Lake Silence by Anne Bishop

I know, I know.  I just reviewed on of Anne Bishop’s books in June.  This one is similar yet different.  Lake Silence is set in the same world as The Others core books, however this novel deals with a different setting than the Lakeside Courtyard.  As such, if my review of Etched in Bone sounded good to you, you may want to search out Lake Silence.  

In this novel we meet Vickie DeVine, a recently divorced and struggling human who has come to Lake Silence to take over The Jumble, her ex-husband’s family’s old resort, and open it as a bed and breakfast type place.  Vickie took The Jumble in the divorce settlement since ex-hubby’s new wife wanted the house and the car and he needed to give Vickie something comparable in order for the divorce to go through.

Vickie walks in her kitchen to see her only guest heating up an eyeball in the microwave and things kind of go downhill for Vickie from there.  Not only is she now dealing with the very dead previous owner of said eyeball, she’s also figured out her guest isn’t exactly human.  Before long Vickie is dealing with crooked cops, her very own vampire lawyer, the Lady of the Lake, and her first guests.  She’s not sure which of those are more stressful.

When I first learned the next book Bishop was putting out wasn’t the next in the series about the members of the Lakeside Courtyard I was truly disappointed.  I have loved getting to know Meg, Simon, and the rest of the pack in Lakeside and I wanted to know where the story was going next.  Because of that it took me a long time to finally pick up Lake Silence from my local library.  I’m glad I finally made time for it!

I enjoyed seeing how life outside the courtyard worked.  This was a very different perspective than the other Others novels because Sproing (yes, I’ve got that right.  The town is named for bunny-like creatures which are definitely only sometimes cute and cuddly) is a human town that is not human controlled.  The Jumble is right outside Sproing on the edge of Lake Silence, one of the Finger Lakes, and outside its gate is wild country.  The people of Sproing have learned how to live with the Others in ways many in the larger cities haven’t yet though they are still far from comfortable with their Other neighbors.

These books do give hints about events that have happened in the previous 5 books so if you want to remain completely unspoiled you should read them before you pick up this novel.  However, if you’re okay with having a little knowledge about the main serious before you start reading it this books is a good introduction to the universe.  The characters are just as compelling as the ones in the bulk of the series and the story will draw you in.  If you find yourself enjoying this book you’ll love the main series even more.

The Witch of Willow Hall by Hester Fox

The Witch of Willow Hall has all the right bits to recommend it: family drama, a handsome and gentlemanly hero, a family secret (more than one actually!) and a heroine who learns about herself while trying to hold her family together.  The book opens on a day, a decade past, when our heroine, Lydia Montrose, finds herself facing off with the neighborhood bully who seems to get a sense of pleasure out of being mean and cruel.  When he goes too far Lydia sees red and sets out to teach him a lesson.  This is the event that should show Lydia she’s different than other people; instead her mother insists they never speak of it and so Lydia never quite understands what it means to injure a boy yet never lay a hand on him.  It also means when her family moves from Boston to New Oldbury to avoid the gossips and stares of the Boston upper crust who have given them the cold shoulder since the rumors started about her brother and sister, Charles and Catherine, she is unprepared for the happenings around her new house.  She questions herself and doubts what she sees, hears, and experiences until her own ignorance has consequences for those she loves.

I enjoyed The Witch of Willow Hall enough that when I finally had the chance to really sit and read it I breezed through it in one day.  I found myself eager to get back to the story to see what happens next and I flipped to the last few pages of the book to see just how things would turn out, something I only do when I really really enjoy a book and its characters.  (I know, I’m weird.  Go with it.)  It is a compelling story and as a first novel I definitely going to be watching for more from Fox.

My biggest regret about the book is we don’t really see how Lydia goes from the timid, unsure girl at the beginning of the book to the woman we finally start to see at its conclusion and that’s a tragedy because I’d love to have seen more of that in both her mundane life and the otherworldly one.  We get glimpses of the transformation and the incidents that begin to shape who she will eventually become yet I don’t think we really see her go through the transformation.  I have a feeling this is something that Fox will get better at the more she writes.

For instance, we see Lydia talking to spirits and experiencing her powers yet she never seems to understand anything about what that might mean for her.  Then suddenly it’s as if someone flips a switch and she has this “oh THAT’s what’s going on!” epiphany.  I wanted to shake some sense into the girl on more than one page because it was like she was being willfully ignorant.  I swear even her ancestor wanted to roll their eyes at Lydia at one point… well, if they had eyes.  I wish Lydia (and so the reader) would have learned more about her ties to Salem and the powers of her family.

