CBR2 Book 92: "Scoundrel" by Zoë Archer

Publisher: Zebra
Page count: 370 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: October 11th, 2010
Date finished: October 12th, 2010

Bennett (yes, his mother is a huge fan of Jane Austen - guess what his brother is called?) Day is a cryptographer and solver of codes and riddles for the Blades of the Rose. He merrily travels the globe, working to protect the world's magic sources from abuse and exploitation from the Heirs of Albion and other similar organizations who would use magic for their own gain and to preserve the international dominance of England and the English. They want to use the magical sources around the world to subjugate non-English peoples and countries, while the Blades try to avoid exactly that. He thrives on action, adventure and danger and is indeed the scoundrel of the title, using his charm and dashing good looks to sweep women off their feet wherever he goes. In Greece, he has just escaped an enraged husband, when he meets what may well be his match in a marketplace.

Lady London Edgeworth Harcourt has been a widow for nearly 3 years. She has lived a sheltered life, pampered by her father and neglected by her husband, both Heirs of Albion, who believe that women are ornaments and possessions too delicate to trouble with the realities of the world. An unhappy daughter, then wife and widow, London has by necessity taught herself everything she has yearned for, including swimming and numerous languages, including ancient dialects hardly anyone masters. Once her father realizes that his daughter can decipher the archaic Greek dialect needed to decode a riddle on an old temple, he has no choice but to bring her with him to Greece. He wants to find Greek fire, a weapon that will make England near unstoppable, but does not in any way intend to tell London why the inscription needs decoding.

London sees her journey to Greece as a chance to finally break free and discover the world she has only read about. She is delighted by the country, and drags her maid all around Athens to see as many sights as possible before she must depart to translate the temple inscriptions. She is finally free of her widow's weeds and cannot wait to actually experience things, glad that her father values her linguistic abilities and actually needs her for something. She runs into Bennett in the market place, where he defends her from an angry street vendor who accuses her of sabotaging his business, when she dares to point out that he is selling bogus antiquities and refuses to believe she can actually read the language on the pottery shards. There is an instant attraction between the two, which is soon complicated when Bennett realizes that she is not only a linguistic expert, but the daughter of one of his worst enemies, and might help the Heirs find the source he is in Greece to protect.

Unsure of whether London is an evil temptress working with her father, or entirely innocent and unaware of the dealings of the Heirs, Bennett abducts her from her father's steamship and he and his friends quickly realize that she knows nothing of the Heirs of Albion or their plans. Bennett reveals the truth about magic, sources, the Blades and the Heirs, but London is reluctant to believe that her father, late husband and brother could be so evil and ruthless, and not sure she can trust the charming stranger she only just met. When she is recaptured by her father and confronts him, he not only confirms what Bennett told her, but reveals that Mr Day is the man who killed her husband. She also realizes that far from admiring and respecting her linguistic abilities, her father only wants her so he can locate another magic source, then he plans to marry her off to one of his toadying Heir lackeys and she will be forced back into her stifling and restrictive existence as trophy wife once more.

Very conflicted and confused, London has to choose if she is to help her father, who wants to use magic to subjugate and oppress people for the glory of England, or trust Bennett, the man who killed her husband, who gave her a false name when they first met, and who abducted her without any difficulty. Soon she finds herself on the run from her father's steamship, on the trail of a magical weapon with a breathtakingly attractive and clearly dangerous man. There is adventure, danger and several linguistic challenges in her future, and her life will never be the same again.

In some ways, I liked Scoundrel more than Warrior, in others, I did not. London is a a lovely woman, thirsting for adventure and very open to new experiences. Possibly too open, and sometimes even a bit rash. She is very quick to trust Bennett, even though he kidnaps her, has lied to her and she knows he hates her father, and made her a widow. She feels extremely attracted to him, and he clearly returns the feelings, and pretty much every lustful thought the couple feel when observing each other is described by the author. It is clear that London is very intelligent, she taught herself a buttload of languages, both modern and ancient, but she still seems almost stupidly trusting when she goes off with Bennett and his allies. I would have liked more exploration of London's (and Bennett's, for that matter) non-lustful thoughts.

