Sorry I've been away.........

Life sometimes gets pretty challenging and things fall by the wayside. This has been one of those periods and the blog has been the casualty. Now that I once again have some time and things have settled down, I plan to do a lot more blogging. It isn't that I haven't been reading-- life never gets so challenging that I give up reading!! At least not yet. My first review of 2012 is Third Grave Dead Ahead, # 3 of the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones.

  






THIRD GRAVE DEAD AHEAD
Darynda Jones
Macmillan Audio, Lorelei King narr.
January 2012








Darynda Jones once again had me alternating between laughter and nail-biting with Third Grave Dead Ahead, #3 in the Charley Davidson series. Charley is not only a dogged and inspired P.I., but also The Grim Reaper. As The Grim Reaper she helps spirits who can't seem to "pass over" usually because of some unfinished business.


As usual, Third Grave Dead Ahead combines working on a case for the living in tandem with her more supernatural concerns. She is approached by a husband who wants to hire her to find his missing wife but she refuses his money and works on the case on her own. She can tell he knows more than he is saying and thinks he is responsible. Besides that, Reyes (Son of Satan, Charley's lifetime guardian, love interest and drop-dead gorgeous) is seriously angry with her. In book # 2 she bound his incorporeal form to his corporeal one and Reyes doesn't like that one bit. Never mind that she had good reasons even though she doesn't know how she did it or how to undo it!


In the course of the book, we have as Cookie says, Charley taking up insommnia as a hobby, prison break-outs, introductions to biker gangs and an almost fatal run-in with a figure from Reyes' past. We get to meet Mistress Marigold at last and find out why Owen Vaughn tried to run over Charley in his father's SUV while they were in high school. The characters in the books are wonderfully realized and one of the major attractions. I can't say that I was too happy with Reyes in this book and Charley's father manages to betray her again. I really wonder if there is some sort of supernatural influence on him, or if he is just a jerk.


I highly recommend this audio version of Third Grave Dead Ahead. Lorelei King is a fabulous narrator, the perfect voice for Charley and the extended cast of characters.



Rating-  5 Stars and Scythes

A Crimson Warning

A Crimson Warning

Tasha Alexander

St. Martins

October 2011

I had almost given up on this series after the two most recent books, but I am really glad that I decided to give it one last try with A CRIMSON WARNING. Lady Emily is back on her own turf in London society, and back to being her clever, feisty, reckless self. The two books set in Constantinople and in France with her harridan of a mother-in-law just didn't work for me.

Crimson paint is being splashed on the houses of some of London's wealthiest and influential citizens, followed quickly by the exposure of scandals. Even though a man so victimized by the paint has also been horribly murdered, the "ton" is much more afraid of scandal than death. The Queen asks Colin Hargreaves, Emily's husband, to investigate and put an end to the pervasive atmosphere of fear abroad in the city. Emily of course becomes fully involved and proves again that she is an equal partner with Colin. They are convinced that the crimes and scandals are the product of rage at being slighted and a wish for revenge. But could it be even more sinister and who is the perpetrator? Even Ivy, Emily's closest and most gentle friend, has a secret that must be kept.

The path that they follow has many twists and turns, with code-breaking and many a trip to the British Museum and Library. I had settled on my candidate for the crimes early on instinct alone, but was misdirected by Alexander very neatly. It takes one more innocent death to solve the crimes and to see that Hargreaves doorstep defaced as well. Many of the characters we have met before reappear in A CRIMSON WARNING, and a host of new ones, all either eccentric, shallow or dangerous. A CRIMSON WARNING is very ingenious and entertaining- Welcome Back, Lady Emily!

Rating- 4 Stars

Back to the Iron Seas in Airships

Heart of Steel
A Novel of the Iron Seas
Meljean Brook
Penguin Audio
November 2011

Following the first book in Meljean Brook's Iron Seas series, Heart of Steel continues the adventures of two characters from the Iron Duke, Archimedes Fox and Yasmeen, mercenary airship captain. Archimedes Fox is an adventurer specializing in retrieval of antiquities lost in territories infected by the zombie plague. He is also the hero of "pulp" novels written by his sister, Zenobia. The mysterious Yasmeen is not only one of the few female airship captains, but is one tough cookie- the "heart of steel" of the title. She kicked Archimedes out of her airship into a zombie infested Venetian canal. Needless to say, Archimedes fell madly in love with her at that instant (even though he doesn't quite know it)! She kicked him off the ship, but kept an unknown Leonardo Da Vinci sketch that he had salvaged.

