This note (which I'm writing as a public service), and the "started-not-finished" status, applies ONLY to this particular 2008 printing by Wilder PublThis note (which I'm writing as a public service), and the "started-not-finished" status, applies ONLY to this particular 2008 printing by Wilder Publications. I still want to read the book in an accurate printing, and will be adding it to my to-read shelf again in a different edition. Unfortunately, in this one, it was obviously "digitized" from a public-domain hard copy, by using a cheap automated software program that messed up bits of the text here and there as it went along: for instance, skipping whole lines of text (and it's hard to tell how many were skipped in each instance), repeating words, garbling phrases, omitting some punctuation marks or changing them, etc. If I'd been reading the text as Chesterton wrote it, I would have indeed hung in there with the book, complex thought and all; but the accumulated frustration with all the ambiguity introduced by the many textual errors finally just got to be too much. It's not fair to the author to read it this way; and I would be very dubious about reading any book printed by Wilder Publications!...more
This is neither a book nor a short story (nor a free-standing read of any kind!), and this note is not a review as such. Instead, the subtitle is liteThis is neither a book nor a short story (nor a free-standing read of any kind!), and this note is not a review as such. Instead, the subtitle is literal; rather than being a prequel to the author's novel Turncoat, this actually is just the 8-page Prologue, set in 1962, from the novel itself. (And the cover art has absolutely nothing to do with the contents.) What we get is simply a tedious and padded description of a short White House ceremony bestowing a medal on a retiring CIA agent, and then an account of the difficult childbirth of a first son to a couple who, as far as we know, have no connection to the agent. There are a significant number of typos or misused words, lots of name-dropping, and digressions like a recounting of the origin of President Kennedy's desk.
It's my own fault that I didn't notice the ultra-short page count before downloading this, and since it's free, I can't say I was gypped; it really is worth $0.00. :-) But it's basically just a come-on (and not a very interesting one to me) for the novel, and I felt that I wasted my time in reading it at all....more
Note, Oct. 11, 2023: I'm just adding a hasty note to this review to state that I read it in electronic format, as an ARC I was given earlier this yearNote, Oct. 11, 2023: I'm just adding a hasty note to this review to state that I read it in electronic format, as an ARC I was given earlier this year by the author, who's a valued Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friend. No promise of a positive review was asked for, or given!
House Blend is a short novella in Heather Day Gilbert's Barks and Beans “cozy� mystery series, set in present-day Lewisburg, West Virginia and featuring amateur sleuth (and first-person narrator) Macy Hatfield. Macy and her slightly older brother Bo operate a “petting cafe,� a coffee shop with an adjacent area where customers can interact with shelter dogs (with a view to encouraging adoptions). This particular entry takes place a couple of years after the series opener, No Filter (since there Macy's about 37, and here she turned 39 a few days before the tale opens), and would probably appeal most to people who've already read the earlier book. But it stands outside of the series numbering, so doesn't have to be read in any particular sequence as compared to the later books. It could even, possibly, serve as a sort of appetizer for the main series for “cozy� fans who are new to it (though I think the first book would be a more effective and appealing introduction). This volume does have basic information as to a couple of romantic attachments that have developed in the intervening years since the series opener –but these are really not “spoilers,� since most readers of the latter book will already have placed their bets on both pairs to become dating couples. :-)
Like most book titles in this series, this one takes a coffee-shop term and connects it to a element in the mystery. The connection here is the word “house.� Harper Pine is a “house flipper,� that is, someone who buys older houses which could benefit from a makeover, has them renovated, and sells them at a profit. Normally she lives in neighboring Virginia; but the house she's currently working with is in Lewisburg, and during her time there she's become a Barks and Beans regular. Unfortunately, the house in question proved to contain a shallowly-buried skeleton with a bashed-in skull in its basement. Back in 1989, Lewisburg gossip was set agog over the disappearance of a young, childless married woman named Delta Buckner. Local police investigated it at the time, but no leads were found; and the intervening 30+ years have left the case very cold and general interest waned to the vanishing point. In the first chapter, though, we learn that the bones have been identified as Delta's, so the missing person case is now a homicide case. Harper's concerned that an association with an unsolved murder will hurt the sales appeal of the house. She strikes up a friendship with Macy, also in the first chapter, and our heroine, being native to the community --and also being, as most readers will recognize (maybe with rolled eyes!) afflicted with, as Gabriel Betteredge in The Moonstone would say, “detective fever�-- volunteers to ask around about the lead-up to the tragedy, to see if she can unearth any clues. So, “the game is afoot.�
The book has its positives. It's a quick read (I read it in two sittings, and some readers might finish it in one), with an undemanding prose style and a strong narrative drive. (I would say that it's plot-driven rather than character-driven, but that isn't necessarily a flaw.) For those who, like myself, have read the first book, it's a chance to reconnect briefly with old friends (though Bo plays very little part in this episode). The nicely evoked small-town ambiance is a plus, and the author's love of dogs comes through. (Dog lovers may particularly appreciate this series in general, although here Macy doesn't get any canine assist in solving the mystery as she did in No Filter.) Our girl also doesn't put herself in such “too stupid to live� jeopardies as she did in the first book. She's learned to pack pepper spray instead of relying on a pocketknife; and though she thinks she's in great danger at one point, readers who actually picture the realistic physical possibilities of the situation won't be as scared for her as she is for herself. (In order to avoid spoilers, I can't be more specific!) Harper proves to be a character with unexpected depth, and was one reason I rated the book as highly as I did; as I said of Bo in the first book, I actually think she'd make a better series sleuth than Macy does.