Even the more normal aspects of her life had a similar feeling.  She just. Didn’t. GET. It a lot of the time.  It’s clear to the reader Lydia and her crush have feelings for each other.  Yet again I found myself wanting to roll my eyes at Lydia.  She’s so good at comparing herself to her sister Catherine that she sees what she believes she should see.  I understand that’s her self-doubt is a strong factor in why she is as she is; much as with Lydia’s powers I wish we would have seen more of the development of her finding her confidence.

These things don’t ruin the book for me.  As I said, the characters are compelling, the backstory is interesting, and the book does have that creepy Gothic flair.  I’m glad I read it and I will recommend it when it come out.  Thanks to NetGalley and Graydon House Books for giving me the opportunity to read this before it was published.

 

My Journey Through the Spirit World by Ryuho Okawa

I enjoy reading about the spirituality of other people.  Not everyone follows the same path or believes the same things about life, the universe, and everything.  It’s the differences that make us unique.  I am always open to learning more about how others perceive the world around us, both the physical and metaphysical so when I was browsing on NetGalley for a book I would be interested in reading for a first review I was thrilled to browse my way to this book.

I was…less than enthused.  The writing feels rudimentary which I don’t expect from someone who has authored other books, especially books on this topic.  In some passages the voice comes across as very young, as if a school child has written it.

The subject matter feels repetitive.  The same concepts are explained over and over with different examples or with slight variations.  Yet the structure of the spirit world is complex and complicated (and not helped out by the lackluster writing.)  It would seem that the way Hell works (it’s a dimension inside other dimensions with other levels) or Heaven for that matter are floors within larger constructs.

The basic tenets of the work (that we should strive to love and be happy) fit with most of our traditions; where the book really lost me was that Love and Truth are synonyms in the spirit world.  I could buy that buildings and objects have mirrors in the other realm (are you kidding? One of my ideas of Heaven is a giant library!)  I can get with the concept that people who murder and wreak havoc on Earth continue to do so in the afterlife until they come to realize the wrongness of what they’re doing.  I’ve read enough other works to understand the concept of astral projection (though visiting Cloudland in my sleep was a bit far-fetched for me.)  I read the section on how love and truth become linked and then I read it again.  While I actually can agree with most, if not all, of the underlying concepts the author is trying to convey the notion of love and Truth being somehow the same were never fully explained enough for me to get where the author was trying to get me.

Between the poorly constructed language and the iffy examples of how the spirit world functions I couldn’t bring myself to continue reading this book.  I started reading the second chapter (about half way through the book) and couldn’t bring myself to keep going.  Definitely do not recommend.

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

If you know me you know how much of a Scooby-Doo fan I am.  I have Scooby-Doo trading cards.  I have Scooby-Doo Pez dispensers.  I have Scooby-Doo t-shirts.  I own the live action movies on DVD, including at least one of the ones put out by Cartoon Network.  I have DVDs of the original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, of the 2002 reboot by the WB, What’s New Scooby-Doo?, and more than a couple of the direct to DVD movies like Big Top Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire to give you a general idea of the depth of my love for all things Scooby-Doo.  Except Scrappy.  We don’t talk about Scrappy.

So a novel entitled Meddling Kids about 4 friends from high school who solved mysteries with their dog?  Sign. Me. Up!  This sounds fantastic!  The members of the Blyton Summer Detective Club are going to be back together!  (Blyton Hills is located in Oregon in the Zoinx River Valley.)  It’s 1990 and they haven’t seen each other since the fateful summer of 1977 when they worked their final case.  No one’s life is exactly how they’d planned.  The genius is a cocktail waitress, the nerd is in a psych ward (in Arkham, Massachusetts,) and those are the two who seem to have things together the most.  And the dog.  The dog is doing alright for himself living with the cocktail waitress.

Andy, the girl on the run and wanted in two states, gets the gang back together again to work on their last mystery because it was too easy.  Something back then scared the bejeezus out of the four young detective club and she blames that case for all the problems in their lives from then until now.  So back they all go to the scene of the crime and start re-investigating the happenings, right as soon as the bust the guy in Arkham out of the psych ward.  And that’s where things go down hill fast.

Turns out the bad guy wasn’t revealed to be a guy in a mask, ghosts might be real, and the authors uses way too many similes and metaphors to be interesting.  The ending is contrived, the writing was so-so, and I missed the part where the bad guy wasn’t exposed as your every-day-average-Joe type moron who thought they could get something over on everyone.  That was part of the fun and campiness of Scooby-Doo!  It’s as bad as the bad guy not saying “And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!”

