enthusiasm].

Occasionally, Blalock does crib a bit too obviously from other genre entries. The sequence where the ferals attack and over-run a radio station closely parallels 1979’s Italian movie, Zombie, while the notion that they “sleep” at night was used in The Girl With All The Gifts. Admittedly, there’s precious little that’s truly new under the sun in the zombie world, but if you want to stand out from the rotting, flesh-gnawing masses, you need to offer something new, be it in content or style. This doesn’t do much of either, and while competent enough, is eminently forgettable.

Author: R.L. Blalock
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as both an e-book and a paperback.
Book one in the Death & Decay series

The Sheriff’s Surrender, by Susan Page Davis

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

Having started our acquaintance with the Ladies Shooting Club trilogy last year with the third book, The Blacksmith’s Bravery (long story), my wife Barb and I are now reading the other two volumes in order. Neither of us were disappointed in this one! My reviewing it here was a happy surprise. Although the covers of all three books feature gun-toting women, and a basic plot current of the trilogy is women learning to take responsibility for defending themselves and others, the heroine of the third book wasn’t actually called on to engage in any gun-fighting action. So I assumed the same would be the case here. But [at the risk of a mild “spoiler” –though for fans of this site, this will add interest rather than spoil it :-)], in this series opener, our heroine does need to step up to the plate with a Winchester. (Contrary to many fictional and movie depictions, rifles were used more for serious shooting in the Old West than six-guns). Despite that difference, though, both books have a lot of similarity in tone, content and style. Since I gave the concluding volume five stars on Goodreads, that’s a good thing!

In 1885 small-town Idaho, young Gert Dooley keeps house for her widowed brother, the town’s gunsmith. One thing she can do to help him is test fire the guns he repairs; and she’s gotten to be a crack shot over the years of doing this. When the town’s longtime sheriff is murdered in his office (the titular sheriff is his replacement), the usually quiet community is spooked; and a widowed storekeeper friend asks Gert to teach her how to use her late husband’s Colt, in case she needs it to protect herself or her business. There’s initially no thought of creating a club as such; but as other crimes follow and other women join in the lessons, the Ladies Shooting Club takes shape. Reactions among the community’s menfolk aren’t uniformly supportive –but not uniformly hostile either; stereotypical role expectations of female helplessness weren’t so ingrained in the late 19th-century West as they’d become later.

Despite the historical setting, the issue the novel poses is very contemporary, and hotly debated even today. Male chauvinists tend to see any use of weapons by females as transgressive of patriarchal norms. And while all feminists believe in “empowerment” for women in some sense, many of them either feel that pacifism is ideologically essential to true feminism, or believe that the State and its agents have an absolute monopoly on legitimate use of lethal force, which renders use of a gun for self-defense by ordinary citizens as nearly as bad as using it to attack an innocent. But another strand of feminism rejects that thinking, and views responsible and educated gun ownership as a legitimate tool of women’s empowerment. It’s not hard to deduce from this book what view of that matter Davis takes.

There’s nothing tract-like about this novel, however, any messages emerge naturally from the story itself. Christian faith plays a role in the lives of Gert and other characters, and of the town –the coming of a preacher and his wife to form a nondenominational community church is an important event, as it really was in many Western communities, where organized religion came more slowly than it did in the more easily-settled Eastern states– but the author isn’t “preachy” in her handling of this. The club is also a vehicle for creating female camaraderie and friendship that crosses social divides set by class, religion, and Victorian attitudes (it’ll eventually include both the preacher’s wife and a saloon owner and her girls), and some characters will have lessons to learn in that area.

But the main focus is on the question of what’s behind the sudden rash of arson and violence in the community. I’d describe this as a Western (and there’s horses, guns, a posse, and gun-play at the end), but it embodies very real characteristics of the mystery genre as well. (While I guessed the identity of the villain early on, I’m not sure many readers would –and you might have fun testing your own wits!) And in the background, we have regard and respect growing into love between a worthy man and woman.