However, there are negatives as well (though one is just the converse of a positive, and not all of them would be regarded with the same weight by all readers). As in the first book, Macy doesn't genuinely solve the mystery; the solution is unexpectedly dropped into her lap by a confession. Under the circumstances, I found it hard to believe the confession would have been made in real life; to overcome that challenge, the character of the person making it would have had to be developed in enough depth to make it seem credible for that person, and that isn't done here. Similarly, the extreme events that culminated in the killing come, as it were, out of the blue; we're told about them, but we don't know enough about Delta as a person to have expected, or to genuinely feel in our gut, that this was something that could have likely happened. (Some of my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends who frequently run into “dual timelineâ€� narrative structures in their reads –I have only a little experience with reading that technique myself-- call attention to the drawbacks and difficulties of that method; but I actually think that structure might have worked better here, and this author would have the chops to pull it off.) The ultra-extreme overreaction of another character with secrets to learning that another character has vague and unsubstantiated suspicions in that general area also served to drop information into Macy's lap; but it doesn't come across as realistic in any setting outside of the old America's Dumbest Criminals TV show. Both of these confessions seem like shortcuts designed to end the book quickly; and in general, the whole composition has a sort of undeveloped or minimalist feel. Short stories, despite their shortness, can be carefully crafted as well-polished and emotionally evocative jewels. This short novel lacks that jewel-like quality; it's just short, and some readers would possibly find it more rewarding if it were significantly longer, and the space used to develop the characters more deeply, and to flesh some things out. Finally, it's doubtful that the police would have failed to again contact the person who made the confession, despite having done so already back in 1989.
True, some of these criticisms are subjective; and it's also fair to note that the author is trying here to appeal to readers who actually want a very quick, light read, and who would be put off by more depth. But I have to review it from the standpoint of my own wants and likes. So, if I could give half stars here, my rating would be two and a half; I rounded up for the sake of the positives noted above....more
The fifth installment of the popular Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series removes Macy from the cafe' for most of the book's length, and provides her The fifth installment of the popular Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series removes Macy from the cafe' for most of the book's length, and provides her with a temporary sidekick in the person of secondary series character Della (mom to one of the cafe' employees), who was introduced in the second book, Iced Over. Della's a caregiver for elderly clients. We learn in the first chapter that the latest of the latter, one Lorraine Rosso (to whom Della was especially close), suddenly died the day before the book opens. She was bed-fast and didn't have a particularly strong heart, and the physician who examined her body attributed her death to heart failure. But while she wasn't a likely contender for any Olympic medals, she didn't previously appear to be at all near death's door; and Della has noted that one of the deceased's two pillows is unaccountably missing. (Was she smothered?) The widowed Lorraine didn't have a loving relationship with either of her two adult children, and didn't trust either of them. (She did trust Della implicitly.)
Adding to the intrigue surrounding the situation, some time before she died Lorraine gave Della a letter, to be opened in the event of her demise. Signed (and witnessed by a neighbor), it reveals that when Lorraine's husband died, he left in her keeping an unspecified "object" of great value, which had come into the possession of his great-grandfather shortly after his immigration to America. (It bears the latter's initials, "F. R.") Not trusting his kids any more than Lorraine did, and believing that they'd simply fight over the object if they did inherit it, he charged her to pass it to some other worthy person. (The kids know a valuable object exists, but not what or where it is.) It further reveals that Lorraine has hidden this treasure, not in her own home, but in some undisclosed place in the Baxter Manor, a Lewisburg inn owned and run by her daughter and son-in-law, Camilla and Phelps Baxter, and designates Della as Lorraine's choice to be the heir of the object. (Lorraine's will, recently changed, will confirm this, though the lawyer won't read her name out loud when the will is officially read.)
