Steampunk Shenanigans & a Giveaway
So, this post is a little later than usual and probably much more anticipated. I’ve been at an art show all weekend selling my jewelry. Oh, by the way, I make jewelry. Here’s 
an example:
We’ll start off with the thing that most of you are probably interested in. I have one signed advance copy of Shadow of Nightby Deborah Harkness. My Penguin rep, Betty, is super awesome and got me a few copies to giveaway. I’ve got one for this blog and two that we’re giving away over on the Little Professor Facebook page. To get a chance to win leave a comment on this post. Winners will be chosen on May 13.
Now that that’s out of the way, on with the reviews.
#19. The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook
So, this is a book I’d had for several months, but just never gotten around to. I think I bought it because someone said “steampunk romance” to me and I was sold. So I ordered it from the store and then it came. And the cover looked like that. Which, is… what it is. I’m not sure why he’s wearing a leather jacket with pleated sleeves and no shirt, but he is. And then there are some gears and an airship so it’s totally steampunk! Or something.
I put it on my ‘to read eventually’ pile and forgot about it. Then, I joined a book club. A book club for grown up (mostly) ladies. In point of fact, the Vaginal Fantasy Book Club. Which specializes in sci-fi/fantasy romance novels. It was started a few months ago by Felicia Day, Bonnie Burton, Veronica Belmont, and Kiala Kazabee. This was the book club read for April. And it was way better than the cover made it look.
To be honest, I didn’t absolutely love the romance parts. They were ok, but nothing super special. But the world building… The world building! So, as far as I can figure out (because unlike Tolkien, Meljean Brook does not give you the entire history of every bridge the protagonists cross) at some point far in the past the Mongol empire started to figure out technology. They swept across Europe and took over some cities and harvested the rest. They developed nanobots that they infected their subjects with. One type reacted to signal towers and suppressed emotion, sped healing, and increased strength. The other type of bots created zombies. The Hoard, as the Mongols are known as, released the zombie bugs into regions that were not worth settling. The zombies clean out resistance and the Hoard’s harvesting machines can come in unmolested.
England had remained immune to the ravages of the Hoard. The zombies cannot cross water on their own and the Hoard itself had no navy to speak of. Then they got clever. They infected sugar and tea imports with the nanobots and once the English population was sufficiently infected the Hoard turned on a signal tower and took over.
The events in the book are set approximately 200 years after the invasion. England is once more free of Hoard control. Rhys Trahearn, once a pirate, sailed up the Thames and destroyed the tower, freeing the English from Hoard rule. For that service he was made a duke. Several years later, someone drops a dead body on his doorstep.
Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth is called in to investigate. She is competent, efficient, and intelligent. She is also half Hoard. Her mixed blood create an almost intolerable environment as she faces hatred and resentment for her mixed parentage. The romance proceeds about as you’d expect. She’s resistant because she has to keep to significantly stricter standards than the average citizen, even than the average aristocrat. He is insistent and slightly unscrupulous. There are a few twists and turns along the way. Predominantly toward the end of the book where you least expect the romantic element to change. So full marks for that.
There’s nothing wrong with the romance, it just wasn’t the most compelling part of the story for me. The actual murder investigation is fairly awesome. Partly because there’s a female pirate captain. And I love lady pirate captains. I even have a shirt with one. The side characters are all fairly interesting as well. The pirate captain has her own book,Heart of Steel, which I have also read and will review in the next blog post.
#20 & # 21 The Lady of Devices and Her Own Devices by Shelley Adina
I debated making these two books one entry, but in the end, I decided that they were written separately so that’s how I would count them. Really, they’re serial novellas. They’re both fairly short, I don’t have an exact page count since I read them on an e-reader. Which is another whole topic.
I have an iPad. I love it. I don’t read much on it. I picked up the first book, Lady of Devices, on a whim because it was $0.99. I decided that even if it was horrible it cost less than a soda. And it wasn’t horrible. But it was brief. And the sequel is quite a bit more expensive. We’ll leave aside my moral stance on e-books and Amazon for right now. (I have one and it’s lengthy.)
So, I was somewhere with lots of time to kill. So I read this book. I think it was actually on my phone rather than my iPad come to think of it. The basic story is that Lady Claire Trevelyan, an atypical debutante, is about to make her debut. However, before she can her father loses most of their assets in an ill advised investment in the internal combustion engine. Unable to bear the shame, he departs this mortal coil leaving his wife, almost grown daughter, and infant son behind to deal with the fallout. The dowager countess takes the new Lord St. Ives to their country estate leaving Claire to close up the town residence and see to its sale.
Circumstances, and angry investors, intervene and Clair soon finds herself out of a home and unwilling to return to her mother. She instead, ends up taking a job as the assistant to a scientist named Andrew Malvern. She also, through no fault of her own, ends up living with a gang of pickpockets, taking over a rival gang, and setting herself 
up as a power in London’s underground.
Book 2, Her Own Devices, continues Clair’s balancing act between her day job as an inventor’s assistant and working aristocrat, and her night job as the mysterious Lady of Devices, underworld power. In order to stay in town and out of her mother’s reach, Claire agrees to an engagement with Lord James, the financial backer behind Andrew’s project. She soon feels unsatisfied with the arrangement. James is not at all happy that Claire has a mind of her own, despite that being his stated reason for wanting to marry her. Shenanigans are afoot in steam-powered Victorian London.
The two books are fairly well written. There are some places where the writing feels a little clunky, but nothing major. My biggest problem is that book 1 especially seems to stop rather abruptly. It felt very much like reading an installment of a serial rather than a finished product. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a serial. It’s just odd to expect one thing and get another. Book 3 is supposed to be out sometime this year. I’ll definitely pick it up.
Remember, to enter the Shadow of Night giveaway all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. You’ve got two weeks.
Apocalypses and Spies
The next three books on my list don’t have a terribly large amount in common. I’ve got one post-apocalyptic dystopia, one British spy novel, and a clockwork Armageddon. Hmm… all three have disguises in them. And spies. I’m going to say that they’re all tied together with spies. Haha! A theme!
Ok, let me start with this… DAN WELLS IS COMING TO MY BOOKSTORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Right, now that that’s out of the way I can stop being a squealing fangirl and be serious. Well, serious-ish.
Partialstakes place in a post apocalyptic world. Partway through the 21st century a company named Para-Gen developed synthetic humans. They were called partials and were dispatched to fight our wars for us. But when they came home they rebelled. A devastating war ensued and humanity was losing. Then the worst blow of all struck. A virus was loosed that wiped out all but a handful of the remaining humans.
It is now eleven years after the RM virus decimated humanity. The few thousand that remain are huddled on Long Island. The Partials have not been seen since the virus attack, but everyone knows they are out there, waiting. However, all is not well with the survivors. Although everyone in the settlement is immune to RM the same is not true of their children. No babies have survived more than a few days since the attack. Humanity is on the brink of extinction. In an effort to combat RM the government has instituted a mandatory pregnancy policy for all women over the age of eighteen. Their plan is to play the odds. Surely one of the babies will live?
