By February I had heard enough people mention how eagerly they were awaiting the sequel to your first novel, 2007's The Name of the Wind, that I was intrigued and decided to pick up the first book in the series.

The Name of the Wind begins this way: "It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts." The following paragraphs go on to describe all three parts of the silence. The first is "a hollow, echoing quiet," the second the silence of two customers at the bar who "drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news." But it's the third silence that is most unsettling, the silence of a red-haired man polishing the bar. It was, the third person omniscient narrator tells us, "the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die. "

The red-haired man is an innkeeper who goes by the name of Kote, but he is also more than an innkeeper, and more than Kote. When a terrifying, spider-like being nearly kills one of the inn's few customers, Kote is the only one who knows what to watch out for and what to do.

Later, a man referred to as Chronicler comes to the inn, and Kote admits to Chronicler that he is Kvothe (pronounced like the word "quothe"), a famous, heroic figure now in hiding. But Kvothe doesn't see himself as others see him, and only agrees to tell Chronicler his story if Chronicler will stay at the Waystone for three days and record Kvothe's tale word for word, without altering anything.

Kvothe's story, told to Chronicler in first person, begins when Kvothe is eleven. Kvothe is one of the Edema Ruh, a highly-regarded troupe of actors and other performers. From his father Kvothe begins to soak up acting and music. From his mother, a noblewoman who left her family to be with his father, Kvothe learns etiquette.

One day the troupe takes in Abenthy, an arcanist (magic user) who helps them with lighting and special effects. Abenthy, or Ben as Kvothe calls him, was educated at the University and teaches Kvothe much of what he knows, including Sympathy, a system of magic that helps Kvothe redirect energy from one object to another. But what Kvothe most wants to learn is how Ben did something Kvothe once saw him do — call the wind so that the wind came and did Ben's bidding.

Ben refuses to teach Kvothe the name of the wind, but he does tell Kvothe's parents that Kvothe is a child prodigy, able to absorb nearly any skill with almost no mistakes. He will be the best at whatever he chooses to be, Ben informs them, so they should think carefully about what opportunities to give their son. Kvothe overhears this conversation and dreams of attending the University, but at age eleven, he does not know what lies ahead of him.

The troupe parts from Ben around the time Kvothe turns twelve, and on that occasion, Kvothe's father performs the first verse of a song he is working on. It is a song about the Chandrian, a group of legendary demons. Kvothe's father is collecting legends about them because he wants to write the definitive song, the one that hearkens back to the root of these legends.

The Chandrian are believed to be nothing more than a superstition, but one night Kvothe returns from gathering firewood to find his entire troupe dead, and the surrounding fires burning blue, a sign of the mythical Chandrian's presence. And indeed, the Chandrian are in front of him for a few moments, before they disappear.

Kvothe is left grieving and utterly alone in the world at age twelve. He forages in the forest and teaches himself to play his father's lute even better. A fateful trip to the nearby city of Tarbean in order to replace a lute string turns Kvothe into an urchin. He lives on Tarbean's streets for three years, until something reopens the memories he has shut away. Memories of his parents and of the Chandrian, of his dreams of attending the University and acquiring knowledge.

Eventually fifteen year old Kvothe arrives at the University and it is here that he makes dear friends and dangerous enemies, here that he learns greater magic, and here that he falls in love. He also cannot let go of his need to get to the bottom of the truth about the beings who killed his parents, even though it places him at great risk.

I enjoyed The Name of the Wind a great deal. One of the things I really appreciated was the device of having Kvothe's tale told by his older self, and the occasional interludes which allow us to see Kvothe in a different place in his life, and to sense danger lurking around the Waystone Inn.

This story-within-a-story structure, known in literary terms as a frame device, gave the book extra richness due to the age gap between the teenage Kvothe and the more mature and weary Kvothe who was telling the story. We got both the younger Kvothe's viewpoint and the perspective of his older, wiser self, who knows things the teenage Kvothe does not.

Alternated with these viewpoints is the third person narration of the frame story, so even though the book is mostly written in first person, there is more variety of voice, perspective and texture than in many first person books.

Still, and although we meet his family, his friends and the woman he loved, there is no question that the focus of the novel is Kvothe himself, and one of the things that kept me reading was the desire to see how he had evolved from the boy he had been to the man telling the story of his youth. Another was Kvothe's voice – witty, opinionated, and as a boy, often unwise.

I think that Kvothe could fairly be described as a Marty Stu (male equivalent of a Mary Sue) character because he is not only a child prodigy, but by age fifteen he is endowed with so many gifts – near perfect recall, a quick and strategic mind, lively curiosity, a talent for verbal sparring, a gorgeous voice and a breathtaking musicianship with the lute, to say nothing of his command of magic.

Normally so many talents in one character would be a sure way to turn me off, so Kvothe's saving grace is his propensity to making big mistakes. He takes chances that most people would not, and while some of them pay off, others land him in trouble. It is this quality, along with his witty opinions, and his vulnerability, that make the younger Kvothe so engaging and make it possible to believe in his genius.

There when many times during the reading of this book that I found myself thinking, "No Kvothe, no! Don't do it!" And he went ahead and did whatever impulsive, courageous yet unwise thing it was I wished he wouldn't do. I see my desire to spare Kvothe from pain and punishments as a sign of my huge investment in this character and his fate. His failings made him real and endearing to me.

One of other endearing things about Kvothe is that he judges people based on their behavior rather than their social status, and doesn't see himself as particularly better than anyone else. He is willing to do some shady things on occasion, but there are other moral lines which he would never in a million years cross. There is a great exchange between Kvothe and Ambrose, the university student who later becomes his nemesis.

Kvothe walks into the University's Archives to see Ambrose and a female student, Fela, at the front desk. Ambrose is sexually harassing Fela, but his family is so powerful that she can't protest, and Kvothe cannot bear to stand by and do nothing. He sees Ambrose's attempt at a poem on the desk, and sets about rescuing Fela by eviscerating Ambrose's writing.

Ambrose looked over his shoulder, scowling. "You have damnable timing, E'lir. Come back later." He turned away again, dismissing me.

I snorted and leaned over the desk, craning my neck to look at the sheet of paper he'd left lying there. "I have damnable timing? Please, you have thirteen syllables in a line here." I tapped a finger onto the page. "It's not iambic either. I don't know if it's anything metrical at all."

He turned to look at me again, his expression irritated. "Mind your tongue, E'lir. The day I come to you for help with poetry is the day–"

"- is the day you have two hours to spare," I said. "Two long hours, and that's just for getting started. "So same can the humble thrush well know its north?' I mean, I don't even know how to begin to criticize that. It practically mocks itself."

"What do you know of poetry?" Ambrose said without bothering to turn around.

"I know a limping verse when I hear it," I said. "But this isn't even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom."

"It is a sprung rhythm," he said, his voice stiff and offended. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"Sprung?" I burst out with an incredulous laugh. "I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly "sprung,' I'd kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die."

How can you not love a character like Kvothe? I couldn't help loving him. A lot of the charm of this book is Kvothe's charm, his indelible appeal, as well as the human scale of his personal story. If he isn't the hero others think he is, he is still more heroic than he gives himself credit for.

The Name of the Wind clocks in at 726 Kindle pages, or 13,459 locations. That is one long book, a huge investment of time, especially when you consider that it is only the first of the three parts of Kvothe's story. The early parts of the book, especially the beginning at the Waystone Inn and then the time Kvothe spends on the streets of Tarbean, dragged a little for me. But the vast majority of the book was greatly involving and entertaining, and there was an artistry to the narration and the dialogue that makes this book stand out among many others.

Even though I'm not usually one to embark on such long tomes, much less series that follow the same protagonists, I find myself anticipating book two. As for The Name of the Wind, it is a terrific novel and one I can easily see myself rereading. A-/A.

Sincerely,

Janine

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony| KoboBooks

Related posts:

1. Tuesday Mid Day Links RoundUp: The Medieval Chronicle
2. REVIEW: Challenge the Wind by Debra Tash
3. Gone With the Wind Lives On (perhaps in ignomy?)

I was casually perusing the Book Smugglers' blog when I came across this midyear list of their favorite books of 2010 and saw that Ana had given your debut, Bleeding Violet a grade of perfect 10.

Since the book's genre (YA with a paranormal flavor) is one I enjoy, I looked up Ana's review of Bleeding Violet. The book sounded unusual and well-written, and perfect 10's are a rare event on the Book Smugglers' blog, so I thought I'd give it a try. I downloaded Bleeding Violet from the Sony store to my ebook reader, began to read, and found myself engaged almost immediately.

The truck driver let me off on Lamartine, on the odd side of the street. I felt odd too, standing in the town where my mother lived. For the first seven years of my life, we hadn't even lived on the same continent, and now she waited only a few houses away.

Sixteen year old Hanna Jarvinen arrives in Portero, Texas to reunite with her mother, who isn't expecting her. The town of Portero isn't in any way normal, but then Hanna doesn't feel normal, either. She's not only biracial and bicultural (half African American and half Finn), but also bipolar.

As she approaches her mother's house, Hanna hallucinates her deceased father's voice coaching her on how to deal with her mother. Hanna's mother, Rosalee Price, left Hanna with her father in Finland shortly after Hanna's birth, and Hanna has no memories of Rosalee. But the voice of Hanna's father, Joosef, warns Hanna not to wake her sleeping mother by knocking on her door in the middle of the night.

So, after finding the spare key and letting herself into Rosalee's house, Hanna follows her father's advice to lure Rosalee out of her bedroom with the scent of a grilled cheese sandwich.

My grandma Annikki once told me that anyone who looked on the face of God would instantly fall over dead. Looking at my mother-’for the first time ever-’I wondered if it was because God was beautiful.

To Hanna, who did not resemble her Finnish relatives, Rosalee, who looks much like her, is beyond beautiful. Hanna wants nothing more than her mother's approval and love.

But Rosalee is not pleased to find her daughter in her kitchen instead of in Finland. As she learns that Hanna and her father came to the United States nine years earlier, and that in the last year, Hanna's father passed away, Rosalee notices the bloodstains on Hanna's clothes.

It turns out that Hanna struck her aunt Ulla, with whom she had been living, on her head with a rolling pin during an argument over whether Hanna should be committed to a mental health facility. And that discovery is how Rosalee learns that her teenaged daughter hears voices and is prone to violence.

While Rosalee tries to ascertain just how badly Ulla was injured, Hanna settles into the attic and unpacks her wardrobe of violet dresses. Hanna sews her own clothes, and she is going through a purple phase.

Rosalee does not want Hanna to move in, but Hanna digs in her heels and refuses to leave. And so, Hanna and Rosalee strike a bargain: if Hanna can fit in at Portero's high school and in the town within two weeks, she can remain in Rosalee's house. If not, she will leave.

Hanna is elated and determined to make friends and stay, but there's only one problem: she has never fit in anywhere.

Still, Portero is not anywhere. When Hanna goes to the school, she discovers that it is a very strange place, one where glass statues shaped like students get more attention than newcomers, where nearly everyone wears black clothes and uses earplugs for some mysterious reason, and where Hanna's geometry textbook turns into "A Teen's Guide to Living with Bipolar Disorder" with multiple choice questions like this one:

12. All work and no play makes Hanna ____________.
a. eat Cheerios c. go crazy
b. limp awkwardly d. very sad

At first Hanna thinks she's hallucinating, but then she begins to suspect that that's not exactly the case. The other students refer to Hanna as a "transy," and after school, Hanna asks her mother what the word means.

"A transient." She grabbed an apple for herself and leaned against the picture window, since she couldn't sit with me at the table. "Anything transient. Like a mayfly."

I knew about mayflies, had seen them in action during the slow summers at our lake house in Finland. Huge swarms of them rising like dark mist from the lakes, mating in the air in winged orgiastic abandon, only to flutter back down into the water, drained. Dead. An entire lifetime played out in the space of a few hours.

But what the hell was mayflylike about me?

Since the students treat Hanna with indifference, she decides the quickest way to gain acceptance is to attach herself to a popular boy. The best candidate appears to be Wyatt Ortiga. Unlike everyone else, Wyatt dresses in green. Students seem to hang on his every word. And Hanna finds him attractive, if annoying at times.

As Hanna gets to know him better, she discovers that Wyatt is as far from normal as she is, and that he is still hung up on his ex-girlfriend, Petra. But that doesn't stop Hanna from pursuing him. And Petra, who doesn't seem to be entirely over Wyatt herself, does not discourage this.

Petra grabbed my shoulders, leaning on me again, but this time so she could whisper in my ear. "Do yourself a favor and find someone tough, someone like Wyatt, who'll look after you. You'll thank me." She let me go and rushed off to join Lecy.

Someone tough to look after me?

Petra seemed like a nice girl, not quite the bitch I'd been expecting, but even if I'd wanted to be her friend, her attitude would drive me insane. Did she think this was the fifies? I didn't need some guy to look after me. I could look after myself.

The more Hanna discovers about how dangerous Portero can be, the more determined she is to face its threats head-on. And that means becoming more and more involved with Wyatt, who knows more about those dangers than any other kid in Portero.

Hanna's goal is to win the right to stay with her mother, and more than that, to win Rosalee's love. But with threats abounding from sources both supernatural and natural, what will she discover about Portero, about Wyatt, about Rosalee, and about herself in the process?

Bleeding Violet is one of the freshest and most original books I have read this year. I don't want to reveal too much of what is going on in the story, but the world-building is startling and surreal, and some scenes have a dreamlike, hallucinatory quality.

But as great as the world-building was, what I liked even more was the writing and the characterization. The dialogue was exceptional – snappy, surprising and real, while the narration was full of the contradictions that make Hanna such an interesting character.

Yes, the girl may be prickly, even pugnacious, and she's not above using her boyfriend, but her need for love and her determination to attain respect and acceptance made her indelibly appealing to me.

Hanna's relationship with Wyatt stands out from many of the teen romances I've come across because the two jump into bed pretty quickly. One of the things that impressed me was how much I liked Wyatt despite his difficulty in getting over Petra even after he was sleeping with Hanna. There was decency and goodness in Wyatt that Hanna sensed from the first but which he could not see in himself.

Rosalee was also a memorable character – seemingly cold in her constant rejection of her daughter, but more complex than she appears at first. And many of the side characters stand out too, from Wyatt's fierce mother to the insecure Petra to the objects that should have been inanimate but came to life and acquired a personality.

I have very few criticisms of this book. Although the portrayal of Hanna's illness did not seem realistic to me at first, I quickly realized that that was because of the book's surreal quality. I do feel that at one point, during the ramp up to the book's climax, the supernatural goings on overwhelmed the human conflicts a bit, but that problem quickly righted itself.

Besides that, I have just one gripe, and that is that not about the book itself, but about the typesetting for the electronic edition I read. As mentioned before, I purchased the book from the Sony store, and my copy was peppered with question marks in places where I think there should have been dashes.

But those minor caveats aside, I enjoyed Bleeding Violet enormously. Original, quirky, suspenseful, occasionally funny, romantic, and dramatic – it was all these things and more. A for this one.

Sincerely,

Janine Ballard

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony | Kobo |

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Violet by Design by Melissa Walker
2. REVIEW: Violet in Private by Melissa Walker
3. REVIEW: The Bleeding Dusk by Colleen Gleason

Dear Ms. Crane,

You've been part of the romance community since at least 2007, and I occasionally lurk on and enjoy your reading blog The Trillionth Page. Your debut novel, an urban fantasy called Mind Games, came out in March to great acclaim, so in April I downloaded a copy from the Sony store in order to give it a whirl.

Unfortunately, it took me over three weeks to finish reading Mind Games (I am a slow reader in the normal course of things, but not that slow!) and then a while to review it. It is a tough, tough book to review because it is stellar in some ways, and yet I also had some big problems with it. Before I go into what I think are the book's weaknesses and strengths, here is a plot summary:

Mind Games is narrated in first person present tense (a choice I often love, and loved here) by Justine Jones, a young woman living in a fictional Midwestern city called Midcity (I loved that choice, too). Justine suffers from hypochondria, which manifests itself in frequent delusions that she has vein star syndrome, a vascular malady which she describes as “the proverbial ticking time bomb in the head.”

Justine's mother also suffered from this phobia, and then she developed a very real case of vein star syndrome which killed her, so no amount of reasoning can make Justine believe that she herself is physically healthy while she's having one of her anxiety attacks. Her fear is potent, and one day Justine meets a man who wants to harness it.

Justine is dining at a Mongolian restaurant with her boyfriend, Cubby, when she is spotted by Packard. Packard is a highcap, a man with extra-sensory abilities. The existence of highcaps is hotly debated: many of Midcity's denizens believe in them, while the authorities and a few others say they aren't real. But Packard exists, and is able to sense other people's psychological structures. He knows without being told that Justine is a hypochondriac who believes she suffers from vein star syndrome, and claims he can cure her if she'll come work for him.

