The Troupe, by Robert Jackson Bennett

I picked up The Troupe because it had a striking cover.  While I never "judge a book by it's cover" the cover art will draw me to pick up a book and check out the back.  And this story promised me a glimpse into the shadowed world of vaudeville and a mysterious troupe that seems to alter reality in whatever town it stops in.  I was hooked!

The book follows a boy, gifted pianist George Carole, who is searching for his father.  Because of a faded poster left behind with his mother's things he believes it's Heironomo Silenus, vaudeville star.  As George looks into this possibility, he realizes that while Heironomo Silenus is famous and always has a sold out audience, no one can remember what he does.  The other bizarre acts, a woman who seems lost in her own world but can bend steel beams with her bare hands, an ethereal dancer who claims to be a Prussian princess, and a man with uncommonly clever puppets are well remembered, but Silenus is a mystery.

Catching up with Silenus' troupe is more difficult than George expected.  Once he finally meets Silenus face to face, George slowly realizes that trying to find his father has become a very dangerous endeavor.  Because Silenus has made a lot of enemies throughout his life and strange, bland men are closing in on the troupe.

I love the world that Bennett created here.  All of his characters were complex and genuine.  As the story behind Silenus is slowly revealed, I hurt for him.  I felt George's pain in trying to find Silenus, only to find out Silenus barely remembered George's mother and wasn't interested in forming a relationship with him.  The other performers are secretive and suspicious, also shutting George out of their lives.  But George is persistent and eventually learns the secrets behind Silenus' act.  The troupe is responsible for finding pieces of The First Song, the song that began creation.  If the song is not collected and sung, the world will be eaten away by the darkness of nonexistence.

I admit, when I read the final confrontation, I totally cried.  I don't want to give anything away because this was a great stand-alone book that deserves to be discovered.

Upcoming Reviews

Look forward to a review of The Troupe, by Robert Jackson Bennett, which centers around vaudeville and a fight to save the universe.


Also, The Twelve, from Justin Cronin, which is the next installment of the series begun by The Passage, will be released soon.

Cold Days, the latest book in the Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher, will be out in November.  In preparation, I am rereading some of the earlier books.

Great books to look forward to!  If anyone has recommendations, I am always open to ideas for new authors and series.

Fairy Tale Retellings - a television series

I'm sorry I have been remiss in publishing reviews.  We have had a busier summer than we anticipated, but in a good way.  While it is not a book review, I wanted to mention to my curious readers about a series I have recently started watching on NetFlix.  If you haven't seen Once Upon a Time and love fairy tale retellings, it's a must see.

The plot has a lot of layers, even from the beginning of the series.  It hooks you, steadily drawing you into this world.  You see in flashes the fairy tale world of Snow White, Prince Charming, and the Wicked Queen and present day life centering around a young woman named Emma.  Emma is drawn to Storybrook, Maine -- a city that seems to have been left behind in time.  It is said that the occupants of the town cannot leave and don't know who they are...well, were, before The Curse.  Every person there is/was a character from fairy tales.  You follow Emma as she tries to disprove this theory and find out "what's really going on" in this small town.  It's a smart twist.  I'm still in the beginning of the series and will post the occasional update as the storyline progresses.

Greywalker, or Why I haven't posted in a while...

I've recently realized a flaw in my plan to be a bookblogger.  I'm excited to talk about books that are awful and disappointing, because I don't want anyone wasting their money without being informed.  And I'm eager to share great finds, such as the Danilov Quintet by Jasper Kent (more on them soon).  It's the books that are mediocre that kill my ambition.  They aren't terrible, but even trying to write a review of them is unappealing.

But I'm going to grit my teeth and work through my stack of back reviews, starting with Greywalker.