With Halloween approaching, the Baxter Manor --where the out-of-town contingent of Lorraine's family is staying, pending the reading of the will-- is sponsoring an upcoming "Spooks and Screams Weekend," to feature a candlelit ghost tour, a hayride, etc. Della proposes that she and her friend Macy sign up for this and book rooms in the inn for the weekend, under the guise of being a bit burnt out from their work and wanting a "girls weekend" to relax. That, she thinks, will give them a chance to secretly search for the treasure, and spy on family members who may be murder suspects. Readers who know Macy won't be surprised that she agrees. (She does have sense enough to contact her police detective friend and acquaint him with Della's suspicions.) This sets the stage for another typical Macy Hatfield outing, this one characterized by numerous red herrings, more than one mystery, faux supernatural elements, and some clean romance. Gilbert makes good use of actual Lewisburg area folklore, particularly the historical element of the "Greenbriar ghost," an instance where a claimed ghostly visitation actually provided verifiable courtroom evidence in an 1897 murder trial ( ). Following the denouement, the concluding chapter brings us a couple of significant developments in the ongoing series story lines.
Like the previous novels of the series, this was one Barb and I read together. In terms of style, plotting, texture, etc., this book has much in common with the preceding ones. However, I wasn't able to rate it quite as highly, because the initial premise struck me as implausible. Although she's a stronger fan of this particular series than I am, and more of a target audience for the "cozy" subgenre (of which this is a good example), Barb shared my criticisms on this point. While it heightens the mystery element for Della and Macy to be kept in the dark as to the identity and location of the mysterious treasure (which functions as a McGuffin here), there's no discernible reason for Lorraine to conceal this information. Her stated purpose was for Della to have the object; that purpose was threatened, not furthered, by not permitting her to have this information. Since the letter was given to Della, there was no danger of the kids getting it, and no more need to conceal the withheld information than to conceal the things she did reveal. (And surely a safety deposit box, with the key held by the bank or the lawyer, would be a more secure hiding place than placing the item in the home of two people who she was particularly anxious NOT to have find it?) Nonetheless, we enjoyed the tale for the diversion that it is, and plan to continue the series!...more
Note: This review has no spoilers for this book; but it does presuppose that those who read it will have read the four full-length novels that precedeNote: This review has no spoilers for this book; but it does presuppose that those who read it will have read the four full-length novels that precede it in the series. I would definitely advise reading the series in order.
When we finished this installment of the Barks and Beans Cafe' series, which we're reading together, my wife Barb (who's not on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ), commenting on the appeal of the series as a whole to her, said that it's "simple, down-to-earth, country." She added words to the effect that much of its appeal comes from the basic likability of protagonist Macy Hatfield (who genuinely cares about others, and it shows), the small-town atmosphere, and the implicit message of the value of family and community. (And being an Appalachian native herself, the setting is a major plus for her.) Her comments do encapsulate a great deal of what the series has going for it, though I think its appeal would extend to readers in any geographic location, with or without an Appalachian connection or an actual rural or small-town background of their own. My star rating reflects what Barb would give it, since she's more the target audience --though I like the series too, and personally liked this particular book the best of those I've read so far (though it has enough similarity to the others that my general comments in most of those reviews would also apply to this one).
For this adventure, Macy's brother Bo plays a much less prominent role than usual. He's in South America, and mostly incommunicado, for much of the book. As the first book ultimately revealed, he has a DEA background (from which he's "retired," sort of, but not so much so as not to keep his hand in at times!). Now, he's been called into a deep-cover mission to (hopefully) finally get the goods on Leo Moreau, the arch-criminal mastermind who's been his nemesis since his DEA days, and whose doings have formed a constant plot strand through the first four novels as well. But continuing character Kylie Baer, the Hatfield siblings' heavily-tattooed barista at Barks and Beans, plays a much bigger role than usual, and we get to know the usually taciturn and stand-offish young woman much better than heretofore. (Some mystery fans might wish that she were the series sleuth here! :-) Of course, Kylie wouldn't relish the circumstances that bring her so much to the fore here: early on, she happens to emerge as the leading suspect in the murder of her younger sister's detested boyfriend, who's found with one of her antique swords in his back....