At first Packard doesn't reveal the nature of the work he wants Justine to do, so Justine refuses. Later, Carter and Shelby, two of Packard's employees, pick up Justine and take her back to the Mongolian restaurant, where Packard reveals that he can teach Justine to transfer her anxiety attacks into other people. Packard's team is a kind of “psychological hit squad” made up of disillusionists, people with psychological disorders who channel their own problems into criminals and thereby “crash” them so that they can then be “rebooted” into better human beings.

Justine doesn't believe in vigilante justice and she wants no part of Packard's brand of it. But Packard gives her a demonstration, allowing her to “zing” her fear into him. Being free of fear feels wonderful, and eventually, when Justine's terror of vein star syndrome returns a few weeks later, as Packard told her it would, she decides to accept Packard's offer. She does not tell Packard or his team of disillusionists that she plans to leave the group when she's thought of a good alternative, and she does not tell her boyfriend, Cubby, the full truth about her new job.

Justine's life as a disillusionist is complicated by her conflicted feelings about the profession, and her reluctant attraction to Packard. Eventually she discovers that just as she kept her intention to leave the disillusionist squad from Packard, he too, kept something very important from her. She also learns that Packard has been trapped in the Mongolian restaurant by another powerful highcap and that he cannot leave. She resolves to find a way to free Packard from his prison and herself from both her hypochondria and her new role.

You have a terrific writing voice and a gift for surprising ideas and creative worldbuilding, all of which made Mind Games so unusual that I haven't encountered anything this fresh and quirky in fiction since reading literary fabulist Judy Budnitz' debut collection, Flying Leap, well over a decade ago.

Take, for example, the Brick Slinger, a telekinetic highcap serial killer who terrorizes the citizens of Midcity by sending bricks zigzagging into people's skulls. Here is Justine's description of the situation, an inventive bit of worldbuilding:

The crime wave makes me sad and angry, and every year it gets worse. Now, thanks to our new serial killer, the Brick Slinger, the playgrounds and ballparks are empty even though it's the height of summer, and people scurry from cars to houses to cars, many of them wearing helmets and hardhats, even when it's ninety degrees.

Later, when Justine goes to her job at a boutique, you use the Brick Slinger's presence in Midcity to create a bit of scene-setting that is odd in the best, most wonderful way:

I lean on the glass counters watching the upscale shoppers rifle through the racks of dresses. A few of them wear steel-reinforced safari hats in pink or beige, the latest in protective headwear.

There are also the ways you use fresh metaphors to put your finger on Justine's feelings. The paragraph below captures beautifully how haunted she is by her hypochondria:

I pull the covers over me, wondering what it would be like to be Cubby. Cubby has faith in life the way you might have faith in a five-star hotel: It's a world of sunny swimming pools, plush towels, and capable people at the front desk, and your happiness is their number one priority. I want more than anything to live in Cubby's safe hotel. To go through one day without health fears. One day.

I have quoted so much because I think your language is wonderfully crafted. For this reason, when I started this book I was sure it would be a keeper for me. Sadly, it isn't, for the following reasons.

First, Mind Games was scary in places – a sign of effective writing, but I don't enjoy being scared. Second, this is also the kind of book where for much of it, it's not clear who, if anyone besides the main character, is trustworthy – and I don't enjoy that type of story very much either. Readers who don't share these preferences of mine, though, will probably like this book better than I did.

Aside from that the biggest problem, if I had to name one, was that the main characters felt static. While my perceptions of some of them shifted a bit, beyond the paranormal change in Justine when she channeled away her hypochondria, the characters never seemed to grow or undergo a meaningful change. That may be realistic, but it also made the book feel monotonous after a while. I think it's mostly because of this, and because of the above reasons, that the book took me so long to finish.

Justine's wit is the most charming thing about her, and I also like her vulnerability and her loyalty to her loved ones, but she is so good-hearted and so concerned with right and wrong that at times she comes across as someone who has no moral blemish whatsoever. Nearly every morally ambiguous act she carries out is something she is essentially forced to do. While I think we should all strive to be free of moral flaws, I also think it is a goal we can only approach without fully reaching. In other words, I don't fully buy that anyone as flawless from a moral perspective as Justine could actually exist.

Another problem with Justine's characterization is that nearly all the men in the book were drawn to her in one fashion or another, and she was described by one of them as beautiful (though she thinks she is only "medium-pretty"), so at some point, it began to feel as though she was just one mental disorder shy of being a Mary Sue. The fact that I still liked Justine despite all this is a huge credit to her narration, which was almost seductively clever.

But for whatever reason (maybe because we didn't get access to his point of view?) I never cottoned to Packard, never really grew to like or trust him, so for all the purported romantic chemistry between he and Justine- well, to use a dreadful pun, there was just no zing there for me. When Justine was transported by his kiss, I remained detached.

If Mind Games had been a romance, that would have killed it for me, but since it was an urban fantasy, I tried to let its other charms win me over.

Have I mentioned that the prose is stupendous? And the world-building? And that I think the premise is very inventive? Ultimately, these kept me coming back to the book. Your descriptions were music to my inner word geek. I love the way you can startle me with one daring word. A penis is actually described as “cucumbery” in this book. And there is this terrific description of Shelby:

Ringlets stands and smiles, revealing a chipped front tooth, which gives her a strange, carnivorous beauty.

Characterization, worldbuilding, and description are woven together in an exhilarating way in paragraphs like this one:

I'm surprised when Carter merges onto “the tangle”-’a nightmarish curlicue of highways that's the fastest, most unpleasant, and most treacherous way to move between neighborhoods. Everybody sane avoids the tangle, which has been blamed for everything from Midcity's industrial decrepitude to, of course, the eight-year crime wave, in articles with titles like “A Dark Snarl at the Heart of Our Fair City.”

Mind Games is particularly difficult to grade because the premise, worldbuilding and language have tremendous flair, which would argue for at least a B- grade, but on the other hand, because of issues with the characterization, pacing and my personal preferences, my enjoyment level was ultimately no more than a C. And so, although I have no doubt that many readers will feel Mind Games deserves a higher grade, I go with the midpoint between these two ranges and give it a C+.

Sincerely,

Janine Ballard

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony | Kobo |

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Lord Ruin by Carolyn Jewel
2. REVIEW: Dangerous Games by Lora Leigh
3. REVIEW: Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair

When I told some friends I was reading your YA novel, Flygirl, and what it was about, one of them directed me to this article at The New York Times. It’s about the awarding of Congressional Gold Medals to the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), who provided the United States Army with their valuable flying skills during World War II, in order to free up male pilots to serve in the war.

To quote from your Author’s Note, “Flygirl is a fictionalized account based on the true story of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots and their heroic feats.” It is also the story of Ida Mae Jones, a brave and determined young woman who is not willing to let anything, even her skin color, stand in the way of her dream of flying.

Flygirl begins in December of 1941, in Slidell, Lousiana, when Ida Mae, the narrator of the story, is eighteen. She and her friend Jolene clean for the Wilsons, a white family, and as they clean, they daydream. Jolene dreams of being a singer, though she doesn’t have the voice for it. Ida Mae’s heart’s desire is to become a pilot, something she already is in every regard but one.

When Ida Mae was a young girl, her father taught her to fly in his “Jenny” cropduster. Ida Mae later prepared hard for her pilot’s test, and performed beautifully when she took it. But her instructor, a white man who’d passed other black pilots at Tuskegee, told Ida Mae, “You can fly, no doubt about it. But no woman’s gonna get a license out of me. Go home, Miss Jones. You’ve failed.”

Now Ida Mae dreams of going to Chicago’s Coffey School of Aeronautics to obtain her license, and she is saving up to finance the trip. But when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, her dream is shelved. Ida’s brother, who is studying to become a doctor, enlists in the army. Before shipping out, Thomas asks Ida Mae to look after her widowed mother, her young brother Abel, and her grandfather, and Ida promises that she will.

A year and a half pass. Thomas is stationed in the South Pacific, where the war is going badly. Black families like the Joneses and white ones like the Wilsons ration sugar, coffee, and other staples. Jolene donates her silk stockings to the army parachute program. “Jenny,” the Joneses’ cropduster, remains in the barn collecting dust, since fuel is also rationed.

One day, Abel brings home a newspaper clipping from school. It is an article about the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program, which will train women to fly military planes within America’s borders, freeing more male pilots to fight in combat. The instant Ida Mae reads about the WASP program, she desperately wants to be a part of it. Here is a way to realize her dream of flying, and to make a real difference in the war effort, to help Thomas in a more meaningful way than rationing sugar and stockings.

Jolene punctures Ida Mae’s ballooning hopes by telling her the program is almost certainly for white women only. For a brief moment, Ida Mae, whose skin is light enough that she could pass for white, considers pretending to be white in order to be able to fly for the military. It doesn’t take her long to realize that such an action is fraught with danger, though, and she tries to give up her dream.

But then Abel points out a picture of a Chinese American pilot who is a member of the WASP, and Ida begins to hope again. With Jolene’s help, Ida Mae forges a pilot’s license, applies to the program and is granted an interview. Just before that interview begins, she sees a black woman being refused entry to the program due her skin color alone. When the interviewer assumes that Ida Mae is white, Ida nearly backs out, but her dream of flying overcomes her fears, and she decides that she if she is accepted, she will join the training program for the WASP.

And so begins Ida Mae’s life as a military trainee pilot in Sweetwater, Texas, a life that is both thrilling and frightening. Even as Ida makes friends with fellow WASP aspirants Patsy Kake, who was part of a barnstorming show, and Lily Lowenstein, a sheltered and wealthy Jewish girl, she wonders whether these women would remain her friends if they knew that she is not white.

The training program is arduous — two out of every three girls wash out — but even more than the long hours of training, it is her deception that takes a toll on Ida, and her worry for her brother Thomas’s safety. Lily and Patsy’s friendship is a godsend, but in becoming part of their world, is Ida creating a gulf between herself and her childhood friend Jolene?

There is also a civilian instructor in the program, Walt Jenkins, who is clearly attracted to Ida and interested in her. Ida’s heart flutters whenever Walt is near. But Walt is white, and he does not know that Ida is black. How can she allow her attraction for him to show without misleading him? And even if she told him the truth, would a future with him mean leaving her family behind?

Flygirl is beautifully written and resonant. Ida Mae remains a sympathetic and believable character throughout the story. She is both courageous and unsure of herself, and I liked the way we see her mature over the course of the story. I also liked that I never felt the book was making a judgment about her choice to “pass.” Instead, we readers are invited to decide for ourselves what we think of her decision.

Ida Mae’s family members are vividly depicted, from her brothers, who respect and admire her, to her mother, who disapproves of her desire to fly, to her supportive grandfather, “Grandy.” Her friends, first Jolene and later Patsy and Lily, are a kind of second family to Ida. I especially liked Patsy, an independent free spirit who worked as a wing-walker in a barnstorming act before joining the WASP.

The romantic elements play a minor role in the novel — it is much more a coming of age story, and a story about how Ida deals with the discrimination she faces both as an African American and as a woman. It is also a book about friendships and family relationships, and their challenges and rewards. And, of course, it is the story of the brave, patriotic women who served their country for little recognition or compensation.

I have just a couple of complaints about this story. One is that Lily, who is Jewish, is depicted as having led a privileged life and is said to have “never known what it was like to be hobbled by somebody else’s rules.” As a Jewish woman, I have a problem with this depiction, because it doesn’t do justice to the prejudices Jews faced in this country in the 1940s. Sometime in the past couple or so years, I watched “The Jewish Americans” documentary on PBS, and I remember seeing that Jews, too, were turned away from many establishments during the 1940s. I find it hard to believe that even after two years of serving in the WASP in several parts of the country, Lily would not have encountered much prejudice.

My other problem was more minor: a moment of annoyance at something Ida did that constituted cheating on one of her tests in my eyes. But since she felt bad about it and did her best to make up for it, I got over that.

One of the things I loved best about this book was the way the 1940s came alive. I truly felt I had been transported there, and was reminded of films from this time period when I read the book. It’s not an era that I often see in novels, so it was a treat to be immersed in it here.

I also enjoyed your writing style very much. Ida Mae’s first person present tense narration was confiding and immediate. There are memorable turns of phrase like this description of a female pilot who gets some bad news: “Melanie looks at me and her face crumples like a newspaper, only all the headlines are sad.”

As I was reading, I felt I was in the sure hands of a capable author. I experienced both sadness and happiness with Ida Mae, and would recommend Flygirl not just to young adults but also to adults who want to learn more about the first women to fly for the U.S. army, or to experience this young woman’s journey. B+/A-.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased at Amazon (affiliate link), Kindle (non affiliate link), Books on Board (non affiliate link), or other etailers.

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2. REVIEW: Blossom Time by Joan Smith
3. REVIEW: Be Mine Tonight by Kathryn Smith

On Saturday, September 15, 2001, seventeen-year-old Samar “Sam” Ahluwahlia encounters a man she doesn’t know at the door to the house she and her mother share. The man is wearing a turban, and his presence on her doorstep disturbs Samar. But he turns out to be not a menacing terrorist, but a loving uncle, part of the extended family from which Samar’s mother is estranged. Samar is surprised by how quickly she grows fond of her sweet, gentle uncle Sandeep.

That’s just one of the many changes Samar experiences in the wake of 9/11, an event during which, as she puts it, “my regular, sort of popular, happily assimiliated Indian-American butt got rammed real hard into the cold seat of reality.”

Linton, New Jeresy, where Sam lives, is close to the epicenter of the attacks, and many of the people there view Sam’s turbaned uncle with wariness or suspicion. Sandeep’s presence in her life also makes Samar wonder what she is missing by never having known her other relatives, her family’s religion of Sikhism, or anything about her cultural heritage. Sam envies her best friend, Molly, for knowing who she is:

If I had to describe it, I would say Molly’s family is a painting in bright, vibrant colors, while my family–meaning me and Mom–is bland neutrals and beiges in a taupe frame. Molly’s family is 100 percent, no question, without a doubt, Irish. They all know it, celebrate it whenever possible, and broadcast it with great pride.

When Molly encourages Sam to express her heritage through fashion, Sam observes that:

Molly’s way more into my “Eastern” heritage than I am. It’s not as if I’m not into it…it’s just that it was never really into me.

My mom spent a whole lot of time, when I was growing up, smudging the hard lines that made us different from everyone around us. She dressed me like everyone else, packed my lunch with all the same snacks as the other kids, and stressed the fact that we’re all more the same than different. “You’re American,” she’d say, “and that’s all that matters. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

But now Samar is beginning to become conscious of the differences her mom tried to erase. When some of Molly’s relatives react negatively to Sam’s uncle Sandeep, the girls’ friendship is strained and tested. A conversation at school with another Indian-American girl named Balvir leads Samar to realize that some of the kids view her as a “coconut.”

“A coconut?” I’ve been mistaken for Dominican and everything else she listed, but a coconut?

“Yeah, you know…brown on the outside, white on the inside.”

That catches me off guard. In grade school I was called plenty of names–paki, doo-doo skin …all kinds of things to let me know my brown skin was not coveted. This is the first time someone’s telling me I’m not brown enough. It’s true I’ve always been like the center of a daisy, if daisies had dark centers. Surrounded by all these white petals: Molly, my best friend, and her family; Mike, my boyfriend, and his buddies; and just about everyone else except Mom.

But that’s because whenever I tried to hang out with the Indian kids at school, they talked about things I knew nothing about, sometimes using words in languages other than English–which is the only language I’m fluent in. Things always got real awkward real fast when we realized we had nothing much to talk about other than school. In some ways, that was even harder than the obvious differences between myself and the white folks I surrounded myself with.

Just as Samar begins to realize that she wants to befriend other Indian-American kids, and to know her grandparents and cousins, even if they are as religious and strict as her mom has told her, she encounters another obstacle in the form of her boyfriend, Mike’s, lack of understanding.

Mike has graduated and is working in retail to help his mom pay off her credit cards debt, but the hardship he faces has embittered him. When Sam’s uncle is harassed by some boys Mike knows, he does not offer the kind of empathy he has sometimes shown Samar in the past.

“Look, I’m not saying what they did was right, Sam.” He turns to face me. “But maybe if you didn’t hang out with your uncle so much, you wouldn’t have to deal with that kind of crap.”

I’m stunned. Words slip through my teeth like smoke. I can’t look at him. If I do, I might burst into tears.

“You could pass for anything. When I first met you, I thought you were Mexican.”

My voice comes out as a gravelly whisper. “But I’m not. I’m Indian-American just like my mom…and Sikh, like my uncle.”