Kira is sixteen. She is a medic in the maternity ward, another term for hell. She believes that there must be a solution. All of the doctors are looking at the babies themselves. All the research is aimed at why they aren’t immune. Kira thinks that the solution must lie with those who are already immune; the survivors and the Partials. No one still alive knows much about the Partials. The information on their development was lost during the war, but if they designed the RM pathogen then they must hold the key to curing it.
Kira and her friends hatch a bold plan. They will capture and study a Partial. But how can you find a Partial? They look just like regular people. True, they’re stronger, they heal faster, and they don’t age. But none of these traits are easy to check on a casual acquaintance. So Kira decides that the only way to ensure that she gets a Partial is to go into their territory and find one. When she does it only raises more questions.
This book is brilliant. Kira is a very well thought out character. She is brilliantly smart and passionate, yet believable sixteen. Her friends are all convincing. I could see people I knew in them all. Wells makes the Partials a convincing threat, but when you find out more about them they become so much more than two-dimensional villans. They are, to put it bluntly, human. I love that.
It always bothers me when I’m reading a book and the villan is too… evil isn’t quite what I’m looking for. Pat maybe? Outside of fantasy where villains are supernatural archetypal forces of evil I have trouble with the concept of someone who is bad just because. That’s lazy. There has to be a reason that the villain is a villain. And most villains don’t think of themselves as evil. They think of themselves as the hero. Wells has done an amazing job of creating several different forces all acting at odds and all believing that they are doing the right thing, the only thing. Everyone wears a grey hat in this story because right and wrong aren’t easy to determine. I highly recommend it. And, it’s the first in a series, which makes me very happy.
He is also the author of the John Wayne Cleaver series and has a new book coming out in July called Hollow City. And he’s coming to the Little Professor on July 6 for a signing!!!!
#17. Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie
So, I am a die-hard Agatha Christie fan. My mom and I started watching the Joan Hickson Miss Marple series when I was a child. I have almost all of the Agatha Christie adaptations that are out on DVD. I have read almost all of her books. Passenger to Frankfurt was one that I had missed. Now I know why.
Christie is a crime queen. There is no denying that. She scripts an amazing who-done-it. She writes charming detectives. She is not, however, a master of the spy novel, which is what this book ostensibly is. Our protagonist, Sir Stafford Nye, is a bored, occasionally playful diplomat on his way home from a stint in Malay. At the Frankfurt airport he is approached by a seemingly familiar woman who begs for his help. Her life is in danger. The only way to save her is for her to fly to London on his passport, dressed as him. He, in turn, will stay in the departures lounge at Frankfurt under a sedative. The story will be that he was knocked out and robbed. She will be safe and he will be mildly inconvenienced.
Ok, so far so good. This is interesting, I think to myself. But that is the last event that occurs with clarity and speed. Sir Stafford returns to England. Some time passes. His clothes and passport are mysteriously returned to him. He meets his mystery lady again, but she is now an obscure Eastern European noblewoman. Or is she Mary Anne, the darling of the British espionage world? She seems to be several different people. And he, somewhat like a large puppy, follows along in her wake. She leads him to Bavaria where a repulsively fat Countess is trying to rekindle the Nazi order using youth uprisings.
The narrative switches from Sir Stafford, to his great-aunt, to various men in government. No one, including the reader (and possibly even the author) is sure of Sir Stafford’s motivations. The narrative skips around. Suddenly we’re at a music festival, then an embassy under attack. This book seems to be Christie’s attempt to write a “modern” (for 1970) spy thriller and not really knowing how to go about it. Christie wrote 82 books under the name Agatha Christie. I have read probably 70 of them. Thus far, this is my least favorite.
#18. Anglemakerby Nick Harkaway
I really don’t know what to say about Angelmaker. I have this problem with Nick Harkaway books. The easiest thing to say is, “It’s awesome, just trust me.” But that’s not a very effective review. It helps if you’re actually in front of me so that you can see how my eyes shine and my cheeks glow with happiness over the book. But since you’re at home, consuming this through a screen, imagine some sort of anime eyes staring up at you (even though, statistically, I’m probably taller than many of you.)
Ok, a few things about Angelmakerthat are totally awesome. First, the cover. Not only is it a very cool cover, but it has a code in it! The awesome designers over at Knopf actually designed a secret message and encoded it into the cover. So that’s awesome. The next awesome thing is the book trailer, which you can watch here. It makes me happy. I’ve probably watched it 10 times. I’m like that.
So, those are awesome things about the book. Now, let me tell you about the story. Our markedly mild mannered hero is Joseph Spork. He is the son of a fairly famous chanteuse and an old school London gangster. Joe’s grandfather, Daniel, was a clockmaker and Joe has chosen to follow almost religiously in his footsteps. He has given up his crown as a prince of the underworld and makes his living repairing clocks, windup toys, and other items made up of gears and cogs. The Spork legend lingers in the London undercity, but only like a hint of cigarettes and food the morning after a fabulous party.
One day, Joe’s friend Billy brings him a clockwork book and then all hell breaks loose. Joe is soon on the run from the police, a secret government organization, and a cult. He is accompanied in his flight by Edie Banister, former client, former super spy, current octogenarian; her dog Bastion, world’s ugliest pug; and Polly, an administrative assistant of epic abilities and very, very intriguing toes. It’s a little bit steampunk, a little bit of a spy thriller, and utterly, totally awesome.
I am a huge fan of Nick Harkaway’s. His first book, Gone Away World, is still one of my favorites. It also had a pretty awesome cover. It was fuzzy. I may have used it like a teddy bear once or twice. I’m not saying I did. Just that I might have. He’s on Twitter, and he’s very nice.
All British All the Time and a Giveaway!
In honor of my 10th post I think I’ll do a giveaway! Harper Publishing sent me two beautiful posters of the Elegy for Eddie cover. I’m going to be terribly greedy and keep one, but I will give the other away and share the love. To enter the giveaway, just post a comment below. I’ll chose a winner at random on Sunday, April 22.
My next three books are all about the British Isles. I will admit, I am an anglophone. I love Brit-lit, tea, and the Queen. I inherited this from my father who thought the only thing better than British was 18th century French. He had two framed letters from Buckingham Palace in his entryway and a map of the Underground in his bathroom. I made my first trip to the British Isles when I was 5. I got a Cabbage Patch Kid doll and a cape. I still have the doll. The cape, I imagine, when the way of outgrown clothes and was passed down the extended family line.