I honestly can’t believe I finished this book.  Chalk it up to my love of all things Scooby that I stuck with it.  I can’t in good faith recommend it though.  I can’t say I wouldn’t read another book by this author if it involved the same characters because honestly the main characters are about the best thing the book has to offer.  I was more interested in them and their interpersonal interplay than I was in the actual plot of the book.  The author’s other works though? My interest in them is like a senior on Senior Skip Day, absent.

A Private Disgrace by Victoria Lincoln

 Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one.

Popular children’s rhyme sung when skipping rope

Lizzie Borden.  Who didn’t learn about the suspected murderess when they were younger, jumping rope to the rhyme talking about how she killed her parents.  In reality Lizzie’s stepmother, Abby Borden, sustained 18 or 19 blows rather than the stated forty whacks and her father, Andrew Borden, 11 blows with the ax.

Many stories have been written about Lizzie Borden and the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts on Thursday, August 4th, 1892.  Abby was killed upstairs in the guest room between 9 and 10:30 in the morning and Andrew in the sitting room between 10:30 and 11:10 AM when Lizzie called to the Borden’s maid, Bridgette “Maggie” Sullivan to “[C]ome quick! Father’s dead! Someone’s come in and killed him!”

A Private Disgrace is the only book written about the murders by a member of Fall River society.  Victoria Lincoln grew up in Fall River, the daughter of a wealthy businessman.  She knew Lizzie Borden when Ms. Lincoln was a young girl and Ms. Borden was nearing the end of her life.  As a member of the tight knit community Lincoln asserts Lizzie did indeed kill her parents and the community of Fall River viewed such a crime as “a private disgrace” and so colluded together to help acquitted Lizzie of the murders in a jury trial a year later.  However, Lizzie and her older sister Emma were not welcomed back to the bosom of Fall River after the inquest and trial; Lizzie was in fact practically ostracized and Emma eventually moved to another town in Massachusetts after an incident at a house party.

Lizzie and Emma never really grew close to Abby however the relationships didn’t become strained until her father deeded property to her stepmother (Abby Borden’s mother’s house which Andrew had purchased) some time before the murders.  Andrew eventually purchased another house used for rental income which was split between Emma and Lizzie, however this did nothing to decrease the tensions of the household.  Lincoln’s theory hypothesizes Lizzie committed the crime while having an epileptic seizure and asserts that some of Lizzie’s “spells” or “brownouts” were in fact temporal lobe epilepsy.  More recent research disproves this idea, however, the idea that the rage from the purchase of the house may still hold water.

If you’re a true crime fan or love a good mystery, I’d say pick this book up.  It is dated however.  The first printing of it came out in 1967 and while one wouldn’t think language has changed much since then one would be wrong!  The author also repeats information, a lot.  One might say she whacks you over the head with it if one was somewhat morbid.  This is not Capote’s In Cold Blood; it is a fascinating look at one possible reason and theory of the murder.  I’ll be searching out other books about the case to see what information from it other researchers think is the most pertinent.  Still, this is a solid enough book that if your library has a copy like mine did I’d check it out.  I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it however.

Etched in Bone by Anne Bishop

Oh man!  I already know starting off I am not going to be able to do this book justice.  Mostly because this novel is the fifth in a series by one of my favorite-ever authors and in order to really appreciate this story you have to have read the previous books.  Still, this is a book review blog so I will give it my best.

A little bit of backstory will hopefully help even if you haven’t read the previous works.  Etched in Bone is book 5 in The Others series.  The series is something I describe as alternate urban fantasy.  The setting isn’t really our world; it isn’t the world as we know it.  It is however recognizable.  The universe of The Others is made up of names unfamiliar yet close enough to our own as to appear nearly right at first glance. Places like “Afrikah,” “Brittania/Wild Brittania,” and the Great Lakes (“Superior,” “Tala,” “Honon,” “Etu,” and “Tahki”) or nearly-there days of the week (“Sunsday” or “Firesday.”)

Those unfamiliar with the series may be best acquainted with the most relevant facts by this excerpt from the opening of the first couple novels:

Long ago, Namid gave birth to all kinds of life, including the beings known as humans.  She gave the humans fertile pieces of herself, and she gave them good water.  Understanding their nature and the nature of her other offspring, she also gave them enough isolation that they would have a chance to survive and grow.  And they did.

