Review: Murder on Astor Place

Murder on Astor Place by Victoria Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I've been needing another historical mystery series to add to my bag, and I believe I've found one in the Gaslight Mysteries. Murder on Astor Place is a solid start to a series set in early 20th Century New York. As usual with this type of mystery, getting to know - and liking - the sleuth and their world is the most important part. Here, the amateur sleuth is a midwife, but we discover that Sarah's social background is not cut-and-dry, and the reasons why she became a midwife add a lot of depth to her character. I really liked her. She's tough and stubborn, but is also capable of changing her mind and realizing when she's in the wrong. I'm looking forward to seeing how she progresses in the rest of the series, which by the way is not finished yet.

There's also a grumpy, disillusioned detective that Sarah is forced to work with, and I liked him as a counterpart. Although I didn't actually like him very much to start with, I think he has a lot of potential as another complicated character with room to change. I'm fairly sure he's going to end up being a romantic interest eventually, but it is very subtle so far, and there's a long way to go. There's barely the beginnings of respect without even what could be called friendship at this point. I like that there's room to grow instead of everything being a done deal already.

Although I said the sleuth and the depth of her world is the most important part, obviously the mystery does need to hold together and keep my interest as well. Here, the mystery tied in very closely with getting to know Sarah's background, so the investigation revealed a lot about her while my mind was searching for clues. I ended up being mostly surprised at the solution, and enjoyed discovering all the pieces very much. This is a series I'm definitely looking forward to following.



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Review: The Season

The Season by Sarah MacLean

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



3.5 stars. This is a sweet Regency romance with just a dash of danger involving French spies, lots of balls and parties, a jealous-yet-honorable suitor in denial, three girls who don't want to be on the marriage mart because they have brains and want something else out of life besides a society marriage - and no bodice ripping. It's a mild love story in the YA category, although it doesn't really feel like a YA novel except for some simplicity in the plot. A fun, clean read if you're in the mood for it.



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Review: The Key

The Key by Marianne Curley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was an entertaining end to the trilogy. The two POVs offered in this book are Matt and Rochelle. They aren't my favorite narrators out of the lot. I kind of missed the characters from the two previous books, but I can see why the focus shifted to these two.

There's not a lot of time travel since the conflict comes to a head in the present. I didn't really miss it that much, though, since this series has never really spent much time on the actual time travel.

I tried not to get hung up on a couple of things - insta-love abounds in this one even more than the second book, and the big question of who the traitor is gets out of hand. I felt like the various suspicions, while creating suspense and drama, were also unrealistic and caused a lot of unnecessary grief. All they would have had to do was remember the actual prophecy to help them narrow the field... just saying. But I suppose you have to have a story, right? And it did keep me guessing.

Just a quick heads-up for those of you who think you're on a lighthearted adventure where all ends well. This ended up being more tragic than I expected - not everyone survives. But I was ok with the ending for the most part, probably because the POV shift made me not care so much. There was plenty of suspense and danger throughout, and it was a lot of fun to read.



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Review: The Dark

The Dark by Marianne Curley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I liked this one so much better than the first. It continues on a year after the events of the last book, but gets right into the action. It really never stops. I'm glad I continued with the series.

This entire series has a huge case of insta-love, though. Everyone seems to have a soul mate, and the way they discover their soul mate is by being unable to look away from each others' eyes when they first meet. When I read the first book, I thought it was going to avoid this kind of thing - but it turns out the two who would have fallen in love otherwise weren't soul mates, so they didn't.

This series was a lot of fun, just not without its flaws. And at least it gets away from high school and teenage drama after the first book.



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Review: Cast in Shadow

Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Cast in Shadow is the first in a series (9 books so far) that I’ve been waiting to start for a long, long time. I still don’t know how long the series is going to be, but I figured there are enough books out that I could get started and see if the wait has been worth it, and oh yes it has. I'm going to have to pace myself on this one so I don't have to play the waiting game for too long.