Greywalker, by Kat Richardson

Quick synopsis: A female private investigator has a near death experience.  Actually, she was dead for a minute or two but was brought back.  Since then, she has been able to see "the grey" and kind of interact with it.  She doesn't know what it is, nor do we really find out.  The rest of the book is spent following her looking for a missing boy, interacting with vampires, searching for a missing artifact, and "learning" from a hedgewitch and her husband, who is a magical theorist.

I confess I didn't bond with the character.  I think that's pretty clear, since I didn't even bother to look up the P.I.'s name.  She is fairly forgettable.  The only thing that I remember about her is her use of a pager instead of a cell phone.  In a time when one of the characters we run into is a technology wiz, using his laptop and a few scavenged parts of who-knows-what, when EVERYONE ELSE uses a cell phone, I am expected to believe that a P.I. is going to run all over town tracking down leads and checking messages through a payphone or going back to her office.  Not even after the incident that nearly killed her, did she get one for safety although she now carries a gun.

I've read articles discussing the level of technology withing books, how most authors will include a level of technology that they grew up with.  That's why in the Twilight books Bella doesn't have a cell phone (bad reception) and is rarely on the internet (it's dial-up, which is synonymous with practically non-existand) and her mom doesn't use a cell phone either (I lost the charger, again, and I totally couldn't buy another, and even if I did I would forget to use it).  This omission can be handled well, like in the Dresden Files or October Daye series.  Both of these use magic as the reason their main characters do not use technology.  In the Dresden Files, wizards and technology do not mix.  Lights go out, fancy cars die, computers explode.  With October Daye, even when her magic isn't so powerful as to render cell phones useless, she is constantly interacting with pure blood fae, fairy nobles, and working IN fairy.  This understandably kills any technology, unless it has been specially altered with magic.

Throughout the first Greywalker book, there is no reason for the lack of use of technology.  The P.I. never checks information online.  She NEVER uses a CELL PHONE.  And she's not the only one.  There is no explanation for it except for the occasional aside when she picks up her messages at the office only to find that she's needed back across town to talk to this person or check this lead.  I could not find her character believable and I couldn't take her seriously.  The world Kat Richardson was able to build was interesting, but we really don't learn much about it in the first book.  I understand that in a series you want some things to be discovered over a couple of books, but pretty much every question I had was left unanswered.

Some people might like this series, and I'm sure it will get better as it goes, but it doesn't have the hook that the October Daye series did, or the complex and interesting world from the Dresden Files.

Two Steampunk novels for the price of one: The Affinity Bridge and The Map of Time

The Affinity Bridge

This was recommended to me by a friend, Alex, who has a fondness for Steampunk.  Since I too have a bit of a fascination with this genre, I was happy to get a lead on a good book.  I wasn’t disappointed. 

The Affinity Bridge begins with a scene in India, revealing a horrific illness, then moves into London.  There are three plot elements: an illness that turns its victims into “revenants”, a ghost killing paupers in the streets of London, and a mysterious automaton-piloted airship crash.  These threads are woven together to form a complex story line that is exciting to follow.   

As we get into the investigation, we discover that the airship crash is highly suspect.  The automaton pilot is missing and the doomed passengers were found roped into their seats.  This case first came to the Crown’s attention because a missing noble was among the dead.

The ghost, a “blue police man”, comes from local legend.  In his first incarnation, the blue policeman was a “ghost” taking revenge for a police officer’s murder.  He hunted down and killed every member of the gang that attacked him.  Now the ghost appears to be indiscriminate; the victims appear to be unrelated to each other except that they were all poor wretches from Whitechapel.

Investigating the murders of the blue police man becomes increasingly dangerous as the victims are found in the slums where the revenant disease is most prevalent.  These revenants are little more than animals, driven by insatiable hunger while their bodies rot.   Neither pain nor injury is a deterrent for them.  

The story unfolds like a mystery novel, with the steampunk elements added casually.  There are steam-powered cabs that can be hailed alongside horse-drawn carriages.  People can travel by air-ship as well as over land.  The queen’s personal physician is a mad scientist of sorts, using technology to prolong her life as well as healing her agents.  Automatons have been built to act as servants and pilots.  They are of course extremely expensive, making them a status symbol as well as a scientific wonder.