I haven’t had the means to travel out of the country lately, but I do love a good British novel. Now, I’ll be honest here, one of these three novels is not written by a Brit. This was shocking to me too, but I’ve come to realize that it’s ok. I can read books set in Great Britain, but written by Americans. It’s not shameful as long as they’re well written, which this one is…
13.The Confessionby Charles Todd
The Confession is our American culprit. Charles Todd is actually an American mother/son writing team. They write mystery novels set in the World War I period. This happens to be a time that I am completely obsessed with, so I’ll forgive them their lack of firsthand Britishness. The Todd team, henceforth to be refered to just as Charles Todd, currently write two series. My favorite is the Bess Crawford series. Bess is a nurse during WWI and her penchant for investigation dovetails nicely with her desire to help those she encounters.
This book is in the longer Ian Rutledge series. Rutledge was an officer in the war and now serves as a Scotland Yard inspector. What sets Rutledge apart from the many other war veterans of fiction is his severe shell shock. During the war Rutledge was forced to convene a firing squad and execute his sergeant, Hamish McLeod, for refusing an order during battle. Rutledge’s shell shock takes the form of Hamish’s ghost. He never leaves Rutledge in peace, but acts as part conscience, part confidant, part torment. Despite, or perhaps because of Hamish’s presence, Rutledge manages his investigations with keen insight into human nature and a dogged determination to bring criminals to justice.
The Confession centers around an incident wherein a man, calling himself Wyatt Russell confesses to the murder of his cousin. Rutledge cannot hold Russell because the alleged murder occurred five years earlier, in the height of WWI. There is no body or any other corroborating evidence. Rutledge has no choice but to let the man go and poke around on his own. He begins to suspect that Wyatt Russell is not the man’s real name, however, before long the man is the victim of murder himself. Several strange things begin to surface about Wyatt Russell and his family. Russell’s mother is a presumed suicide. Russell and his cousin, the putative victim, are both listed as deserters from WWI. Something happened at River’s Edge years ago and someone is still willing to kill to keep it quiet.
14. Smut: Two Unseemly Stories by Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett wrote An Uncommon Reader, which is a charming novella about what happens when Queen Elizabeth discovers a mobile library on the grounds of Buckingham Palace and checks out a book. It was a very fast read and I quite liked it. So, I thought that even though the subject matter of his next book was somewhat more unconventional I’d give it a shot. If nothing else, I could read it in an afternoon.
Sadly, I did not enjoy Smut nearly as much. It wasn’t the subject matter. I read torrid romance novels with abandon. But this book was just… awkward. The first story, The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, is about a widow of a certain age. She has a rather unusual job acting as a hypothetical patient for medical students. One of the patients rents a room with her boyfriend in Mrs. Donaldson’s house, but they’re always late with the rent. Eventually, they work out an arrangement.
The second story, The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes, centers around a very proper, very annoying matriarch. Her husband keeps his private life on the internet and her son keeps his private life in a variety of clubs for gay men. Both men try to shield Mrs. Forbes from anything that might discompose her. Graham eventually marries a woman his mother does not approve of. He cares about her, but by this time is being blackmailed by one of his previous paramours. The whole story is about people hiding things from one another for no terribly good reason.
I didn’t feel much of an attachment to the characters in either story. I suppose, in retrospect, there wasn’t much of an emotional attachment to the protagonist of An Uncommon Reader, but since she is a queen I suppose I wasn’t expecting there to be. However, when I’m delving into the foibles of middle-class Britain I would hope to like or sympathize with the people whose lives I am observing. But I didn’t. It was only a couple of hours of my time, but I rather wish I’d stopped with the first book.
15. Elegy for Eddie by Jacquelin Winspear
Elegy for Eddie is the ninth installment in the Maisie Dobbs series. The year is 1933 and Maisie is once more in London. She is approached by several old friends of her father’s who want to hire her. Eddie Pettit, a young man from Maisie’s old neighborhood, has died in an industrial accident. But the costermongers and Eddie’s mother aren’t satisfied with that explanation. All of the factory workers have been forbidden to discuss the incident on pain of losing their jobs. Maisie remembers Eddie fondly as a kind, gentle young man with an almost magical way with horses. The idea that someone might deliberately have harmed him is repellant to her. However, the case quickly proves much more dangerous than Maisie suspected. Maisie’s assistant Billy is severely injured while asking questions about the accident. Maisie herself is warned away by her paramour when her investigation leads toward prominent men and state secrets.
I was very happy that this book was a return to Maisie in London dealing with a very personal problem. I enjoyed A Lesson in Secrets, with it’s flavor of espionage, but I wouldn’t want the series as a whole to trend in that direction. I like Maisie to be herself, to walk around and talk to people openly. I also like that Maisie is having to take stock of herself in this book. She can see very clearly when it comes to other people, but her own life is in quite a muddle. She begins to sort some of that out in Elegy for Eddie.
Remember, leave a comment to enter for a chance to win an Elegy for Eddie poster!
Sherlock and Spells
The next several items on my list are a bit more in line with my regular reading habits than the action-fest that is Jonathan Maberry.
#10 Sherlock in Love by Sena Jeter Nausland. 
Dr. John Watson, now in his twilight years, has decided to write the definitive biography of Sherlock Holmes. His little adventures have been put down to paper, but a truly in-depth analysis of the man’s personal life has never yet been penned. However, shortly after he places an advertisement in the papers asking for any stories about Sherlock Holmes strange things begin to happen. He starts to see a figure who looks very much like Holmes shadowing his steps. People begin to warn him away from his project. Several of his case logs are stolen and pages are removed from others. Eventually, even the illusive Irene Adler shows up to warn him off.
However, Watson is dedicated to his project. He feels that he cannot rest without the world having the opportunity to know his friend as he did. Somehow, everything that is happening seems to revolve around a curious period of their acquaintance when Holmes began taking violin lessons. Those lessons led to several abrupt trips; first to Edinburgh and then to Bavaria where adventure and tragedy were to be found in equal measure. The more Watson digs into those events the more he realizes that there was a part of Holmes that he had never seen.
This book is quite fun for a Sherlock Holmes fan. Interestingly, out of everyone at my book club, I was the only one who had read any of the original Conan Doyle stories. That was fun to discuss. I will say, I figured out the direction the story was going fairly quickly, but that didn’t really stop me from enjoying it. The resolution is a bit surprising and will probably offend some Holmes fans. I think even so, it’s worth a read.
#11 Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
I picked this book up from Audible during one of their sales. I had actually had an advance review copy kicking around my house for years, but somehow I never quite got around to picking it up. But, I needed a new audiobook and this tickled my fancy for some reason. And, I must say, I made a good decision. The book is a little reminiscent of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, but with a southern bent.
The book is set in North Carolina. All of the Waverly women have a gift. Some of them are more useful than others. Evanelle Waverly might give you something. It could be anything; two quarters, a rain hat, a new shirt, a mango peeler. The thing is, you’ll need it. Somehow, some time in the near future, you’ll need whatever it is that she gives you. Claire Waverly takes care of the family garden. She can use the herbs and flowers in her cooking to bring out particular emotions and memories. Her rose geranium wine will make you remember the happiest times of your life. Sydney Waverly is the family black sheep. She left town right after high school and hasn’t been seen since.