Bennett is quite happy being a scoundrel, sleeping his way around the world while having adventures and fighting bad guys. He is impressed by London's linguistic abilities, and deeply impressed with her lust for adventure. Of course, it doesn't hurt that she is wicked beautiful. He doesn't want to settle down, and has never met a woman he was willing to give up his independence and bachelorhood for. At first, he is convinced that his passion for London will fade in time, just as with any other woman he's ever encountered. Unsurprisingly, the more time he spends with her, the more smitten he is.

There is a lot of action and adventure in this book, just as in Warrior. More of Catullus Graves' marvellous inventions are unveiled, we find out a bit more about the inner workings of the Blades, and while there may have been a bit more sex and lustfulness than I like on occasion, the book is still loads of fun, with some great supporting characters, and I'm very much looking forward to the next one, out in November.

CBR2 Book 91: "Warrior" by Zoë Archer

Publisher: Zebra
Page count: 370 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: October 9th, 2010
Date finished: October 11th, 2010

Captain Gabriel Huntley has spent almost half his life in the army. Just returned to England to possibly settle down with an office job in Leeds, he witnesses a man being attacked in an alley, and steps in to help. The man is brutally stabbed, and charges Gabriel to pass his dying message onto his friend....who is currently in Outer Mongolia. Gabriel, who was having doubts about a staid life in an office anyway, accepts the mission and travels to Mongolia to give the rather incomprehensible message to Franklin Burgess.

Mr. Burgess has a badly broken leg, but is a member of a secret organization, the Blades of the Rose, tasked with keeping magic safe and hidden from the population in general, and away from the unscrupulous hands of those who would use it only for their own gain. The message is a worrying one, meaning that the evil Heirs of Albion (a bunch of English noblemen bent on taking as much magic in the world for themselves and the good of the British Empire) are on their way to capturing a very powerful magic source in Mongolia. He has no choice but to send his daughter, Thalia, on the mission in his stead. Thalia is an unorthodox young lady, raised among Mongolian nomads, and has wanted nothing more than to prove her worth to the Blades since she was old enough to hear about the secret society.

While she is determined to manage the mission alone, accompanied only by a servant, it quickly becomes obvious that she will need help, and Gabriel is just the man for the job. He saves her from an ambush by two of the Heirs, and convinces her that it would be stupid for her to travel alone. At first, she refuses to tell him the details surrounding her mission, but it does not take long before she has to tell him the truth about magic, the Blades, the Heirs and her important task. Now the couple have to fight their attraction while they escape the clutches of the villains bent on killing them, and stealing the Mongolian magic source.

Warrior is the first of four Blades of the Rose novels, and to my joy the books will be coming out in quick succession between now and December. I already have the second book, Scoundrel, loaded onto my E-reader. The first book is a blend of historical romance, fantasy and adventure, reminiscent in tone of the Indiana Jones movies, with possibly a bit more focus on the romance. But the focus of the book is not just getting the couple together, but just as much the quest they are on, preventing the bad guys from gaining a weapon that could threaten untold thousands.

The characters are strong and well developed, and in an interview I read with the author, she talked about how important it was for her that the heroines be just as strong and capable as the heroes, maybe not physically, but holding their own, and by no means being swooning damsels that need rescuing and can't survive without a big strong man in their life. Gabriel is very clever, has years of battle training, can shoot and wrestle and excels at military tactics. But Thalia has been raised to think for herself, and can ride and shoot as well as, if not better, than a man. She is very intelligent, having been raised by her anthropologist father, and Gabriel is not intimidated by her brains, but rather finds this a very attractive feature in her. The couple have a good balance, and make an excellent team. I hope the rest of the series is as fun and exciting as the first book.

CBR2 Book 90: "The Iron Duke" by Meljean Brook

Publisher: Berkley
Page count: 384 pages
Date begun: October 8th, 2010
Date finished: October 9th, 2010

Detective Inspector Mina Wenthworth is the daughter of the Earl of Rockingham, but she lives in a version of England that not long ago was enslaved by the Mongol Horde, and had been for centuries. The Horde infected the populace with nanoagents, and were able to control them with electronic frequencies, taking away their free will, and could even, during something known as the Frenzy, force them to become overcome with lust, mating with anyone close by. Mina is the result of such a Frenzy, when her mother was raped by members of the Horde. When she saw her child for the first time, the Countess of Rockingham gouged her eyes out.