Since this was the second book we read of the series, as Barb said, it was “like visiting old friends.” I’d recommend to new readers, though, that they read the books in order. And for us, it’s now on to our third book (which is actually the trilogy’s second), The Gunsmith’s Gallantry!

Author: Susan Page Davis
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm by Garrett Robinson

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

One of the common problems I’ve found with fantasy novels is establishing the universe. It’s clearly going to be very different from the reader’s, and the author needs to get them up to speed on how things work in the book’s setting. If this isn’t done quickly and effectively, the reader can be left floundering in a world they know nothing about. Robinson uses a neat trick to get around this. His heroine, Loren, basically knows nothing about it either, because she has been brought up in a remote rural area. Virtually all she knows about life outside the woods comes from tales told to her by an itinerant tinker, and her dreams of becoming a heroic thief seem no more than fantasies.

That all changes when she encounters a fugitive, Xian the mage. Fed up with her life – and given the severely abusive parents, it’s hard to blame her – she throws her lot in with him. That’s how everything starts: as she discovers the world around her has a lot more to offer than household drudgery and arranged marriages, so do we. She has a couple of advantages over the usual runaway: she’s “country strong” having been brought up to hunt, providing her with a skill-set which will putt her in good stead to hold her own in a more urban environment. And on her departure, she takes a dagger, a family heirloom of sorts, which for some reason, strikes fear into the subset of those she encounters, who recognize it.

Loren is, perhaps, a little too well-prepared occasionally: while I can see how running and climbing trees would translate into parkour-like city skills, her adeptness at picking locks was a little eyebrow-raising. However, this ia a relatively minor issue, and more than outweighed by the strengths of Robinson’s writing. He draws a world which is easy to imagine in your mind’s eye, populated by a range of memorable characters. I appreciated the almost total lack of the near-compulsory romantic angles, and that Loren is far from the only strong woman to be found in these pages. Already, we have met Auntie, the shape-shifting mage who runs the underworld in the city of Cabrus, and Damaris, a scarily well-connected smuggler who helps Loren, yet appears to have her own agenda.

As the introductory book to a six-volume series, there is rather less than a complete story told here, though neither is there one of those oh-so annoying cliffhangers. There are instead questions, which will presumably be answered down the road. Where did Loren’s blade come from? What is its significance? What about the mysterious gems Damaris is smuggling? And who is Jordel, the man who is also after Xian, yet seems to keep encountering and assisting our heroine? I was left feeling fulfilled by what I had read, yet also wanting more, and that’s a combination which is not as frequently found as you’d expect.

Author: Garrett Robinson
Publisher: Legacy Books, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and a paperback
Book 1 of 6 in The Nightblade Epic series.

Fugitive of Magic by Linsey Hall

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

It’s probably worth noting that although this is Volume 1 in the somewhat clunkily-named “Dragon’s Gift: The Protector” series, it follows in the wake of two other Dragon’s Gift threads by the same author, The Huntress and The Seeker. While you don’t need to have read those to enjoy this, it does explain a structure, which could seem somewhat odd. For the volume sets up a trio of treasure-hunting magicians – Cass, Del and Nix – then all but discards the first two and concentrates heavily on Nix. Turns out Cass and Del were the subjects of the Huntress and Seeker sagas respectively, and the Protector gives Nix her turn in the spotlight. This is why some aspects, such as the shop run by the three women, seems more than a bit undeveloped: I presume they were featured in the ten or so previous volumes set in the same world.

With that out of the way… Nix is chasing down a shoplifting pack of demons, when she stumbles across a murder scene. The killer manages to frame her for the murder, which is unfortunate because the victim was a close ally of the vampire race. Their top enforcer, Ares, locks a nasty collar around Nix’s neck to ensure she doesn’t skip out before her date in court, three days hence. Worse still, their court contains mind-readers, who will undoubtedly discover her secret [shared by Cass and Del]. For as well as her relatively mundane conjuring skills, allowing her to pull things literally out of thin air, Nix is also a FireSoul. That’s a very, very forbidden talent, allowing her to absorb the abilities of others. In order to avoid exposure, she needs to locate the real killer, a quest that will bring her into an uneasy partnership with Ares, and take her to a long-forgotten castle in France, St. Pancras railway station in London, and other locations both magical and mundane.