The Waverlys are a breed apart. Even though everyone in town has something a little bit different about them, the Waverlys are special. They’re special because of the apple tree. The apples from the tree in the Waverly garden will reveal to you the most important moment of your life. Sounds great, but you have to remember that it doesn’t show you the happiest moment, not the best moment, just the most important. What if that’s your death? What if the most important moment of your life has already happened? What would you do then? The Waverlys are the guardians of the tree. They make sure that no one ever eats those apples. Some people think they’re keeping them for themselves. Some people think it’s all a bunch of hooey. But the Waverly women keep guarding the apples. Then Sydney rolls back into town and upsets the whole system.
My only complaint about this book is that the ending seemed a little rushed. The story for the most part unrolls like honey; clear, and slow, and sweet. But then, all of a sudden, Sydney’s storyline gets resolved. It’s like you were expecting pound cake and got flaming baked Alaska. Still good, just unexpected and much flashier than you were prepared for. I would absolutely recommend the book. It’s got a little bit of steamy stuff, but not so much I’d shelve it in our romance section. There’s enough of an edge of danger to keep you on your toes. And I really enjoy the way Allen builds the special attributes into the people of Bascome, North Carolina. It could feel forced with a lesser writer, but as it stands it creates a lovely, magical background for the main characters to act on.
#12 Claire DeWitt & the City of the Deadby Sarah Gran
I really don’t know how to explain this book. Drew has done a pass at it over on the Little Professor website. I want to tell you everything, but I can’t because then you wouldn’t need to read the book. I want to explain Claire to you, but I can’t because I don’t really understand her. I know that I like her even though I’m not sure I’m supposed to. Claire DeWitt is a detective. Or, I suppose maybe she is a Detective. She lives to solve mysteries. She does not make friends by this. She does not want friends. She had friends once. There were three of them. One disappeared and the other two were consumed by that. She is their mystery. The unsolvable Holy Grail of a problem that, if ever resolved will probably destroy the detective.
Claire is a follower of the french detective, Jacques Silette. He once wrote a book called Detection, which is like Claire’s personal bible. It only makes sense to the sort of person who can become his type of detective. Claire is one of those people. She found her copy of the book in the dumb-waiter of her family’s crumbling Brooklyn mansion. It was like it was waiting for her. It changed her life. Whether that is a good thing remains to be seen.
The client, according to Silette via Claire, doesn’t actually want their mystery solved. They think they do. They swear they do. They believe that they do. But really, they don’t. To solve a mystery one must first understand the hows and the whys that the mystery occurred. Think about it. Think about everything in your life that has led you to this moment. Would you really want someone turning all of that up? Would you want someone to tell you all those things about the people you loved? Would you hate that person for telling you or your loved ones for making it happen? Are you sure you want your mystery solved?
Claire finds herself in a post-Katrina New Orleans looking into the disappearance of Vic Willing, a New Orleans D.A. He went missing sometime during the storm. His nephew has hired Claire because she’s the best. What he really wants is reassurance that his uncle died accidentally during the craziness that was Katrina. But Claire doesn’t really do reassurance. She provides truth even when you don’t want it.
For Claire, being back in New Orleans is a special sort of hell. She trained as a detective here until her mentor was murdered. Now she’s back. Claire is having to pick up the threads of a city that is still repairing itself and work her way back in. Her New Orleans is a grim, dangerous place. There are drugs, and gangs, and secrets, and hate. There is beauty, but it’s always tainted. Claire exists on an almost magical plain. Everything contributes to the investigation. The green parrots in the trees, a dirty business card on the street, the drugs she takes, the dreams she has, the thugs that want to steal her car; they’re all threads.
I can’t really tell you why I like this book so much. Part of it is the writing. Gran has crafted something truly special. Part of it is Claire herself. I should hate her. She’s abrasive and self-destructive. But I like her. I don’t know that I’d want to hang out with her frequently, but I kind of want to give her a hug. She’d probably punch me though. This is supposed to be book one in a series, so I’ll get to spend some more time with Claire. Gran is a fairly slow writer, her books come out every few years rather than every year, so I don’t know when Claire #2 is coming, but I’m looking forward to it.
Giant Jonathan Maberry Post
Jonathan Maberry is one of my favorite recent discoveries. His books don’t match most of the rest of my library. They’re fast paced, hard-hitting, and crazy in an awesome way. They are what I would normally consider “man books.” Let me put it another way, I read Clive Cussler to wind down after reading one of the Maberry novels. That should tell you something.
Things about Jonathan Maberry that are awesome:
He did an interview for Little Professor.
He’s an incredibly prolific.
He’s got the Pine Deep series, which does of Pennsylvania what Stephen King did for Main. Or should it be done to Maine? Hmm…
There are my personal favorites – the Joe Ledger series. Joe is a member of the Department of Military Sciences, a covert government agency that deals with the worst threats to America and the world. But more on Joe later… 
There is a stand alone novel called Dead of Night. The zombie apocalypse starts in Pennsylvania. It’s brutal and beautiful and depressing as hell.
He has a young adult series that has its third book coming out this fall from Simon & Schuster. He writes graphic novels. He writes non-fiction on a variety of topics including Zombie CSI.
He’s super approachable. He can be found on Facebook and Twitter. He and several others run an online writer’s group. He goes to conventions and is happy to interact with his fans (even weirdos like me!)
He actually knows martial arts, so his fight scenes are extra awesome!
Now, the nitty-gritty. The Joe Ledger series. The Assassin’s Code is #9 on my 100 in 2012 list. I managed to get an ARC from my awesome St. Martin’s rep (THANKS JEFF!!!!) and devoured it. The book actually hits the streets on April 10, but if you’re impatient after reading my awesome reviews they have released a sneak peek… After I finished Assassin’s Code I decided to go back and re-read the entire series. I won’t tell you how many times this makes (since my boyfriend says it’s creepy), but I will say that the books are very re-readable. Unlike some books where knowing the outcome reduces the enjoyment in the story the Maberry books have layers that are revealed the more you know.
Book 1: Patient Zero
This is the book that introduces Joe Ledger and the DMS. At the beginning of things Joe is a detective with the Baltimore PD. He’s one of those guys that has good luck with languages so he’s been loaned out to a Homeland Security task force. Mostly, this means sitting on his butt in a surveillance van listening to people complaining about sports and women. Until one day, someone says something important. It’s just a name, but it’s a name that catapults Joe from the surveillance van to the front lines of the war on terror.