They learned to build fires and shelters. They learned to farm and built cities.  They built boats and fished in the Mediterran and Black seas.  They bred and spread throughout their pieces of the world until they pushed into the wild places.  That’s when they discovered that Namid’s other offspring already claimed the rest of the world.

The Others looked at humans and did not see conquerors.  They saw a new kind of meat.

From “A Brief History of the World,” Written in Red, by Anne Bishop

The Others (or the terra indigene [pronounced tair-ah ihn-dih-zheen] are the things that go bump in the night in our world.  They are the vampires and the shapeshifters, the monsters we can’t identify but know are outside our window, watching us.  In this series the Others have always been.  They didn’t hide themselves away, choosing to reveal themselves when the time became right; they were created when the world was created, when humans were created, and given their own land and space to grown.  And humans, being what we are, both in this world and the Others’ world, were curious and industrious; humans spread because humans bred and because it is our nature to want more.

It has been centuries now since the humans pushed into the wild places and found the wild places were going to push back.  The Others and the two-legged meat have an uneasy peace most times.  In smaller places the humans have bartered with the terra indigene for their own space and the humans are left alone much of the time though they still hesitate venturing out after dark or straying to close to the woods. In larger human cities a space has been set aside for Others to live as overseers of the agreements humans have made with them.  These places are called Courtyards and they house different configurations of Others, usually those willing to live in closer contact with humans.

Etched in Bone finds the members of one such place, the Lakeside Courtyard, dealing with the arrival of a family member of one of the humans who has worked with the Others and been accepted by them as not-edible.  It is clear almost from the beginning this family member definitely doesn’t have the best interests of the Courtyard…or really the best interests of even his own family…in his heart.  He’s looking for an easy ride and a life where he doesn’t have to do much more than drink beer, engage in petty crime, and ignore his wife and kids.  To the Others who inhabit the Courtyard these are foreign ideas, whether you’re a wolfshifter or a vampire, taking care of your community is ingrained in them from birth.

Along with the newest human arrivals comes the arrival of The Elders, terra indigene so primitive and wild they are as feared by the Others as the Others are by humans.  The Elders are the stuff of Others’ nightmares.  We have seen them briefly in previous books, now we learn more about them.

And all of this is why I highly suggest you start reading the series with book number one, Written in Red (link opens to Amazon in a new window.)  Do not, I repeat, do not start reading this series here!  You will be lost and you will blame me!  Do start reading this series though!

I love Bishop’s world building. Love it! She did it in the Black Jewels trilogy (and related novels, she did it in the Ephemera trilogy (I hope for more!) and she’s done it again with this world. Each of her universes are completely different and each are so masterfully created they feel as if they could be as real as our world.

The world of the Others feels familiar; I can easily imagine Lakeside as a precursor to New York City or Boston. The people are as real as the setting. Who doesn’t have a few relatives we wished wouldn’t come around? (I mean not me! Mine are wonderful people but you know, in general.) The relationships are as complex as ours are. Friendships develop for lots of different reasons, proximity makes strange bedfellows at times. And sometimes we’re looking for a place to escape and find instead a family.

Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

The first book in the Midnight Texas trilogy (Now a miniseries on NBC!) Midnight Crossroad should be my kind of book.  It’s got interesting characters, a protagonist with a secret (which only means he’ll fit right in in Midnight,) and a bit of the paranormal thrown in for good measure.

On the whole, this is a good book.  I read it quickly and enjoyed it enough that when my mother-in-law gave me the trilogy after she was finished with them I was happy to have books two and three.  Books two and three are still unread however.  I don’t know why.  I’m interested in finding out where things go.  I enjoyed the main character (Mr. Bernardo with fingers in a number of different ventures) and nearly all of the supporting characters.  The mystery even stumped me! (Though I should have seen it coming.  In my defense I think I read too fast to really let the clues sink in.  This is why I don’t write mysteries.)

One of my favorite bits of these novels is how Harris puts in bits about her other series in them.  Manfred talks about a girl he met who had a special talent and another he mentions likes learning about murders.  It makes the reader already familiar with other works of hers feel like they’re visiting an old friend rather than starting another story from scratch.

