Everything Is Better With Dragons
Book blogger, Autistic, Probably a Dragon
31st December 2013
Del Rey Press
ISBN 9780345537201
$7.99
Mass market paperback
Eveline Cooper has finally got to University, unfortunately it’s not all she hoped. It’s a prison that occasionally explodes. Nick is dead and Imogen is in a coma; Eveline is alone with only notes from her uncle Sherlock to keep her sane. The Baskerville conspiracy is building up to openly rebel against the Steam Barons but they need Eveline free to help them on Dartmoor.
I know I said I wasn’t reviewing any books this month because I’m concentrating on my novel but I got to 43000 words yesterday so I took some time off to finish reading an ARC I’d got from http://www.netgalley.com and another book I’d borrowed from the library. My reviews follow.
2013
Passing4Normal Press
Ursula has never had a orgasm, she has drank an awful lot of wheatgrass juice though. She belly dances badly and keeps bowls of mushrooms all over the house.
Donny lives alone with his comic book collection, and has never touched wheatgrass. Until he meets Ursula.
Continue reading “Review: Donny and Ursula Save the World by Sharon Weil”
Originally: 2010 – Lyrical Press
Edition reviewed: 2013 – Momentum
In forty years a new underground craze will start – splash parties. Time travellers known as ‘bricks’ will be thrown back in time, ‘lobbed’, and their actions in the past will cause a ‘splash’ as their presence disrupts the timelines. The back wash from the ‘splash’ mixed with the new drug tempus causes a high. It’s marginally illegal; police forces concentrate on controlling the drugs and noise caused by the splash parties, after all the timeline can’t be changed because it fixes itself.
22 February 2014
Dundern
In 1838 the writer Letitia Landon married the governor of Cape Coast Castle, Captain George MacLean while the captain was on leave. It was a whirl-wind romance. They sailed for Cape Coast a few days later, arriving safely after five weeks. Eight weeks later Letty was dead. Initially her death was recorded as accidental – an overdose of prussic acid, but events surrounding her death caused a storm in London’s literary crowd, her husband was accused of neglect or cruelty, and there were rumours of suicide. The mystery remains – how did she die? Award winning writer Audrey Thomas first heard Leticia Landon’s story in 1964 while visiting Ghana. She visited Cape Coast Castle during the two years her husband taught at the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Their guide told her about the famous English lady who wrote books and who’s death was surrounded by mystery. This is her answer to that mystery.
Continue reading “ARC Review: ‘Local Customs’ by Audrey Thomas”
2013
Gollancz
The final adventure of Sookie Stackhouse begins the day after the penultimate novel ended: Sam the Shapeshifter lived and Eric the Vampire is not happy that Sookie used the fairy gift from her great-grandfather to bring Sam back and not to get him out of a sticky political situation. Everyone is upset. And then an old enemy comes back in to Sookie’s life, an instrument of unknown enemies. When she is murdered the police would quite like it if Sookie were the murderer. It all gets very stressful for Sookie as more enemies come out of the woodwork and Eric divorces her. Sam is distant and confusing, Bill a little too friendly.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Dead Ever After’ by Charlaine Harris”
2013
A modern spy thriller set in Hungary
Jackson is one of an elite covert force, ‘The Black Lions’, recruited from the CIA and ready to deal out violent justice. His team mates are a mixed bag of ex-security services from around the world.
Continue reading “Review – ‘The Black Lion: Satan’s Kingdom’ by Anthony Karakai”
2013
Headline
In the twenty-first Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, novel, our heroine finds herself in an unusual situation: meeting her in-laws in Boulder. Unfortunately she’s meeting Micah’s parents because his Dad is dying from a zombie bite that’s rotting faster than the doctors can cut it away.
Probably not the best time for a family reunion?
Continue reading “Review: ‘Affliction’ by Laurell K. Hamilton”
2012
Austin & Macauley Publishers Ltd.