He turns the music up, and the lyrics of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ fill the little black Civic. “Who has to know?” he says.

I look out the window on my side.

Me. I know.

As all the quoting I’ve done in this review shows, Shine, Coconut Moon is a thoughtful, sensitive look at issues of culture and assimilation, diversity and self-knowledge.

The writing is at once delicate and penetrating, and Sam’s first person narration shines with her often painful honesty about her confusion. I liked Samar very much, and found myself moved by the challenges she faced in her quest to discover her roots.

The other characters were mostly sympathetic as well, even when they were at odds with Samar. Molly, Samar’s friend, wasn’t always in the right, but she was a good friend much of the time. Sharan, Sam’s mother, wasn’t always in the right either, but she clearly loved her daughter. Uncle Sandeep had a touching gentleness. Even the villains of the story, such as they were, weren’t without their own issues.

I do have a few criticisms. First, I felt that Samar’s ignorance about her own cultural heritage strained credulity at times. I found it hard to believe that at the age of seventeen she would not even know the correct pronunciation of the word Sikh, or that the people of the Indian diaspora refer to themselves as South Asian, even though she was one of them. I understand that her mother did not teach Sam much of anything about her background, but I still think that in seventeen years of life she would have picked the most basic things up.

Second, I also felt that Samar’s mother’s childrearing didn’t completely fit Sharan’s background as a psychotherapist. In my opinion most people with her grounding in psychotherapy could have foreseen the difficulties she was creating for her child by keeping her completely separated from any and all family besides herself and failing to teach her anything about her background. Had Sharan been a member of a different profession, I would have found her choices more believable.

The novel’s final chapter serves as a kind of epilogue showing a more assured and self-aware Samar than the one with which we’ve spent much of the book. I found it comforting, but at the same time, it felt a bit out of place.

But these aren’t major criticisms. Shine, Cocount Moon moved me and made me reflect about my own life, and the degree to which I have assimilated since emigrating to the United States; the things I miss about the culture of my native country and the large family I left behind. There are no easy answers when it comes to these issues, and so the book was not always easy reading for me, but I am glad I bought it, and got to experience Samar’s touching journey. B/B+ for this one.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

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I had a blast reading The Birthday Present, the third and final story in your Countess Trilogy. To readers who have not read the earlier stories, but would like to read this one, I have to suggest reading this series in order.

Like The Countess’s Client and An Impolite Seduction, The Birthday Present is a Harlequin Spice Brief set in the late eighteenth century and narrated by its heroine, Anna, Countess von Esslin, who details her sexual adventures and her encounters with the Scottish scientist James McKirnan. James is a thorn in Anna’s side, but he makes her hot as well as bothered.

It’s been fourteen years since James and Anna first met in a Paris brothel and eleven years since their encounter in Derbyshire. Both are now living in Munich, since it is where Anna prefers to live and since she had, in retaliation for James’s actions in the earlier stories, spread rumors about him that made it difficult for him to live anywhere else.

Anna’s thirty-fourth birthday has arrived, and although she is the hostess of a popular salon, she feels dissatisfied. As she explains:

Most of the regular visitors to my salon were either distinguished old men or energetic young artists and scholars. The former held no interest for me for reasons that should be obvious, and the latter, if more appealing in physical form, proved equally unsatisfying when consumed as a regular diet. The new, romantic generation was far too high-strung and sensitive for my tastes–young men bored me, though they clustered around me like gnats and, after a few years in Munich, the thought of spreading my thighs for yet another adoring and submissive young poet was enough to make me cry with frustration.

Anna’s celibacy has lasted for two years, and she is therefore morose when she is invited to King Maximillian Joseph’s first court ball. Her birthday falls on this same night. At the ball, James McKirnan insists on a dance with her, and since he has some influence with the royals despite his common birth, Anna cannot afford to snub him in public.

Therefore, Anna dances and spars with her enemy. The banter between the two is delicious:

“Will I ever get anything but frowns from you, Countess?” James had just asked me in his usual light, mocking manner. He was leading me through the first steps of a complicated rondeau.

I told him coldly that if he ever did anything to earn a smile from me, I would certainly not withhold it.

Before James can reply, the dance is interrupted by Anna’s cousin Robert, who wants to present her with a birthday gift elsewhere in the palace. Robert claims his present is what Anna wants most in the world. He leads her to a closed door in the Palace’s east wing, and insists on blindfolding her, saying that he cannot give her this gift if she refuses to wear the blindfold.

Anna’s curiosity gets the better of her and she agrees to Robert’s condition. Inside the room, she encounters a nude, well-muscled and aroused man who gives her the vigorous, satisfying sex she has been craving. But one encounter is not enough for Anna, and she asks Robert to set up another.

Will Anna uncover her secret lover’s identity? Will the man satisfy her again? And how will Anna’s contest of wills with the Scotsman who is the bane of her existence resolve itself?

Like An Impolite Seduction, The Birthday Present is both sexy and hilarious. I think the plot here was the cleverest of this trilogy yet, but I won’t give it away. The lovemaking is very erotic, but this is also the most romantic of the three stories IMO.

In my review of The Countess’s Client I said that the jury was still out on James, but between the second story and this one, he has won me over.

One of the most satisfying things in this story was the way Anna and James remained true to themselves yet had matured and softened a little with the passage of time. I liked that both remained two strong-willed people; that Anna’s snobbery did not disappear overnight and that her sexual appetite is here to stay. She is only a bit less entrenched in her views at the end of the trilogy than she was in the beginning, but that bit is enough for me to believe in the happy ending.

And speaking of the ending, although it was not a traditional HEA, I thought it was perfect for these characters. It made me hoot with laughter, and spread a silly grin across my face, too. A- for The Birthday Present.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: An Impolite Seduction by Alison Richardson
2. REVIEW: The Countess’s Client by Alison Richardson
3. REVIEW: Harlequin Present’s One Click Buy, December

Recently I reviewed The Countess’s Client, the first Spice Brief in your Countess Trilogy. I enjoyed the story, and especially its haughty narrator, Anna, Countess von Esslin, a young widow with a taste for good sex on her own terms. To read more about her, I purchased An Impolite Seduction, the second story in the trilogy.

As An Impolite Seduction begins, three years have passed since Anna has last encountered the man who makes her heart, and other parts, go pitter patter. As she puts it:

I have had many men in my short life, and in every case but one, I have left them on cordial terms. The one exception, an execrable Scotsman I had known in Paris, was guilty of the basest treachery against me, and after we parted my one consolation was the knowledge that I could likely live out the rest of my life without ever having to set eyes on him again.

But Anna was too quick to console herself with James’ absence from her life. While visiting England to attend her cousin Charlotte’s wedding, Anna discovers that James is the neighbor of the man Charlotte is affianced to. Anna will be forced to spend much time in his odious, common, and oh-so-sexy, company.

And that is not the only problem afoot. It seems that Charlotte’s betrothed is a pious earl entirely lacking in sexual experience, and Charlotte herself is also a virgin. Anna is worried that her cousin’s wedding night will be disappointing at best.

What is a cosmopolitan countess to do but invite an Italian gentleman to seduce cousin Charlotte out of her pitiable inexperience, and maintain utmost decorum at dinner while a certain execrable Scotsman strokes her to orgasm beneath the table?

I had tremendous fun reading An Impolite Seduction. The sex was sexier here, in my opinion, than in The Countess’s Client, enhanced by Anna’s snobbery, which added to the sexual tension in paragraphs like this one:

Yet the right suit of clothes does not make a man a gentleman, and I was well aware that James was nothing more than the son of a common tradesman, whatever pretensions he might affect. Men from the lower orders have their uses, of course (and James, to be frank, fucked like a prize-winning Thoroughbred), but they should understand that they serve at our pleasure; they must not try to lead where it is their duty to follow.

Of course James does not understand this at all, and I loved the way the antagonism, and sparks, between Anna and James kicked into higher gear, as each of them attempted to rout the other.

I did wish that their relationship was developed a bit more outside the bedroom than it was, but this is erotica after all. Also, the story is written with a wink at the reader, leading us to understand that Anna doth protest too much; the narration sometimes indicates that Anna means yes when she says no. I mention this because it is something that some readers may object to, but while I understand why, I was able, for the most part, to view this story as a lighthearted romp.

Several moments had me guffawing; the blend of hilarity and sexual tension was highly entertaining. The last paragraph was priceless and I am now eager to read the final story in this trilogy, The Birthday Present. B+/A- for An Impolite Seduction.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in ebook format at Sony and other ebook retailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Countess’s Client by Alison Richardson
2. REVIEW: The Secret to Seduction by Julie Anne Long
3. REVIEW: The Rules of Seduction by Madeline Hunter

I have a bone to pick with you. I’ve got a packed read-and-review schedule for the next month or so, and I need to be able to move from book to book. But you’ve made that impossible. Yes, I blame you. It’s your fault that your book, Jellicoe Road, left me so drained and dazed that I can’t read anything else.

I tried. I tried a sexy historical romance. I tried a contemporary erotic novel. I tried a thought-provoking science fiction story. I tried one of my very favorite books from last year. I even eyed another YA. I put them all back down after a page or two.

It’s not that they were bad. They just weren’t your book. They weren’t Jellicoe Road.

It really isn’t fair of you to write a book that’s so beautiful and powerful that everything else pales in comparison.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me explain that when I picked up this book to read for Keishon’s TBR challenge, I was cheating a bit. Yes, technically speaking Jellicoe Road was first published in 2006 (The Australian edition called On the Jellicoe Road), but the American edition came out in 2008, and it’s only been sitting in my TBR pile for a few months.

I first heard of this book here on the YA YA YAs blog. Then I heard that it won the American Library Association’s Printz Award. Then it was selected for DABWAHA. At that point I bit the bullet and bought it in hardcover, a purchase that was worth every penny and then some.

I read Jellicoe Road for the TBR challenge because this month’s theme is “Tortured hero or tortured heroine,” and I had the sense that this book had its share of tortured characters. Boy, was I right about that.

The heroine of the story, Taylor Markham, is a seventeen year old boarding school student at the Jellicoe School, which is about 600 kilometers from Sydney. Taylor was abandoned by her mother in the bathroom of a 7-Eleven when she was just eleven years old. A woman named Hannah began taking care of her at that point, and Taylor suspects Hannah knows something about her mother, but whatever it is, Hannah won’t reveal it.

Taylor enrolled in the Jellicoe School when she was thirteen. When she was fourteen, a hermit whispered something in her ear and then shot himself. But Taylor can’t remember what he told her, and she has other memory gaps as well. She also dreams about a boy in a tree who knows things about her. Sometimes her life feels like a mystery that she can’t solve.

Just after the hermit committed suicide in front of her, Taylor took off to try and find her mother. On the way to Sydney she met a boy named Jonah Griggs, who is rumored to have killed his father, and who is one of the cadets, military school students who camp near Taylor’s school for six weeks every spring and every fall.

The kids from Taylor’s school have a territorial war with the cadets and with a third group of students who live in the town, known as the townies. So Taylor’s running off with a cadet was not looked on well by her fellow students. But Taylor and Jonah made a connection. Taylor opened her heart to Jonah and trusted him, and when he called an adult to come and take them back to their schools, she felt betrayed.

Now, three years later, Taylor is unwilling to trust anyone again. She presents a hardened exterior to the world. Despite this, Taylor is chosen through some convoluted politics to be the leader of the Jellicoe School kids in the next round of wars. The leader of the townies is Chaz Santangelo, who has a history with Taylor’s friend and supporter, Raffaela. And the leader of the cadets is Jonah Griggs. So Taylor must come face to face with Jonah again, this time as two leaders of enemy factions.

And just as this is about to happen, Hannah, the one constant in Taylor’s life since her mother abandoned her, disappears from her house without a word to Taylor.

As this story unfolds, told in Taylor’s first person narration POV, it is interspersed with third person italicized fragments of another story, about a group of kids who were involved in a car accident that killed the parents of three of them. The connection between the two stories isn’t revealed until deep into the book, so I won’t say what it is.

Can Taylor lead the Jellicoe School? Where has Hannah gone to? Will Taylor be able to piece together the secrets from her past, or unearth her lost memories? What about Jonah Griggs? Is he truly the enemy, or does he care for Taylor more than he allows her to see? And how is the story of the other group of kids relevant?

The above is a summary of what the book is about, but it doesn’t do justice to how moving it is, how good the writing is, or how memorable the characters are. Taylor is indelibly so. Although she has a lot to be tortured about, she is the last person to wear her suffering on her sleeve. Instead, she has a stony demeanor.

Here, for example, is an exchange between Hannah and Taylor which takes place when Hannah informs Taylor of the transfer of some girls to the dormitory Taylor is in charge of:

“Transfers,” she says, handing me the sheet. I don’t bother even looking at it.

“My House is full. No more transfers,” I tell her.

“There are some fragile kids on that list.”

“Then why transfer them to me?”

“Because you’ll be here during the holidays.”

“What makes you think I don’t have anywhere to go these holidays?”

“I want you to take them under your wing, Taylor.”

“I don’t have wings, Hannah.”

But for all her prickliness, Taylor’s inner thoughts eventually reveal her vulnerability. Here’s a scene that comes when she is floating on water:

My body becomes a raft and there’s this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes–the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.

If Taylor isn’t what she appears to be at first, neither are many of the other characters. Their layers are peeled back gradually, and involve discoveries of things neither Taylor nor the readers know, so I don’t want to reveal them. In fact, it takes a few chapters to figure out exactly what is going on, but that is part of the charm of the book, because the reader’s confusion mirrors the sense of mystery Taylor feels about her own life. Some of the puzzles take most of the book to be put together, and although I guessed at certain truths before Taylor understood these things, that did not lessen my enjoyment of the book.

In fact, “enjoyment” seems like too mild a word. After its slow start, the book gathered more and more momentum, until I was completely swept away from thoughts of my own life. I became so invested in Taylor and the other characters in the book that some sections seemed heartbreaking to read, albeit in a cathartic and healing way. I laughed and cried — or, as my husband put it, “blubbered.” When I finished this book, my tear ducts felt completely empty.

I loved the intricacy of this story, the way so many small and seemingly unimportant details turned out to be important in the end, the way the different threads connected. It’s a rare book that seems so seamless when I finish it, that takes such complete hold of me with its magic.

Despite its YA designation, Jellicoe Road deals with a lot of adult themes, and includes a romance and even a couple of brief sex scenes, so while I would not recommend it for younger kids, I do wholeheartedly recommend it to older teens and to adults.

Thank you, Ms. Marchetta, for writing such a powerful, beautiful, unforgettable book. A for Jellicoe Road.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased at Amazon. No ebook although this is a HarperTeen release and HT is fairly good about ebook releases. At least you know who to contact if you want a legitimate digital copy.

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2. REVIEW: Road to Love by Linda Ford (5/08)
3. On the Road to the Final Four

Last May, when I reviewed Wicked Gentlemen, Ann Somerville recommended some m/m romances to me. I checked out excerpts from the books she mentioned, and of them all, A Strong and Sudden Thaw stood out the most.

I purchased a copy of the book intending to read and probably review it, but not long after that, you posted that the publisher which originally put out your book in October 2006, Iris Print, was sending you royalty checks that bounced. Since you officially requested that readers not purchase new copies of A Strong and Sudden Thaw, I was torn over whether to review the book. I didn’t so much make a decision not to do it, as was enticed by the many other books clamoring for my attention, and as time passed, I forgot about my good intentions to review your book.

But this story has a happy ending. In July, Iris Print went out of business, and two and a half months ago, a new edition of A Strong and Sudden Thaw was published by Lethe Press. Readers can now purchase the book without worrying about stolen royalties.

In January, I signed up for Keishon’s TBR Challenge, and when Keishon posted that April’s theme would be “Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, SFR or Fantasy” I looked through my bookshelves and found A Strong and Sudden Thaw. Since the book is not only a m/m romance but also a fantasy/science fiction hybrid set in a post-apocalyptic Virginia, the April challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity to read and review the book.

As best as I can tell, A Strong and Sudden Thaw is set about a hundred years in the future. The land has become frozen and much technology has been lost, at least in the town of Moline, where David Anderson, the narrator of the book, lives. Because of the Ice, as it is known, society has reverted to pioneer ways, and David and his family live off the land. The family is close knit; David is the oldest of five children ranging in ages from sixteen (David) to five (his little sister, Almond). David’s maternal grandmother, whom he calls “Grandmam” (his parents are “Pa” and “Mam”) also lives with the family.

Recently dragons have appeared in the skies of Moline, to snatch a sheep here or there, but once they even snatched a baby. The people of Moline organized a posse to go after them, but the mission failed – the dragons’ scales protect them from bullets.

