This book ended up being too frothy for me. Alissa is a Muse and as such her role in life is to inspire those around her. The big concept in the book is that the heroine is competing to be the Best Muse of All (or for to be the Wreath Muse) which is akin to a Miss Universe pagaent complete with an evening gown competition and a swimsuit (“I’ve heard we’ll be wearing bathing suits for the photo shoot by the retreat’s tropical indoor pool. No gloves or long skirts for that session.”) and sportswear component as well. It’s not even ironic. Her competition is her former best friend:

Cerise Xenakis, her former best friend, held court at the center. Cerise’s dark hair gleamed in the candlelight. She wore a daring dress of white leather and pewter lace. From a distance it looked like lingerie, and Alissa had heard that Cerise had taken the dress from a music video she’d starred in for the Molly Times, one of the bands she inspired. The Molly Times’s debut album had gone platinum and had been nominated for three Grammy Awards.

Alissa swallowed hard, wondering to whose presentation the EC—the Etherlin Council—had given more votes: hers or Cerise’s. Among the people Cerise inspired, there were an Olympic gold medalist, a Heisman Trophy winner, a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, and four multiplatinum musical artists. Among Alissa’s aspirants, her writers had won a Pulitzer, three National Book Awards, and two Academy Awards. Her scientific and engineering aspirants had published eighty-four scientific papers and generated nineteen patents, two of which Alissa had been included on. She had transferred her share in the patents to the Etherlin community trust. She was proud that her work on clean energy had generated eight million dollars over four years. That was four million more than she’d made modeling. She wanted to be respected and regarded as a muse of substance, but she was glad to have the modeling income for the community as well. She knew that with her combined earnings, she’d contributed more money to the trust than all the other current muses combined.

The romance tension comes from Alissa falling for someone who is forbidden to her. Alissa is the daughter of the House of North and one of the most accomplished Muses of all time. The Wreath comes with extra powers. (Kind of like a power up pack in a video game). Alissa seems to be a shoo in. She even seems to have the support of the father of her closest rival.

Alissa’s coronation, however, is imperiled by a scandal involving Merrick, a ventala. A ventala is the progeny of a human and a vampire.  Some view Alissa with suspicion regardless because her mother killed herself. Alissa must be an exemplar candidate because she needs to be the Wreath Muse in order to save her father who is suffering from some kind of dementia. Alissa met Merrick when he saved her from a demon five years ago. Ever since then, Alissa has secretly written him letters and he has left her gifts. When Alissa is up for the crown title Wreath she begins to be targeted by someone dangerous. Merrick comes back to protect her with the Etherlin security team reluctantly allowing him into their midst.

Part of Alissa’s danger seems to be intertwined with her mother’s suicide and her father’s dementia. Unlocking those mysteries will reveal a dark side to Etherlin.

On the one hand, there was some interesting world building. Outside the Etherlin live a mix of humans, vampires, demons and ventala in the Varden. There are syndicates that rule with Varden and its fairly lawless…yet, the Muses venture out during sanctioned visits to inspire greatness. (Are they inspiring the gangsters? I could never really tell if the Muses were responsible for all the success or only the good success. Were there evil Muses out there? )  Alissa says:

“To be entitled to a muse’s energy and efforts, a person has to work extremely hard and has to have talent or intelligence, ingenuity and drive. Do you understand? There aren’t a lot of muses. Our focused attention facilitates the greatest inventions, the greatest works of literature, feats of athleticism, scientific discoveries . . . If a muse expends energy on someone who isn’t capable of doing something extraordinary with it, then what happens to the person who could have created a masterpiece or the next technological revolution? It’s actually a weakness in my character that I haven’t stopped.”

The idea is that the people who live in Etherlin are superior. They are ruled by intellect and inspire others to create great art, invent useful products, or be successful politicians. Yet the vampires are looked down upon because they are impulsive and driven by emotion and need. Isn’t there some inherent inconsistency here? Someone who inspires others through emotion thinks that emotion is somehow devaluing? And what is with all the focus on how someone looks in their gowns and their bathing suits if you are a MUSE? My face, it has a very confused look on it.

