Books 33 - 41
There is a lot so I'm putting it under a cut
My Dearest Holmes by Rohase Piercy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For me the shocking thing here isn't that someone published a queer look at Watson and Sherlock but that they did it in the 1980s. Even into the mid-late 1990s when I started publishing short stories most publishers had bans on gay characters, often blacklisting authors so that's the shocker, not that someone imagined them as queer. That, I suspect happens often. I don't. I see Holmes as Aro/Ace instead but regardless I went into this after someone gave me the book.
One of the stars was for the year published and the way Piercy wrote it, making it feel tonally as if it were a Sherlockian tale. On the other hand, I found it rather dull. It's not a mystery with queer pining. It's unrequited queer pining and suffering with something of a mystery in it. You're in for a 140 pages of Watson mentally moaning about how he can't have Sherlock. (which made it really a 2 star read in most places specially the first story)
We have two novelettes. The first is the weaker of the two. They are written as if they were Watson detailing a case like usual but these were to be published after their deaths when they could no longer hurt them.
Watson has been asked to get Holmes to look into some missing letters for a friend, letters of a compromising nature. At this time period, being homosexual isn't just going to ruin your reputation, it's a ticket to jail (especially for men, women were a little better protected). This of course is the segue into Watson's pining for Holmes.
I honestly can't even remember what the letters were about or the names of the people, I was that bored with it. If not using this for a reading challenge, I would have DNFed it there. It ends with Holmes giving Watson good advice for the time: concentrate on your job, learn to be more discreet (we learn that Watson was given to going to Molly clubs) and marry to throw off suspicion (which in this time period was the safest thing to do if you were gay, just ask Oscar Wilde)
The second was a bit more interesting as it revolves around "The Final Problem" the infamous death of Sherlock at Reichenbach Falls. In this Watson has married Mary which is a marriage that acts as a shield for them both, she being a lesbian. (again not an unusual solution at that time). So we get that story through Watson's unrequited love lens. Somehow everyone seems able to take one look at Watson and knows he's gay...
We also get Watson's reaction to Holmes's death (needless to say he takes it beyond bad) and to his return to life. And after all the queer suffering (Watson even thinks at a young gay couple, enjoy it now before you suffer like I suffer) it ends on a positive note.
My main quibble with this story is Mycroft who Piercy chose to depict as a despicable brother and cruel (potentially homophobic) man and might even be Moriarty himself. Not sure where she pulled that out of the ether but it didn't jive with my understanding of Mycroft at all and it was jarring.
At the end of the day, I won't remember this book by the time April rolls around.
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Court of Wanderers: the highly anticipated sequel to the action-packed dark fantasy SILVER UNDER NIGHTFALL! by Rin Chupeco
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Boy this was SO hard to rate. 3.5 read rounded down for reasons I'll get into soon. But honestly this was sort of a hot mess that really needed to be edited more tightly. Yes it's been a year and a half since I read book one but I shouldn't have felt a desperate need to reread it to make sense of this. I think that's a problem with the whole duology. It's very character driven, nothing wrong with that but it wants to be plot driven.
And the plot is murky at best and that's where it trips itself up and falls flat several times. The whole court system and who wants to kill who and why isn't as well defined as it needed to be, especially since the whole plot of this is the courts want to install Malekh in a place of even more power. The betrayals that come later in the book don't hit nearly as hard as they should because it's so convoluted and unclear it's hard to figure out why I should care about this other than it nearly takes out Remy, Malekh and Xiaodan.
And as much as I still like our trio there isn't much growth for them in this. The biggest question is will Remy eventually allow himself to be turned (more on that later)
For me the biggest issue was the editing. That above mentioned question about Remy is asked multiple times. Sometimes the trio said nearly identical stuff to what they said two chapters ago. It's like 'this again?' I swear sometimes authors/editors run up against deadlines, book one was hot so they don't take the time needed to fix problems. For me there were several repetitive things in it (this being one of the most egregious) that could have been tightened up. The author
Speaking of tightening, this is where someone should have stepped in and said enough is enough. The sex scenes made this feel like bad fanfic. Seriously put me in mind of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer hey days when you'd get 50 page stories with 10 pages of plot and 40 pages of people rolling around in bed. I got SO bored with the sex in this. That's all Remy/Malekh/Xiaodan do! If I sliced out the sex scenes I think this would be a third of the book would be gone. It felt far too much like was overly enamored of watching their lovelies screw that we needed to see this once a chapter.