And speaking of other series, while I wouldn’t tell someone not to read this book I have to admit, this isn’t the first Charlaine Harris novel I’d recommend either.  That distinction goes to the first in the Harper Connelly quartet (and boy am I sad it’s only a quartet!) Grave Sight (link takes you to the Amazon page for the book.)  If you want your mystery a little more cozy and a little less kooky I’d send you to the Aurora Teagarden mystery series and its first book Real Murders by Charlaine Harris (link opens to my review.)  I know the Sookie Sackhouse novels and subsequent television series are what put Ms. Harris on the proverbial map; I don’t like them nearly as much as other vampire novels I’ve read.  For my money (or library fines) I’d choose any of these series over the True Blood/Dead in Dallas series.

 

Crossbones Yard by Kate Rhodes

I wanted to like this book. It has all the elements I normally enjoy: smart female character, interesting secondary characters, psychological insights used to solve crimes. I could probably go on. I won’t.

I won’t because I didn’t like the book. I found myself not wanting to pick it up when I had time to read (I read two other books while working through this one if that says anything!) I wanted to know who did it (unlike some of the other reviews I hadn’t figured it out by chapter 3 which actually upsets me a bit this time!) so I kept reading. Eventually I gave up and flipped to the end to read the last few chapters. I should have just put the book down instead. The bad guy’s identity actually made me mad which hardly ever happens in books!
A few things that bothered me about the book:
1. The main character runs. Incessantly. Obsessively. Long, fruitless runs that don’t do anything except apparently give the author a chance to write about London. A lot. I don’t care. It was interesting the first time. The 21st time I was over it.
2. The main character runs. A lot. Even though there is a killer out killing women who has sent. Her. Letters! Sure, let’s go for a jog!
3. The book feels disorganized or disjointed. Perhaps this would have resolved itself if I’d managed to actually finish it. Since I didn’t I can only say after reading probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the book I have no idea why some scenes made it in except as an opportunity to muddy the suspect pool. It would have been nice to have the water a little clearer. I’m sure clues were there; I read fast enough I don’t always see all the foreshadowing. Even some of the things I had seen I easily dismissed because it didn’t seem to match up to anything.

I doubt I’ll pick up the next book in the series. I have too many other books waiting to be read.

All the Books!

The first weekend in May is always the Greater St. Louis Book Fair weekend.  I have missed it for a few years (the last time I went it was held in the lower level Macy’s parking garage at West County Mall for you locals.) so this year I made a point to put it in my planner and go.

I feel like I brought home all the books.  I know I didn’t because when I left on Sunday at closing the tables still had books on them.  However my already overcrowded bookcases (the blog’s title is Messy Bookcase Blog for a reason after all!) were not up to the challenge of holding them.  Especially in any organized manner.  And since I bought a lot of books in a couple different series I definitely need them to be organized!

What this means is I am now going through said messy bookcases and finding books I can safely send on their way in the hopes of freeing up some space on the old shelves so I can put my new friends away.  I’m putting all my books on paperbackswap.com so I can use the credits from sending them to new homes to request books in the series I wasn’t able to find at the book fair.  (If you don’t know about paperbackswap.com, message me! It’s a great place if you don’t keep hold of books after you read them.  I hold onto some and part with others.)

The Silence that Speaks by Andrea Kane

This is not the book to start with if you’re interested in Andrea Kane’s forensic mystery series.  Her series has some interesting elements to it; however you’ll likely feel as if you’ve been put down in the middle of a story, mostly because you will have been.  The fourth installment of Andrea Kane’s Forensic Instincts series has Marc dealing with an old flame, perhaps the one woman who can distract him from his main objective, keeping her alive.

I enjoy the Forensic Instincts novels because they are part procedural, part suspense-thriller, and part character study.  Each of the team members brings something unique to the Forensic Instincts’ team: Casey is the founder and behaviorist; she’s joined by a clairvoyant-pardon me, intuitive, a former Navy SEAL, a technological genius, a retired FBI agent, and an evidence dog.  Working together they solve cases working inside the low–and outside it when required.

This book was generally good.  What I like best about the series is its uniqueness.  So many mystery/suspense novels have the same formula to them with characters that aren’t interchangeable exactly but aren’t too drastically different from each other either.  I enjoy the team aspects to Kane’s FI novels because it isn’t usually done.  Each case involves the skills of all team members (and often times other characters who are brought in to help) rather than it being one or maybe two characters doing all the heavy lifting.  Each member is very good at their respective job and while Casey is The Boss in capital letters she rarely pulls rank and tells her team how it’s going to be because she pays, quite well, them to know their stuff.

If you’re looking for something different than your average msytery novel, I’d say give this series a try.  Except you want to start with The Girl Who Disappeared Twice rather than with this book.