England was saved from the Horde when the pirate captain of Marco's Terror, Rhys Trahaearn, sailed up the Thames and blew up the huge tower which controlled the infected Englishmen, popularly known as buggers. In the ensuing revolution, the Horde's control was lifted, and now the nanoagents no longer enslave people, but make them faster and stronger. Rhys was embraced as a popular hero and given the title Duke of Anglesey. He is popularly known as the Iron Duke

But Mina still looks like the Horde overlords that sired her, and this causes people to whisper behind her back if they are kind, and physically attack her if they are less so. She works hard as a Detective Inspector to help support her family, who while they are noble, are very poor. When she is called away from a ball in the Iron Duke's honour, to investigate the murder of a man literally dropped on the Duke's doorstep, her life changes forever.

Rhys has not had an easy life, and is not comfortable with the adulation of the people or the hero status he feels he is undeserving of. He is first annoyed that one of his staff called the police, as he would have preferred to sort out the murder himself, it is clearly meant as some sort of signal to him - but he is impressed with the Detective's zeal and determination, and the more intrigued he is by her, the more determined he is to add her to his possessions.

Mina, who has had to work three times as hard as anyone else because of her half-Horde heritage, and who constantly faces scorn and derision, is not about to become even more of a talking point and scandal by becoming the Iron Duke's plaything. But when it turns out that the Duke's former ship, Marco's Terror, where her younger brother Andrew is serving as midshipman, has been captured by enemies of England, she is forced to work together with him to try to save her brother. As they set out on a dangerous journey, it becomes obvious that not just the ship is in danger, but possibly all of England as well.

Mina is a really strong and unusual heroine. She has loving parents, but can never escape the knowledge that she is a result of rape, and her features cause her to be hated and feared almost wherever she turns. She is a dedicated professional, and has clearly earned the respect of her superiors and co-workers, but knows that she is unlikely to ever find a man who can accept her shameful origins, and any child of hers may inherit her Mongol features and face the same difficulties that she has had. She finds the Iron Duke intriguing and very attractive, but cannot let herself be tempted by him, as her reputation is all she has, and she cannot give any ammunition to the writers of the scandal sheets. She was also old enough to experience on Frenzy before the Iron Duke rid England of the control of the Horde, and fears losing control like that ever again.

Rhys is very strong and very dominant, and literally has bones made of iron. He escaped his birthplace in Wales early, and it is a mystery to most why the frequency of the signal tower failed to affect him. He did not want to be hailed as a hero and a saviour, but has reluctantly embraced his title and is trying to do the best he can for his people. He is fiercely loyal and protective of what he considers his, and does not hesitate to go after his ship when it's been captured. He pursues Mina with determination and aggression, but has to change tactics when he realizes that she cannot be bought or blackmailed into working for him, or sleeping with him. The more time he spends with her, the more fascinated he is, and he is determined to win her - whatever the cost.

The Iron Duke is the first book I've read by Meljean Brook, and I was very excited to read it, having read rave reviews in several places, and having gotten a taste for Steampunk in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series. This is the first of new series, The Iron Seas, according to Ms Brook's website, and I am very excited. She has created a fascinating world, with mechanically enhanced humans, steam driven carriages, air ships, krakens and megalodons and some very well drawn characters. I will eagerly await new installments in the series, and probably go back and read some of her Guardian series as well.

CBR2 Book 89: "Naked Heat" by Richard Castle

Publisher: Hyperion
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: October 5th, 2010
Date finished: October 8th, 2010

NYPD detective Nikki Heat is not having an easy time doing her job. Her face is on every newsstand in the city after Jameson Rook's article printed, and made her far more famous than she would like to be. She is trying to forget all about the writer and his feature article after their break-up, but this proves impossible after she arrives at a murder scene to find New York's most vicious gossip columnist dead, and Jameson Rook is the person who found the body. Cassidy Towne was the subject of his next article, and he wants to team up with Nikki once again, to solve the murder, finish his article, and maybe get back into her good graces.