The action starts when Yasmeen goes to see Zenobia- not only to report the probable death of her brother, but to offer her a portion of the proceeds of the sale of the sketch. When she arrives, she finds Zenobia held hostage. The existence of the sketch has somehow become public and lots of people want it. Including Archimedes who needs it to repay a debt, one that will cost him his life if not repaid. Archimedes and Yasmeen join forces and the great adventures begin. Yazmeen loses her hard won fortune and her beloved airship, Lady Corsair, along with her crew but gains much more.

I can't even attempt to describe the intricate world that Meljean Brook has built in the Iron Seas series. I can only recommend that you begin with the Iron Duke and follow up with Heart of Steel. High adventure, steampunk gadgets, zombies and romance make Iron Seas a must-read. I really cringed at the cover of the book and the audio book, but managed to ignore its general cheesiness. There is plenty of lusty romance here, but I personally enjoyed the adventure more. My only quibble was that the various scrapes and dilemmas of Archimedes and Yasmeen seemed too easily resolved. One expects a book like this to have a happy ending, but it just was a little too neatly done. Otherwise, I highly recommend Heart of Steel as a fast-paced, enjoyable escapist read. The audio book is very competently performed by Faye Adele


Rating  4 Airships


                                         

An Incredible Romp through Victorian London (Steampunk Style)

The Immorality Engine

Newbury and Hobbes Investigations

George Mann

August 2011

Tor Books

The third in George Mann's Newbury and Hobbes Investigations Steampunk series is great fun from beginning to end. Sir Maurice Newbury, Queen Victoria's agent, is continuing to sink into his opium addiction, much to the dismay of his great friend, Sir Charles Bainbridge of Scotland Yard. Still more distressed is Sir Maurice's assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes.

When the body of a suspected jewel thief turns up murdered in one of the seedier sections of London, yet robberies identical to to the corpse's earlier crimes are still happening, Sir Maurice must rise to the occasion. Bainbridge and Hobbes must literally drag him out of an opium den. To add to the mystery of the corpse, there also seems to be a threat to the life of the Queen.

The plot includes clairvoyants, clones, a wacky resurrection cult, spectacular war engines in the best Steampunk tradition, and a vision of Queen Victoria that is truly creepy. Kept alive by the machines of the the diabolical Dr. Fabian, she sits like a spider in the web of her own mad plots and deceits. Newbury and Hobbes are forced to decide whether their loyalty has been misplaced.

The Immorality Engine completes the first story arc of the series and I can hardly wait for the next installment of the Newbury and Hobbes investigations. I would, however, recommend reading The Affinity Bridge and The Osiris Ritual before diving into The Immorality Engine. While Mann does a great job of bringing us up to speed, the first two books help build the world and characters. The Newbury and Hobbes Investigations are a great blend of mystery, horror, steampunk and a little romance.

Rating- 5 Opium Pipes

The Black Dagger Brotherhood-Paranormal Romance on Steroids

The Black Dagger Brotherhood, a mega-selling mass-market Paranormal Romance series by J.R. Ward is a publishing phenomenon. These books sell like the proverbial hotcakes. As of this writing, there are ten books published and more to come. Ward has brewed a heady mixture of the standard Gothic Romance conventions- tortured hero, female in jeopardy, suspense, adventure, hero redeemed by love for same female in jeopardy- added in large doses of somewhat kinky erotica and violence and put the whole mess on a steroid regimen- with vampires!

The basic premise is this- the vampires of mythical Caldwell, NY are a separate species, not at all the undead but pretty much immortal, at least until someone slaughters them. A centuries long war with a group called the Lessening Society is being fought to save the vampire race. Enter the Black Dagger Brotherhood, lethal, mega-sized, leather-clad, trash-talking, booted and vice-ridden vampires who battle the evil Lessors, who really aren't all that scary, especially since they are colorless and smell like baby powder(?). No kidding. You want tortured heroes with hideous childhoods-these brothers are the ones for you. But they mate for life and are redeemed by the women they love. Well, not really, but they do cut down on their self-destructive behaviors and come to terms with their various hideous childhoods.

I really don't know how I stumbled across the first book in the series, Dark Lover, but to say that I was underwhelmed is an understatement. First of all, I laughed my way through the glossary of terms that appears at the beginning and does so in every book. I'm still snorting my way through that glossary. Then, there are the names of the original brothers: Wrath, Rhage, Zsadist, Vishous, Phury and Tohrment. Are you seeing a pattern here? Throw in some extraneous letters- they still sound the same. After the original six brothers are dealt with in the series, we have Rehvenge, Dhestroyer and John Matthew (huh?). As the series progresses, female warriors have been added, along with a quasi-religious and social system that is mired somewhere circa 1174. The most recent entry introduces a cadre of Slayers from Europe who are even more anti-social than the original Brothers. I counted Dark Lover as a waste of good trees. However, I kept hearing buzz and decided that I must have missed something. No, not really.