It is a High Fantasy, but with a definite Urban Fantasy feel. It takes place in a single city, with several different races: Humans, Leontines (Lionish), Aerials (Hawkish), Barrani (flawless immortals), and Dragons (also immortals). There are a couple more, but those are the main ones we meet in this book. Each is complete with its own culture and characteristics, making this a vibrant, interesting world.

Kaylin is a Hawk (not to be confused with the Aerial species), which is a sort of police force in the city. Her interactions with her co-Hawks of various races are what really makes the story come alive with both humor and tension, setting an atmosphere that I found addictive without really being able to explain why.

The story starts as Kaylin gets pulled in on a case involving deaths of children that are similar to deaths that occurred in her orphan past, a past she has tried to ignore. What exactly happened is a mystery for a large part of the book, but once we know what happened, the question becomes why, and how to stop it from happening again.

A lot of things are a mystery, some because they aren’t revealed all at once, and some because the world-building is difficult to understand at times. Sometimes, I felt like I was missing basic background information that prevented me from following everything as it was revealed. I didn't always understand as much as Kaylin did during her discoveries - explanations and experiences that she accepted as just another piece of the puzzle were confusing to me. There was a definite feeling of being in the dark at times.

So the world-building doesn’t spell it all out, but I liked what I did understand enough that I just went with it and got the gist of things. I hoped my understanding would fill in later. And it did, more through the events than the explanations. By the end of the book, I felt like I pretty solidly knew what was going on, how the world was set up, who was in it, what the magic was - mostly. There’s still a lot that I need to learn more about, but I think I’ve got the basics down, and having plenty left to learn promises more fun reading the series.

I don’t want to put other readers off with this, because I really liked the book and can see a lot of potential in the series. This is more a warning that it could be easy to get frustrated at first. Just don’t get bogged down in trying to decipher the meaning of every detail straight away. Because even though not everything is totally clear, it becomes clear as the action fills in the picture for you. I learned much more about the world through Kaylin's relationships and through seeing what happens than anything else, which is a great way to learn how a world works. I really got into it, caught by the atmosphere and attached to the characters.

After the last page, I felt a bit lost, and had to go read the beginning of the next book to fill the void. Only the beginning though, because I’m not going to rush through these all at once. This is a series to savor, and I intend to make it last.



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Review: Child of a Hidden Sea

Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I received Child of a Hidden Sea for review from NetGalley shortly before it was released in June. It looked interesting - a seafaring-based portal world with political intrigue, mystery, and magic. It is also not a Young Adult novel, which definitely appealed. The synopsis promised to have plenty for me to love. Well, I liked it ok enough, but I can’t say I loved it. It was entertaining, and I am interested enough to read a sequel if there is one, but I also feel kind of ambivalent about it and am having a hard time putting my finger on why.

I enjoyed the sea-faring aspect, and the descriptions of the natural world were vivid and breathtaking. Sophie is a Marine Biologist in her life on Earth, and her excitement at the new species she encounters is infectious. It’s a world I would love to see for myself during a sea adventure - on a real, old fashioned ship without engines, of course. She is also a diver, which comes in handy a couple times during this adventure (I wonder what would have happened if she didn’t know how to dive or have equipment - but that’s beside the point).

Sophie's curiosity about this new world gets her in trouble, though, because curiosity is not encouraged here at all. The world is full of unfriendly, stuck up, or downright hostile people, so I found it difficult to like anyone or their cultures. This is an aspect of world building that I usually enjoy. Instead, all of the wonder is reserved for the pristine environment, and her difficulties adjusting to the new world are a lot closer to real life culture shock - without anyone sympathetic enough to help her find her way and learn the ways of the peoples. Also without even a common level of politeness. So I struggled to care about the fate of this completely thankless world full of prejudice, the heroine’s newly found family being the worst of them all.

The mystery is about Sophie’s history before she was adopted on Earth, as well as who was trying to kill her aunt and why. She has to learn the politics, history and culture well enough to put it together without much help from the natives, some of whom are jealous, suspicious and aggravatingly condescending. Again, I really just enjoyed the adventure of being at sea more than the intrigue of these incredibly rude and hostile people.