“Find the real killer in X hours to prove your innocence, or else” is a fairly well-worn plot, but Hall manages to add enough novel elements to keep it fresh. The same is true of several other elements: the incredibly handsome, brooding vampire with whom the heroine has unresolved sexual tension, for example, manages to be be somewhat less irritating here than usual. I think the first-person narrative helps there: Nix’s inner monologue is nicely self-deprecating, and was more often than not in tune with what I was thinking as a reader. Ares is clearly there to do a large block of the heavy action work. But I was pleased to see that Nix does not hesitate to wade in there, right from the opening sequence, which sees her and her two friends engage in what is basically a pitched battle in the middle of the street against multiplying numbers of demonic entities.

I suspect you probably would be better off not leaping in to the universe like this, ten volumes down, and must confess to being slightly miffed something described as “Book 1” is far from being that. However, this was devoured at quite a rate, and offers a fast (if not particularly challenging or thought-provoking) and enjoyable read. Though the story clearly leads on to volume two, it doesn’t cliff-hanger the reader to death, and I’d certainly consider reading further – by which, I mean earlier – entries.

Author: Linsey Hall
Publisher: Bonnie Doon Press, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and paperback.

The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook, by Josie Brown

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

My preferred format for reading is paper; and that’s the only format I support financially, since the only language Big Publishing understands is dollars and cents. Even for a reader like myself, though, e-books have their uses. Writers can offer particular books for free in that format, and that makes it possible to read them first in order to check the quality before you buy the paper edition. And sometimes that opportunity saves you money that would have been wasted if you’d taken a chance on the paper book to begin with! For me, this series opener (which Brown makes available free in e-book format on a permanent basis) was one of those books I was thankful I didn’t have to spend money on, which I’d have regretted.

The novel’s premise is intriguing enough, and the harrowing first chapter grabbed my attention effectively. We’re plunged into the action right away, with present-day events narrated by protagonist Donna in present tense. At the first opportunity, she drops back into a flashback (in past tense) that gives us an introduction to her childhood and family background –and yes, that’s relevant!– how she met her husband, their few years together, and her discovery, after he was identified as the dead victim of a car wreck on the night she gave birth to their third child, that he had a BIG secret: the corporation he worked for was a front that contracted to do wet work for the CIA, and he was an assassin, most recently assigned to help bring down the Quorum, a shadowy organization of ex-government assassins who’ve gone rogue and are out for profit. (They planted the bomb in his car.) We also learn how, needing to support her kids and wanting to better protect them (long story!), and wanting vengeance on the kinds of scumbags who made her a widow, she subsequently agreed to go to work for Carl’s employer, in his old job. (That’s not as big a stretch as it would be for some women –she learned to shoot as a kid, is naturally talented for and very good at it, and met Carl at a firing range.)

While I was reading the first few chapters, I expected this to be a four-star read. The body of the novel itself (we’ll talk about the italicized chapter beginnings below!) actually is more serious in tone than comedic, although it does have some deadpan humor that arises from the incongruities of Donna’s job responsibilities vs. her domestic ones. Her reflections about the ethics of what she does aren’t approached flippantly, and she’s a well-drawn character who earned my sympathy and respect –a very tough woman, morally and physically, but essentially a good and decent person and a caring mom (who intends to survive and be there for her kids). Brown creates a situation that’s fraught with moral and emotional complexity and shades of gray to start with, and then ups the emotional ante exponentially with a new development –followed by some more really compelling twists and turns, the first one of which I didn’t see coming. (I did suspect the second one.) None of the other characters are developed as fully as Donna, but they’re believable, and the author does conjure a sense of place with the southern California setting (in Orange County). And I liked the depiction of family life, and Donna’s relationship with her kids.