But that is not David’s most immediate concern. His mother, May-Marie, wants David to marry one of the girls in town, but David has no interest in this girl or in any other girl. He knows other boys his age are interested in girls, and he realizes that something about himself is different.

When a young healer named Callan comes to Moline from Florida, David strikes up a friendship with Callan, who lends him his precious and rare books, and treats Almond and David’s grandmother’s ailments with gentle thoughtfulness.

David and Callan become close, and David begins to realize he is attracted to Callan, and to dream about his friend at night. But David doesn’t believe his feelings are reciprocated, and doesn’t even realize that it is possible for two men to become lovers.

It’s not until Callan and another man in town are arrested for engaging in sexual acts (something to which David was a witness) that David realizes it might be possible for him to have the kind of relationship he has dreamed of with Callan.

There are many obstacles to face first, though: the intolerance of the townspeople, including David’s own mother, Callan’s punishement for his “crime,” the dragons, and the government, which beings to seem more and more corrupt.

A Strong and Sudden Thaw is narrated in a David’s distinctive voice. Here is the opening paragraph:

There’s an old scenic view about halfway up the mountain, alongside where the old highway runs. The signs are fading, of course, and the pavement’s cracked and ruined, invaded years ago by roots of the scrub pines reclaiming what men stole from them back in the Before. There used to be a fence, a low barrier of iron-grey metal put up by the old people, but it’s gone now too. My mam always told me not to lean on that fence, and she was right, because one day late last summer, after a torrential rain that left us all knee-deep in cold black muck, that twisted fence went right over the edge. Just following after our world, I guess, plummeting over the edge into the abyss. Or at least that’s what Grandmam says, and she ought to know, as she remembers the Before times. She tells stories that make the old world sound like spun sugar candy you get at the Harvest Fair. Rich and sweet, but destined to crumble away at the first hard rain.

The narrative voice of A Strong and Sudden Thaw is one of my favorite things about it. Another is the way the characters, both major and minor, come alive.

David is wonderful, and I loved the way that despite his relative ignorance of things like history and politics, you showed that he possessed a lively intelligence. He is also courageous and honest, so much so that I sometimes feared for him. Callan is less distinctive, but very sympathetic, a gentle, educated, bright and caring man who clearly loves David.

David’s family members are also very memorable, from the fairy tale telling Grandmam, who remembers the days before the Ice and shows more tolerance and understanding of David’s love for Callan than most of the other characters do, to David’s father, Brock, a deeply honest and honorable yet pragmatic man, to David’s siblings and his mother, May-Marie, a religious woman who believes that physical love between men is wrong but loves her son very much nonetheless.

Many of the townspeople are also distinctive, so I was very impressed with the thought that went into creating each and every character.

The fantastical element is introduced at the beginning of A Strong and Sudden Thaw but it soon takes a backseat to the relationships and the story of the town’s intolerance toward Callan’s sexual orientation. Eventually though, the dragons make their presence in the story felt in spades, and the focus of the story shifts somewhat, though not entirely.

The book is quite suspenseful, so much so that I peeked ahead to see how things would turn out for the two heroes, something I almost never do. It was also, to me, reminiscent of both the later Laura Ingalls Wilder “Little House” books, because of its focus on a pioneer-like community’s survival, and of the movie version of “Brokeback Mountain,” because of the censure David and Callan face from their community, and the way they have to hide their feelings for much of the story.

David and Callan’s initial falling in love happens very quickly, and I would have liked for it to be drawn out more. The conflict is mainly an external one, the fact that their relationship is forbidden. I liked that the book didn’t take the simple way out most of the time, so I was a bit disappointed in the resolution to David and Callan’s difficulties, which seemed a bit too easy.

A bigger problem for me, though, was the age difference between the two heroes and the way it was never addressed in the book. When things first get physical between them, David is sixteen and Callan twenty-three, and that seven year age gap bothered me. I have mixed feelings about it because in many ways David’s youth is necessary to the book’s coming-of-age story aspect.

I realize that David was a mature sixteen year old, and Callan a young twenty-three, but I was still uncomfortable. I think that if David had been even a year or two older, or if Callan had been younger, or else if the age difference had been discussed by the main characters, I might have not been so uncomfortable with it. But the only time the age difference came up was in the context of the narrow-minded side characters who felt that Callan had corrupted David and turned him gay. While I have no doubt that David was gay before he ever met Callan, I would have liked to see the age difference debated or at least acknowledged without being attached to homophobia.

For that reason, I can’t endorse A Strong and Sudden Thaw as strongly as I might otherwise. I’m not sorry that I read this original and well-written tale, I just wish that my enjoyment had been wholehearted. B for this one.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in trade paperback from independent bookstore near you or ebook format at AllRomanceEbooks and other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Ghostland by Jory Strong
2. 2008 Golden Heart for Novel WINNER with Strong Romantic Elements
3. 2008 RITA WINNER for Novel with Strong Romantic Elements

Janine: The Better to Hold You was one of my most anticipated books of 2009. I’m a big fan of Alisa Sheckley’s wry, satirical chick lit novels which were published under the name Alisa Kwitney. I remember picking up The Dominant Blonde back in 2002 and being so delighted to discover a new-to-me-author who had written such an intelligent, funny and touching book. Sex as a Second Language is also a big favorite of mine.

Jennie: Yes, Kwitney has probably been my favorite contemporary/chick lit novelist for a while now, ever since I read The Dominant Blonde (at your urging, I believe, Janine!). I’ve enjoyed all of the books I’ve read by her since then, particularly Sex as a Second Language and On the Couch.

Janine: In discussing her books with a friend, I once said that this author never flinches from showing her characters in embarrassing situations or portraying them making unwise choices, but their witty observations and wobbly egos always save them from appearing less than bright. Instead, they come across as intelligent, insightful people with flaws, foibles and insecurities of which they are acutely aware. Like soft boiled eggs, Kwitney’s characters have outer shells that crack when they are hit, revealing a shaky layer that protects an even more vulnerable core.

All of this is true of Abra Barrow, the heroine and narrator of The Better to Hold You. A 29-year-old veterinarian interning at New York City’s Animal Medical Institute, Abra is also the daughter of a washed up B-movie actress and a Spanish director. Abra’s husband Hunter is a writer who recently visited Transylvania to investigate werewolf myths. Since his return to Manhattan, Hunter has been writing obsessively, craving meat, and playing dominance games both in and out of bed. Abra also begins to suspect that Hunter may be cheating on her.

Meanwhile, at the Animal Medical Institute, Abra’s instructor Malachy Knox, a brilliant researcher whom the interns have dubbed “Mad Mai,” lectures about the lycanthrope virus, which he believes can change some people on the cellular level. Malachy thinks Hunter may have learned something important about the virus during his visit to Transylvania.

When a dog named Pia, who appears to be part wolf, is brought to the institute for medical treatment, Abra and her friend Lilliana suspect that Malachy might experiment on Pia unless they prevent it. Abra is presented with the opportunity to do so when a scruffy man she previously saw on the subway comes to the institute and introduces himself as Red Mallin, a wildlife removal operator from out of town, and a friend of Pia’s owner. Abra decides to take the chance that Red is really who he says he is, and entrusts Pia to his safe-keeping.

The meeting is brief, but Abra is struck and flattered by Red’s obvious attraction to her, since she has never felt entirely secure in her marriage to Hunter. Though Hunter is much more her type — urban, handsome and well-educated — he has always seemed to Abra to be a little bit out of her reach. Going back as far as college, when their relationship began, Abra has never been certain that what Hunter saw in her — “a little nun, perfectly at peace with herself” — is really there.

Disagreements begin to crop up more and more in Hunter and Abra’s marriage, but Abra is afraid to stand up for herself, because she doesn’t want to lose Hunter. She begins to dream strange, vivid dreams. When Abra visits her eccentric mother, her mom does a tarot reading which reveals that magic is coming into Abra’s life, that the universe will be playing a trick on her, and that Abra may be in danger.

The tension between Abra and Hunter escalates, leading to an ugly discovery. Eventually, Hunter decides to relocate to the country, and Abra follows him to the town of Northside, where she encounters Red Mallin, and things that go bump in the night…

The Better to Hold You is a tough book to review because, although there are paranormal goings on throughout the book, Abra, the narrator, doesn’t see them for what they are until more than halfway through the book. So without getting into spoiler terrain, it is difficult to describe these.

Jennie: I think you’ve done quite a good job without giving too much away. I really like your comparison of Kwitney’s character’s to soft-boiled eggs. Very apt! And it encapsulates why I like her heroes and heroines so much: Kwitney manages to create heroines that are relatably neurotic without being pathetic or weak. She creates heroes that manage to retain an appealing masculinity while showing quite a bit more vulnerability than your average romance hero ever shows (a few of Kwitney’s heroes could fairly be described as “bumbling”, but it doesn’t take away from their charm or lessen their masculine appeal).

Janine: I so agree with you about her heroes! Before going into the many things I enjoyed in The Better to Hold You, I’ll admit that because the novel is classified as urban fantasy, I was expecting a different book — one where the fantastical elements were more pronounced throughout. I got impatient waiting for Abra to realize what was going on around her, though in hindsight, I think it was very realistic that she wouldn’t. How many of us would believe in werewolves and other monsters? For Abra to deny what was going on was actually pretty sensible on one level.

Jennie: I sort of had the opposite reaction, in that I think I expected what I got – a Kwitney book with paranormal overtones. But I actually got more annoyed by Abra’s denseness as the book wore on – to the point where it seemed that it wasn’t so much sensible behavior from a character’s perspective but perhaps necessitated by the plot. I also felt the lack of a big “aha!” moment – it was more like: denial, denial, denial, and then, “oh, okay, all this stuff is real”, without as much dramatic tension as I would have expected from such a revelation.

Janine: I didn’t feel that Abra’s denial was out of character, but I do agree with you about the lack of a dramatic revelation. One thing that was really interesting was the way Abra’s denial about the supernatural happenings around her mirrored her denial of the problems in her marriage to Hunter. Even though Abra didn’t see the signs as clearly as she could have, they came across to me as a reader.

Jennie: Yes, and I think that’s what created some frustration for me as a reader. Particularly in first person narration, to have events presented to the reader by the narrator and interpreted by the reader through the narrator, and to have the narrator come to very different conclusions…well, I think it creates a slight sense of dissonance. There is just something different about first person narration (which I am a fan of, by the way) – being inside a character’s head creates an association that, at least for me, makes the character’s blind spots harder to take.

Janine: That is interesting, because I actually have the opposite feeling. I expect blind spots from a first person narrator (what is termed “the unreliable narrator” in English classes). I enjoy the tension these blind spots create, the feeling that I realize something that the narrator does not. It is actually when blind spots are absent, and the narrator’s perception is matched or validated by that of all the other characters, that I become frustrated, because that never happens to anyone in real life. So I was glad that wasn’t the case here. My only problem with Abra’s denial was that it made the fantasy elements of the book less visible, and I wanted a full blown urban fantasy book.

To get back to the storyline, Abra’s fear of being dumped by her husband prevented her from taking a stand and asking for what she wanted and needed from him, and my feeling was that this in turn was one of the things that made Hunter more aloof.

This book really made me think about something that romances don’t always address — the fact that so often in romantic relationships, there is one who wants or needs the other more than he or she is wanted or needed in return.

In Abra’s relationship with Hunter, it was Abra who was in the less secure position. In her interactions with Red, though, she was in the more secure postion. Sheckley showed both the appeal of both Hunter and Red: the appeal of the unattainable man, and the appeal of the man who makes you feel like a queen.

Jennie: Yes, I think Scheckley did do a good job portraying this realistically – and even tying in some of the fantastical elements (the idea of the alpha male being depicted in a rather literal way, here).

Janine: Yes. I wish I could say I loved either Red or Hunter, the way I loved Liam from The Dominant Blonde. But just as she showed the attractive sides of both men, Sheckley also showed their unattractive aspects. Red was a little too country for Abra in many ways, while Hunter, who on paper was more her type, didn’t show her the same level of devotion.

Jennie: See, I found Hunter just insufferable. He was realistically insufferable – I’ve seen relationships that are slightly less exaggerated versions of Hunter and Abra’s in real life. But I don’t find it appealing to read about, and the more appalling Hunter’s behavior got, the more I wanted him to get his comeuppance.

I think Red looked good in comparison to Hunter. He was such a contrast, in almost every way. He worshipped Abra, and I liked her enough to want her to be worshipped. No, I didn’t love him for himself as much as I loved Liam or some of the other heroes from the author’s Alisa Kwitney books. Perhaps I didn’t identify with him quite as much because we never got Red’s POV. But I did like him, quite a lot.

Janine:I liked him as a person, but he was not exactly romantic hero material to me. Hunter had more of the romantic glamour that I look for, but with a big downside. I did like Abra very much though. She was an insightful, witty and caring woman, and I felt she deserved someone who could fulfill her needs.

Jennie: Yes, exactly. And as with the best romances, I think there was some recognition that Abra herself needed to change in order to get her happy ending.

Janine: Good point. Let’s talk a bit about Sheckley’s prose style. I feel that in terms of sheer craftsmanship, she is one of the most skilled authors of contemporary romantic fiction and that she deserves to be much better known than she is. Here are some of the reasons why:

1) Her dialogue is spot on, as in this conversation between Abra and her mother:

My mother sighed and lit a cigarette, watching me get myself back under control. “Here. Do you want a cigarette? Don’t look at me like that, sometimes it helps.” She shook out the match. “Why you want to keep him with you, I’ll never understand. He’s a bastard.”

I gave a little hiccup of a laugh. “You just think all men are bastards, Mom.”

“It’s a safe assumption.”

“God.” I folded the tissue and blew my nose again. “How my father stayed married with you for ten years, I’ll never know.”

“You talk like he’s such an angel. Remember who left!”

“Mom, you were having affairs right and left. And you hounded him all the time. I remember when I was ten you actually had a fight where you said he was personally responsible for the subjugation of women in the Spain.”

“He was a filmmaker. There’s a responsibility there. Besides, he said a lot of shit about me.”

2) She also has a great way with narration and metaphors:

The problem with Manhattan is, everyone comes here eventually -all your old friends, enemies, lovers, demons. People you met on vacation in Nepal will wind up beating you out for a taxi. The bully who called you dog breath all through first grade will turn up at your local diner, and will remember you didn’t come to his sixth birthday party, which is where the whole trouble began. Don’t come to the big city to become anonymous. New York is like Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West turns out to be the lady who didn’t like your dog back in Kansas.

3) Another thing I love is her wry social satire. For example, there is this great spoof of self-help books when Abra picks up a book called Understanding the Alpha Male:

Is your mate an Alpha Male? Take this test.

1. Would your mate describe himself as:
A) A team player
B) One of the guys
C) A highly autonomous individual with leadership capabilities
D) Your lapdog

2. When confronted with a major life choice, does your man
A) Ask your advice
B) Ask an expert’s opinion
C) Tell you and the expert what’s wrong with both of you
D) Pant and whine

3. When driving, if cut off by another car, does your mate
A) Curse and yell
B) Pursue the offending vehicle very closely and then swerve off at the last possible moment before impact
C) Physically assault the small dog sitting in the other driver’s lap
D) Shake uncontrollably, often losing control of his bladder.

Jennie: Yes, I love this author’s voice. I was happy that the change in genres didn’t change her prose. I also really liked the clever weaving of fairy tale elements into the story. Even when Scheckley went a bit over the top with them, late in the story, I appreciated that here was a paranormal that didn’t take itself too seriously.

Janine: I think I actually wanted the book to take itself a bit more seriously. I feel a little torn on what to grade The Better to Hold You because, though the charms of Sheckley’s writing are many, this particular book was somewhat slow to get off the ground, and I wish that I’d fallen in love with one of the male characters. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it and am glad I read it. I look forward to the next book in the series, Moonburn, which comes out May 19th. My grade for The Better to Hold You is a B.

Jennie: My grade is also a B (though a high B; it was almost a B+), and I will definitely read the next book in the series. I think ultimately my issues were mostly centered on the power imbalance between Hunter and Abra; if the villains had been punished more thoroughly for their misdeeds, I would have found the book as a whole more satisfying.

Janine: My take on that was that the villains weren’t punished more thoroughly because we’ll be seeing more of them in future books. I agree with you about the book being a high B — not quite a B+ but better than many other books I’d rate a B. I hope readers give it a try.

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Flirting in Cars by Alisa Kwitney
2. REVIEW: Sex as a Second Language by Alisa Kwitney
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

Exactly one hundred days to her marriage to her husband Andy, Ellen Graham literally crosses paths with her ex-boyfriend Leo. Ellen describes their encounter this way:

From the outside, say if you were a cabdriver watching frantic jaywalkers scramble to cross the street in the final seconds before the light changed, it was only a mundane, urban snapshot: two seeming strangers, with little in common but their flimsy black umbrellas, passing in an intersection, making fleeting eye contact, and exchanging stiff but not unfriendly hellos before moving on their way.