This novel is paced and plotted very well, and presented in the straightforward, engaging style that's characteristic of the series. The mystery elements hold up to scrutiny. (As usual, pay attention to minor details; they may prove to be significant!) I actually guessed the identity of the principal baddie as soon as he/she was introduced, and foresaw the main outline of what was going on, though not some details; but that's only because I've read a lot in the mystery genre and understand some of its dynamics, not because the author ineptly telegraphs it. (She doesn't; my wife was in the dark until the big reveal.) Our small-town West Virginia setting continues to be effectively evoked; Coal and Waffles will appeal to dog lovers (and Stormy will please the cat persons in the reading community), and the interpersonal relationships outside of and around the mystery plot add texture. (These will see one significant development, but no spoilers!) At first, I felt that one not initially very likable character mellows and shows a more mature than expected side too quickly; but I ultimately put this down to the fact that first impressions can mislead us.
Gilbert consciously (and skillfully) tailors this whole series to the tastes and expectations of "cozy" mystery fans in particular. For any of the latter who've discovered this series (and there are quite a few who have; this author has several series, in two genres, but this is the most popular of them!), and who have followed the previous installments, this one won't disappoint in the slightest....more
My Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friend Monica gave this novel (the first book in the author's Miss Fortune Mysteries) five stars, which put it on my radar; and I'd downlMy Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friend Monica gave this novel (the first book in the author's Miss Fortune Mysteries) five stars, which put it on my radar; and I'd downloaded the e-book edition some time ago when I discovered that it's offered for free, as a teaser for the series. While my rating isn't as high as hers (it would be three and 1/2 stars if Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ allowed that), and I didn't expect that it would be, I did turn out to like the book somewhat more than I expected to.
Our protagonist and first-person narrator here is "Fortune" Redding. We're not told her real first name ("Fortune" is the handle she's used to answering to, but it's indicated, well into the book, that it's a nickname, short for "soldier of fortune") or her exact age; but she's worked for the CIA for eight or five years, depending on which figure we go with, since we're given both in different places. (I took the first one to start with, so picture her as about 30, joining the Company just after college.) The affiliation was a natural one for her; her father, with whom she had a prickly relationship, was a top CIA agent, and after his death when she was 15, her remaining teen years were overseen by a couple of CIA officials, one of whom is now her boss. (Her mother had died years earlier.) She's a seasoned assassin (of verified baddies), with a VERY long list of kills to her credit, and zero compunctions about her line of work. But she's neither a psychopath nor a moral nihilist; on the contrary, she's basically a kind-hearted person (albeit an emotionally-constipated loner with no confidential friends), who sympathizes readily with those in danger and distress.
That trait got her in trouble on her latest mission. It wasn't supposed to be a hit; she was simply posing as the glamorous mistress of a drug dealer, delivering money for him to a Middle Eastern crime boss. But (as we learn along with her, at the debriefing in the first chapter) her meeting was compromised by an unknown leak in the CIA, who'd tipped the bad guys off as to who she was. They'd decided to test the tip by setting up a situation where she'd have to act to try to rescue a 12-year-old sex trafficking victim, figuring that she could then easily be dealt with, since she'd come unarmed. Unhappily for them, Fortune's quite adept at improvising a weapon when she has to; though she doesn't care much for high heels, she dispatched the head honcho with a stiletto heel on the shoes she was wearing, and got away clean, presumably with the 12-year-old. (We learn about this only in a terse second-hand report; I'd have loved to read it in real time!) Now, the deceased's brother Ahmad, also a big-time crime lord, has put her picture all over the Dark Web, with a million-dollar price on her head (ten million, if she can be delivered to him alive to be tortured).
If Ahmad can be taken out, the contract on her will be moot, but in the meantime, she needs to be stashed in a safe place --and one that can't be compromised by the unidentified leaker. Luckily, her boss' niece, librarian and former beauty queen Sandy-Sue Morrow, just inherited a house in Sinful (population 253) in the bayou country of southern Louisiana from a newly-dead aunt on her mother's side. The two weren't close; Sandy-Sue has never been to Sinful, and she has no social media presence due to a stalking incident years ago. With summer just starting, she's scheduled to go down there to inventory the house's contents and prepare it for sale. Before the very unwilling Fortune can say "culture shock," her boss has packed the real Sandy-Sue off for a summer in Europe, and our heroine is in route to Louisiana to hide under this new identity. It's only supposed to be through the summer months; and in a small, quiet southern community, nothing's apt to go wrong, right? But the flooding caused by a recent hurricane unearthed and moved a lot of debris in the backwoods, and on Fortune's first evening in town, the late aunt's dog fishes a human bone out of the bayou behind the house. It proves to have belonged to a very wealthy, and universally hated, town resident who disappeared some five years ago....