In fairness, I also need to defend Donna against the complaint of one reviewer, who regards her as a moral pariah because she lies to her kids, at a very serious level. Well, yes, she does (although she doesn’t like that situation). But as a reality check, these kids are 12, 10 and 5 years old, with big mouths, limited impulse control, and a child’s immaturity and deficient understanding of danger and the complexities of real-world situations. Even if the lies involved are extreme, telling them the truth in a life-and-death situation, where things they do and say could have disastrous consequences, is not a course I’d advocate.

The principal problem I had here was that the plotting is simply not well thought out, and not convincing. One could argue that the essential premise is far-fetched; but I was okay with suspending disbelief that far. (Whether or not black ops organizations would hire a single mom with kids is a matter of speculation, since real life organizations like this don’t publicize their personnel policies. :-) ) But even within the premise Brown creates, much of her plotting simply doesn’t stand examination. Some of the major actions by the villain(s) are at cross-purposes with some of their other major actions; several events that take place here would involve the police in the story, at a level that couldn’t be ignored, but there’s no indication of that here; Donna’s reasoning for one major decision is weak and unconvincing; and Acme (the company she works for) would be much more actively involved in the decision-making at the end, not passive as it is here. Also, characters could not realistically suddenly just shrug off previously incapacitating wounds (which happens here twice), and there are other significant logical slips that took me out of the story. The author writes prolifically, but she apparently wrote this novel too quickly to take her craftsmanship in plotting seriously, or to put any real thought behind it. (That’s a real shame.)

Finally, a word is in order about the titular “Handbook” aspect. As a gimmick here (and as nearly as I can tell, in the other 15 books of the series as well, though I haven’t read them) Brown prefaces each chapter with short, italicized snippets giving supposed household hints that blend home economics with mayhem. These are unrelated to the story-line (though some may have a passing thematic connection to something in the chapter), don’t advance it in any way, and don’t reflect any things that Donna might actually do. Instead, they’re intended to be humorous (often depending for their humor on exaggerations that are completely over the top). Some readers like these (one reviewer found them to be her favorite aspect of the book!); so as the saying goes, “Your mileage may vary.” Personally, though, their humor generally fell flat for me; it typically strains too hard, and comes across as weak (or nonexistent) and forced. I found them an irritating nuisance that the book would have been better off without. Good fiction doesn’t need gimmicks to appeal; and if the author had given us a tight, plausible, well-constructed plot, this novel wouldn’t have needed any gimmick either.

Ultimately, I gave this two stars rather than one, in consideration of its positive elements; and I did finish it (I had to see how it ended!). But I don’t plan to continue reading the series.

Note: The book includes several episodes of explicit sex –including one that’s very abusive and disgusting, although there’s a defensible literary reason for describing it– and other sexual situations (in the opening scene, Donna’s posing as a prostitute). There’s also some bad language, including the f-word (though in Donna’s vocabulary, the latter is only a verb used in unloving contexts, not an all-purpose adjective/adverb) and in the sexual scenes, vulgar terms for some body parts. Most of the other bad language here is strictly of the d- or h-word sort.

Author: Josie Brown
Publisher: Signal Press, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Petra by Cheri Lasota

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

Petra is a teenage Roman slave at around the birth of Christ. She is completely under the thumb of her sadistic master, Clarius, until a strange conjunction of events and a poisonous herb with mystical qualities changes the power dynamic entirely. Both of them, together with her lover, Lucius, attain immortality. But it’s an immortality which requires the two men to drink from Petra annually, or they will degenerate into sub-human monsters. Neither is happy with the arrangement: Clarius is not used to being reliant on anyone, least of all his former property, and Lucius hates the fact Petra agreed to submit to their ex-master, in order to save him. As the centuries stretch into millennia, Petra begins, slowly, to put together a group people who will be capable of defeating Lucius and the immortals he has recruited, allowing her to live in eternal peace with Lucius.