All three main plots, the airship crash, the blue policeman murders, and the devastating revenant virus, draw together beautifully for a great conclusion.  I really enjoyed reading The Affinity Bridge, and look forward to the other books in the series.

Steampunk novels can be hard to balance.  The Affinity Bridge did a great job making the very nature of the world a steampunk world.  It captured the excitement of the time without beating the reader over the head with invention.  Other steampunk novels have stories cluttered with affectation, be it flowery language, or scientific gadgets, but they aren’t really part of the world.  Each gadget sits on top of the plot, weighing it down and getting in the way of details.  One such series is the Parasol Protectorate series.  Their use of Victorian phrasing borders on silly, but I am drawn to them anyway.  I enjoy them the way some people enjoy soap operas.  Another example is The Map of Time, which was nearly painful to read.  In fact, I can’t talk about how horrible it was without talking about the ending of each short section. 

Spoiler Alert for The Map of Time!

Spoiler Alert!  Spoiler Alert!

The Map of Time

The Map of Time contains three separate sections which are only loosely related.  All three feature famous author H.G. Wells as an important character.  The first section was actually enjoyable, as it focused on a young man unable to get over his guilt and move on with his life after his One True Love dies.  The woman of his affection was actually the married prostitute Marie Kelly.  The young man finally managed to declare his love for Marie Kelly to his father, only to be turned out and cut off from his wealthy family.  He had hoped to be given an allowance so he could keep Marie Kelly as his mistress in a tasteful love nest, keeping her safe from the dangers of Whitechapel.  (What he would have done with her husband was not explained.) 

When he returns to his One True Love, to tell her that he was not penniless but that it didn’t matter, so long as they were together, he finds her dead at the hands of Jack the Ripper.  Since that terrible night, his Romantic soul would not let him have any real happiness, or allow him to move forward.  His Love was dead.  It was only a matter of time before he joined her.  He even went so far as to plot his suicide, but his plans were interrupted by his best friend.  However, his friend offers him a chance at redemption: he could travel back in time to save Marie Kelly.

This ultimately leads to H.G. Wells and his “time machine.”  While there is no real time machine, an elaborate plan is hatched to “save Marie Kelly in a parallel universe.”  I liked the premise of this story, using trickery to save this young man’s life. 

The second story also uses trickery and faked time travel, but for far baser purposes.  An actor involved with Murry’s Time Travel accidentally meets a female observer and falls in lust.  He tricks her into bed, but from remorse he must involve H.G. Wells to write love letters.  The romance blossoms into something far better and nobler than it began, but it is still an uncomfortable premise. 

The final story is somewhat convoluted.  This is the first tale in The Map of Time that involves actual time travel.  I liked the idea used for this time travel, involving not technology but genetics.  They also introduce the idea of the map of time and a library containing the “original” history of their world.  This could have been worth exploring further, but in this short story, Wells’ life is threatened and he has to make a choice: allow events to progress as they are about to, leading to the birth of time travel, or try to change his future and live life as he was “meant to”.  After we hear all about Wells’ future life, his trials, his progeny, and the future of the human race, Wells’ chooses the other path.

This effectively destroys all genetically triggered time travel and erases that parallel universe. 

So nothing actually happened in the entire last story.  It’s the time travel equivalent to “and then he woke up.” 

That would be bad enough but Wells muses about the nature of parallel universes, wondering if perhaps every fictional book could be a plausible world.  Could he be a character in someone else’s book? 

Cliché after cliché.  And throughout the three stories the reader must put up with an obnoxious narrator.  This narrator follows the “why use two words when twenty or more will do” school of thought.  Instead of facilitating the stories and adding to my enjoyment of them, it distracts from the pieces. 