And some of these scenes were pretty gross and I say that as someone who likes a little bondage, polyamory and dominant female scenarios. None of them were very explicit. On the other hand a very lengthy scene of human familiars servicing their vampires (Remy now included) during court while they're trying to do business as a show of I don't know? Dominance? wasn't sexy, just boring and uncomfortable. Another entire chapter was them fighting while screwing to the point I forgot they were actually having sex since the three of them were talking non stop. Does anyone actually do this?
Had some of the extraneous sex been chopped out (along with the repetition) the pacing issues could have been fixed because seriously I almost DNFed this in the boggy middle. I did very much like the ending even though it was seriously weird and I wished more time was spent on what Malekh and Xiaodan went through at the Allpriory because that should have been a BIG thing but it wasn't.
Not saying I disliked it. I am saying I didn't like it nearly as much as book one. That said, the ending is open and if the author came back to this world down the road I'd read it.
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Zokusho by Paul Corn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is one I picked up a Tsubasacon last year from the artist. It sits at the intersection of SF and fantasy which would normally be up my alley. The distractor for me is that I'm not a fan of assassins and thieves as protagonists and there were a lot of them in this. Each story was set up (at varying lengths) to introduce the characters who presumably will be working together in the future.
We have mafia enforcer types, we have rotting Johnny who is literally doing that after a magic-surgery gone wrong (and was special forces turned assassin as well) and then there are a couple of Wayward Cross...knights? (who may or may not be assassins too) and the telepath Nitrous Blight who was for me the more interesting of characters.
By the end of this volume, everyone is introduced and some are now working together. However, I'm not too likely to go further just because it's not my taste in reading material. The art, for some reason, put me in mind of Rurouni Kenshin. If you like morally grey to charcoal characters you'd probably enjoy this.
View all my reviews
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins Library Edition Volume 1 by Sam Maggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a gorgeous (and pricey) edition of four of the origin stories of the Mighty Nein characters written in conjunction with Matt Mercer and the voice actors embodying the various characters. In this we have, in order, Jester Lavorre, Yasha Nydoorin, Caleb Widogast and Nott the Brave. So let me talk about them individually.
Jester's story has lovely art and color palette and while the story seems to go on a bit long (I haven't checked but I suspect it is the longest by page count). We meet Jester as a young girl, Sapphire, whose mother is one of the most sought after courtesans in the realm and is also Agoraphobic and overprotective to the extreme. Jester is rarely allowed outside the building and turns inward to her art. Until she meets The Traveler, who at this time she believes to be another kid like herself. It's a story about their dangerous shenanigans until Jester finally leaves the nest. It is by far the happiest story of the bunch.
Yasha's story was the weakest (and I'm not saying that because Yasha is not my favorite character. I like her don't get me wrong but she's at the bottom of the pile for me). It seemed overly long for the story it's telling but that might not have been so bad had the art been better. William Kirkby's art in this is...I wish I could see it as the editors extolled it. It's a muddy, heavy lined, out of proportion, bodies don't look like that mess. I outright hated it. Yasha's story is pretty tragic though so there was potential for it to be good. She's taken basically as the spoils of war but raised by the leader as her own. That works until she falls in love with another woman taken in the same way. Only more sadness results and we leave her on the steps of joining the Nein.
Caleb's story is tied with Nott's as my favorite (I'm biased, they're my favorite two characters in the Nein but in full honesty Caleb is the type of character I always fall for). Caleb's story starts with joy, him getting a rare spot at the Solstryce Academy where he and a couple others, Astrid and Wulf are mocked for being country bumpkins. They are selected for special training which is obvious to anyone but them they are being groomed and tortured and probably experimented on (which is probably why three country folk were selected). They are left scarred inside and out and used as weapons for the empire. Also they're a thruple (the pages get pretty spicy within the bounds of what's allowed on a page) so Caleb is canonically a poly pansexual from what we can tell. And then his story goes beyond tragic as the gas lighting and outright magically enthrallment takes him to a dark place, to dark things and then he breaks.