But inside was a very different story. Inside, I was reeling, churning, breathless as I made it onto the safety of the curb and into a virtually empty diner near Union Square. Like seeing a ghost, I thought, one of those expressions I’ve heard a thousand times but never fully registered until that moment. I closed my umbrella and unzipped my coat, my heart still pounding. As I watched the waitress wiped down a table with hard, expert strokes, I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.

Although Ellen is happy in her new marriage to Andy, when her cell phone rings only minutes after the encounter and it turns out to be Leo, asking where she is, she tells him. He arrives shortly. Since they haven’t seen each other in several years and their breakup was painful for Ellen, she’s pleased to tell him she’s now married. Leo, who says he has missed her and apologizes “For everything,” suggests that they try out being friends and despite her better judgment, Ellen hears herself agreeing.

Ellen gradually tells the reader the story of her past. She is originally from Pittsburgh. Her mother, a junior high school math teacher, died of lung cancer, leaving thirteen year old Ellen, her older sister Suzanne and their salesman father bereft.

When it was time for Ellen to go to college, she applied to Wake Forest, a school in North Carolina. The roommate she was assigned could not have been more different in her background. Margot is the daughter of a rich and prominent Atlanta attorney and a beauty queen from Charleston. She has flawless manners and a fondness for the color pink. Yet despite their differences, the girls hit it off and became fast friends, and it was through Margot that Ellen met Andy, Margot’s older brother. For many years, though, she thought of Andy as nothing more than Margot’s brother.

After graduating, Margot and Ellen headed for New York, where they got an apartment and started looking for work. Nothing great panned out for Ellen, so she took up waitressing to earn her keep and photography because it interested her.

Margot encouraged Ellen to treat her photography as more than a hobby, and eventually Ellen found a job as a film processor in a photo lab. She was twenty-three year old and working there when she got summoned for jury duty and was immediately intrigued by one of her fellow prospective jurors.

Leo was then in his late twenties, originally from Queens and working as a reporter for a small newspaper. He had dropped out of college after three years because he could not pay for a fourth year, and his brothers and father were firefighters. Leo has dark hair, olive skin, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, and Ellen felt a powerful sexual pull toward him right away.

When Leo was selected for the jury, Ellen disregarded all the advice she got from Margot’s brother Andy, an attorney, on how to avoid jury duty. Instead, she did everything she could to get selected, too. She was chosen, and eventually their mutual belief in the defendant’s innocence drew Leo to her. When Leo suggested that he visit her hotel room, against the rules for the sequestered jury members, Ellen tried to refuse, but what came out of her mouth was the word yes. As she observes, “It would be the first of many times I couldn’t say no to Leo.”

From that point on, Ellen and Leo became nearly inseparable. Ellen made herself completely available to Leo and did everything she could to impress and please him. At first, it appeared they were both passionately in love. They spent months in deep conversations and intense lovemaking, revealing everything to one another and comforting each other over their losses and vulnerabilities.

But after about a year of this, a gradual shift took place, and Ellen began to feel that while her feelings for Leo were as powerful as ever, Leo’s were becoming less so. He made it clear to Ellen that marriage was not for him. And then, after New Year’s Eve of 1999, when he failed to meet her at a party and did not call her that night or the next morning, Ellen suggested that they break up, thinking it would lead to the confrontation she wanted. Instead, Leo agreed with relief, and Ellen left his apartment feeling dumped.

In the wake of her breakup with Leo, Ellen found herself in a tailspin. She kept hoping Leo would change his mind and come back to her and spent her days listening to sad songs, staying in bed, neglecting her appearance, eating junk food and generally wallowing in her misery.

After months of this, Margot stepped in, telling Ellen that Leo made her “needy, spineless, insecure and one-dimensional,” that the pictures she took during that relationship were some of her worst, and that in essence, she needs to stop wasting her time on him.

Margot’s words snapped Ellen out of her self-pity, and she bought herself a new camera the next day. During the next year, Ellen learned all she could about photography, and got a job as the second assistant to a respected photographer. In the two years that followed, she learned even more and her confidence grew. She also dated a little bit, and healed a lot.

Then, while in Atlanta to celebrate Thanksgiving with Margot’s family three years after her breakup with Leo, Ellen ended up washing the dishes alongside Margot’s brother Andy. He asked after her and her family, and then if she’s single, and that is when Ellen realized Andy was interested in her and that she could fall in love with him.

Andy and Ellen had a smooth courtship that ended in marriage after three years of dating, and as the book begins, Ellen is doing well as a photographer and very happy with her husband. Andy, is as she says “approachable, friendly and somewhat goofy,” as well as “very cute” and “very successful.” Ellen says of the way their romantic relationship began:

It might not be as titillating as striking a love connection with a dark stranger while sequestered on a murder trial, but in some ways it was even better. It had substance. A sweet, solid core. A foundation of friendship and family–the simple things that really mattered, things that lasted. Andy wasn’t about mystery because I already knew him by the time he asked me out. Maybe I didn’t know him well, and the knowledge I did have was mostly filtered through Margot–but I still knew him in some fundamental, important way. I knew where he came from. I knew who he loved and who loved him back. I knew that he was a good brother and son. I knew that he was a funny, kind, athletic boy. The sort of boy who helps with the dishes after Thankgiving dinner, ulterior motive or not.

But when Ellen returns home from the diner, she decides not to tell Andy about her encounter with Leo, because Andy knows that her relationship with Leo was, in her own words, “intense,” and she is afraid he might be hurt. Instead, Ellen makes passionate love to her husband, trying to obliterate Leo’s presence from her mind.

When Ellen and Andy fly to Atlanta to visit the pregnant Margot and her husband Webb, Ellen is disturbed to find a message from Leo on her cell phone, one in which he says he has a question for her. She resolves not to return the call, but changes her mind when her preoccupation with what Leo’s question might be interferes with her ability to enjoy her visit with Margot and her in-laws.

So Ellen finally calls Leo back, and he reveals that he has a great opportunity for her — he’s arranged for her to photograph rock legend and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Drake Watters for the cover of a magazine. It is a huge career break for Ellen, but she does the right thing and calls back to leave a message on Leo’s machine turning it down.

But several days later, when Ellen’s agent calls about the same job, Ellen, assuming that Leo has taken himself out of the picture and is being generous, feels that she can accept the work.

Since Ellen’s sister Suzanne is a huge Drake Watters fan, Ellen allows her to tag along to Los Angeles for the photo shoot. But when Ellen arrives at the shoot’s location, she discovers Leo is waiting there. Will Suzanne, who always liked Leo and is less than approving of Ellen’s wealthy new family, prove an adequate chaperone, or will Ellen give in to her attraction to Leo?

Love the One You’re With is written in Ellen’s nicely conversational voice. As was very much the case with your first book, Something Borrowed, you do a very good job at portraying your heroine’s moral dilemma, her desire to do the right thing and the attraction she finds difficult to resist.

The book is propelled by a great deal of suspense surrounding the question of what moral lines Ellen will cross and what lines she will remain behind. Even as I wondered if Ellen would cheat on Andy, or even if not, what the fallout might be from her keeping secrets from him and from Margot, I found myself liking all the characters. There are no bad guys here, just imperfect human beings.

I also liked the way Ellen’s mother’s death and her lower middle class background affected the romantic conflict. Ellen had reinvented herself by going to Wake Forest and befriending the wealthy Margot. There were times when I wondered if she hadn’t married Margot’s brother Andy partly because his family was warm and loving and she did not have a mother. Leo’s background was more similar to Ellen’s, in that neither of them had rich parents, and they also both shared a love for New York.

But it was clear that Ellen did love Andy, despite the powerful attraction and unresolved feelings she had for Leo. As I read, I found myself torn between Andy, who was such a nice and committed guy, and Leo, who was more sexy to me, and who clearly also had feelings for Ellen.

In the end, I was mostly satisfied with Ellen’s choice and with the resolution of the story.

I also liked the way you portrayed the characters. Ellen is the star of this book, and she is mostly likable and understandable. There are a few times she behaves immaturely, but since she knows she is being immature, it was easy to forgive those instances. I thought the way she interrogates herself about her own choices, and the way she tries to justify or rationalize some of her more questionable actions was very lifelike and real.

Leo has a kind of charismatic appeal that makes it easy to understand Ellen’s attraction to him. He has just a little bit of the brooding loner and the dangerous bad boy in him, but at the same time, he also shows a very human and sympathetic side that makes it tempting to forgive him for the rough breakup that he put Ellen through, and for coming on to a married woman.

Andy is the quintessential nice guy, and he is mostly sweet and thoughtful, calm and calming, and clearly committed to Ellen. I have to say though that I wish that Andy’s courtship of Ellen had been shown more in the book, because I think then I might have found him as romantic and appealing as I did Leo, whereas without that, Andy’s slight goofiness did not always charm me, and I did wonder whether he and Ellen had enough in common.

Margot and Suzanne were interesting characters too, so completely different from one another yet both important to Ellen, in her corner at times, but far from perfect themselves. Ellen’s friendship with Margot feels almost as central to the story as her relationships with Andy and Leo, and I love the way you emphasize female friendships in your books, and make them as interesting as they are in real life.

While I found the ending of Love the One You’re With a bit rushed, I enjoyed the book much better than your most recent one just before it, Baby Proof, and almost as much as Something Borrowed. Something Blue remains my favorite of yours, but since Love the One You’re With was suspenseful and thoroughly enjoyable, I recommend it to our readers and give it a B+.

Sincerely,

Janine

PS for readers. Since the spoiler of who Ellen chooses in the end has been requested — Ellen ends up with Andy.

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format.

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1. REVIEW: Just Sex by Susan Kay Law
2. REVIEW: Through Thick and Thin by Alison Pace
3. REVIEW: Broken by Megan Hart

I first heard of your book, Wicked Gentlemen, when it was nominated in the GLBT category of our DA BWAHA March Madness tournament. Wicked Gentlemen made it to the third round of the tournament, which means it was the runner-up in the GLBT category.

At the time we were collecting votes, K.Z. Snow mentioned that the prose and storyline in the pdf excerpt posted on your site were phenomenal. Since I’m always hungry for the combination of phenomenal prose and storyline, I proceeded to read the excerpt. I was very impressed, and I quickly ordered the book.

Wicked Gentlemen is comprised of two closely connected novellas which blend the genres of steampunk paranormal, M/M romance, suspense and allegory smoothly and expertly. The first novella, “Mr. Sykes and the Firefly” is written in first person and narrated by one of the book’s two heroes, while the second novella, “Captain Harper and the Sixty Second Circle,” is written in third person, in the POV of the book’s other hero.

Both novellas are set in a world patterned after Victorian England, but one in which the descendants of demons, known as “Prodigals” have risen from hell to accept salvation from human priests. But instead of salvation the Prodigals encountered persecution. They are confined to the city, where most of them live in a subterranean ghetto called Hells Below. If they are suspected of any crime, they can be arrested and interrogated by the Inquisition, a religious police force.

Belimai Sykes is a Prodigal who resides above ground and makes his living by offering various services for hire. Like other Prodigals, Belimai possesses pointy ears, black nails and yellow eyes. Besides these, his demon ancestors also bequeathed him paranormal abilities, but since the nature of these aren’t revealed immediately, I won’t spoil their discovery for readers. In his past, Belimai was captured and tortured by the Inquisition, an experience which left him scarred and addicted to a drug called ophorium.

As “Mr. Sykes and the Firefly” begins, two men arrive at Belimai’s door. One is a physician, Dr. Edward Talbott, and the other an inquisitor, Captain William Harper. The two men are brothers-in-law. They want Belimai to investigate an abduction. Harper’s sister, Joan, who is also Tablott’s wife, has gone missing. She was last seen in a carriage which had been broken into. While Dr. Talbott reported the break in, his wife rode home in the carriage. But on their arrival at the Tablott residence, the driver and groom discovered that the interior of the carriage was empty.

Before her disappearance, Joan had been receiving warning letters from a Prodigal named Mr. Roffcale. Joan and Roffcale were both members of the Good Commons Society, an organization of activists that agitates for suffrage for both women and Prodigals. Joan’s involvement with the Commons was not a matter of public knowledge, though she often wrote controversial pamphlets. Now Captain Harper has arrested Roffcale and is holding him in a cell, but he hopes to avoid interrogating Roffcale since he doesn’t want Joan’s activism to become publicized.

Belimai agrees to take the case, and he and Captain Harper go to the Inquisition House to question Roffcale. Just entering the Inquisition House is agony for Belimai, who is assaulted with painful memories of his stay there. But worse is yet to come. When Belimai and Harper reach Roffcale’s cell they find only his disemboweled remains.

The sight leaves them both shaken, and when Captain Harper suggests that he owes Belimai a drink, Belimai prefers getting drunk to a sleepless night of trying to forget the murder. While they are drinking together, Belimai warms to Harper, despite his being an inquisitor. A drunk Harper then ends up in Belimai’s bed, but the next morning, they dismiss their lovemaking in what is a wonderful bit of dialogue and narration:

“About last night…” Harper shifted slightly. “I think it would be best if we got it clear between the two of us–”

“I have no intention of telling anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I smiled so that Harper could see my long teeth. “And I don’t think you’re likely to go bragging about it, so what’s left to say?”

“No, I meant between us… We were both pretty drunk. I just wanted you to understand that… ” Harper paused, unwilling to go on. Steadily, the pause began to spread into a lingering silence. He seemed unable to make himself speak of the night before. It amused, but didn’t surprise me.

“You want to make it clear that it was just a drunk fuck?” I filled in for him at last.

Belimai is incredibly hard on himself, but his self-deprecation is also part of what makes him fascinating. For example, his response to the above conversation is as follows:

It was pleasant to find another man as willing to let go as myself. Others had lingered in my bed and concerned themselves with the syringes scattered across my desk. They had clung to me as I descended into ruin. Some had attempted to save me. I had been wept on, slapped, and pulled into a dozen chapels by men who had mistaken me for their true love.

None of them had understood that my moments of sweetness were pure ophorium. Everything that they seemed to love about me came from the needles they detested. The man they desired was an illusion, an ugly stone made briefly beautiful by a trick of the light. In their own ways, each of them had fallen as deeply in love with my addiction as I had. None of them had known how absurd they were, begging me to leave behind that drug that was the source of all they loved most about me. My kindness, my calm, even my careless ease. Ophorium made me their perfect lover because it erased the truth of what I was.

But Belimai is in fact a better person than he believes he is, and Captain Harper is also not quite what he first appears to be. As they investigate Joan’s disappearance and Roffcale’s murder, which seems to be related to other killings, they begin to see through each other’s facades, even as things become more and more dangerous for them.

Wicked Gentlemen is a one of the most original books I have read in a long time. Though I’m not an expert on the paranormal and fantasy genres, the world building here struck me as fresh, consistent and startling.

The world of Wicked Gentlemen is constructed of unexpected combinations of pieces from our own history and mythologies that fit together into a flawless design. You also use physical, sensory details like the Prodigals’ sensitivity to light and holy water, and the humans’ sensitivity to heat, to make the reader feel that world.

Not only that, by making the priesthood police force threatening and dangerous, and the Prodigals victims of persecution, you raise thought provoking questions about the line between maintaining law and order and allowing personal freedom. But though it can be read as an allegory about racism, homophobia, and other forms of persecution, Wicked Gentlemen never feels preachy.

The characters of Belimai and Captain Harper are both appealing and extremely interesting, and a few of the secondary characters are almost as intriguing. Even though some of them only appear in a few pages, they felt very real to me.

The mystery and suspense plots are also well-executed, especially the one in the second novella, “Captain Harper and the Sixty Second Circle.” I wish I could say more about this novella, as I enjoyed it very much, but since it picks up where Belimai and Harper’s lives and relationship were left at the end of “Mr. Sykes and the Firefly,” I think that to do so would reveal too much.

Suffice to say that Harper, when we finally get his point-of-view in the second novella, is just as intriguing as Belimai.

The contrast between Belimai and Harper is the engine that drives the book.
Where Harper is a respected member of high society and a priest-inquisitor, Belimai is viewed by the same society which so respects Harper as guilty until proven innocent. If Harper is the pinnacle for which some men aspire, Belimai is viewed as the dregs.

The gap in their positions, and Harper’s seeming flawlessness in comparison with Belimai, is epitomized in the first moment of intimacy between them:

I led Captain Harper back to my rooms and peeled off his black coat and his priest’s collar. Slowly, I worked his gloves off, exposing his long fingers. His nails were as pink and glossy as the insides of a seashell. Each was tipped with a perfect white crescent. I kissed the soft skin of his palm. His stainless body was everything mine could never be. I hungered for that perfection.