However, it’s a kind of terror that he’s never seen before. No one has ever seen this before. Instead of bombs and guns these people are using bio-weapons straight out of science fiction. They’ve come up with a pathogen that for all intents and purposes… raises the dead. How do you fight that? How do you kill something that’s already dead? How to you train soldiers to shoot an enemy that looks like a sick child, or a grandmother, or a congressman?
Within days Joe has built a team of first line shooters and is racing against the clock to out-think the twisted geniuses behind these attacks. It’s not even clear who his enemies are. Islamic extremists seem to be the face of the attack, but how could they get their hands on this kind of beyond cutting edge medical research? If they drop the ball then it could mean the actual end of the world. No pressure.
Book 2: The Dragon Factory
You know your day is going to be rough when it starts with fleeing from the National Security Agency and then goes downhill from there. Unfortunately, for Joe Ledger, that’s pretty much a Tuesday. It’s actually a minor problem that the Vice President is moving against the DMS. He has mobilized the NSA while the President is out of commission for some surgery. He’s trying to make a clean sweep and shut down the entire DMS, pick up their field agents, and, most importantly, the DMS computer system called Mind Reader. Mind Reader can intrude into any other system, collect data, and exit without leaving any traces. In the hands of the DMS it’s a powerful tool against terror, but in unscrupulous hands it can be a weapon of untold power.
Because of this, the DMS is handicapped going into the real crisis. Joe and Echo team brush the edges of it when they’re sent on a mission to Deep Iron, a subterranean storage facility inside the Colorado mountains. They’re doing a possible search and rescue on another DMS team that has gone dark. When they actually engage two enemy agents they are stunned. These men are capable of superhuman feats of strength and endurance. It’s like someone took a gorilla and gave him a combat exoskeleton and then sent him to murder Mrs. Ledger’s favorite son.
At the same time, in several places around the world, isolated populations are seeing a dramatic increase in genetic diseases. Illnesses that traditionally affect small parts of the population are becoming epidemics. People are catching inherited diseases. Illnesses that have treatment protocols are killing people who should be getting better. People are dying from diseases they should never have even had. Somehow this is all tied in with the records Jigsaw team and the strange soldiers were looking for in Deep Iron; records that date back to the Nazi death camps and the genetic experiments that were performed there.
Book 3: The King of Plagues
Joe has been a long time healing from the events at the Dragon Factory. He’s actually on vacation in London when the Royal London Hospital is bombed. As the only DMS agent available in Europe he is attached to the investigation. Just as he is starting to make some headway he’s called out to the Orkney Isles to attempt to contain a situation at a bio-weapons research lab. Someone is terrorizing ordinary men and women into committing atrocities; someone who is working for a shadowy organization calling itself the Seven Kings.
The Kings are dedicated to destabilizing the world. Anything that might cause chaos, and result in profit for them, is fair game. Terrorism, assassinations, disease, scarcity, coups; all of these are weapons in the King’s arsenal. But the Kings themselves remain shrouded in darkness. The DMS has tangled with the Chosen, the street level minions of the Kings’ organization. They have once engaged the Kingsmen, the upper level of soldiers, but of the Kings themselves there is no sign. The only thing they know is that the Kings want to drown the world in a river of blood. That is ominous, but terribly vague. How do you fight something that sounds like a biblical curse?
Book 4: The Assassin’s Code
Echo team is doing a covert operation in Iran. Three American hikers have been captured and accused of spying by the Iranian military. Joe and Echo team go in to rescue them, hopefully, without sparking off a war. The mission goes well. The team is away and Joe is getting ready to follow his own exit plan when everything goes to hell. He plays tag with a couple of snipers, meets with the head of Iranian Intelligence, and gets attacked in his hotel room by a man with superhuman strength and filled teeth. Then things get ugly. Safe houses have become bloodbaths.
Three different groups seem to be tracking Joe through Iran. One group is ruthless, but amateurish. They can deal damage, but nothing like the professionals Joe is used to going up against. The second group is headed by his new best friend, the sniper named Violin. When she doesn’t have a laser sight on his… assets, she seems like a nice lady and she’s great backup when the chips are down. The third group is… something else. They are known as the Knights of the Red Order and they are fast, strong, and utterly vicious. All three groups seem to want the flash drive given to him by his Iranian contact. A flash drive that shows pictures of a nuclear weapon that is supposedly hidden somewhere in Iran. To make matters worse, the nuke is one of several hidden around the world.
Yes. I’m a fan girl. I admit it. I gush. (Although, lucky for me, he is not the proud recipient of my most embarrassing author interaction. That honor goes to Dan Wells.) For some reason, there is something in Maberry’s writing that answers a need in my weird little psyche. The books are fast and Joe Ledger is the sort of person I can unreservedly cheer for. No, he doesn’t follow proper police procedure. Hell, he doesn’t even follow the Geneva Convention, but he’s fighting monsters, the ultimate politically correct villains!
Book Clubs and Bad Guys
Books 7 – 9 on my list are very… varied.
#7 is Longitude by Dava Sobel
Longitude is the story of John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker who ultimately solved the difficulty of calculating longitude while at sea.
I read this for the book club I run and, honestly, didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. We have a history of picking non-fiction books that sound interesting, but turn out to be fairly dry. Sobel managed to talk about the life of a rather interesting man and add scientific and historical facts to that rather than drowning the reader in detail. It seems like in many non-fiction books the author seems to say, “I did all this research and you’re going to see it whether you like it or not!”
Harrison was one of thousands of inventors and scientists competing for the Longitude prize offered by the British Parliament. The difficulty with longitude
was that in order to accurately calculate it you had to know the time in your present location and the time in your home port down to the second. But none of the pendulum clocks of the era were able to keep accurate time in the face of pitching seas, moisture, and massive temperature changes. Harrison managed to create a series of clocks that could do just that. His most elegant and final effort looks very much like a pocket watch, but is quite a bit larger.
However, Harrison’s clocks were in direct opposition to the other main group of contenders – the astronomers. Most people believed that the solution to the longitude puzzle would be found in the stars. Harrison’s timepieces were all well and good, but the common man couldn’t tell how they worked. They were almost magical in an era when the best pocket watches lost several minutes per day. Harrison had to fight almost his whole life to finally be recognized for his efforts.
Sobel does a brilliant job of keeping Harrison and his opponents very human. It would be all too easy to turn his nemesis, Reverend Maskalyne, into a caricature, but she manages to make him comprehensible, if not sympathetic. I actually enjoyed this book so much that I’m actually planing to watch the Nova documentary Lost at Sea: The Search for Longitude. I’ll let you know how that goes.
8. The Witness by Nora Roberts (Out April 17 from Putnum)
I admit it. I read romance novels. There, I’ve said it. You can judge me if you want to. Seriously though, they’re fun. Some of them are better than others, and I’ve read some of everything. The Nora Roberts hardcovers are usually about 60% romance and 40% thriller, which is a mix that keeps me pretty happy. In a way, they’re a bit like that show “Harper’s Island” that was on a few years ago. About the time things are getting to gooshy someone gets killed. Also, there’s usually one or more dogs. This makes me happy.