It turns out that there is nothing simple about the case. On the way to the morgue, Cassidy Towne's body is stolen, she had numerous enemies and was writing a tell-all book about the death of a high profile movie star - Heat is under pressure to solve the murder quickly and wants to stay out of the limelight while doing so. She wants nothing to do with Rook, but needs his insider knowledge about the murder victim to solve the case. And new bodies keep turning up.

Richard Castle is a fictional TV character played by Nathan Fillion. I have yet to discover who ghost writes these books, but the first Nikki Heat novel, Heat Wave, was an honest to God New York Times Bestseller. ABC has done an incredibly clever thing by having the novels published along side the TV show. Naked Heat is even better than the first novel, it's fast paced and entertaining, there is great banter between the characters, just like on Castle, and while I had certain aspects of the story figured out in advance, the murderer's identity and motive came as a surprise to me. I really want to figure out who actually writes these books, as I would happily pay money for other novels the person writes as well.

CBR2 Book 88: "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Page count: 384 pages
Ratin: 2 stars
Date begun: October 2nd, 2010
Date finished: October 5th, 2010

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Everywhere I turn recently, there seems to be some mention of Eat Pray Love. Elizabeth Gilbert has been on the Oprah show, it's been turned into a big movie with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem. It's an international bestseller. One of my friends bought it to read on her very long plane ride to Peru this summer, thinking that it would be an easily disposable book - but ended up loving it, carrying it around with her on her three week trip, and took it back home with her. Having thought it was just the tale of one woman's trip round the world, I was curious, and decided I needed to read it for my blog.

I wanted to hate this book. Having seen the trailer for the movie, the whole thing seems so smug. To begin with, I really did hate the book, or at least Elizabeth Gilbert herself. She complains about being trapped in her perfect marriage with her understanding husband and their two homes in New York and I did not really see why I should be sympathetic to a person who leaves her husband to live with a younger actor, gets divorced, depressed and ends up ruining her relationship to both men. Needing to find herself and properly define herself as a person, Elizabeth Gilbert wanted to go to Italy to explore the art of pleasure, to India to explore spiritual devotion and to Bali to explore the balance between pleasure and devotion. Luckily, unlike lots of other women who suffer through gruelling divorces, her publisher paid her an advance, so she had the money to go off for a year and visit all these countries and do all these things.

She decides to spend four months in each place, and she wants to be celibate for the whole year, because sex messes things up and interferes with things. In the Eat part, she moves to Italy to learn Italian, and meets lots of nice people and eats and eats and eats and in the beginning pissed me off with her stories of how she loves travelling the world, but never uses guide books and seems proud to sort of stumble through things unprepared. She goes to a language school and does indeed learn quite a lot of Italian in four months, and manages to stop using anti-depressants because she has conversations with herself in a notebook.

Then, for the Pray part, she goes to India and lives in an Ashram and tries to find closeness with God. At first, she has trouble meditating and hates chanting and is unable to get into the whole spiritual release thing. She meets some straight talking man from Texas who refuses to listen to her self-pitying bullshit, and she eats vegetarian food and scrubs temple floors and in the end, obviously masters all the things she came there to do, and hugs trees and feels at one with the universe just in time for her to leave for Bali.

In Bali, she goes to find an old medicine man she met there years before. He read her palm and said she should come live with him, and he would teach her everything he knows. When she returns, he doesn't recognize her, because she's all happy now. He teaches her more meditation techniques and she sees how he heals people, and also befriends a lovely Balinese divorcee doctor, who has to move from place to place and struggles to take care of her precocious daughter and two adopted orphans. The lady becomes Liz' new best friend, and she manages to get all her friends and acquaintances to donate enough money that she can buy a house for the lovely doctor, and her endearing kids. She also breaks her vow of celibacy when she meets and falls in love with a Brazilian man 17 years older than her, and completes the Love part of the book.