One night in 1792 the cutter that ‘The Boy’, Jacob Swift, Swifty, King of Smugglers, was on came under attack from a 70-gun warship in The Channel just off Deal, Kent. She sank and every man aboard died. But not before Swifty sent a message in a bottle telling his gang where the greatest treasure he ever got his hands on was hidden.
Two hundred years later, and an unhappy young boy called Stanley is contemplating how best to survive the school bully when he spots something odd on the beach. His discovery leads him to the town’s old maritime museum and the curator, Reg Cooper, who has a story to tell. Thus unfolds the tale of Jacob Swift, poor fisherman’s son who rises to lead the greatest smuggling gang in Kent. It is a story of loyalty to friends, adventures on the high seas, running from the law, and brandy.
The narrative is detailed and colourful, moving along fairly quickly, and the dénouement, the discovery by Stan of a major treasure, and resulting survival of the museum, is fulfilling. The tale of Jacob Swift’s rise and fall is entertaining, if ultimately sad.
The characters of Jacob Swift and his friends are well developed, but the modern day narrator, Reg, and Stan, are flat characters. Their purpose is to tell the story of their antecedents, rather than it being their story. They do not develop at all. There is very little plot; the plot that does exists is merely a vehicle for a more interesting tale. It works, but in a limited sense.
The author is a local historian and writer from Kent; he should know a fair bit about his own county’s history. What I wonder about is his general grasp of eighteenth century history. There are several anachronisms in his text; I don’t think, though I’m not certain, that balaclavas were in general circulation in the 1780’s or that English smugglers would have used litres to measure how much brandy they were importing. Please, correct me if I’m wrong. I mention these because I’d be trotting along happily reading this novel and then I’d be jarred out of the narrative. Also, there were errors of spelling and grammar, ‘along’ instead of ‘a long’ for instance, small things that an editor should have picked up on and corrected. These faults irritated me slightly but didn’t stop me enjoying the essential story.
Sarah Milton is a criminal profiler with the LAPD’s Violent Crime Unit; she’s helped solve several serial killings, and when she was a child she had an imaginary friend called Anna Nigma. Anna disappeared when Sarah’s mother was murdered.
During a trip to get some dog food Sarah is shot; a trip to the afterlife provides a clue to her mother’s murder, and then, when miraculously Sarah survives, Anna has returned. Sarah believes she’s going mad, until an old friend, in the course of investigating another serial killer ‘Raithe’, sends her to an old Chinese mystic, who collects ancient books. There’s a surprise in store for Sarah, and Anna.
Sarah, with Anna’s assistance, tracks down Raithe and his incorporeal accomplices. She goes to investigate, alone. Which is a big mistake. Her colleagues arrive a little too late.
I quite enjoyed this novel; the characters are engaging and the plot kept my interest. I especially enjoyed the development of the relationship between Sarah and Anna. Anna is a great character; she pulls pranks, is gobby and obnoxious, prone to temper tantrums, loves Sarah unconditionally and likes to play Scrabble. There’s a lot of potential in this series of books, especially for the development of the damaged Sarah, and her relationship with Ryan (a colleague), and the solving of her mother’s murder. Hopefully, Anna will eventually find out who she is as well.
I try not to judge harshly, but I do have a couple of criticisms. I found some of the characters too convenient and predictable – Meghan the trust fund baby, who just so happens to be the owner of a rare and ancient book collection, just when Sarah needs such a friend. I hope she’s developed as more than just helpful scenery in the rest of the books. Sarah needs a friend. Sarah’s dad is also a bit of a caricature of the distant father/politician. Unfortunately I found myself guessing the plot about half way through. It was obvious that Anna’s a ghost and that Raithe is murdering people as revenge for the already dead. I was only mildly surprised when I discovered that the same already dead were pulling his strings – it’s in his name, after all.
It’s possible I’ve read far too many supernatural and crime novels and I’m being picky; it doesn’t matter that this means I can predict a plot with a decent amount of accuracy because I can still enjoy a new story. I look forward to reading the next in the Sarah Milton Chronicles ‘Fidelis In Æternum’.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 