The Etherlin people hold a pageant to pick their Wreath Muse! How can these people think themselves superior? Their entire days are spent looking good. Alissa has to meet with the Ralph Lauren people but soon “She hoped to be completely consumed with the Wreath Muse publicity tour and the obligations of the role.”  In the end, I couldn’t get over that a) I was reading a paranormal pageant book interspersed with some vampire sexxoring and B) the only reason that Alissa wanted the Wreath was to save her father.  Seems rather unMuse like to me and the ending.  Oy, the ending. It shot another huge hole in the worldbuilding.

Best regards,

Jane

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I have a feeling that this book is going to get some bad grades because the heroine does very bad things and is hard and edgy and the redemption story is hers, not the male protagonist.  But it is because of the heroine that I enjoyed this book.   Natalya Trubachev is a CIA agent. She’s been deep undercover trying to run down all the different factions of a sex trafficking trade. At the beginning of the book, she is the procuress for one of the main players in Russia.

Her actions are ameliorated a little by the fact that she is enabling the kidnapping and sale of beautiful strippers, but this is a chick who has been doing bad things in the name of patriotism for three years. She’s also been sleeping with the major mafia boss who thinks he is in love with her. She is sent to Las Vegas to procure a few more girls because their U.S. contact is not doing a very good job.  Let me repeat, Natalya isn’t saving these girls. She is actually sending these kidnapped women into the sex trade.  As the book opens, Natalya is on the verge of burn out:

Natalya shivered with her. This part was the worst. Three years of soothing the women should have made her immune. At one time, she had been disconnected from them. But now, each pale face, each quivering lip, curled her stomach and left her questioning things she didn’t dare consider. Things like her purpose. The state of her soul. Like why she’d ever become a Black Opal, an elite, deadly, and highly undocumented CIA operative.

When she is sent to the U.S., the person she is to recruit ends up being her fraternal twin sister.  The major flaw in this story is the number of coincidences like this one.  The sibling connection was INCREDIBLE in this story and by that I mean, totally not believable. I had to swallow this eye rolling contrivance in order to move on and enjoy the story.

Romance is replete with redemption stories about bad bad men.  I’ve seen readers complain about the wussy girl spies but this is a woman who is fucking, lying, killing, for the CIA.  It might be an impediment that some readers can’t get past.

In the Vegas club, Fantasia, Lieutenant Brandon Moretti is working undercover to catch a serial killer targeting the blonde dancers in Vegas. Of course, it isn’t a serial killer, exactly.  Moretti and his team of Vice cops are driven, in part, by the death of a female member of their team to this serial killer.

It is at Fantasia where much of this story takes place. Where Natalya grapples with her conscience and weighs the cost of her actions against the ability to live with herself.  Where Brandon struggles with his increasing attraction to Natalya, the new stripper,  his concern for her safety, and his belief that she is lying to him about something.

Natalya is not alone. Her bodyguard, Sergei, is actually another undercover agent for the CIA and has been working, in tandem with Natalya to bring down the Russian mob.  He’s only had to kill people unlike Natalya who has had to have sex with an evil man, make him fall in love with, all the while sending strippers into captivity.  Sergei and Natalya try to smoke out the cops on the take, the Russian mob connection, and destroy the Bratva once and for all.  Natalya is uncertain whether Brandon is her Russian contact or whether it is someone else.

Their attraction to each other is immediate but it worked in this book, as if the pheromone setting was on high at all times.  You couldn’t be in Fantasia and not be affected by the lust.

The dancing/stripping scenes were really well done, described as a real skill and not just for titillation.  The russian mobster really does love Natalya and his love for her provides an added dimension to the story.  Often I dislike reading scenes from the villains point of view because they seem so gratuitous. Not so in this case.