In this particular book, our protagonist is a young genius named Elizabeth. She’s a little bit of a cross between Doogie Howser and an abuse victim. She’s incredibly smart. She’s ready to start Harvard Medical at 16 and she’s never made a single decision for herself. Her mother has controlled everything – what she wore, what she ate, what she studied. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, her one night of rebellion goes horribly wrong. She goes out and ends up witnessing a hit by the Russian mafia. She has always done what she was supposed to and in one moment her entire life is shattered.
Twelve years later a freelance security consultant named Abigail Lowry has moved to a small town in the Ozarks and caught the attention of the police chief. He’s not quite sure if he wants to date her or arrest her for the small arsenal she keeps around her house. So, he keeps going out to her place, risking attack by her remarkably well-trained guard dog, and taking her flowers. He hopes that eventually she’ll trust him enough to open up about whatever has her so scared and why the most common social interactions seem so foreign to her.
This book was fun, pure and simple. It’s not incredibly complex and it’s not going to change your world. But it will entertain the heck out of you. It was especially appealing for me because of the Russian connection. Little known (or cared about) fact about your’s truly is that I was a Russian lit major in college. So I’m always a little bit tickled when I run into unexpected Russian.
Book #8 is The Assassin’s Code by Jonathan Maberry. I think I’m going to save that for another post though. I’ve been re-reading the entire Joe Ledger series and so I think I’ll do one big post about all of them. Hopefully, I’ll get that up very soon.
I’m Back
Hello my lovely blog readers! I’m a bad, bad bloglette. I was working on a play (which went amazingly well), but that ate up all my time in January. I’ve finished several books since we last spoke (and given up on a couple). I probably won’t review everything here just because of length, but I’ll get a few done. So let’s dive right in:
4. Dead Rekoning by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill (Out in June from Bloomsbury)
I don’t have a cover photo for this yet since it’s still quite a ways out from publication. It’s awesome! It’s a little bit steampunk, and a western, AND it has zombies in! what more could a girl ask for?
Our primary protagonist is named Jett, a young woman from Louisiana who is out west searching for her twin brother. He went missing during the Civil War and she’s convinced that he’s somewhere in the wide open spaces of the western territories. Of course, she can’t just travel as a genteel flower of the South. Jett has disguised herself as a gunslinger and has the skills to back up her costume. She’s small and looks young so people test her frequently. When she gets into yet another saloon brawl she has no reason to think that anything different will happen this time. However, her private argument is broken up by a horde of zombies! Only the fact that her horse is brave and loyal saves Jett from the horrible fate of the rest of the town.
Outside of town Jett runs into the other two driving forces of this book; Miss Honoria Gibbons, a socialite and inventor from San Francisco, and White Fox, a freelance scout for the Army. Tensions are initially high as Jett has no reason to like those who worked for the Union army, but White Fox soon proves a staunch ally and a good friend.
Both Honoria and White Fox are in search of the same thing. Entire towns have been going missing all over the southwest. Honoria’s father is a rich, but terribly gullible man. Shysters have written to him claiming that flying machines have come and stolen all the people. They could bring him proof, for a modest consideration. Honoria travels constantly trying to debunk the hundreds of crooks who write to her father. She uses her travels as chances to test out her new inventions. Her latest invention is a sort of steam-powered horseless wagon with a few surprises for less than friendly visitors.
White Fox is also following the path of the missing. He was asked by a soldier to find out why his family had stopped writing. When he arrived at the settlement he found everyone gone and signs of a struggle. He began to track rumors and follow clues until he arrived at the same place as Honoria and Jett. Together, the three new friends will try to discover what the creatures that attacked Jett and the townsfolk are and who or what created them.
There are definite overtones of COWBOYS VS. ALIENS here, but only in the best ways. The two authors have come up with engaging characters and a fantastic world for them to play in. There are indications that this will not be the last we see of Jett and her companions, and I for one, am hoping for many more books!
5. RENEGADE MAGIC by Stephanie Burgis (Out in April from Athenum)
What can I say about how much I love this series? It’s magically delicious! RENEGADE MAGIC is book 2, following KAT, INCORRIGIBLE, which will be out in paperback in April. It’s Jane Austen for the Harry Potter crowd. Kat is the youngest of three girls. Her father is an absent-minded vicar and her stepmother is a horror. She’s not evil, she just desperately wants the family to be respectable and fine. Kat is not respectable. Her mother, you see, was a witch and the witchcraft has passed to her daughters. Kat however, has gotten a little more than her sisters. Their mother wasn’t just a witch. She was actually a Guardian, one of the people entrusted with special powers to defend the realm against the misuse of magic. Kat has inherited her powers, her responsibilities, and her enemies.
Kat’s oldest sister, Elissa, is terribly respectable. She would never dream of doing anything so outre as using magic. The middle sister, Angeline, is a little too interested in magic. In fact, in book 1 she accidentally ensnared a suitor using magic. Now his mama has burst into Elissa’s wedding shouting accusations and casting aspersions on the entire family. With Elissa gone on her honeymoon, Kat and Angeline are left to deal with Stepmama alone. She decides that the only thing to be done is to take the girls to Bath and try to get Angeline safely married off to someone who doesn’t know about the magical skeleton in the family closet.
Kat soon finds herself in a difficult position. Her brother is dodging in and out of the house, obviously up to no good. Her sister is taunting the most notorious rake in Bath in an attempt to drive Stepmama into apoplexy. The entire family is staying with relations who may be under the misapprehension that Lady Fotherington, Kat’s greatest opponent, is actually, her godmother. To make things worse, Lady Fotherington has had Kat banished from the hall of the Guardians. Kat is on probation, one step out of line and her powers will be bound. But there is more going on in Bath than family troubles. Someone is using the ancient Roman baths to draw power and Kat’s idiotic older brother is caught up in it. Soon, so is her hostess’s youngest daughter. And Kat’s Guardian mentor won’t believe a word she says about Lady Fotherington, the buildup of wild magics in Bath, or the danger to her family. Once again, it looks like the incorrigible Kat will have to save the day on her own.
6. CLOVER TWIG & THE PERILOUS PATH by Kaye Umansky (out in June from Roaring Brook Press)
This is a sweet book, which again, is part of a series. (I love series books. They’re like meeting up with old friends.) Clover Twig is a neat, tidy, young girl who does housekeeping for a witch named Mrs. Eckles. She’s a nice witch, if a little behind the times. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, Mrs. Eckles has a horrible sister named Demelza. Clover thwarted Demelza in an earlier book (CLOVER TWIG & THE MAGICAL COTTAGE) and Demelza is out for revenge.