Nott the Brave's story is very much the saddest of them all. Kirkby's art is back. It's still ugly but at least not as bad as Yasha's (so...that was an artistic choice?!?) And I can't really review it without completely spoiling it if you haven't caught up with the Mighty Nein (I am not but I had already been spoiled for all this because what it's 4-5 years ago now that it aired?) What is done to Nott is horrific and really one of the more interesting twists.
So very glad I got this edition and I know I said it's expensive but honestly is more expensive than buying the comics individually? No, not really. It's worth it.
View all my reviews
LOVE IS LOVE Poetry Anthology: In aid of Orlando's Pulse victims and survivors by Lily G. Blunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I bought this years ago as all proceeds went to helping others in the aftermath of the Pulse shooting in Orlando (and then put it somewhere in my TBR where it got swallowed up until now.
As with any poetry anthology it's going to be a YMMV situation. Some poems will speak to you. Some won't. That's the thing with poetry it tends to hit differently than prose. There's no real need to tell you my favorites, just that there were several I loved. I'm glad I bought this, though I wish there had been no need for the anthology in the first place.
View all my reviews
We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It hurts to rate this so low. Usually I'd bail on something before this but I was reading it for a challenge and I kept thinking I'll get into it. 80s nostalgia, girl power, magic, all of this is in my wheelhouse. I just couldn't get past the things bothering me.
For one, it has a strange choice in narration. It's like someone doing a voice over...for the entire book. Which of the girls is this? We don't know. And then it breaks that narrative by including points of view that they should have no way of knowing (like the thoughts of one of the girl's father's for example) It keeps the reader at a distance.
But for me the killer was how amazingly overwritten this whole thing is. First we have the weird quirk of almost always referring to every character by full name every time (Mel and Little Smitty being exceptions) And everything is so over described it's dense and wearying to wade through. Tell me they dropped their dufflebags, no need to tell me everything that's in them unless it's important later. Everything is described at least three times in a row so if the narrator wants to say something is hot as a summer's day, add in at least two other analogies more often than not.
By fifty pages in we know they're wearing a strip of blue sweat sock on their arms, no need to bring it up every other paragraph. Ditto Jen and her 'claw', her overly teased up 80s bangs. We get it. No need to make it its own character in the book. By the time we really got into the magic, I was fatigued by the prose and no longer cared.
View all my reviews
The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
If the Popsugar challenge hadn't issued a hard to find prompt of a character who's 42 I probably would have walked away from this. I can't begin to say how deeply disappointed I was (and I don't usually review books that I'm this disappointed with but since it was for the challenge) I was SO looking forward to this. Historical mysteries are one of my most favorite subgenres (I have nearly 200 of them reviewed here. This is my 4th one of the year and we're only 6 weeks in)
My problem? Gus & the book's focus. The main character annoyed me. Gus and her twin Julia are supposed to be smart. Gus is too arrogant for that and makes dumb choices (especially at a time when one small mistake could 'ruin' a woman and if you were cast out in this highly overromanticized time period, you were going to end up dead, prostituted or put into a work house) There were several TSTL moments, too many for me. For instance, Gus's big plan to rescue a woman from her husband was to go in, tell them who she and Julia were and then sneak her out. She TOLD him their real names. It's not until dozens of pages later do we get clued in that she had planned to have an even higher ranking aristocrat give her an alibi (by then I thought she was an idiot) and she does this not thinking things out thing multiple times.
Now for the focus. The blurb leads you to believe Gus is going to try and help clear Lord Belford's name. He was convicted of murder (during a duel) and transported to New Zealand 20 years ago. They meet as he tries to rob her on her way to save the aforementioned wife and Gus shoot him (she is more violent than most historical sleuths and I'm okay with that). I struggled to look past the insta-love Gus has for him (he tried to rob you at gun point but yeah he helps you later but still...) when we had nearly 500 pages that we could have built to that.