It is that gap in their status that makes their relationship forbidden on all sorts of levels. Not just because they are both men, and the world in which they lived is Victorian in its sensibilities, but because of the mistrust, prejudice, and bigotry that separates their two races, and also since their stations in life are so very different that most of their acquaintances would not understand the relationship if they became aware of it. The barriers they face make their hunger for each other extremely compelling.

Harper and Belimai’s personalities are different as well, at least on the surface. Belimai is a sarcastic, self-deprecating rebel who is often contrary just for the sake of being contrary; Harper is seemingly devoted to duty. But the disappearance of his sister triggers long-dormant impulses in Harper, impulses that reveal that he too, is at heart a rebel, if one of a more quiet and less overt sort.

Just as the two men contrast, so do the two novellas, which differ not only in their suspense story arcs and POV characters but also in the fact that the first is narrated in first person and the second in third person.

Although I found that choice unusual, it worked for me because it made the book more textured and varied, and because while first person narration was suitable to Belimai’s talkative personality, third person was more appropriate for the quiet and private Captain Harper.

I have just a few quibbles about Wicked Gentlemen. First, there were a few times when I felt that the grittiness of the descriptions was slightly overdone, such as for example in a scene in which Harper just barely dodges the contents of a chamberpot. Second the description was frequently vivid and sharp; I loved, for example, this bit of ophorium high:

Two hours later, the night blossomed. The sky unfolded in rich waves of purple and blue velvet. Breezes traced pale violet ribbons through the darkness. Tiny buds of glittering stars burst into brilliant illuminations.

But as much as I loved your writing style, I noticed, after a while, that all the sentences were either short or medium-length, and I would have loved a little more variety in sentence length — an occasional long sentence here or there would have been nice.

Lastly, there were so many interesting characters, situations, and backstories in Wicked Gentlemen that I would have loved for the book to be a bit longer so that these could have been explored in more depth. More of Belimai and Harper’s relationship would have been good, too.

For our readers who may be wondering, I should mention that there is only one explicit love scene — but that one is pretty high on the heat meter. There is also violence in the book, but though I tend to be fairly sensitive to violence, I was able to handle it.

Although Wicked Gentlemen is not perfect, it is so sharply observed, so uniquely constructed, so original, and so touching in places that I have to give it a high recommendation. I am not in the habit of reading M/M romances but I enjoyed this one so much that I was very glad of the chance I took by spending $12.95 on it, and I’m now off to buy the anthology Tangle, which contains your novella, “Feral Machines.” As for Wicked Gentlemen, it’s an A- for me.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in trade paperback from Amazon or directly from the publisher. No ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: If His Kiss Is Wicked by Jo Goodman
2. REVIEW: If His Kiss Is Wicked by Jo Goodman
3. REVIEW: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Fire and Ice is the fifth and (if I’m not mistaken) final book in your Ice series, which features the agents of a ruthless spy organization known as the Committee. This one is all about the flamboyant Reno, Taka’s younger cousin.

Back in the third book, Ice Blue, Reno, aka Hiromasa Shinoda, a video-game loving Japanese punk with long red hair and teardrops tattooed on his cheeks, met up with Jilly Lovitz, Summer’s brainy half sister, who was then eighteen years old. From the moment those two laid eyes on each other, a powerful attraction was born, but Summer and Taka made Reno promise to stay far away from Jilly.

Fire and Ice opens two years later. Reno is now twenty-seven and an agent of the Committee (though how exactly he is able to do the Committee’s work looking as conspicuous as he does is not explained). In the opening scene, Reno learns that while Taka and Summer have gone into hiding from Russian mercenaries who have been hired to take out all the Committee’s agents, Jilly, unaware that they are no longer in Tokyo, has decided to pay them a visit. Realizing that Jilly is in danger, Reno breaks his promise to stay away from her in order to go to Japan and save her life.

Jilly has come to Tokyo in the wake of a one-night stand that went so badly she is uncertain whether or not she is technically still a virgin. Jilly, who at age twenty has already graduated from college and is now working on her PhD, has always been isolated from her peers because of her intelligence and her studies. In the two years since she last saw Reno, she has not gotten over her crush on him, and he is one of her reasons for coming to Japan.

Just as three of the Russian mercenaries are about to grab Jilly from Summer and Taka’s deserted apartment, Reno shows up and kills them. After escaping on the back of a motorcycle to a traditional Japanese inn where they encounter more mercenaries, Reno and Jilly head for the mountains. Reno’s grandfather, a yakuza (Japanese mafia) boss, has an onsen (traditional bathouse) there.

On the way to the onsen, they bicker as Reno does his best to annoy Jilly in order to maintain a distance between them and thus keep his promise to Summer and Taka, and even more so because he values his own freedom and recognizes that his feelings for Jilly endanger it. Jilly, meanwhile, keeps telling herself that now that she has seen him kill, her crush on Reno is a thing of yesterday. But even she realizes that she protests too much.

Just as they are about to arrive in the onsen, all hell breaks loose, leading Reno to wonder if there’s a traitor in his grandfather’s organization. So Reno and Jilly go on the run again, and this time, sharing close quarters leads to growing intimacy between them, as do close calls with death and desire.

Fire and Ice is a tough book to grade and review. At the end of my review of Ice Storm, I indicate that I have enjoyed the Ice series, but that its pleasures were diminishing for me. I loved Black Ice so much that though it’s not perfect, I gave it an A. Cold as Ice was a B+ for me, Ice Blue a B, and Ice Storm a B-.

So how did I feel about Fire and Ice? Fortunately, I am not sorry I spent $6.99 on it. But at the same time, I wish I loved it as much as I loved Black Ice.

One of the best things about Fire and Ice is that it is only nominally about the Committee. Except for a very brief appearance by Peter Madsen in the first scene of the book, the only other Committee agent who shows up in this story is Taka, and he is there far more in his capacity as Reno’s cousin and Jilly’s brother-in-law than as a secret agent.

That is all to the good in my opinion, because the Committee came very close to being reduced to a bunch of bumbling fools in Ice Storm, and I think that as a consequence the ruthless spy organization aspect of this series is pretty much played out.

Other elements we have seen before in the earlier books are present in Fire and Ice, including the pairing of a relatively innocent and softhearted heroine with a more experienced and tough hero, the hero and heroine’s going on the run together, the hero’s saving the heroine’s life while forcing her to confront her own desire for him, the heroine’s initial certainty that the hero doesn’t return her feelings, and her shock when faced with the brutality of death and killing.

While some of these ingredients are key to what made me love Black Ice, the fifth time around they don’t feel as fresh as they once did, and for the most part (with exceptions like a powerful scene in Reno’s apartment that involves an unexpected twist), I think Fire and Ice is at its weakest when they come into play.

The book is at its strongest when exploring newer terrain, such as the Japan setting, the relative youth of its hero and heroine, Reno’s fear of commitment, and the vulnerability that lies behind his punkster facade. You win big points from me for these aspects of the book. Reno, in particular, is a truly memorable character, especially in those moments where he reveals himself to Jilly or to the reader.

The fact that Reno and Jilly are in love to begin with is both a weakness and a strength in my eyes. It is mentioned on your website that a free story about Reno and Jilly’s first meeting will be available soon. I look forward to reading it, but there were times when I wished that falling-in-love process was shown more in the pages of Fire and Ice.

It’s clear why Jilly has a crush on the flamboyant Reno, and why her feelings deepen as he protects her, but it’s not so evident why Reno would feel the same way about Jilly, beyond his physical lust for her body, since although we are told she is brilliant, that brilliance isn’t shown, and otherwise there isn’t much that makes Jilly distinctive or different from many other young women, except perhaps for her for her sexual inexperience.

There is a scene in which Jilly puts together some information about Reno and arrives at a different view of him than she had before, and this scene does give a bit of insight into why Jilly might have attracted him. I would have liked to know even more about this aspect of his background.

At the same time, the presence of Jilly and Reno’s mutual obsession from the very first page of the book also serves to give the book a different twist that the previous Ice books did not have. Because he is already in love to begin with, Reno is softer with Jilly and more protective of her than Bastien, Peter, Taka and Serafin were with Chloe, Genevieve, Summer and Isobel, respectively. That is one of the things I liked best about Fire and Ice, especially since Reno is young and not ready to settle down, confused by his promises to Summer and Taka to stay away from Jilly and not sure what he wants to do about any of it.

On the whole, I found Reno intriguing enough to hold my attention easily, but Jilly less so. The Japan setting felt well-researched to me, and I was glad to read a book that was set at such a different locale. While there were times during Fire and Ice that I felt I was reading something I’d read before, there was just enough freshness to keep me interested, and I also savored your lean, tight writing style at several points. Had I not read the earlier books in the series, I would probably have liked Fire and Ice even more, but I still liked it as much as its most recent predecessor, or perhaps even a bit more. B- for Fire and Ice.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Ice Storm by Anne Stuart
2. REVIEW: Ice Blue by Anne Stuart
3. REVIEW: Cold as Ice by Anne Stuart

Black Ice is my favorite of all your books — the ones I’ve read, that is. You have a huge backlist and I have not come anywhere near reading them all, but I’ve read several of your most popular titles, including A Rose at Midnight, To Love a Dark Lord, Moonrise, Nightfall, Ritual Sins, three more books in your Ice series and others as well. I have enjoyed some of them more than others, but not until Black Ice came along did one of them blow me out of the water.

Twenty-three year old Chloe Underwood is a translator of children’s books living in Paris and longing for a little more sex and violence in her reading material. Little does Chloe know that she’s about to get more of both, but it won’t be in the pages of a book.

Chloe’s British roommate Sylvia is a fellow translator who had lined up a side job for herself, translating for some business people over the weekend in a chateau. At the last minute, Sylvia’s wealthy lover invites her to spend the weekend in his company. Sylvia’s dearest hope is to marry for money, but in the meantime, she can’t afford to lose her job. So Sylvia pleads with Chloe to take the weekend translating gig in her place, and Chloe reluctantly agrees. When a limo comes to pick up Sylvia, Chloe, with a suitcase full of Sylvia’s glamorous clothes, gets into it, little realizing the impact this action will have on her life.

Meanwhile, an operative whose real name is not revealed until later in the book has spent over two years establishing an identity as an arms dealer named Bastien Toussaint. Bastien, as he is referred to, works for a shadowy organization known as the Committee. At the Committee’s behest, Bastien has infiltrated an international cartel of arms dealers — the business people Chloe will be translating for. Bastien is ruthless enough that he will do whatever the job requires of him, or so he believes.

When Chloe arrives at the chateau, she makes the mistake of letting the cartel members, who claim to be food importers, believe that she speaks only French and English. In reality, she knows several other languages as well, and can understand them when they speak Italian or German. Bastien quickly deduces this, and also notices that Chloe’s clothes don’t fit her that well. The two things make him suspect her of being an operative sent to the meeting to kill someone — perhaps even himself.

Chloe, of course, is entirely innocent, but she is still in grave danger. Gradually the members of the cartel grow more suspicious of her, and they have no compunction about killing her. Chloe can feel menace emanating from some of the cartel members, but the situation she is in is so outlandish that rather than trust her nagging instincts, she tells herself that she is being paranoid.

The organization Bastien works for, though purportedly in business to save the world, is as ruthless and brutal as it needs to be in pursuit of that goal. And though Bastien believes he is every inch the bastard he needs to be to get that job done, his thoughts from his very first appearance in the book reveal that he is not quite as sanguine about every aspect of that job as the Committee expects him to be.

Pondering the fact that chateau staff members are carrying semiautomatics under their loose clothing that may very well be weapons that he himself provided, Bastien thinks that “It would be damned funny if one of them killed him.” Later on, speculating about Chloe’s purpose in coming to the chateau, he muses:

Had she come for him, or for someone else? Was the Committee checking up on his performance? It was always possible — he hadn’t bothered to hide the fact that he was weary beyond belief, no longer giving a damn. Life or death seemed minor distinctions to him, but once you went to work for the Committee they never let you go. He’d be killed, and probably sooner rather than later. Mademoiselle Underwood, with her shy eyes and soft mouth, might be just the one to do it.

And there was only one question. Would he let her?

Those are the earliest, but by no means the last, signs that Bastien has a death wish. After years of performing his job superbly, he is starting to get erratic.

Since he is playing the role of a married womanizer, Bastien can act on the attraction between Chloe and himself. He comes on to her and suggests that they have sex, but Chloe, conscious of his wedding ring as well as feeling that he is out of her league, declines.

Eventually the other cartel members become suspicious enough of Chloe that Bastien is expected to interrogate her, find out how much she knows, and then either kill her or allow another of them to do so. And so Bastien is faced with a choice — to continue taking lives in the name of saving the world, or to save one life, Chloe’s, and in doing so, save what’s left of his own soul.

Bastien makes his choice, but not before Chloe suffers at his hands, so that by the time he rescues her and they go on the run, Chloe hates and distrusts him. Eventually she realizes that her life depends on Bastien and his proficiency at the very skills that disturb her so much. She must grapple with just how much to trust someone that has done the things Bastien has done, and with what else she might be feeling for him.

Black Ice is not a perfect book; for one thing, there are some annoying discrepancies, such as the fact that Bastien’s age is given as both 32 and 34, and his aunt’s name is first referred to as Celeste and then as Cecile. Contradictory information is also given about the location of Chloe’s passport.

Also, even after six or seven readings, I’m still not clear on why the cartel members would want to bring in an outside translator rather than training one of their trusted employees to do that job. If they had a good reason for that, I think it should have been provided in the book.

But there is so much that I love about this novel. One of the wonderful things about Black Ice is that it isn’t just a book with a dark hero, it’s a book with a dark world; many of the secondary characters are violent or corrupt, to such a degree that reading it is like entering another dimension. I loved that world because it created countless moral ambiguities and dilemmas for the main characters.

There’s some wonderful dialogue in the book, and one of my favorite bits comes when Chloe figures out that Bastien is not who he claims to be:

She stared at him, a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Can you tell me one thing? Are you part of the good guys or the bad guys?”

“Trust me,” he said wearily, “there’s not much difference.”

This little exchange encapsulates one of the things I love so much about the book: that though very violent, it is also about how violence can, after a while, make us not as different from those we fight as we want to be. In the process of battling ruthless killers with violence, Bastien and his organization became ruthless too, until they were little better from those they wanted to save the world from.

I love the moral complexity of that, and of the fact that rather than idealizing people in violent professions in this book, you made me question the heavy cost of collateral damage, the morality of the people who accept it as necessary, and even more so, the morality of our asking others to do that kind of dirty work for the rest of us.

I know that some readers, including my fellow blogger Jayne, feel that Chloe, in her innocence, is not a good match for Bastien, and on my first reading of Black Ice, I did feel that she wasn’t as interesting as she could have been. But since I still loved the book enough to read it several times after that (including three rereads right after I finished it), I’ve gotten to know Chloe better in my rereadings and come to like her very much just as she is.

I am now more in agreement with the writer of the Publisher’s Weekly starred review of this book, who described the characterization in Black Ice as brilliant. I feel that Chloe’s innocence serves an important function; her reactions to the shocking violence that unfolds around her reminds the reader that violence should shock us, that each individual life has a value. Whether death claims a friend, an enemy or a stranger, Chloe is shaken because she is sensitive to violence, and that serves to sensitize the reader, as well as the desensitized Bastien.

I also think that Janet, another of my fellow bloggers, was onto something when she once said that Chloe also serves as a mirror that reflects Bastien’s long-suppressed desires and that she therefore has to be neutral, or in her case, clueless. I agree with that; I think that Bastien’s questioning of whether Chloe is innocent or deadly may be his way of examining himself. As Janet said, it’s his own degraded self that Bastien sees when he discovers Chloe’s innocence, and that is what prompts him to act to save her.

Third, there is also a normalcy to Chloe that, in the midst of all the surreal violence, grounds the story. A heroine whose personality and background was more like Bastien’s would have made this book relentlessly dark, and would have deprived it of a window into the safe and secure world we all take for granted.

Chloe has some wonderful lines in the book, such as when she wonders if she is her growing attraction to Bastien is a sign of Stockholm Syndrome, when she compares Bastien to a highwayman in a poem, and when she thinks of Bastien that “He was a monster, not even human. But he was her monster, keeping her safe, and she was past the point of caring.”

The evolution of Chloe and Bastien’s relationship is fascinating because even as Bastien becomes less accepting of the world he inhabits and of the dark side of himself, Chloe, as she grows more familiar with the world in which Bastien lives, condemns him less and less.