I did like the juxtaposition of magic and technology, and how technology is viewed as inferior on this world but Sophie uses it to help her solve the mystery and force the natives to accept her findings when they would gladly throw her under the bus - er, ship. I do feel as if Sophie is on her way to winning over some of the hostile people so that her future adventures might include some actual friendships and therefore a better appreciation for the more positive sides of the world’s cultures - hopefully.

I also discovered that there's something about portal fantasies in general that bothers me, that I’ve felt before when reading others but couldn’t identify. It's that the ported character has to speak realistically for someone from our world, with accent, slang, cultural references, etc. Obviously this is to be expected, but I find it jarring to have someone with an American accent referring to fast food restaurants, texting, and the internet while in a fantasy world. This is just me, but is another reason I felt some ambivalence about the story.

Overall, it was an entertaining read, a little different from other fantasies I’ve read lately. I will be interested in reading a sequel, if there is one. The ending was left open enough while still feeling complete.

**Received free arc for review.



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Review: The Curse of the Mistwraith

The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



I'm not sure how I came across The Curse of the Mistwraith. It must be one of those Goodreads finds that unfortunately is not working out for me. I’ve fought to read this far, and I just can’t face it any longer. I took a break and tried to come back to it several times, only to find my determination to finish it waning with distance. Every time I try to start back up again, I get stuck. I keep trying to force myself through this one telling of the history of a sword, and it’s all very momentous sounding, so I feel like I can’t skip it (I get the feeling that would be like skipping the story of the Ring in LOTR). But I just don’t care and I’m bored and I don’t like anyone, and I don’t even really know anyone after 120 pages. This weighty tale is apparently a roadblock that I don’t have the strength to pass. I need to move on.

So what is so terrible about it, you might ask. The best answer I can give is that the narrative style is too scattered and random and too much is spent on background and history without forging any connection to the present and the main characters. The characters themselves are not very likable, and I really don’t care what happens to them. The POV switches all the time, most often using minor characters such as messengers, captains, servants, etc. to provide an outside view of the main characters. How are you supposed to tell who is important when you never know whether that character will be revisited again or not? How can you grow attached to the main characters when they are only seen through vignettes showing other people’s impressions of them from afar? And when you do actually get the primary viewpoints, it doesn’t help their case much. The two brothers are not very sympathetic when you get inside their heads. I did have hope that they would change, but I just don’t have the patience and don’t care enough to find out.

On top of the lack of character appeal, the world changes about 15% into it - as in, all the effort I’ve put in to getting into this story and learning about the first world is tossed out when the two brothers are sent through a portal to another world. They are apparently stuck there permanently, and this is where the true story begins. But having to start over at this point is disastrous because I haven’t learned to care yet, and I don’t want to wade through more history and portents and legends to find out what they’re doing there and how important they’re going to be. I still don’t like them, don’t know them very well, and POVs are still switching. Instead of building my attachment to the characters and this huge thing that has happened to them, the emphasis is on portents, legends, prophecies, background. I get it already. Make me care. Make something happen now.

I almost forgot to mention the excessive use of prologues and random scenes. Every freaking chapter has its own prologue. I kid you not. The flow of the main story, if it can be called that, is completely derailed by these diversions to other people, times, places that supposedly lend import to what is about to happen hopefully sometime in the next 600 pages. Then after each prologue, we get random flashes of scenes from other people, times, places that we have no idea who or where they are or whether / why they might be important to the whole. It just adds to the boredom, increases distance from the plot and characters that you're fighting to get to know.

It makes skimming difficult because you might miss something that’s actually important. What if a viewpoint that seems random and useless ends up being critical to understanding the whole? Everything has that portentous feeling, and yet somehow feels distant and trivial and is a complete slog to get through. And did I mention there’s not much of an actual story yet?

Clearly this narrative style is not for me.



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