As mysteries go, this one is not deep or in some respects very plausible, but it is entertaining. Despite the author's use of a humorous tone in most of it --though it has its serious moments, some of them deadly so (literally!)-- it's not really an example of the "cozy" subgenre, nor even of the broader stream of more "genteel" who-dunnits in general. That tradition features more actual detection in terms of sifting physical clues and witness statements, and eschews directly-described physical violence. There's little of the former here, and definitely some of the latter in the denouement. (Action-heroine fans may be pleasantly surprised to find that Fortune's combat skills won't necessarily have to go to waste in this new environment!) But the mystery of who killed Harvey Chicoran doesn't necessarily have an immediately obvious solution (many characters, and no doubt readers, may assume that the widow did it --but did she?). There will be twists and turns in solving it, and Fortune's involvement in that effort will provide her --and readers-- with challenges, adventures, excitement and danger.
A weakness of the book is that a lot of the humor exaggerates the quirkiness and peculiarities of the Louisiana bayou country's rural inhabitants to the point of caricature. It plays to stereotypes that too many urbanites have about the South, and rural people in general, which reflects culpable ignorance of cultures outside their own. Fortune herself is a prime example; she seriously wonders, for instance, if the community she's going to has electricity. (Rolls eyes profusely.) She also has a tendency to reduce women with Sandy-Sue's background to despised, stereotyped "Others." Some characters, like the members of the Sinful Ladies Society (membership is only open to "old maids" or widows of 10 years standing, to avoid contamination by "silly man thinking"), are steeped in misandry, and Deleon views that as funny. This is mitigated to a degree by the fact that she's native to the region (which I've visited) herself, does reveal some basic affection for it, and depicts it with some realistic local color; and by the fact that she does portray a couple of male characters positively. There are also a few inconsistencies that should have been caught and edited out.
On the positive side, this is a tautly paced book that keeps you turning pages, or in my case clicking frames (I read the first two-thirds of it in one sitting, and could and would have read it all if time had allowed!), with a tightly-compressed plot that unfolds in less than a week. Even if you disagree with some of Fortune's attitudes, she is honestly likable, with a wryly humorous narrative voice that's appealing (at least to this reader). She exhibits a willingness to look at herself and grow through exposure to new experience, which I like; and I appreciated the strong depiction of female friendship and loyalty. There's a certain amount of bad language here, mostly of the h and d-word sort or vulgarisms, but not much profanity and no obscenity; and there's no sexual content nor any romance at all (though I understand that a romance develops in subsequent books in the series). While Fortune describes herself, though not out loud, as a "heathen" (when she's informed that everybody in Sinful who's not one of the latter attends one of its two churches), and there's some humor based on the foibles of the church-goers, there's no actual pushing of an anti-Christian agenda.
I only read this book as a diversion, because it was free; I don't plan to follow the series. But I don't regret making Fortune's acquaintance, nor visiting her in her new-found community. :-)...more
With this novel, Gilbert and Cudmore bring their Tavland Vikings duology to a strong and satisfying conclusion. This installment is set in the years 1With this novel, Gilbert and Cudmore bring their Tavland Vikings duology to a strong and satisfying conclusion. This installment is set in the years 1000-1001, soon after the first book, and takes place entirely on the authors' fictional island country of Tavland. Here, Ellisif, Dagar and their family connections appear only briefly, in passing, and though Hakon and Inara play more of a role than the latter do, they're secondary characters. Our focus this time is on just one aristocratic couple, young (I don't recall if her age was stated, but I pictured her as about 20) Kadhrin Finnleik and Jarl Vikarr Lodbrok, who's not much older. (He's said to be in his early 20s.) They were betrothed by their families as children (but also share a mutual attraction). The wedding has been delayed for the past two years, while the Finnleiks made an extended visit to the court of the Danish king, Sven Fork-beard, who's a distant relative of Kadhrin's mother. (He was a real-life person, as were the other non-Tavish political figures of that day who are mentioned in places.) But as our story opens, their returning ship is just pulling into the harbor of Ladborg, Tavland's largest “city� (though by our standards, none of these towns would be very large), where Vikarr lives.