Just as I love seeing Chloe contend with who Bastien is and what her attraction to him means, I love seeing Bastien struggle with Chloe’s growing importance to him. If Chloe serves as the book’s moral center, Bastien is on a kind of see-saw in his thoughts and emotions, alternating between wanting to save Chloe and wanting to stop feeling responsible for her so that he can get back to focusing on his job.

There’s a gap between the blunt way Bastien forces Chloe to confront certain unpleasant truths and even threatens her at times, and the way he protects her over and over that makes him absolutely fascinating to me. He is pulled in three different directions, one by his training to obey the Committee and his tendency to look out for his own skin, another by his weariness and his death wish, and a third by his need to for once save a life.

It’s this combination of ruthless competence, weary vulnerability, and the almost quixotic need to save one American girl that makes Bastien such a layered and complex character. His internal conflict works perfectly because in trying to get Chloe out of the cartel and the Committee’s reach, Bastien is trying to get himself out of their reach, too.

The emergence of love from such a place, and between two individuals who would normally never have sought each other out, is a big part of what makes this book so romantic to me. There are sections in the book, particularly in its final third, which are as moving as anything I’ve read in a romantic suspense. Bastien has a speech in one scene in a hotel that, coming from a man who is so emotionally shut down, has to go down as one of the most romantic speeches I’ve ever read.

I don’t want to close this review without saying a few words about how much I enjoyed the Paris setting (Why, or why, aren’t more contemporary romances set outside the United States?), the wonderful use of snow and ice both for atmosphere and as a kind of metaphor for death, and the lean, terse writing. I think that in this case the spare tone is perfect for such an action-driven story, and I love the way (especially evident in the chapter endings) you conjure a mood with so few words.

For me, Black Ice remains a bona fide keeper, and I give it an A.

Sincerely,

Janine

****

Dear Janine,

I know your tastes in books don’t precisely align with those of your blogging partners. However, they very much align with mine, sometimes to an amazing degree. We often love the same authors. And often, out of ten or fifteen books that a favorite author has written, we’d luurrve the exact same three or four.

You read more widely than I do, to my lasting benefit. Upon your recommendations I’ve discovered, with great joy, the books of Sharon Shinn and Shana Abà©. Megan Hart and Pam Rosenthal are on top of my TBR list because of your enthusiasm for them.

Yet once in a while, a book comes along that illustrates just how individual reading is, even for two people who come as close to being two peas in a pod as we do, in terms of what we demand and desire in a book. Four years ago, we had a passionate difference of opinion over Laura Kinsale’s Shadow Heart, an imperfect book that I loved deeply and that you, as much as you wanted to, didn’t.

This time, that book is Black Ice.

Having not the least compunction about setting a book aside as soon as my interest wanes for whatever reason, I start many more books than I finish. And usually, if I finish a book, it’s an automatic A–”it’s no mean feat holding my attention, as I’m both fastidious and lazy as a reader.

I finished Black Ice on the day I started it, but it’s not a keeper for me.

There is much to recommend. Stuart writes a muscular prose that is perfectly suited to her fast-paced, danger-laced story. You’d warned me that the first 100 pages or so might feel slow. They didn’t feel slow to me. The pace was tight. The scenes both illustrated character and propelled the story forward.

The background of the Committee and the cartel was sketchy. But hey, I adored Mr. and Mrs. Smith , so that didn’t bother me. Chloe was simply that girl at that place at that time. But that in itself didn’t bother me either–”I loved the romantic thread in The Bourne Identity in which the heroine was exactly that girl at that place at that time. It didn’t even bother me that Chloe was a sweet puppy of a heroine–”and I’ve spent most of my adult life writing various incarnations of the anti-heroine.

I agree that it is essential that Chloe be helpless and innocent, in order to trigger what remained of Bastien’s conscience, i.e., at this stage, Chloe is less a character than a plot device to tilt him over from mere weariness into action.

This is where my first problem came. I didn’t buy Bastien’s death wish. We were told about it–”in the paragraph you quoted in your review–”but I never felt it viscerally. Bastien had not messed up anything. He was doing everything he was supposed to. The impression I received was less a man who wanted to die than a man in need of a good, long vacation–”like how the accountant in me thinks longingly of the simple, concrete pleasures of 1065 tax returns when I couldn’t hack another day of character motivation. I would have been much better convinced had there first been a smaller crisis from which he pulled back and didn’t act and was psychologically devastated by it, thus precipitating his change of heart when faced with the next crisis, rather than have him jump in all of a sudden, when Chloe’s life was threatened.

Two, I wish I’d felt more of their initial attraction. For Chloe to be a catalyst on such a scale, I needed a lightning strike of an attraction, rather than the fairly typical one I got.

Three, while I support the theory that a darker heroine would not have worked here, couldn’t we at least have a stronger one, if not at the beginning, then by the end?

This book is overwhelmingly Bastien’s book, and I can understand that, because he is as dark, interesting, and layered a character as you said he is. But that Chloe is no match for him at all is something that does bother me. A lot.

I didn’t expect or need Chloe to turn into a kickass heroine. But I had to see a great deal more of gravitas and strength of character from her in order to believe that she could form the moral center of this relationship with this enormously complicated man. I needed to see not just tender care from Bastien’s part toward her, but respect, a ton of respect. And to believe Bastien would respect her, I had to respect her.

I liked Chloe, but my respect for her never rose above lukewarm, as she alternated between growing wiser and taking WTF action. And then, during the final confrontation, whenlargely because she was acting irrationally, he had to tie her up to shove her into a crawl space to save her, rather than tell her that was what she needs to do and trust that she was mature enough to understand that was the only way for her to be safe and for him to do his job in getting rid of the bad guys, I mentally bonked my forehead on the nearest sharp object and lost whatever respect I had for her and most of my belief that this relationship could work long-term.

I think this book would have worked better as an action movie where the romance takes a distant second place. Or, alternately–”because my heart is black and poison flows through my veins–”as a straight action/suspense novel in which either Bastien or Chloe dies. There would be great poignancy in Chloe’s death, as it is shown to Bastien the true cost of his life of massive amorality, not in that he cannot repent, but that the innocent ones he subsequently touches must pay the price for him. And if Bastien had died, then it would be sort of like Titanic. Chloe would go on and live a normal life, but she would always remember the mysterious, charismatic stranger who gave up his life for her and saved his own soul in the process.

As it is, I close the book not very convinced of their HEA, or even happily for a year. All the interactions between Chloe and Bastien had been driven by the adrenaline rush of life-or-death situations. Other than boinking, I cannot see the two of them do normal stuff together. And because the world Anne Stuart had created was so dark, I’m just about 100% sure that someone(s) would come for Bastien and/or Chloe. And if Jason Bourne couldn’t keep his girlfriend alive, well, what hope do the rest of us have?

Bastien is such a great character, and Stuart has crafted some truly touching moments in his unthawing, and in the primal way he both conquered and protected Chloe. But ultimately, I can delight in a hero only as far as I can admire the heroine. So in this case, my enjoyment of Bastien’s journey was marred by my frustration with Chloe. I would still recommend this book, with the caveat that readers who go into a homicidal rage at the sight of a weak heroine approach with caution.

B-. (I got this book at the library. Not sure how my feelings would change if I’d had to pay for it.)

But, dear Janine, although this particular recommendation didn’t hit the target, I would still go on trying other books that you recommend, and even part with cash for them. :)

Sincerely,

Sherry

This book can be purchased in mass market.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Black Ice by Anne Stuart
2. REVIEW: Ice Storm by Anne Stuart
3. REVIEW: Cold as Ice by Anne Stuart

The latest book in your Ice series, Ice Storm, opens with a bang. Literally. In a prologue set sometime in the past, we are introduced to nineteen-year-old the heroine this way:

Mary Isobel Curwen had never shot a man before. She stood there, numb, unmoving. She’d never fired a gun before, and the feel of it in her grasp was disturbing.

A paragraph down is there is some more terrific writing:

Had she blown a hole through his head? His chest? Was he dead or just wounded? She knew she ought to check… She’d had every reason to shoot him but you couldn’t very well let a man bleed to death, could you? she thought dazedly. Even if he’d been trying to kill you?

Or maybe you could. Maybe you could drop the gun, turn and run, as fast as possible, before he suddenly stood up and came after you, before one of his buddies came running to see where the noise had come from. Maybe you could take the gun with you, just in case.

I love the creative use of second person here, the way you put me in Mary Isobel’s head. So I was very excited to sink into this book and find out more about what made Mary Isobel, or the mysterious Madam Isobel Lambert of your Ice series, tick.

As chapter one opens, the mysterious board that oversees the secret operation known as the Committee gives Isobel, who now heads the agency, the task of extracting a former terrorist who has also served as second-in-command to ruthless dictators out of Morocco. Serafin the Butcher, as he is known, is ready to trade all the intelligence he holds in his memory in return for safe passage to England.

Though she appears to be “of a certain age” Isobel is in fact only thirty-seven or so. She is more vulnerable than most people imagine, and it is her task to get Serafin out of Morocco and to debrief him. Just before she leaves, she gets a photo of Serafin and is shocked to recognize Killian, the man she shot and left for dead all those years ago, the man she had believed she killed.

Alternating with the present day chapters are flashbacks to Isobel and Killian’s past, which reveal that Isobel was once a normal American girl, planning to enroll in the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and to hike around France before that. In Marseilles she wandered into a bad neighborhood and was attacked by a gang, but a mysterious young man saved her.

The man was Killian. Though Mary Isobel didn’t know it, Killian was in France to join a group of terrorists planning to assassinate the leader of an African country. To provide himself with a cover, he invited Mary Isobel to hike with him, planning to seduce her to keep her blind to his plans, and then leave her when he reached his destination. Of course, the plan went awry, Killian wound up shot and left for dead, and the experience was the catalyst that led Mary Isobel to change her name and join the Committee.

On arriving at their meeting place in Morocco eighteen years later, Isobel is greeted by a twelve year old boy soldier with an AK-47. The boy, Mahmoud, leads her to the man who is now known as Serafin the Butcher. But he is so changed that Isobel is not certain if he and Killian are one and the same. Gone is the good looking young man who seduced her so expertly, and in his place is a paunchy, black-toothed, washed out but ruthless man. Soon, he and Isobel are on the go and in danger. And Isobel discovers that the attraction between Killian and herself did not die, anymore than he did.

Interspersed between Killian and Isobel’s story are subplots about other characters from previous Ice books. Harry Thomason, the previous head of the Committee, thinks the organization has gone to pot under Isobel’s leadership; Peter and Genevieve are dealing with infertility. Taka sends his cousin Reno to England for training to become a Committee recruit, and eventually, much to my delight, Bastien and Chloe from Black Ice appear in the book as well.

Ice Storm is action-filled, entertaining, and moves along at a good clip. As in some of your other books, the dialogue is often ironic or confrontational, and frequently terrific. Here’s an example, from one of the flashback scenes, when Killian is just getting to know Isobel, and she is still clueless about his identity.

“I’ve got a thermos of coffee,” he’d said by way of greeting. “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”

She just looked at him. “I don’t like sugar.”

He shrugged. “Well, if we’re going to be traveling together we’ll have to compromise. There isn’t really that much sugar in it.”

“I thought you said ‘sweet as love.’”

“I find love bittersweet, don’t you?”

She opened the thermos and poured some into the cap, taking a tentative sip. “I’m not sure I find love at all,” she replied.

While I enjoyed this and other aspects of the book, I also had some problems with it. To begin with, I was disappointed with the portrayal of Isobel. I had hoped for a heroine as ruthless and competent as the male agents in the Committee.

Isobel is likeable enough, and I don’t mind your showing her past as a vulnerable teenager who fell in love with the wrong man. I also had no objection to your portraying Isobel as a woman who has become weary of her job, or to the way meeting Killian again brought back some of her youthful vulnerability, as it was bound to do.

What bothered me was the way the book glossed over some of the most interesting pieces of Isobel’s past, her induction to the Committee and her work in the field. Not only that, there was little evidence of her training in the Isobel of the present, so that I became conscious of a double standard in your portrayal of Isobel when compared to that of the Committee’s male agents.

Bastien in Black Ice was bone-tired as well, but that didn’t stop him from being a killing machine for much of that book. Isobel, though she could take a life, was always left shaken afterwards.

Peter of Cold as Ice was willing to sleep with men to get the job done. And Taka, Bastien and Peter all understood that sex can equal power when used expertly enough. Not so Isobel.

In addition, there are so many hints that not everything about Killian is as it seems at first, and hints about other things as well, that I wondered how it was possible that I could easily pick up on them, while Isobel, who had supposedly spent years as an ice cold undercover operative, never had a clue.

No amount of emotional vulnerability or fraying would have made Bastien, Peter or Taka so blind, so I was left conclude that Isobel had never shared their cold competence, and to wonder how on earth she had ever been accepted into the Committee in the days when Harry Thomason ran it.

Much of the story is told from Isobel’s POV, with briefer sections in Killian’s. I can understand why you made that choice, because the story requires that Killian be shrouded in mystery. But the end result is that while I liked Killian, I was not convinced that he was “the most dangerous man in the world.” I never really felt I got much insight into his character, even at the end of the book, and he remains somewhat sketchy to me.

I was also, once again, and more than ever before, disappointed in the portrayal of the Committee. Gone is the ruthless, amoral, brutal and relentless organization that made Black Ice such a riveting book. When, in one scene Harry Thomason waxes nostalgic about “the good old days, where enemies were straightforward, where you trusted no one, and any inconveniences and anomalies were wiped out,” I found myself nodding in agreement.

I wondered if Thomason was right about the effects of Isobel’s leadership, since the Committee under her had evidently dwindled to a few people, most of whom had forgotten how to do their jobs. Their sudden incompetence felt like a contrivance to allow Killian to have the upper hand over Isobel for much of the book.

Still, the book was thoroughly involving, the sex scenes hot enough to make me fan myself, and I very much enjoyed the dialogue, the international settings, the lean and taut writing, the subplots about Peter and Reno, and the revelations about Mahmoud. Bastien’s appearance in the story made my heart skip a beat, and the final scene of the book was truly superb, just perfect.

For all these reasons I think that despite the problems I had, I would probably buy the book again, given the chance.

Ice Storm was deeply entertaining, but it could have been so much more. Black Ice was an A read for me, Cold as Ice a B+ , Ice Blue a B, and so, it’s with a mixture of gratitude for the enjoyment I’ve gotten from those books, sadness and the over this series’ diminishing returns for me, and the hope for more from Fire and Ice that I give Ice Storm a B-.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in mass market or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Ice Storm by Anne Stuart
2. REVIEW: Cold as Ice by Anne Stuart
3. REVIEW: Ice Blue by Anne Stuart

Like Jayne (who recently reviewed this book), I read and enjoyed your debut, Dedication, shortly before the Signet Regency line went kaput. I had liked the book enough to hope that you might get a contract before too long. Luckily for me, not one, but two publishers were smart enough to offer you a contract.

The Rules of Gentility is the result of the first of these contracts, with Avon (The second is for Forbidden Shores, an erotic historical which I eagerly await, to be published as a Signet Eclipse in October under the pseudonym Jane Lockwood).

Written in first person journal form, and, even more unconventionally, in present tense, The Rules of Gentility chronicles the delightful courtship of Philomena Wellesley-Clegg and Inigo Linsley. Both Philomena and Inigo's points of view are included, as each writes about their encounters and adventures while negotiating the tricky waters of the marriage mart.

Philomena is the second oldest daughter of a family in Trade (they own a coal mine), whose mother wants her to break into the rarified world of the ton. As Philomena, an aficionado of all things millinery, puts it:

I consider the pursuit of the bonnets and a husband fairly alike–"I do not want to acquire an item that will wear out, or bore me after a brief acquaintance, and we must suit each other very well.

Philomena has a list of five potential suitors, but one is quickly snapped up, a second she views in a brotherly light, a third is obsessed with his dogs and cows, and the other two are more interested in each other than in Philomena. Fortunately, she meets Inigo, her best friend Julia's brother-in-law, while visiting Julia. Philomena notices his black curls and his bright blue eyes, and in short order, she adds his name to her list.

Inigo's first impression of Philomena is that she is silly and fashion-mad, and he's not completely off the mark. She is at times both of those things, but she's also intelligent, caring and (as it doesn't take Inigo long to discover), despite her inexperience in carnal matters, sensual.

When Inigo's older brother and mother begin to pressure him to marry, he considers Philomena as a candidate for the role of his wife. Although he is not yet ready to propose, he and his mother pay a call to the Wellesley-Cleggs’ home. After causing some comical mayhem in the foyer, Inigo notices that Philomena is about to burst into tears. She confides that one of her suitors is about to propose, and though she doesn't want to marry him, she doesn't feel she has a good enough reason to refuse.