So, after my snide comments-why am I still reading them? Well, I don't really know. Despite the names, the weak world-building, the egregious "branding" sprinkled throughout each book, the street lingo that I can't believe is spoken anywhere on this planet and the general silliness, I am hooked. Enough to download them free from the library, anyway. In spite of, or maybe because of all their faults these books are oddly compelling. Ward is one heck of a story-teller and the Black Dagger books have a breakneck narrative flow that just drags you with it. The best analogy I can come up with is the compulsion to rubber-neck a traffic accident. It's a guilty pleasure and so is the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

New York to Dallas

New York to Dallas
J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)
Putnam Adult
September 2011






Number 33 (!) in J.D. Robb's (Nora Roberts) IN DEATH series is a departure in both title and location for this long-running, bestselling series. I have been a sucker for this series since the beginning and look forward to each new release. In fact, it is a must have on the day of release for me, despite the fact that I found the last three or four to not quite measure up to the previous books. New York to Dallas is a home run, however, and I think I can put my fears to rest about the series winding down. Thirty-three novels in one series is pretty amazing but then Nora Roberts is amazingly prolific.


Eve is summoned to Dallas to engage in a battle of wits with Isaac McQueen, a violent pedophile known as "The Collector". Eve put him away twelve years earlier when she was still a  rookie beat cop in New York. Somehow, McQueen has managed to escape and kidnap one of the girls that Eve rescued from his "collection". McQueen wants payback and to outwit her this time around. As any reader of the series knows, the city of Dallas has great significance to Eve. She was given the name last name Dallas when she was found wandering there as an 8 year old. Beaten and abused, she had no memory of her own name. Eve has been dealing with the issues left from her horrific childhood throughout the series. This time, she is back in Dallas dealing with those issues (and a very big one gets wrapped up in New York to Dallas), along with the politics of working with an unknown police force and without her usual assorted New York back-up. Of course, she has her husband, Roarke. I can only say that every woman should have back-up like Roarke!


New York to Dallas is an emotional roller coaster ride, suspenseful and well-plotted. While I missed the characters I know so well, Peabody, Feeney, Mavis, and Somerset, who were not present for the bulk of the action, there were enough new characters to keep me interested. Isaac McQueen is an evil psychopath who needs to be taken down, and Eve is just the woman to do it. I have listened to, rather than read all the In Death series. Susan Erickson is a superlative narrator and pitch perfect for all the characters. Very highly recommended, with the warning that this book is not the one to start the series with.


Rating- 5 NYPSD badges

The Always Surprising Carina Press

I usually hesitate to blog about books that are only available in electronic form, but Carina Press is publishing some extraordinarily good books at very reasonable prices. The very first downloaded book I read from Carina about a year ago was Presumed Dead by Shirley Wells, an English author who has several books published in the U.K., but not so widely available in the U.S. I was really impressed by Presumed Dead, first in the Dylan Scott Mysteries, and it is now also available in a print version.


In Presumed Dead, Dylan Scott is having a very bad patch in his life, disgraced, imprisoned on a charge of excessive force and losing his career in the London Police Force as a detective. Not only that, he is nearly penniless, booted out by his wife and living in "the smallest flat in the land". When he is approached by Holly Champion, a young woman in Lancashire obsessed by the disappearance of her mother thirteen years earlier, he really has no choice but to take on the case.


Dylan is generally clueless about personal relationships and his marital situation, but he is nothing if not dogged in the pursuit of answers. Presumed Dead is a very well constructed mystery with a nice balance of procedural and personal life. The characters are memorable and the mystery is solved neatly with a number of surprises.

The second book in the Dylan Scott Mysteries, Dead Silent, is just as enjoyable. Dylan is going on with his life, and after his success in the Champion investigation is once again hired to investigate a missing person case in Dawson's Clough in Lancashire. Sam Hunt, an attractive young woman, has been missing for ten months and Dylan is hired by her father to find her. Before he even arrives in Lancashire, he gets warned off and beaten up by a tough. After meeting Sam's father, Dylan feels that something is definitely "off". His impression grows even stronger after meeting her mother and stepfather.


The case of Sam Hunt has far-reaching consequences, as far away as Romania and the Orkney Islands. I find Dylan's investigative methods extremely realistic- Dylan just keeps on and doesn't give up until he gets the answers. He is a man with a strong sense of right and nothing deters him. in Dead Silent, his personal life is on an upswing, even though the estrangement from his wife is still unresolved and his aging hippie mother is still living with him. 


I highly recommend Presumed Dead and Dead Silent to fans of Peter Robinson's Inspector Alan Banks novels, and anyone who enjoys atmospheric British mysteries with a little edge.


Rating- 4 stars