I actually liked bits of the book a lot, but overall, this is the story of a smug middle class American woman who got to travel the world for a year on someone else's dime, and because she had to spend a lot of time alone and thinking about herself and her life, got over her divorce just fine. Some of the stories told in the book are very funny, and wryly and interestingly narrated. She describes things well and I really did find myself wanting to go to Italy and Bali, although the Ashram part didn't really grab me too much. Reading about someone else's spiritual enlightenment just isn't that interesting. The travelogue bits are much better. I am not sure why this book has become so very popular, but I suspect Oprah Winfrey's recommendation has something to do with it. It's not a bad book, by all means, but it's not a very good book either.

CBR2 Book 87: "Thorn Queen" by Richelle Mead

Publisher: Bantam
Page count: 480 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: September 28th, 2010
Date finished: October 1st, 2010

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR STORM BORN, THE FIRST BOOK IN THE SERIES!

At the end of the last book in the series, Eugenie Markham, shaman and most-feared killer of faerie and other Otherworld beings, managed to defeat the not very nice King of the Alder Land, and through some trickery from Dorian, King of the Oak Land, became Queen of the now renamed and reshaped Thorn Land. Instead of a lush and medieval rural setting under the Alder King, the land shaped itself to Eugenie's whims and wishes, and is now a warm desert-like land, with cacti and high humidity, very different for all those living there. There is a prophecy that states that the heir to the daughter of the Storm King will wage a devastating war on the humans, and the gentry will defeat them. Eugenie's half-sister is on the run, more than happy to be the one who gives birth to said heir.

So Eugenie has to deal with her newly discovered half-fairy heritage, and that her father wasn't some run of the mill gentry lord, but the most powerful fairy king around, with amazing weather powers. She needs to find her half-sister before said sister gets herself knocked up and proceeds to give birth to some war chief, and she needs to get used to the idea that she is now a Fairy Queen. Kiyo, her half-human boyfriend, is not happy with her growing control of her rather scary weather magic, and the amount of time she has to spend in her Kingdom, which is directly affected by her moods and feelings. But since she IS queen, and discovers that her people are starving, unable to grow crops in their radically changed land, and that several girls have been disappearing, she has no choice but to spend more time in the Otherworld, and get more familiar with her duties. Besides, Kiyo has to spend rather a lot of time with his ex-girlfriend, who is expecting a baby.

Just because her sister is off somewhere willing to bear an heir, does not make Eugenie less desirable as a consort. She still has to fight off gentry who want to rape her, and there are powerful gentry who would like her as their lover, hoping to father the Storm King's successor. One of those men is Dorian, but Eugenie has trouble trusting him after he manipulated her into taking control of the Thorn Land. Yet with Kiyo gone a lot, a bunch of missing girls to find, and weather magic she needs to learn to control, it's hard for her to avoid him.

Things take yet a surprising turn towards the end of this book, and I will be very interested in seeing where Richelle Mead takes the story next. Eugenie, Kiyo and Dorian all continue to develop as interesting characters, and as the love triangle appears to be resolved by the end of this book, I'm pretty certain it's not going to be dragged out over the course of the series. The next book is out in March, and I look forward to reading it.

CBR2 Book 86: "Bayou Moon" by Ilona Andrews

Publisher: Ace Books
Page count: 480 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: September 28th, 2010
Date finished: September 29th, 2010

William Sandine is a changeling, raised in the Weird, a magical world where the geography in some ways mirrors our world, but things are very different and they have magic rather than technology. Being a changeling means he turns into an animal, in his case, a wolf. He is not a were-wolf, as such, he can't turn other people into shapeshifters by biting them, his changes are in no way controlled by the full moon, but the condition is hereditary. Having been raised a special ops soldier and an outsider, William has very few ties in the world. He is living in a trailer in the Edge, a semi-magical area in between the Weird and the Broken (basically our mundane world, where there is technology but no magic), collecting plastic action figures and working construction in the Broken.