If you’re getting a bit of an Interview With The Vampire vibe here, you are not far off the mark, with the story spanning multiple human lifetimes. Fortunately, it largely stays clear of the vampiric cliches, and what could have been little more than Twilight with delusions of historical significance becomes a little more. It’s recounted in flashback from the 18th century, though there are huge gaps in the narrative, where you’re left to wonder what Petra was doing during the 1,300+ intervening years. I’m still a little vague on the specific mechanism of the immortality, too: it is based on Petra’s blood, the herb, or is it the combination? But my major problem was the overpowering emphasis on the romantic angles. Look, we get it: Petra and Clarius are super in love. Now, can we move on to interesting anecdotes about life everlasting?

Proceedings take a sharp right turn in the 14th century, when Lucius has had enough of it all, and bails. This volume is, frankly, much more interesting with him not about. Petra goes in search of him, and the resulting adventure is easily the strongest section of the book. Hearing stories of an “immortal”, she heads out from Genoa, hoping that it’s her lover, and finds herself trapped in Kaffa, a port on the Crimean Peninsula, which is being besieged by the Mongol hordes. It’s a hellish landscape, made all the worse by the plague-infected corpses which the attackers lob over the walls (this actually happened – it was the first recorded case of biological warfare, and helped decimate Europe, as merchants who survived the siege brought bubonic plague with them when they returned home). This is a very well-handled meshing of historical events with fictional characters, working to good effect. I’d like to have seen more of this, and less sloppy romance.

Petra says that she’s an accomplished swordswoman – and given the hundreds of years she’s had to practice with weapons, that makes sense. There’s rather more talk than walk, in this volume, though I sense this may be a case of the author wanting to keep her powder dry for subsequent volumes and the battles against Clarius which seem destined to come. Would I read them? Hard to say. Lasota showed she has plenty of potential, but there’s still a risk this could end up collapsing into teenage mush. Probably a case where I’d borrow volume 2, or wait for a 99 cent sale on Amazon.

Author: Cheri Lasota
Publisher: CreateSpace, through Amazon – this was part of the Dominion Rising collection for Kindle.
Book 1 in the Immortal Codex series.

The Adventures of Kathlyn by Harold MacGrath

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

“Have you not learned by this time that I am not a weak woman, but a strong one? You have harried me and injured me and wronged me and set tortures for me, but here I stand, unharmed. This day I will have my revenge.”

As we discussed earlier this week, the novel is an adaptation of the 13-part serial by the same name starring Kathlyn Williams. The first episode was originally released between Christmas and New Year 1913, and the book was published a few days later, as a tie-in. With both the serial and the feature-length version of the story, released in 1916, both almost entirely lost (one episode and print fragments remaining), the book is virtually all we have to go on in terms of documenting the proto-action heroine who is its titular character.

Kathlyn Hare is the daughter of Colonel Hare, a noted “bring ’em back alive” hunter, who provides animals to circuses and zoos. He had spent many years searching for big game on the Indian sub-continent, in particular the country of Allaha, where he saved the king from a leopard attack. Years later, the senile king makes the Colonel his successor, much to the chagrin of Prince Umballah. The Colonel returns to Allaha, intending to abdicate, leaving a sealed letter behind, for Kathlyn and her sister Winnie to open if he doesn’t come back.

When that comes to pass, the letter triggers Kathlyn’s departure across the world to Allaha, on a courageous mission to rescue her father. Before it’s over, and Umballah is finally defeated, there will be encounters with wild creatures, wilder locals, and an almost endless stream of perils, both natural and man-made. Fortunately, there’s the brave explorer Bruce to help out, as well as some friendly natives, and not least, Kathlyn’s very particular set of skills, involving a particular affinity for animals.

With its action-wilderness setting and breathless pace, Kathlyn feels almost like the ancestor of Lara Croft, though she defers significantly to the men when it comes to the heavy lifting and most of the fighting. But there’s a lengthy period where she has to fend entirely for herself in the jungle. Considering this comes from a time before women were even allowed to vote, she still makes for a striking character. Of course, this dates from a different era, and the unfortunate attitudes of the time, more than a century ago, are frequently reflected in the content. When Kathlyn is informed she is to marry Umballah, there are a million valid reasons to be horrified: he has basically abducted her, after all. But the one the author chooses to have Kathlyn express? “Marry you? Oh, no! Mate with you, a black?”