Overall, if someone is interested in this book, I would recommend reading the first story, possibly the second if you like questionable romances, and completely skipping the third.

One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire

I’ve reviewed the October Daye Series, confessing that it is a guilty pleasure of mine to follow the series.  This most recent book, the fifth in the series, was very enjoyable.  In One Salt Sea Toby Daye has to solve the kidnapping of the princes of the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist.  There has been bad blood between the land and the sea kingdoms, including death threats, so the Land Duchy of Saltmist is the first suspect.  Which will mean war between the Land and Sea, and frankly, the Land armies are not up to challenge.   

I can’t really talk about this book without giving away the ending.  So, if you haven’t read it yet and want it to be a surprise, here’s a quick review: if you’ve enjoyed the other books in the series, you’ll love One Salt Sea.  You get more details about the world, the rules of faerie, the special abilities and complex histories of the different races.  Toby’s family also makes another appearance.  There are things about the “changeling’s choice” that I find a little odd, but they are dealt with well in this book.  I have yet to understood why a faery would choose to be in a relationship with a human in this world, since half-blooded children are scorned by seemingly all purebloods, including their parents, and if the children choose to be human then they are killed.  It’s like a lose-lose situation for everyone.  But for Toby’s family, it comes to an acceptable resolution. 

Spoiler Alert --  

I’ve wondered for a while how the love triangle between Toby, Tybalt, and Connor was going to be resolved.  Toby seems by turns amused and irritated by Tybalt and Connor being jealous of one another, posturing, and then teaming up to save her.  Connor’s death was really unsettling, but isn’t death supposed to be that way?  At first I wished that there had been more to it, that he hadn’t simply died because of negligence.  If only Toby or anyone had been more aware of the situation, then he could have lived.  He would have been asleep for the next hundred years, still effectively separating him and Toby (unless she changed the balance of her blood again).  But as the story continued and we are finally given the history behind the Selkies, and why the Sea Witch despises them so, I could see a certain elegance in Connor’s death.  It was integral to setting up future works.  A point that I brought up in my earlier review of the series was that Seanan McGuire seemed to hold the lives of her characters very cheap.  People died at an alarming rate, often without really providing more beyond a higher body count and a couple of people to irrationally blame October for their troubles.  I think that her view on death has changed a little, or she has at least learned to handle it better.  Even one of the villains of the piece gets a shot at redemption. 

This was a satisfying read, finally, and I look forward to the next book.

Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother...

Wicked Plants:  The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other
Botanical Atrocities, by Amy Stewart.
Guest Review by Jennifer Cuddeback

My reading passions run more towards nonfiction, and so I was invited
to give a review of a recent nonfiction read for this blog to help add
variety.

Wicked Plants, written by Amy Stewart, is a layman's foray into
botanical warfare, and is handled with aplomb.  If you're looking for
a narrative book, this is not it - I wanted to get that out of the way
in the beginning.  It's written rather like an encyclopedia, except
instead of being arranged alphabetically, it is arranged thematically.
Steward often gives historical uses or perspectives on the plants she
discusses, such as how certain plants got their names.  For example,
the plant we call Jimson Weed owes it's name to the colony at
Jamestown and to it's use during the Revolutionary War.  Steward's
auto-didactic style ranges from literature and ancient history to
little known facts, and the connections she makes are quite
interesting to the lay reader.  There is again no central narrative or
plot to tie the information together, but the book holds a wicked
fascination all its own even without that.  The reader might wish for
more details about some plants - more anecdotes or references - and
occasionally the layout is confusing.  For instance, one plant may
appear in one area while a very similar and related plant appears in a
completely different place.  However, the overall feel of the book
holds together well.  The book is illustrated with etchings of the
plants by Briony Morrow-Cribbs and clever, descriptive drawings by
Jonathon Rosen (which do occasionally detract from the overall flow of
the text).  For a pocket guide to backyard menaces, Wicked Plants is
certainly worth a place on any bookshelf.