But that is not the book's focus (and mild spoiler alert, not something that is cleared up) Instead it feels like Goodman found out so many atrocities visited upon women in the early 1800s that she had to include them all in this. There are three separate cases, each a different atrocity (all set against the background of how worthless she and Julia are as they never married and reproduced like a good little girl). So rather than focus on one or two of these and save something for the series (which this will be) it's all shoe horned in with judgy, self righteous Gus. I won't be around for more.
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Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I rounded up from 3.5 because it was honestly funny if you don't mind wacky situations being the norm. I mean it opens with Meg helping out her brother Rob after putting herself temporarily out of work by smashing her hand (she's a blacksmith) and he needed help figuring out what was going on at Mutant Wizard, the game making company he's CEO of (he's not the most grounded of people) and Meg's office companions are her boyfriend's mother's horrible dog (in a crate) and George, a one winged buzzard (not in a crate)
Ted, the unfunny prankster of the gaming group, is found actually dead (after faking it so many times) riding around on the automated (and apparently huge) mail cart, strangled by a mouse cord. (This was pubbed in 2003 so we're talking pre-smart phones, pre-wireless everything). THe less than competent police are sure the blackmail note in Rob's office means Ted was out to get him and surely he's the killer because a 'ninja strike' was used to incapacitate Ted first and Rob knows all these moves.
Fake moves Meg had been pranking him with and the young programming geeks working under him think are real. So Meg has to weed through the weird and the strange to save her brother. Not only are there all the oddball gamer guys working on Lawyers from Hell II (the upcoming sequel to her brother's winning game idea) there are the psychologists sharing the building (unwillingly) who are weird themselves.
With her actor boyfriend in LA, Meg is free to take risks including going to Ted's home (a place stuffed with chintz as he was caretaking an estate) and going to the office late night only to find it never empty. It's the running joke of the story.
It wasn't a bad mystery. Meg solved it about 10 seconds before the per usual amateur sleuth in deep trouble ending. This one was so over the top it bordered on slapstick. Still, I enjoyed this and since they didn't appear in the book, I'm assuming the leaping loons are the people working in the building. It seems apt.
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My Dearest Holmes by Rohase Piercy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For me the shocking thing here isn't that someone published a queer look at Watson and Sherlock but that they did it in the 1980s. Even into the mid-late 1990s when I started publishing short stories most publishers had bans on gay characters, often blacklisting authors so that's the shocker, not that someone imagined them as queer. That, I suspect happens often. I don't. I see Holmes as Aro/Ace instead but regardless I went into this after someone gave me the book.
One of the stars was for the year published and the way Piercy wrote it, making it feel tonally as if it were a Sherlockian tale. On the other hand, I found it rather dull. It's not a mystery with queer pining. It's unrequited queer pining and suffering with something of a mystery in it. You're in for a 140 pages of Watson mentally moaning about how he can't have Sherlock. (which made it really a 2 star read in most places specially the first story)
We have two novelettes. The first is the weaker of the two. They are written as if they were Watson detailing a case like usual but these were to be published after their deaths when they could no longer hurt them.
Watson has been asked to get Holmes to look into some missing letters for a friend, letters of a compromising nature. At this time period, being homosexual isn't just going to ruin your reputation, it's a ticket to jail (especially for men, women were a little better protected). This of course is the segue into Watson's pining for Holmes.
I honestly can't even remember what the letters were about or the names of the people, I was that bored with it. If not using this for a reading challenge, I would have DNFed it there. It ends with Holmes giving Watson good advice for the time: concentrate on your job, learn to be more discreet (we learn that Watson was given to going to Molly clubs) and marry to throw off suspicion (which in this time period was the safest thing to do if you were gay, just ask Oscar Wilde)
The second was a bit more interesting as it revolves around "The Final Problem" the infamous death of Sherlock at Reichenbach Falls. In this Watson has married Mary which is a marriage that acts as a shield for them both, she being a lesbian. (again not an unusual solution at that time). So we get that story through Watson's unrequited love lens. Somehow everyone seems able to take one look at Watson and knows he's gay...