But, wait! There’s more:

  • Sexism! “Not a sign of that natural hysteria of woman, though [Kathlyn] had been through enough to drive insane a dozen ordinary women.”
  • Racism! “The Hindus are a suicidal race.”
  • Sexism and racism! “The women of [Umballa’s] race were chattels, lazy and inert, without fire, merely drudges or playthings.”

Painful though such sentiments obviously are, I feel you can’t validly judge a vintage book by modern standards, any more than you can complain that Shakespeare’s play do not depict parliamentary democracies. If you feel such things are important, however, this novel is likely not for you.

The writing style, while enthusiastic, is occasionally odd in that it chooses to skip over what should be thrilling moments. I wonder if perhaps this was the book’s way of not stealing the serial’s thunder? For example, as Kaitlyn sets off, accompanying a big cat her father was shipping to its end buyer, a major incident is all but entirely skipped over thus: “How the lion escaped, how the fearless young woman captured it alone, unaided, may be found in the files of all metropolitan newspapers.” Uh, what? But there are times when MacGrath does hit it out of the park, descriptively: “In the blue of night the temple looked as though it had been sculptured out of mist. Here and there the heavy dews, touched by the moon lances, flung back flames of sapphire, cold and sharp.”

Or there’s this stirring description of Kathlyn, in her role as a “Joan of Allaha”: “With the sun breaking in lances of light against the ancient chain armor, her golden hair flying behind her like a cloud, on, on, Kathlyn ran, never stumbling, never faltering, till she came out into the square before the palace. Like an Amazon of old, she called to the scattering revolutionists, called, harangued, smothered them under her scorn and contempt, and finally roused them to frenzy.” It’s sections like this which make me feel it’s a real shame we’ll never be able to experience the theatrical version of this story. On the other hand, the book does have the advantage of being able to include dialogue, something not available in the silent era, so it might still be more accessible to the modern audience.

I found it an interesting snapshot of a bygone era, and if you’re happy to take this for what it is, and forgive the crude stereotyping, it’s an entertaining and fast-paced read (if occasionally repetitive, in terms of story – how many times is Kathlyn and her family going to escape the clutches of Umballah and not GTFO?). Time for a remake starring Saoirse Ronan, I’d say!

Author: Harold MacGrath
Publisher: Originally in 1914 by the Bobbs-Merrill company, it is now available free from Project Gutenberg, in a variety of formats.

The Fire Beneath The Skin series, by Victor Gischler

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Ink Mage

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

The small duchy of Klaar has been impervious to invasion, due to a secure location offering limited access. But when betrayal from within leads to its fall, to the vanguard of an invading Perranese army, heir apparent Rina Veraiin is forced on the run. She is fortunate to encounter one of a handful of people who know how to create mystic tattoos that will imbue the recipient with magical abilities. With her already significant combat skills radically enhanced, and her body now also blessed with a remarkable talent to heal, Rina can set about trying to recover her domain. It won’t be easy, since the king is not even aware the Perranese have landed. But she has help, albeit in the motley forms of a stable boy – sorry, head stable boy – a gypsy girl and a noble scion, whose charm is exceeded only by his ability to irritate.

Despite the young age of the protagonist, who is still a teenager, this isn’t the Young Adult novel it may seem. It’s rather more Game of Thrones in both style and content, with the point of view switching between a number of different characters. Some of these can be rather graphic, particularly the story of Tosh, an army deserter who ends up working as a cook in a Klaar brothel. But even this thread turns out more action-heroine oriented than you’d expect. For the madam gets Tosh to train the working girls in weaponcraft, so they can become an undercover (literally!) rebel force against the Perranese. Can’t say I saw that, ah, coming…

Gischler seems better known as a hard-boiled crime fiction author – though I must confess to being probably most intrigued by his satirical novel titled, Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse! The approach here does feel somewhat fragmented, yet is likely necessary, given the amount of time Rina spends galloping around the countryside. It may also be a result of the book’s original format as a serial. However, it translates well enough to a single volume, and I found it became quite a page-turner in the second half. There, Rina readies her forces to return to Klaar, and take on the occupying forces, which have settled in for the winter. 