Before you can say "pretend betrothal,–? Philomena and Inigo announce to their families that they are engaged but want to keep it quiet so that Philomena can have her season. The scene in which Inigo issues his proposal, in the water closet no less, lovingly satirizes the time honored conventions of historical romances, as do many of the developments that follow, including misunderstandings, the revelation of a big secret, the visit to a brothel, etc., etc. Of course, even in farces, the course of true love is bumpy, and that is very much the case here.

The Rules of Gentility is meant to be a cross between historical romance and chick lit, and indeed, the alternating journal entries and the present tense narration give it a kind of hip, updated feel that miraculously, does not conflict with the historical setting. Instead, it lends the book immediacy and gives it verve.

I enjoyed your writing style here, which manages the feat of being chatty and elegant at once, and of sounding (not surprisingly, since you hail from the UK) British at all times.

The farcical humor kept me amused throughout, and I found Inigo and Philomena both fun to read about and easy to like. Still, I would have preferred for their characters to be explored in more depth. The rest of the cast of supporting characters is nothing if not entertaining, but most of them, too, could have used a bit more dimension.

Your warmth and affection for the genre you spoof comes though, but I wonder if the goal of satirizing romances may be what limited the character development. Or perhaps it is fairer to say that while I enjoy humorous books, I prefer them to be more than pure farces.

I was entertained by The Rules of Gentility, and although I would have liked it to have a bit more bite or gravity beneath the humor, I thought it well worth reading. This frothy, enjoyable confection gets a strong B from me.

Sincerely,

Janine

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Rules of Gentility By Janet Mullany
2. REVIEW: Rules of Marriage by Wilma Counts
3. REVIEW: The Rules of Seduction by Madeline Hunter

Your young adult fantasy novel, The Thief, was named a 1997 Newbery Honor Book, an ALA Notable Book, and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. After hearing good things about the series that begins with this book from two different friends, I was eager to begin reading it.

Gen, the hero of the story, is languishing in the King of Sounis's prison when the Magus, who is the king's advisor and scholar, comes to see him. The Magus explains that he needs Gen (a thief who managed to swipe the King's seal) to steal something for him, but he won't reveal what. Gen will be released into the Magus's custody if he agrees to this theft. If he tries to escape before stealing the object and turning it over to the Magus, the King of Sounis will offer a huge reward for Gen's capture.

So it comes about that Gen agrees, and the next day, he begins a journey to an unknown destination in the company of the Magus, a soldier named Pol, and two young men that Gen dubs Useless the Elder and Useless the Younger. Gen must make the journey on horseback, and he is not very good on horses. He is also weak and hungry because of the time he spent in prison. Therefore he is not always on his best behavior as the group travels, and tensions begin to develop in the group.

Since Gen bragged about stealing the king's seal, the Magus thinks Gen is a good thief but a stupid one. He plans to use Gen as he might a tool, like a hammer, but he doesn't accord him anymore respect than he would a hammer. Gen, who had reasons for bragging about his thieving that he doesn't want to reveal, is chafed by the Magus' attitude.

Then there is Useless the Elder, whose real name is Ambiades. He is the kind of person who looks down at anyone from a lower station, and sees most people as being below himself. To say that Ambiades is difficult to get along with is an understatement, and Gen doesn't even bother trying.

On the other hand, Gen comes to like Pol and Useless the Younger, whose real name is Sophos. Pol is very capable and Sophos friendly to Gen.

During their travels, the group passes from the Kingdom of Sounis to that of Eddis. Gen's mother was from Eddis, and he is familiar with its religion, in which a different, older set of gods is worshipped than the ones prayed to in Sounis and Attolia. To make the journey more enjoyable and to educate Ambiades and Sophos, the Magus begins to tell Eddis's creation myth to the other men. Gen knows different variations of these stories from his mother, and eventually, he too begins to tell the others stories about the old gods.

Some of the dynamics between Gen and his companions begin to change as the journey progresses. Gen also learns that the object he will be stealing is something that could shift the balance of power between the three kingdoms of Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia. When, about halfway through, the travelers reach their destination, the place turns out to be more mysterious and magical than Gen imagined.

Will Gen succeed in stealing something where countless others have failed? And what will happen to him and his companions after this attempt? What will happen to the balance of power between Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia? Those things are left to the reader to discover, and in the process, we also learn that not everything is what it appears to be.

It took me a while to get involved in the story because although Gen's narration was very well written, his character was not instantly sympathetic to me. In the beginning of the book he is portrayed as a rather selfish person who cares mostly about his own comfort and about becoming famous through an extraordinary theft. This does change as the book continues, and I gradually grew to like him better.

The first half of the book seemed somewhat slow to me. The tension between Gen and his companions begins with mild annoyances, and I felt a bit impatient while waiting for something of greater significance to happen. The myths of the old gods held my interest, and I thought that you did a terrific job of making them unique, and giving them the flavor of mythology at the same time.

The second half of the book held more excitement, and I especially liked what happened when Gen and his traveling companions reached the place where the object he came to steal was located. There were some twists that were revealed at the end of the book, and even though I had guessed one of them all along, there were others that surprised me.

The setting of The Thief is based on Greece, and it was refreshing to read a fantasy with a Mediterranean flavor. I enjoyed the little details such as the characters eating olives and cheese for lunch and yogurt for breakfast, but one little detail that threw me was the mention of guns. Although they were said to be less accurate than crossbows, I still had to revise my mental picture of the society of this world. Because everyone traveled on horseback and there were no other inventions as advanced that were mentioned, I had not anticipated that guns would exist in Sounis, Eddis or Attolia.

While I can't rave about The Thief, I enjoyed it enough to look for the next book in the series, especially since I've heard that this is where things get romantic between Gen and a rather interesting woman who makes a brief appearance in The Thief. As for this book, although I think it may be a better read for young adults than for grownups like me, it's still good enough to get a recommendation and a B- from me.

Sincerely,

Janine

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony

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2. REVIEW: The Smoke Thief by Shana Abé
3. REVIEW: Charmed Thirds by Megan Mccafferty

There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while two motor boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

Recognize this quote? It’s from what some consider the greatest American novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. No, this is not a pop quiz for high school seniors. I’m quoting Fitzgerald because I want to talk about an element of the novel that isn’t discussed on romance boards quite as frequently as plot, characters, or sex scenes: style.

When I read the passage above, I want to swoon. The music from Gatsby’s house runs not only through the summer nights but through the words themselves, and I can almost feel the cool starlight on my flushed skin, can almost imagine myself moth-like, wearing something as velvety as wings, only half listening to the low hush of whispers that surrounds me, the murmured laughter like the clinking of champagne glasses.

I’m not half the writer Fitzgerald is, so I can’t quite capture what his words do to me, can’t put to paper the joy I get from startling images like “blue gardens” and metaphors like “cataracts of foam” and “his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug.” When I read this book, not just the images and the ideas embedded in the words, but the sounds of the individual words themselves, the sound effects of words grouped together and the rhythms of the sentences wrap me up, enfold me, intoxicate me.

For me, there are few pleasures better than sinking deep into a book written by a master stylist, a writer who clearly loves words and can string them together like the jewels they are. Immersion in the words of such a writer is a sensory and sensuous experience. That sensation of being carried away by a sublime book can be as romantic as anything, so I have to ask this question: why don’t more romance authors employ the gorgeousness of the written word to that effect? Why not dazzle readers with language, or at least, attempt to? Why not write more lyrical and poetic prose?

It’s hardly fair, I know, to compare other books to what may be the greatest American novel. And yet, I can’t help but do it. Having had a taste of beautiful writing, I crave more. There are voices in the romance genre that I love, authors who are wordsmiths of the first order. But there aren’t enough of them to satisfy my cravings for rich language.

It’s not that I can’t enjoy books written in what I think of as plain and serviceable prose. I can and I have, and I’ve recommended them here. It’s just that generally those aren’t the books I anticipate most keenly and enjoy best. They can be a lot of fun, but only rarely does one of them blow me out of the water. And I long to be blown away.

Lately I have not been reading much literary fiction, partly because I review for this blog, and partly because some of it seems to me to revel, in terms of content at least, in drabness and pessimism. I can love an intricate plot full of twists and turns, as well, and that’s not the strength of many literary writers. One thing I do miss about literary fiction, though, is the way words are put together, the crafting of language, the style.

I’ve long felt that genre writers and non-genre writers could learn from each other. I could talk at length about the things that authors of contemporary literary fiction could learn from genre writers, and ask why they aren’t more interested in doing so, but if I did that at this forum, I’d just be preaching to the vestry members. So let me ask instead why there aren’t many genre authors whose sound effects, imagery, and metaphors engage my senses the way the words of many non-genre authors do.

Is it that literary and genre writers have sneered at one another so much that there’s too much defensiveness on both sides for many members of each group to admit that something could be learned from the other group? Is it that it’s harder to produce gorgeous writing on a tight deadline? Is it that, as one of my friends has suggested, the romance genre is young? Or is it, as another friend suggests, that perhaps such books are being written but not published? Do other romance readers dislike poetic writing?

Beauty, I realize, is in the eye of the beholder, to some degree at least. But (finicky, spoiled reader that I am) I ask (and know this question may upset a lot of people, and feel bad about that), how many genre writers actually try for *beauty* when they write? How many genre writers actually attempt greatness in the arena of style?

Not that I mean to imply that none do. The romance genre has some wonderful stylists. Here are some examples of lovely writing in the romance genre:

She vanished into the twilight, a slight figure soon devoured by shadows and the restless flicker of the torches the stable boys were embedding in precise intervals along the drive. Kit looked back at Malbroke's mansion, at the warm golden windows and colored drapery, the ornate plastered ceiling of the ballroom visible behind glass like distant icing on a wedding cake.

– Shana Abe, The Smoke Thief

He awaited them in the drawing room, dressed with old fashioned formality: knee breeches and an unadorned tailcoat of black silk. That appeared to exhaust his fund of conventional behavior. He barely looked at them, except for a swift, potent glance when Folie opened the door. There was something faintly startled in it, as if he had forgotten they were coming. Without delay for small talk or an announcement from a servant, he merely made a taut bow and indicated the dining room doors.

– Laura Kinsale, My Sweet Folly

The roses and the lilac, violets and lemon verbena shed their fragrance more intensely after dark, the sweet air of the English country night seeming to glimmer with benign spirits. Mary could feel her parents’ presence; it seemed to her that Arthur Grandin had added the warm light of his memory. There were a few more restless shades abroad as well: she shook her head at the one who stuck a sugary yellow tongue at her. When she was sure that Jessica was looking the other way, she stuck her own tongue back at the little imp–who giggled silently and flickered off toward the forest.

– Pam Rosenthal, The Slightest Provocation

I hardly ever dream anymore, I don’t know why. Tonight I did, though, and it woke me up. I was walking through a tall thicket of brake fern, the clear green fronds as high as my shoulders. I came to a gate leading into a meadow full of flowers. A man began to walk beside me, and his boots were golden bronze from the yellow pollen of buttercups. I don’t know who he was, though in the dream I think I knew.

– Patricia Gaffney, To Love and to Cherish

But she could still feel the sea inside her stomach, and color and movement and noise came at her in waves: men swarming to unload the ship, the early morning sun ricocheting hard between smooth sea and blue sky, gulls wheeling in arcs of silver and white. No clouds floated above to cut the glare or soften the heat. Sylvie took her first deep breath of truly English air. It was hot and clotted with dock odors, and made matters inside her stomach worse instead of better.

– Julie Anne Long, Ways to be Wicked

Miss Van Evan sat in a chair directly in front of the writing table, the sunlight brightly spotlighting her skirts, skirts the deep, saturated purple of sloe plums. This color was the predominant note in the girl’s presence: folds of dark, dark purple in a halo of sunlight.

– Judy Cuevas (Judith Ivory), Bliss

Above her the roof of Euston Station yawned in two barnlike peaks, its smutted glass filtering in a watery species of sunshine more appropriate to dusk than noon.

– Emma Holly, Beyond Innocence

My aim in this letter isn’t to knock the genre, or its hard-working authors. It’s simply that though the element of style isn’t everything to me, it can add hugely to my enjoyment, and there are few things I thirst for more than a beautifully written romance.

My questions to you who are reading this are the ones I asked above, and these: Does style make a difference to you? How much does it affect your reading experience? Who are your favorite stylists in the romance genre? Whose writing are you drawn to simply because you like the way they put together their words?

After watching Jane plead with authors to digitize their books, I’ve decided to present my own plea to authors, and it’s this: Attempt the poetic. Reach for those stars, and like one of Fitzgerald’s moths, I will be drawn to your luminous words. Write lyrical romances, books that seduce me with their melodies. I crave them. I long for them. I read them until they fall apart and buy more copies. I tell all my friends about them. I cherish them dearly; I see them as precious, precious gifts. Write one for me, for yourself, for lovers of words everywhere.

Sincerely,

Janine

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Although The Dream-Maker’s Magic is the third book in your series of books that began with The Safe-Keeper’s Secret and continued in The Truth-Teller’s Tale, it easily stands on its own. And although, like the two earlier books, it is aimed at young adults, this adult enjoyed the book very much.

Set in an unnamed kingdom, The Dream-Maker’s Magic is the story of a friendship that grows into love. The narrator of the story is Kellen, a girl who hasn’t known much affection in her young life. As Kellen’s mother tells it, she gave birth to a boy in a difficult and painful labor which nearly killed her. After a glimpse at the child, Kellen’s mother fell asleep. When she was healthy enough to care for her baby herself, she discovered that some time when she wasn’t looking, the child was magically transformed into a girl. “I was that baby,” says Kellen. “I was that strangely altered child.”

From that day on, my mother watched me with a famished attention, greedy for clues. I had transformed once; might I change again? Into what else might I transform, what other character might I assume? As for myself, I cultivated a demeanor of sturdy stoicism. I was hard to ruffle, hard to incite to anger–at least that anyone could tell from watching me. It was as if I hoped my unvarying mildness would reassure my mother, convince her to trust me. It was as if she was some animal lured from wild lands and I was the seasoned trainer who habitually made no sudden moves.

Even after a Truth-Teller, a woman who will answer any question truthfully, tells Kellen’s mother that Kellen has always been a girl, even in the womb, her mother cannot accept it. She continues to dress Kellen as a boy and to refer to Kellen as her son. Kellen’s father cannot bear this lunacy and so he abandons his wife and child. As for Kellen, she wears shapeless, boyish clothes without complaint and does a son’s chores for her mother.

One day a new schoolteacher arrives in the town of Thrush Hollow. By dint of his strong will, the teacher persuades Kellen’s mother to enroll Kellen in his school, although Kellen has little interest in attending it. At the school, most of the boys tease Kellen and try to trip her, but one boy is different.

Gryffin’s legs have been twisted from birth. His mother abandoned him as a baby and left him in the care of an abusive uncle who is a tavern-keeper. Gryffin is kind to Kellen and the two quickly become friends, and so, two people who previously felt like misfits find acceptance, understanding, and warmth in one another’s company.

Gryffin tells Kellen about his uncle and about his dreams, dreams of the day he will escape the tavern and travel to the capital, Wodenderry to further his studies and pursue a career. He studies hard and does all he can to make his dreams come true, he wants Kellen to dream of a different future as well, but Kellen is only able to make wishes for other people, not for herself.

Then, just as Kellen and Gryffin’s relationship is starting to blossom into their first experience of romantic feelings, the kingdom’s Dream-Maker, whose sorrows invest her with the power to fulfill other’s dreams, loses her power to make wishes come true, and a new and far more powerful Dream-Maker is found. Will Gryffin’s dream of escaping Thrush Hollow come true, and if so, what will happen to Kellen?

The Dream-Maker’s Magic reveals its charms slowly and with patience. Because of her mother’s delusions and her father’s abandonment, Kellen is old beyond her years. The narration, as in the section I quoted above, gives voice to her thoughts and observations beautifully. In keeping with her maturity and with the stoicism she presents to the world, her narration is mostly matter of fact, but occasionally she allows some of the childlike wonder within her to slip out.

Gryffin is even more mature. He is a thoughtful, kind and sensitive boy and as much a treasure to Kellen as she is to him. Perhaps because they share some of the same struggles, they are each exactly the kind of friend the other needs, and the book conveys this well.

There are times when Kellen and Gryffin suffer because of their uncaring guardians, but there are also many times when strangers do the young people good deeds. “Kindness is a form of magic,” says one character. “So everyone should be capable of at least a little.”

If The Dream-Maker’s Magic doesn’t have the near-epic scope of some of your books for adults, if it’s not breathlessly romantic like some of those, I think it’s because it’s not intended to be. It is something smaller, but very fine: a thoughtful, quiet enchantment. A-.

Sincerely,

Janine

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