We also get Watson's reaction to Holmes's death (needless to say he takes it beyond bad) and to his return to life. And after all the queer suffering (Watson even thinks at a young gay couple, enjoy it now before you suffer like I suffer) it ends on a positive note.
My main quibble with this story is Mycroft who Piercy chose to depict as a despicable brother and cruel (potentially homophobic) man and might even be Moriarty himself. Not sure where she pulled that out of the ether but it didn't jive with my understanding of Mycroft at all and it was jarring.
At the end of the day, I won't remember this book by the time April rolls around.
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Court of Wanderers: the highly anticipated sequel to the action-packed dark fantasy SILVER UNDER NIGHTFALL! by Rin Chupeco
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Boy this was SO hard to rate. 3.5 read rounded down for reasons I'll get into soon. But honestly this was sort of a hot mess that really needed to be edited more tightly. Yes it's been a year and a half since I read book one but I shouldn't have felt a desperate need to reread it to make sense of this. I think that's a problem with the whole duology. It's very character driven, nothing wrong with that but it wants to be plot driven.
And the plot is murky at best and that's where it trips itself up and falls flat several times. The whole court system and who wants to kill who and why isn't as well defined as it needed to be, especially since the whole plot of this is the courts want to install Malekh in a place of even more power. The betrayals that come later in the book don't hit nearly as hard as they should because it's so convoluted and unclear it's hard to figure out why I should care about this other than it nearly takes out Remy, Malekh and Xiaodan.
And as much as I still like our trio there isn't much growth for them in this. The biggest question is will Remy eventually allow himself to be turned (more on that later)
For me the biggest issue was the editing. That above mentioned question about Remy is asked multiple times. Sometimes the trio said nearly identical stuff to what they said two chapters ago. It's like 'this again?' I swear sometimes authors/editors run up against deadlines, book one was hot so they don't take the time needed to fix problems. For me there were several repetitive things in it (this being one of the most egregious) that could have been tightened up. The author
Speaking of tightening, this is where someone should have stepped in and said enough is enough. The sex scenes made this feel like bad fanfic. Seriously put me in mind of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer hey days when you'd get 50 page stories with 10 pages of plot and 40 pages of people rolling around in bed. I got SO bored with the sex in this. That's all Remy/Malekh/Xiaodan do! If I sliced out the sex scenes I think this would be a third of the book would be gone. It felt far too much like was overly enamored of watching their lovelies screw that we needed to see this once a chapter.
And some of these scenes were pretty gross and I say that as someone who likes a little bondage, polyamory and dominant female scenarios. None of them were very explicit. On the other hand a very lengthy scene of human familiars servicing their vampires (Remy now included) during court while they're trying to do business as a show of I don't know? Dominance? wasn't sexy, just boring and uncomfortable. Another entire chapter was them fighting while screwing to the point I forgot they were actually having sex since the three of them were talking non stop. Does anyone actually do this?
Had some of the extraneous sex been chopped out (along with the repetition) the pacing issues could have been fixed because seriously I almost DNFed this in the boggy middle. I did very much like the ending even though it was seriously weird and I wished more time was spent on what Malekh and Xiaodan went through at the Allpriory because that should have been a BIG thing but it wasn't.
Not saying I disliked it. I am saying I didn't like it nearly as much as book one. That said, the ending is open and if the author came back to this world down the road I'd read it.
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Zokusho by Paul Corn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is one I picked up a Tsubasacon last year from the artist. It sits at the intersection of SF and fantasy which would normally be up my alley. The distractor for me is that I'm not a fan of assassins and thieves as protagonists and there were a lot of them in this. Each story was set up (at varying lengths) to introduce the characters who presumably will be working together in the future.
We have mafia enforcer types, we have rotting Johnny who is literally doing that after a magic-surgery gone wrong (and was special forces turned assassin as well) and then there are a couple of Wayward Cross...knights? (who may or may not be assassins too) and the telepath Nitrous Blight who was for me the more interesting of characters.
By the end of this volume, everyone is introduced and some are now working together. However, I'm not too likely to go further just because it's not my taste in reading material. The art, for some reason, put me in mind of Rurouni Kenshin. If you like morally grey to charcoal characters you'd probably enjoy this.