The tattoo magic is a nice idea, effectively providing “superpowers” that can help balance out the obvious limitations of a young, largely untrained heroine. It is somewhat disappointing that, after significant build-up involving the Perranese’s own tattooed warrior, the actual battle between him and Rina seemed to be over in two minutes – and decided through an external gimmick, rather than by her own skill. In terms of thrills, it’s significantly less impressive than a previous battle, pitting her against a really large snake, or even the first use of Rina’s abilities, which takes place against a wintry wilderness backdrop – more GoT-ness, perhaps?

Such comparisons are unlikely to flatter many books, and this is at its best when finding its own voice, as in the tattooing, or the gypsies who become Rina’s allies. He does avoid inflicting any serial cliffhanger ending on us, instead tidying up the majority of loose ends, and giving us a general pointer toward the second in the three-volume series. Overall, I liked the heroine and enjoyed this, to the point where I might even be coaxed into spending the non-discounted price for that next book.

The Tattooed Duchess
A Painted Goddess

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

It makes sense to treat the second and third volumes in the series as a single entity. Ink Mage worked on its own as a one-off, with a beginning, middle and reasonably well-defined end, and the eight-month pause between installments was not a problem. Duchess and Goddess, however, really need to be read back-to-back. Mage ended with Rina Veraiin having recovered her family’s territory of Klaar, thanks largely to the magical tattoos covering her skin. But the new duchess is discovering that fighting to get territory is one thing, ruling over it on an everyday basis, quite another. Especially since the Perranese invaders repelled in the first volume, are on their way back with a vengeance. For their Empress Mee Hra’Lito needs a big win to keep control of things on her side of the ocean.

Rumbling in the background, and coming to a head particularly in Goddess, is a changing of the guard in the Kingdom of Helva’s divine pantheon, with the current incumbent as top god being challenged for that position. Disturbingly, the likely replacement is the god of war: never a good thing, especially when he can raise an army of unstoppable dead soldiers and send them after Rina and her allies. Dealing with both those threats, requires Rina to ink up some more. Since she’s otherwise engaged, that means sending expeditions to the furthest corners of the lands and beyond, to retrieve the templates needed for Rina’s power-ups. [Though part of the problem is, these don’t come with instructions, explaining what a tattoo will do…] 

In particular, off to the Scattered Isles go stable-boy Alem, who carries a torch for Rina, and gypsy girl Maurizan, who is interested, both in Alem and getting some magic ink of her own. Meanwhile the noble Brasley and a new character, near-immortal female wizard Talbun, are exploring the depths – or, rather, heights – of the Great Library. This is a building so vast, it remains largely unexplored, with its origins and contents lost in the mists of time. Rina, meanwhile, is on a diplomatic mission, aimed at securing support for Klaar, only to be abducted by a group of Perran soldiers and their own mages, left behind when the army withdrew.

Especially in the second volume, poor Rina is largely relegated to a supporting role. The major threat to her is, not deities or monsters, but the arguably more insidious danger of an arranged marriage, necessary for the defense of Klaar. Maurizan becomes the action heroine focus, supported by members of the “Birds of Prey”, ex-prostitutes who have become the castle guard, as well as Talbun. It’s decent, yet almost inevitably, suffers from the bane of trilogies, “second volume syndrome”, lacking both a beginning an an end [I will say, for understandable reasons, explained by the author on his site]. It was originally published in serial format, so feels a bit episodic too, though I can’t say this impacted my enjoyment particularly much.