He is contacted by what is basically the Weird-version of the CIA, and asked to go on a secret spy mission in a massive swamp area of the Edge known as the Mire. A crazy enemy spy master known as Spider, and his band of mutated agents are trying to get a special weapon, which would be disastrous for the Kingdom of Adrianglia. Since Spider hates changelings, and has a history with William, the Mirror are pretty sure he won't refuse the chance to get revenge and stop Spider once and for all. They're not wrong. William accepts the mission, and goes into the Mire, where he meets a young, seemingly homeless woman he has to make a deal with to get to his arranged meeting place.

The woman William affectionately names Queen of the Hobos, is in fact a young Mire noble named Cerise Mar. Her family has huge numbers and lots of land, but are very poor. The Mar family is in a feud with a neighbouring family, who has taken over one of their houses. Cerise's parents have gone missing, and that leaves her the head of the family. She needs to prove to the local authorities that her father didn't sell the house before he disappeared, and get the rivaling clan evicted. Then she has to locate her parents. She agrees to guide the strange Weird noble to make some extra cash, but had not expected to have to fight for her life to get them to their destination.

It soon becomes clear that Spider has kidnapped Cerise's parents, and tries to torture them to find the location of the hidden weapon William is also there to find. Spider wants to know why Cerise left the Mire so suddenly after her parents' disappearance, and figures he can also use her as leverage against her parents. When William realizes that Spider's mutant goons are after Cerise, he becomes even more determined to stay at her side, and the more time he spends with her, the more remarkable he discovers that she is.

Bayou Moon is the follow-up to Ilona and Gordon Andrews' On the Edge (they write all their novels under her name), but can be read completely independently, and works as a stand-alone novel. On the Edge is probably Andrews' best novel to date, it is certainly the one I love the most, and considering I adore ALL their books, that is great praise indeed. That one is completely self-contained, by the time they wrote Bayou Moon, they knew they had a series on their hands. As such, this one has a bit more of an open ending, but no edge of your seat cliffhanger that makes you curse the authors and tear your hair in frustration until the sequel comes out. Another thing that makes it obvious that the authors knew they were now writing a series, is the multiple story lines in Bayou Moon. There are a whole load of characters introduced, some not so very vital to the main plot, who I suspect will become protagonists in later stories.

William Wolf, as he is often called, first appeared in On the Edge, but everything you found out about him in that book is repeated here for new readers. He has always been a loner, born in a society that doesn't really accept changelings, abandoned by his mother shortly after birth, raised in a orphanage and trained from an early age to become a soldier and a killer. He feels that love and a family will always be denied him, and is therefore very conflicted when he meets Cerise and realizes that she is not repulsed or scared by him. He hides his true nature from her for a long time, afraid that he will lose her, but desperately wants a relationship with her.

Cerise has more family than she knows what to do with. A multitude of relatives, hardly any money, and heavy responsibilities on her shoulders. She has helped her father run the family finances for years, and when her parents suddenly disappear, she has to take the reins of the whole clan, and try to steer them right, in the midst of what looks like a very likely to be bloody family feud. She has also been trained to be the family fighter, and is not very amused when William assumes she needs protection, and can't take care of herself. As well as a brilliant manager, Cerise is a fierce fighter, and shows that she can cut freaky mutants in half with one sword thrust.

On the Edge is primarily the romance between Declan and Rose, with a secondary storyline about danger threatening the Edge and the surrounding world that needs to be stopped. In Bayou Moon, which I had been hoping would be the same, only with William and Cerise as protagonists, there are a bit too many story lines. There's a lot of time spent introducing Cerise's many colourful relatives and their various quirks, and there's the feud with the neighbouring family, and the spy subplot with Spider and his nefarious plans. The book has not one, but two climaxes, first the Mars have to fight their neighbours, and then they all have to take on Spider and his band of mutant spies to reclaim the mysterious and dangerous weapon, and free Cerise's parents.

Too many stories to keep track of splits the focus of the book, and makes it a less satisfying read. It's a shame, because I think Ilona and Gordon were trying for something more advanced and sophisticated with Bayou Moon, and I don't entirely think it worked. I did not in any way dislike the book, but I don't love it as much as I wanted to, and it did not live up to my (admittedly very high) expectations. I will still eagerly anticipate every new book written by the couple, though, and I am huge fans of their blog.