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Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins Library Edition Volume 1 by Sam Maggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a gorgeous (and pricey) edition of four of the origin stories of the Mighty Nein characters written in conjunction with Matt Mercer and the voice actors embodying the various characters. In this we have, in order, Jester Lavorre, Yasha Nydoorin, Caleb Widogast and Nott the Brave. So let me talk about them individually.
Jester's story has lovely art and color palette and while the story seems to go on a bit long (I haven't checked but I suspect it is the longest by page count). We meet Jester as a young girl, Sapphire, whose mother is one of the most sought after courtesans in the realm and is also Agoraphobic and overprotective to the extreme. Jester is rarely allowed outside the building and turns inward to her art. Until she meets The Traveler, who at this time she believes to be another kid like herself. It's a story about their dangerous shenanigans until Jester finally leaves the nest. It is by far the happiest story of the bunch.
Yasha's story was the weakest (and I'm not saying that because Yasha is not my favorite character. I like her don't get me wrong but she's at the bottom of the pile for me). It seemed overly long for the story it's telling but that might not have been so bad had the art been better. William Kirkby's art in this is...I wish I could see it as the editors extolled it. It's a muddy, heavy lined, out of proportion, bodies don't look like that mess. I outright hated it. Yasha's story is pretty tragic though so there was potential for it to be good. She's taken basically as the spoils of war but raised by the leader as her own. That works until she falls in love with another woman taken in the same way. Only more sadness results and we leave her on the steps of joining the Nein.
Caleb's story is tied with Nott's as my favorite (I'm biased, they're my favorite two characters in the Nein but in full honesty Caleb is the type of character I always fall for). Caleb's story starts with joy, him getting a rare spot at the Solstryce Academy where he and a couple others, Astrid and Wulf are mocked for being country bumpkins. They are selected for special training which is obvious to anyone but them they are being groomed and tortured and probably experimented on (which is probably why three country folk were selected). They are left scarred inside and out and used as weapons for the empire. Also they're a thruple (the pages get pretty spicy within the bounds of what's allowed on a page) so Caleb is canonically a poly pansexual from what we can tell. And then his story goes beyond tragic as the gas lighting and outright magically enthrallment takes him to a dark place, to dark things and then he breaks.
Nott the Brave's story is very much the saddest of them all. Kirkby's art is back. It's still ugly but at least not as bad as Yasha's (so...that was an artistic choice?!?) And I can't really review it without completely spoiling it if you haven't caught up with the Mighty Nein (I am not but I had already been spoiled for all this because what it's 4-5 years ago now that it aired?) What is done to Nott is horrific and really one of the more interesting twists.
So very glad I got this edition and I know I said it's expensive but honestly is more expensive than buying the comics individually? No, not really. It's worth it.
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LOVE IS LOVE Poetry Anthology: In aid of Orlando's Pulse victims and survivors by Lily G. Blunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I bought this years ago as all proceeds went to helping others in the aftermath of the Pulse shooting in Orlando (and then put it somewhere in my TBR where it got swallowed up until now.
As with any poetry anthology it's going to be a YMMV situation. Some poems will speak to you. Some won't. That's the thing with poetry it tends to hit differently than prose. There's no real need to tell you my favorites, just that there were several I loved. I'm glad I bought this, though I wish there had been no need for the anthology in the first place.
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We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It hurts to rate this so low. Usually I'd bail on something before this but I was reading it for a challenge and I kept thinking I'll get into it. 80s nostalgia, girl power, magic, all of this is in my wheelhouse. I just couldn't get past the things bothering me.
For one, it has a strange choice in narration. It's like someone doing a voice over...for the entire book. Which of the girls is this? We don't know. And then it breaks that narrative by including points of view that they should have no way of knowing (like the thoughts of one of the girl's father's for example) It keeps the reader at a distance.
But for me the killer was how amazingly overwritten this whole thing is. First we have the weird quirk of almost always referring to every character by full name every time (Mel and Little Smitty being exceptions) And everything is so over described it's dense and wearying to wade through. Tell me they dropped their dufflebags, no need to tell me everything that's in them unless it's important later. Everything is described at least three times in a row so if the narrator wants to say something is hot as a summer's day, add in at least two other analogies more often than not.