Rather than having to wait for the next part, as readers at the time had to do, I was able to head straight on into volume three. And Gischler redeems himself admirably for any flaws, with an excellent final volume. Rina has pretty much completed her set of tats, now possessing superhuman strength, speed and healing, as well as the ability to have anyone believe what she says, plus more. However, there’s a darker side to her talents, which becomes apparent to everyone when the Perranese lay siege to the port of Sherrik. With great power comes… scary responsibility, it appears: Rina has to make some unpleasant decisions about how far she is prepared to go, in order to repel the massive invading fleet. And they aren’t even her toughest adversary.

There are a lot of disparate elements across the series, yet Gischler melds them together into a coherent whole, rather than feeling like he’s simply plugging in fantasy tropes. I was particularly impressed by how even minor characters feel well-developed, such as Mee Hra’Lito. She didn’t need to be in the book at all, being simply the force behind the big bad (or more accurately, the secondary big bad). Yet seeing her motivations, adds depth to proceedings and enhances the epic scope. On the other hand, perhaps the series’s main weakness is lacking a truly central character. Is this Rina’s story? Alem’s? Maurizan’s? The answer is both all of the above, and none of them.

Still, this is the first true series I’ve completed since beginning book reviews on the site, and I’ve certainly enjoyed the experience. Gischler hinted at further volumes in February, saying of his universe, “I feel there’s more there to be mined,” and I wouldn’t mind in the slightest – even if Rina’s role would need… let’s say “serious revision”, based on how this ends, and leave it at that. Or a Peter Jackson trilogy of films based on these: that’d do, just as well.

Author: Victor Gischler
Publisher: 47North, available in both printed and e-book versions, as folllows:

Abducted by T.R. Ragan

  By

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

A largely uninteresting and occasionally tedious read, this begins when the 17-year-old Lizzy Gardner is abducted by a serial killer known as “Spiderman”, for his habit of using insects to terrorize his victims. Lizzy manages to escape, but Spiderman isn’t captured, until almost a decade and a half later, when someone confesses to the crimes. By then, Lizzy has become a private eye, and also giving lectures to young girls, on how to avoid falling victim as she did. She’s not convinced the right person has been caught, and she’s right: the real Spiderman is by no means happy that someone else has taken “credit” for his crimes. So he starts up again, with the eventual aim of recapturing Lizzy, the one who got away…

It’s really extremely contrived, with Lizzy fortuitously unable to recall any significant elements of her ordeal – even the place where she was held – which could have allowed the police to capture the perpetrator. Then there’s the convenient coincidence that her boyfriend of the time has grown up to become (what are the odds?) an FBI agent. Of course, when they reconnect, the old sparks still fly, and he’s also the only one who thinks she’s not a demented PTSD victim. Somewhat more engaging, to be honest, are the supporting female characters, including Jessica, Lizzie’s intern, who has her own reasons for interest in the case. Leading them is likely Hayley, an abused teenager and attendee at Lizzy’s lecture, who takes it upon herself to become bait for Spiderman, so that she can deal with him. If the whole story had been told from her point of view, it could have been a fresh perspective.

Instead, you could make the case Spiderman is given better motivation and characterization than the heroine. Although even here, it’s the usual mix of childhood trauma and hatred of women; the only unusual aspect is he seems himself as what could be described as a “social justice warrior,” punishing those he perceives as “bad girls.” Yet the prose devoted to him is one of the problems here: Ragan’s desire to show both sides of the story, almost inevitably, leaves both of them under-cooked. Despite its clear desire to be Silence of the Lambs, this most certainly falls short, on both sides of the scales of justice.

Part of the problem is that it feels like the characters are universally weighed down with the burden of a tragic past, from which they can’t escape. While I know tragedy is one of the driving forces of drama, this appears to be Ragan’s literary version of “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The plot offers virtually nothing in the way of surprises or twists, meandering on to the confrontation between Lizzie and Spiderman, which you’ve been expecting since about chapter three. There’s precious little here to explain the series’s apparent success, and even less that would get me interested in reading any further entries.

Author: T.R. Ragan
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer, available through Amazon in both printed and e-book versions.