Meanwhile, the Perilous Path has shown up again. The Perilous Path entices the unwary onto itself and then throws them up against seven magical dangers. When Clover’s baby brother goes missing everyone suspects that he has been lured onto the path. Clover and her accident prone friend Wilf set off onto the path after him. Mrs. Eckles stays behind to provide logistical support through the latest in crystal ball technology. She cannot risk setting foot on the path. Everyone knows it turns witches mean. Just look at her grandmother. Or her sister!
CLOVER TWIG & THE PERILOUS PATH is an adorable book. It’s not terribly complicated as it is written for the 1st – 3rd grade market, but everything, much like Clover herself, is neat, tidy, and in its proper place.
In other news, I have given up on both PHOENIX RISING and THE DRAGONS OF BABEL for the time being. PHOENIX RISING just wasn’t holding my attention at the moment. I’ve been in a picky mood. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the story; it just wasn’t what I was looking for at the moment. THE DRAGONS OF BABEL was also just not filling my needs. I only got through the opening conflict, but it was already a little grim for me.
I’ll make a confession. I like happy endings. And not just happy, I like unequivocal happy endings. I don’t want there to be a shadow of doubt that these characters are going to be ok. Now, I can handle quite a bit of trauma along the way, but when I get to the end I need at least an implied ‘happily ever after.’ Maybe it’s a character flaw. I get enough reality in my reality. I want some resolution and happiness in my media.
There are books that don’t tie themselves up into neat little packages that I nevertheless love. THE SILVER METAL LOVER by Tanith Lee is a perfect example. That book is beautiful, but it is also tragic. The Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry is another anomaly in my reading habits. It’s an exciting, fast paced series (the 4th book is #9 on my list of 100 for 2012), but no one is riding off into the sunset with a song in his heart at the end of those books. But, on the whole, I like things to end well. I wasn’t getting a warm fuzzy feeling from the direction THE DRAGONS OF BABEL was going in. I’ll probably return to it later. People I respect like it. But for right now, some YA fun and fantasy was more up my alley.
Cooking with Pyramids
So, I just finished book #3 of my 100 in 2012 project. At the moment, my list looks like this:
1. The Wide Awake Princess by E.D. Baker
2. Cooking the Books by Kerry Greenwood
3. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
Cooking the Books is a mystery novel by Australian novelist Kerry Greenwood. The book isn’t actually due out in the US until later this spring, but I am an impatient person. I got a friend to pick up a copy on her holiday trip to Australia. I finished it in two days. One thing to know, I’m mildly obsessed with this author. Cooking the Books is the latest book in her Corinna Chapman series.
Corinna is a baker in Melbourne. She lives in a reconstructed Roman apartment building named Insula. She has an apprentice named Jason and a boyfriend named Daniel. All of this, except perhaps the apartment building, sounds very tame. But these books are to tame what Wonderbread is to homemade focaccia. Insula is studded with interesting people; two aspiring actresses, a retired Classics professor, a witch, a weaver, a society hostess, and a rotten little doggie named Traddles. Jason is a 16 year old recovering addict who has managed to rebuild his world around feeding people. Daniel is ex-Israeli army and now works as a private detective.
In this installment of the series Corinna’s bakery, Earthly Delights, is closed for a month’s vacation. Jason is out at the beach. The shop assistants have gotten roles in a new tv pilot. Daniel is on a fiendishly difficult case involving mislaid bonds. Corinna is expecting a month of relaxation and quiet. However, events and old school chums conspire against her. Thomasina, former school chum and current caterer has had a baking related disaster. Her pastry chef has broken a leg and is unable to work. This is a disaster because the company has just gotten a contract to do all the catering on a new tv pilot that is about to start filming. Corinna reluctantly agrees to take up her rolling pin in a good cause. Besides, it gives her an excuse to check in on her assistants and make sure they’re eating enough.
Naturally, things get more complicated. The production is being plagued with mishaps. Most of them seem to be aimed at the highly temperamental star of the show. If the star walks then the entire pilot collapses. Thomasina and all her assistants are out of a job. Corinna’s assistants lose their best chance at breaking into acting. The director loses her pet project. Soon all of the cast and crew are looking at Corinna to figure out a solution.
Meanwhile, Daniel is trying to help a young accounting intern who has managed to mislay a huge stack of bearer bonds. He knows that one of the bonds has been cashed in by a homeless man named Pockets. Unfortunately, Pockets’ connection with reality is tenuous at best so he can’t just tell Daniel where the rest of the bonds are. They have been filed, Pockets states, in the proper place. The intern who lost the is facing not just the loss of her job, but possibly the end of her career. Things in the accounting firm aren’t what they should be. For starters, why was an intern walking through town with millions in bearer bonds. That just seems to be asking for trouble. Daniel begins to suspect that the bonds may not have gone missing by accident.
Kerry Greenwood writes fun, fast paced mysteries with delightful characters. If I thought I could find Insula I’d pack my bags and move to Melbourne tomorrow. Her other series is the Phryne Fisher series, which is set in Melbourne in the 1920’s. Phyrne is a well bred, well monied, charming young flapper who takes a dim view of murder. She is dashing, lovely, and thoroughly unexpected.
In other news, I have finished The Red Pyramid on audio and stared on Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel by Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris. It is a steampunk adventure story featuring an unconventional red head from New Zealand and a mild mannered archivist from London. They must fight the forces of the destructive House of Usher, the arch enemy of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Agent Braun has a bulletproof corset and a fondness for dynamite while Agent Books is more comfortable in the library than in the field. I’m only a couple of chapters in and though it hasn’t grabbed me the way George Mann’s novels do, it is quite enjoyable.
My current hardcopy book is The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick. I’m 50 pages in and I’m still not quite sure what’s going on. The Dragons of Babel is a sequel of sorts to The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which I have not read. The novel throws you into a post-industrial Avalon, which is in the midst of a war. The greatest weapon are the iron dragons, sentient machines that bond with their pilots. Will, our protagonist, is out stargazing one night when one of these dragons gets into a fight near his village. It wins, but has no wings and no pilot. It declares itself the new king and forces the villagers to serve it. It takes Will as it’s agent, thus setting him apart and against his former friends.
Nothing is explained. Will and his village are just there as you open the novel. They go about their daily lives, which are almost what you would expect of a semi-medieval rural fantasy setting, but then suddenly Swanwick will throw something totally bizarre at you. These are things that are so everyday within the world you’re reading about that the narrator doesn’t feel the need to explain them. When Puck Berrysnatcher is grievously wounded the wisewomen stuff him with mud, swaddle him in linen, and bury him for a few weeks. Um… ok. It works, but the reader doesn’t know enough about the world to expect it to. There is a truth speaker. Of course she is bare breasted when performing her duties. All the truth speakers are. Oh. Ok. Will’s aunt makes sacrifices to… someone. People have secret names that can kill them. Oh, of course. None of this is explained. You just pick it up as you go along. It’s not necessarily bad, but I’m 50 pages in and I’m only just getting the feel of how the world works.