By fifty pages in we know they're wearing a strip of blue sweat sock on their arms, no need to bring it up every other paragraph. Ditto Jen and her 'claw', her overly teased up 80s bangs. We get it. No need to make it its own character in the book. By the time we really got into the magic, I was fatigued by the prose and no longer cared.
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The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
If the Popsugar challenge hadn't issued a hard to find prompt of a character who's 42 I probably would have walked away from this. I can't begin to say how deeply disappointed I was (and I don't usually review books that I'm this disappointed with but since it was for the challenge) I was SO looking forward to this. Historical mysteries are one of my most favorite subgenres (I have nearly 200 of them reviewed here. This is my 4th one of the year and we're only 6 weeks in)
My problem? Gus & the book's focus. The main character annoyed me. Gus and her twin Julia are supposed to be smart. Gus is too arrogant for that and makes dumb choices (especially at a time when one small mistake could 'ruin' a woman and if you were cast out in this highly overromanticized time period, you were going to end up dead, prostituted or put into a work house) There were several TSTL moments, too many for me. For instance, Gus's big plan to rescue a woman from her husband was to go in, tell them who she and Julia were and then sneak her out. She TOLD him their real names. It's not until dozens of pages later do we get clued in that she had planned to have an even higher ranking aristocrat give her an alibi (by then I thought she was an idiot) and she does this not thinking things out thing multiple times.
Now for the focus. The blurb leads you to believe Gus is going to try and help clear Lord Belford's name. He was convicted of murder (during a duel) and transported to New Zealand 20 years ago. They meet as he tries to rob her on her way to save the aforementioned wife and Gus shoot him (she is more violent than most historical sleuths and I'm okay with that). I struggled to look past the insta-love Gus has for him (he tried to rob you at gun point but yeah he helps you later but still...) when we had nearly 500 pages that we could have built to that.
But that is not the book's focus (and mild spoiler alert, not something that is cleared up) Instead it feels like Goodman found out so many atrocities visited upon women in the early 1800s that she had to include them all in this. There are three separate cases, each a different atrocity (all set against the background of how worthless she and Julia are as they never married and reproduced like a good little girl). So rather than focus on one or two of these and save something for the series (which this will be) it's all shoe horned in with judgy, self righteous Gus. I won't be around for more.
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Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I rounded up from 3.5 because it was honestly funny if you don't mind wacky situations being the norm. I mean it opens with Meg helping out her brother Rob after putting herself temporarily out of work by smashing her hand (she's a blacksmith) and he needed help figuring out what was going on at Mutant Wizard, the game making company he's CEO of (he's not the most grounded of people) and Meg's office companions are her boyfriend's mother's horrible dog (in a crate) and George, a one winged buzzard (not in a crate)
Ted, the unfunny prankster of the gaming group, is found actually dead (after faking it so many times) riding around on the automated (and apparently huge) mail cart, strangled by a mouse cord. (This was pubbed in 2003 so we're talking pre-smart phones, pre-wireless everything). THe less than competent police are sure the blackmail note in Rob's office means Ted was out to get him and surely he's the killer because a 'ninja strike' was used to incapacitate Ted first and Rob knows all these moves.
Fake moves Meg had been pranking him with and the young programming geeks working under him think are real. So Meg has to weed through the weird and the strange to save her brother. Not only are there all the oddball gamer guys working on Lawyers from Hell II (the upcoming sequel to her brother's winning game idea) there are the psychologists sharing the building (unwillingly) who are weird themselves.
With her actor boyfriend in LA, Meg is free to take risks including going to Ted's home (a place stuffed with chintz as he was caretaking an estate) and going to the office late night only to find it never empty. It's the running joke of the story.
It wasn't a bad mystery. Meg solved it about 10 seconds before the per usual amateur sleuth in deep trouble ending. This one was so over the top it bordered on slapstick. Still, I enjoyed this and since they didn't appear in the book, I'm assuming the leaping loons are the people working in the building. It seems apt.
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