This is the last post of the year, and, due to the holiday binge-watching (The Morning Show, See, Outlander, Witcher, Lost in Space, Hobbs and Shaw, a ton of Christmas movies and the last Star Wars film, Rise of Skywalker, which made me cry), I have only three books to review, and no tidbits from Shelf Awareness, unfortunately.
That said, I have 11 books on my bed TBR, just waiting to be read and savored, so I can't complain too much. Here's a short list of books that I didn't get for my birthday or Christmas, that I will be seeking in the new year (I can't believe it is almost 2020! The last 10 years, heck, the last 20 years have flown by!)
1) Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center
2) A Cruel Deception:A Bess Crawford Mystery by Charles Todd
3) We Came Here to Shine by Susie Orman Schnall
4) The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
5) Cartier's Hope by M.J.Rose
6) The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
7) The Library of Legends by Janie Chang
8) Above the Bay of Angels by Rhys Bowen
9) The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
10) A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
11) Year of the Wicked: Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring by Jeff Mariotte
12) Becoming by Michelle Obama
So there you have it, and even dozen books that I will be looking for in 2020, some of which aren't out until later in the year.
Meanwhile, here are the reviews of the books I did manage to read in the last week or so.
The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman is the 6th book in her Invisible Library series, which I began reading after the first book debuted years ago. I have thoroughly enjoyed most of them, but some of the books in this series were uneven and just not as exciting, plot wise, as previous installments. However, the Secret Chapter thankfully hearkened back to the beginning of the series, when the action and adventure were paramount, and the politics of the library took a backseat to the thrilling plot and spy-like characters, all with secrets to protect. Here's the blurb:
In the latest novel in Genevieve Cogman’s historical fantasy
Invisible Library series, Irene and Kai have to team up with an unlikely
band of misfits to pull off an amazing art heist, or risk the wrath of a
dangerous villain in his secret island lair.
A Librarian
spy’s work is never done, and after their latest adventure, Irene is
summoned back to the Library. The world where she grew up is in danger
of veering into chaos – so she needs to obtain a particular book to stop
this happening. And the only copy of the edition they need is in the
hands of a notorious Fae broker and trader in rare objects: Mr Nemo.Irene and Kai make their way to Mr Nemo’s remote Caribbean island, and are invited to dinner – which includes unlikely company. And Mr Nemo has an offer for everyone there. He wants them to form a team to steal a specific painting from a specific world. And he swears that that he will give Irene the book she seeks, if she joins them – but only if he has the painting within the week.
No one can resist the deal he offers. But to get their rewards, they’ll have to work together. And is this really possible when the team includes a dragon techie plus assorted fae - filling the roles of gambler, driver and ‘the muscle’? Their goal? A specific Museum in Vienna, in an early twenty-first-century world. Here, their toughest challenge might be each other.
The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman is a bookish adventure where a Librarian spy must fall in with a nefarious group to achieve her goals. Imagine Ocean’s Eleven meets James Bond with a pinch of magic . . .
For once, I totally agree with the blurb, in that this book read like an Ian Flemming novel, complete with nasty villains who feed their opponents to the sharks and a group of "experts" in various kinds of espionage who have to work together to steal a painting. That one of those experts is Kai the dragons ne'er do well sister only adds spice to the stew. I also like the fact that Irene the librarian is so competent and smart that she really doesn't need Kai to rescue her. She kicks her own share of rumps! Cogman's prose is finely woven to propel the zipline plot along at 100 MPH. Thankfully, there's an HFN ending (Happy For Now) and readers can feel they've learned more about the families of the protagonists (Irene and Kai) while also enjoying a fast-paced story that will keep them turning pages until the wee hours. I'd give this book an A and recommend it to anyone who has read any of the Invisible Library series books.
The Case of the Spellbound Child by Mercedes Lackey is the 14th book in the Elemental Masters series. I've read all of them, and enjoyed a majority of them tremendously. This installment involves ghastly ghosts and a horrible elemental who uses lost and orphaned children to supplement his magic. Here's the blurb: The fourteenth novel in the magical alternate history Elemental
Masters series continues the reimagined adventures of Sherlock Holmes in
a richly-detailed alternate 20th-century England.
While Sherlock is still officially dead, John and Mary Watson and Nan Killian and Sarah Lyon-White are taking up some of his case-load--and some for Lord Alderscroft, the Wizard of London.