Happy New Year
Resolutions. They get you every year. If you don’t make one you feel part guilty and part smug. If you do make one you have to worry about keeping it. SOme years I do and some years I don’t. I have made one this year and it directly impacts this blog. My resolution this year is to read (or listen to) 100 books I have never read before. I am including kids’ books in this since they make up a large portion of my book consumption as it is. I won’t include picture books though unless I find myself getting utterly desperate.
I’ve started the year off with two books that are new to me. The first I’m reading in hardcopy – The Wide Awake Princess by E.D. Baker. It’s about Princess Annabelle who is gifted with immunity to magic. This is great when it comes to dodging angry witches, but somewhat difficult when living in a castle full of magically beautiful people. No one wants to spend time with her because her anti-magic can cancel out their gifts. Her mother always insists that she is mad at the fairy’s gift not at Annabelle, but she still banished Annie from her presence. But when Annie’s oldest sister is cursed with 100 years sleep Annie is the only one left awake to do anything about it.
The second book that I”m consuming at the moment is The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. I’m listening to it on my iPod so I’m making it through significantly slower. Rick Riordan is good at mythology and now he is turning his sights on the Egyptian pantheon. Two estranged siblings meet up with their dad in London. What is supposed to be a quiet family visit turns into high adventure when their dad blows up part of the British Museum and then gets sealed into a sarcophagus. Carter and Sadie, with the help of their uncle Amos must battle against Egyptian gods to protect themselves and find some answers about who their dad reallly is and how they can get him back.
To keep up with my resolution I need to read about two books a week. I’m already halfway through The Wide Awake Princess, but I’m only a chapter or two into The Red Pyramid. I’ll keep you posted!
Death Comes to Pemberly
When I first heard that P.D. James would be writing a sequel to Pride & Prejudice I was excited, but skeptical. I love Jane Austen and P&P is a particular favorite of mine. I always have a copy available to me. Once, when I returned to my college campus a few days early to avoid a winter storm I hiked a mile through the snow to get to the Odyssey Bookshop to buy a spare copy of Pride & Prejudice because mine was locked in my inaccessible dorm room. I got the Dover edition, in case you’re curious. I have owned 3 copies of the 6-hour BBC miniseries (VHS, DVD, and the Anniversary edition of the DVD). Needless to say, I’m a big fan.
I have tried other Austen sequels in the past. Some have been better than others. The Carrie Bebris mysteries are decent. I quite enjoyed Pamela Aidan’s Mr. Darcy series. On the other hand, I found Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife entirely too salacious for my tastes. I know several people who love it, but it wasn’t for me. I’ve even read Lady Catherine’s Necklace which focuses on Lady Catherine de Bourgh rather than Elizabeth and Darcy. But those were other authors. Authors I didn’t know outside the context of Austen sequels. This was P.D. James whose mysteries I had enjoyed in the past. I had expectations.
Expectations can be dangerous, especially with me. I am, I’m afraid, not a forgiving person when I’m disappointed. It’s a character failing, but one I am familiar with. I will rail against the mistakes of a favorite where I might forgive an unknown. When an author has developed a reputation for excellence with me I do not tolerate anything less. So I was trepidatious.
P.D. James, on the whole, came through for me. She started the book with a very modest apologia. Jane Austen, she opined, would not really have approved of her book. Austen did not like to dwell on the unpleasant, and murder is nothing if not unpleasant. But, James wrote it anyway, with apologies and acknowledgements that if Austen had wanted to write a murder mystery then she darn well would have written a better one than this. I found the author’s introduction charming. And I was in the mood to be charmed.
Death Comes to Pemberly takes place six years after the close of Pride and Prejudice. James fills in a few of the details for those who do not remember their Austen perfectly, but doesn’t overdo it. She spends more time on Mr. Collins and his absurdities than she does on the back and forth between Darcy and Elizabeth. As one who remembers P&P faithfully, I appreciated this. The action takes place on the day before a major ball at Pemberly. Jane and Bingley have come to join Darcy and Elizabeth. Georgiana and Colonel Fitzwilliam are all in residence, as is a young barrister from London who is a guest of the Bingleys’. A quiet family evening is shattered when a carriage races up the drive and Lydia Wickham falls out of it into Jane’s arms screaming that Wickham has been murdered in the Pemberly woodland. Death has indeed intruded into the peace of Pemberly.
James does justice to the voice of Austen. Her characters are true to themselves. Elizabeth is still wry, but tempered with the maturity you would expect of a loving mother and a content wife. Jane is still almost too good for this world, while Bingley is his affable self. Lydia is the vain, shallow idiot she has always been. Marriage with Wickham could only reinforce her bad points. Darcy and his cousin are the most changed. In Darcy we see the landowner and family man who is, for the most part, only hinted at in P&P. Fitzwilliam, on the other hand, has inherited the title that was earlier held by his older brother. He is very aware of his own consequence and has become in truth the overly prideful man that Darcy had been in appearance. Even Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet’s nerves make cameo appearances much to my delight. Several new faces from the Pemberly estate are introduced, but blend into the ensemble cast. The language and the feel of the interactions is pure regency. James stays true to period to a remarkable degree.
Death Comes to Pemberly is not, at its heart, a mystery novel. No one really detects. There is a death, an inquest, and a trial. But there is not a detective. No one collects clues as such. The solution to the murder is not winkled out piece by piece, but revealed in its entirety at the end of the story. This does not detract from the novel, but it is important not to go into the story expecting a who-done-it or a police procedural.
On the whole, I very much enjoyed the book. But I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have one or two minor issues. The first is that James can’t quite keep herself from winking at the future. There are two or three points at which a character laments the lack of some technology or reform that is unavailable to them. During the initial medical examination of the victim the magistrate bemoans the lack of blood typing methods that won’t be invented for almost a century. At another point, Mr. Alveston, the London barrister, laments the fact that prosecuting council has more power in the courtroom than does defense council. Again, this is something that was reformed following the events of this novel. I fail to see that either of these anachronistic asides was particularly important. Perhaps they were preemptive, to avoid confusing a reader who was more familiar with modern forensic practice? I’m not sure, but I found them slightly jarring.
My other primary complaint was that James chooses to link characters from this novel with other characters from the Austen cannon. Wickham, for instance, served for a time as the secretary to Sir Walter Elliot from Persuasion. I’m not sure that I agree with that. Austen herself never created cross links between her books. Again, I found it slightly jarring. It seemed a bit too much like the author was nudging me in the ribs and checking to make sure I’d seen the clever thing she had just done. The rest of the novel is so seamless that these few moments stand out in my mind. They are minor and don’t really create a major impact on the integrity of the novel. They just rub at me. But then, I’m like that. Death Comes to Pemberly is well crafted and highly entertaining!
Medusa's Library 