As a vision of Natalya’s green eyes leapt to life in his mind, Dmitri couldn’t help but smile. He ran a hand down the curtains, fabric she’d chosen when he’d invited her to move in. Then, he had never imagined he could come to care so much for a woman who’d once been no more than a hired gun. But her eyes, like the heavy silk between his fingers, made him think of summer, of happiness. Of life. Not the death that surrounded him.

The dark tone, the sexy story, the undercover Vice cops huge capacity to forgive the heroine for constantly lying to him (he knows she is lying to him, just doesn’t know what it is about) all worked for me.  I liked reading about a hard edged female agent who was doing dirty things because that’s what a real CIA agent would do, right? I acknowledge that this book is not for everyone and it is flawed but it’s different than I’ve read before.  B-

Best regards,

Jane

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I read your debut novel, India Black, earlier this year and enjoyed it a great deal. While I can see why some people would be put off by the voice, I adored the protagonist, a brothel-madam-turned-reluctant-spy, and her unrelenting cynicism and jaded pragmatism. It was refreshing. Combined with a caper sensibility, it was one of my favorite books last year. So I was very excited when Jane sent me a copy of the sequel. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

After the events of the previous novel, India Black has gone back to her life as the proprietor of a brothel. But her life has suddenly become boring. I suppose that’s understandable. When you’ve grappled with Russian spies, trying to satisfy your employees’ desire for new dresses is probably not on the same level. So when British spy French recruits her for a new mission, India jumps at the chance.

The mission is a tricky one. Queen Victoria is fond of seances because she believes it allows her to communicate with her dearly departed husband, Prince Albert. At one such seance, she was “told” by her husband to spend Christmas at their Scottish home. Prime Minister Disraeli believes it’s a Scottish Nationalist plot to assassinate the Queen, and it’s up to India and French to stop it from happening.

I’ll be the first to admit that British history is not my strong point. That said, I have a feeling these portrayals of Queen Victoria, John Brown and various other historical personages are perhaps not so flattering. I’d be interested to see what other, more informed readers think of these depictions and how they compare against the historical reality.

As for the book itself, one of the reasons why I loved the first novel was because it was a caper story. I’m a big fan of caper stories and their structure. So I admit I was expecting more of that. Unfortunately, barely any of that was here. Instead, The Widow of Windsor opted for a more amateur sleuth approach. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not particular narrative style that engages me. Straight mysteries are generally not my genre.

Because of the shift from spy caper to amateur sleuth, I think India’s character suffered. I thought we saw very little of India’s resourcefulness and cleverness. In fact, I often thought she was outmaneuvered and outwitted by everyone around her. And in the end, she comes off as being slow on the uptake and unobservant. I didn’t like that at all. In the first book, we were introduced to a larger than life character and I felt that this book, as Jane said, diminished her.

But it wasn’t all bad. I did like India’s relationship with the Marchioness, for whom she was posing as a maid. There’s definitely more to that old woman than meets the eye and I’m not convinced her entire ridiculously eccentric personality wasn’t a complete fabrication. I am doubly curious now, given her remarks about India’s mother.

Speaking of which, I am dying to know India’s background. We got hints of it in the first book, and we get more of it here. By this point, I am extremely curious as to how a woman like India became a prostitute, even more so considering the hints the Marchioness dropped about her mother.

The great irony of this novel is that one of the underlying themes is not to underestimate women. It comes up again and again throughout the narrative. Normally, I like that message because fiction could stand to be more populated by great women characters. But I thought it was undermined by India’s ineffective sleuthing that often lands her in trouble and makes her look incompetent. While I understand it’s unbelievable to make India a rock star at investigation, a little less bumbling around and getting lost would have been nice.

Like the first book, India Black and the Widow of Windsor retains its comedic undertones but it never quite matches the satisfying over the top qualities. I wasn’t thrilled by India’s portrayal as a character, and I thought the ending was somewhat anti-climatic. I can only hope she fares better in the next installment. C

My regards,
Jia

Previous novels in this series: India Black (review)

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