Lord Alderscroft asks them to go to Dartmoor to track down a rumor of evil magic brewing there. Not more than four hours later, a poor cottager, also from Dartmoor, arrives seeking their help. His wife, in a fit of rage over the children spilling and spoiling their only food for dinner that night, sent them out on the moors to forage for something to eat. This is not the first time she has done this, and the children are moor-wise and unlikely to get into difficulties. But this time they did not come back, and in fact, their tracks abruptly stopped "as if them Pharisees took'd 'em." The man begs them to come help.
They would have said no, but there's the assignment for Alderscroft. Why not kill two birds with one stone?
But the deadly bogs are not the only mires on Dartmoor.
While Sherlock is still officially dead, John and Mary Watson and Nan Killian and Sarah Lyon-White are taking up some of his case-load--and some for Lord Alderscroft, the Wizard of London.
Lord Alderscroft asks them to go to Dartmoor to track down a rumor of evil magic brewing there. Not more than four hours later, a poor cottager, also from Dartmoor, arrives seeking their help. His wife, in a fit of rage over the children spilling and spoiling their only food for dinner that night, sent them out on the moors to forage for something to eat. This is not the first time she has done this, and the children are moor-wise and unlikely to get into difficulties. But this time they did not come back, and in fact, their tracks abruptly stopped "as if them Pharisees took'd 'em." The man begs them to come help.
They would have said no, but there's the assignment for Alderscroft. Why not kill two birds with one stone?
But the deadly bogs are not the only mires on Dartmoor.
One thing I found interesting about the book that I wasn't expecting was the horrible treatment of children in the early 20th century. Beatings and starving and sending children to work hazardous jobs, or to death-traps like the workhouse (which was where a lot of poor and homeless children ended up) were not at all uncommon. I'd thought that some of that treatment was ending now that Victoria's reign was almost at an end. This wasn't so, unfortunately. I also found the kidnapped children's ingenuity in trying to escape and finding ways to get more food and to help each other stay as healthy as possible before and after each grisly "harvesting" of their powers, to be heartening and fascinating. Of course, the creepy pedophilic incubus-like guy who was stealing their powers gets his in the end, and most of the children are recovered. Lackey is a gifted storyteller whose prose is as smooth as silk, and her plots move at a great trot, never lagging behind. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who has been following the Elemental Masters series.
Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw is a YA "dark" fantasy that reads like a fairytale retelling. I've read this author's other book, The Wicked Deep, and as I recall, I had problems with the female protagonist wimping out in that book, too. Here's the blurb: Be careful of the dark, dark wood…
Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.
Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.
But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.
For as long as there have been fairy tales, we have been warned to fear what lies within the dark, dark woods and in Winterwood, New York Times bestselling author Shea Ernshaw, shows us why.
Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.
Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.
But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.
For as long as there have been fairy tales, we have been warned to fear what lies within the dark, dark woods and in Winterwood, New York Times bestselling author Shea Ernshaw, shows us why.
Just as in the Wicked Deep, Nora, who is from a long line of witches, doesn't really seem to know if she is one, and she spends a majority of the book beating herself up and doubting her worth and value because she doesn't have a specific magical talent, like the other women in her family. She's also ineffective at solving the mystery until the very end (SPOILER, though this will seem obvious to anyone reading the first few chapters, Oliver is, actually, dead, and it is only his ghost who is following her around, and only she can see and touch him), when, (AGAIN, SPOILER) she just suddenly finds her talent is turning back time, so she goes back to the fateful moment when everything went wrong, undoes it, and saves Oliver from drowning and becoming a ghost. And she cries and blubs like a baby, again. I really think witches should be more emotionally sturdy, but Nora just isn't. She blubs and blathers and is scared like a bunny surrounded by wolves during the whole book. So while I appreciate that we have a female protagonist for this book, does she have to be so weak, emotionally fragile and incompetent? That just plays into a bunch of nasty sexist stereotypes that men have set up for centuries about women being "hysterical" and unreliable and the 'weaker' sex. The strongest characters in this book are the trees, who even manage to devour a character who deliberately sets a forest fire. While readers may wish that could actually happen, I prefer to read about strong women characters instead of sentient trees. So I'd give this novel a B-, and recommend it to those who find dark woods full of trees terrifying, and who like deus ex machina style endings.
By the way, to date I've read and reviewed 2,825 books since 2005.
By the way, to date I've read and reviewed 2,825 books since 2005.