Political intrigue will play a major role in this book. (Some of the background to this is hinted at in the previous installment, but it's developed more fully here.) Tavland hasn't been a single entity for very long. Previously divided into several independent regional fiefdoms, it was united in the late 900s by Vikarr's father, Grune Lodbrok, for the most part peacefully. He was able to use the well-founded fear of foreign invasion to convince the other jarls to unite for common defense and accept him as king. But he died before his oldest son, Vikarr, was old enough to rule; so the Thing (the popular assembly of all of the male landowners, which in the semi-democratic polity of the Scandinavian peoples wielded a lot of power) gave the kingship to his younger brother Dungad; and when Dungad died in 998, a majority of the Thing chose his son Eadric as king, rather than Vikarr. Both cousins had fully expected –and wanted-- Vikarr to be chosen. They both accepted the decision. But though Eadric has good qualities and comes across well in small group settings, he's uncomfortable speaking to crowds, untested in battle, and not naturally very decisive. After two years, he still hasn't grown well into the kingly role. Vikarr, on the other hand, is a born leader, a proven warrior, and already shoulders a lot of the decision-making and public speaking for his cousin. By now, more and more people are having second thoughts about their choice, frustrated with the king's passivity, and contemplating the idea of replacing him with Vikarr; and Vikarr shares that frustration, and struggles at times with the same temptation. There's grist for high-stakes drama here.
However, this isn't solely a novel about medieval politics. It's also very much a novel about marital dynamics, and about the personal growth of the main characters. The political aspects of the tale are a natural part of this basic focus on characters, personal growth, and personal choices. Indeed, while there's no single climactic moral choice that faces our two co-protagonists, there are a variety of important questions about what's right or wrong to do that arise in the normal course of their life together. Not surprisingly, with two evangelical Christians as authors, Christian faith forms a moral and spiritual context for our lead couple's thinking. (Tavland was declared officially “Christian� by King Grune, and the faith --of course, in the Roman Catholic form, but denominational distinctives don't bulk large here-- is genuinely spreading among the people; it's far from universally shared, and probably no more than nominal even for many of its supposed adherents, but both Kadhrin and Vikarr take it more seriously.) True, the kinds of specific issues grappled with here are peculiar to the time and place. (For instance, what exactly do you do with former concubines your family owned, who have no particular legitimate employment prospects and no obvious place to go? Or, how does your theoretical belief that working to free other people's slaves is a good thing to do square with the fact that you happen to own a bond-slave , whom you'd much rather not do without?) But we can relate to the basic underlying questions of what's really most important in decision making, and how the other humans in your world deserve to be treated.
Many of the general comments in my review of the first book would also apply to this one. Again, the narration is past tense in the third person, and again I couldn't detect any obvious “seamsâ€� or stylistic differences between the two writers' contributions to the whole. Lifelike, nuanced characters are a strength of both books; and both our main characters here are very human, with a mixture of qualities that can be both positive and negative. Kadhrin, for instance, is a basically kind person, smart (even though illiterate), and possessed of great strength of character, courage, and resolution. She's also headstrong, impulsive in ways that aren't always well considered, and ambitious to do great things –of course, for the betterment of Tavland; but she's not really aware of how much ambition for her own renown and satisfaction may play into that. Vikarr is a man of real integrity, intelligent (few Viking leaders in that day could read, but he's mastered the skill), with a strong sense of duty, noblesse oblige, and compassionate responsibility to those dependent on him. But he's also got his blind spots; and he's not always emotionally perceptive, not good at showing affection in public, and doesn't necessarily take advice well. Neither of these people have ever been married before, so they're learning to navigate the relationship by trial and error; and the development and maturation of their feelings is very believable. (Other characters are realistic as well, though not so deeply drawn.) Another strength is the solid research into the period that underlies the work, allowing our authors to bring the Viking world vividly to life (and without infodumps). The plot is ably constructed, and genuinely suspenseful in the last chapters, where the reader is not sure what will happen. Dialogue is not archaic sounding, though the writers don't include anachronisms (and in “translatingâ€� their characters' Old Norse speech into modern English, they retain the proto-Germanic â€�Âá²¹â€� --cognate with the English “yeahâ€�-- for a period effect). Overall, for me this was an immersive reading experience, and a real page-turner.
A few nits can be picked here. I'm not sure Vikings would have used surnames like Lodbrok or Finnleik at this early a date, rather than just the patronymic (for instance, Grunsson, or Torstensdatter). On one page, Grumsborg is twice said to be the eastern part of Tavland, though the map places it in the west. And a couple of times, characters travel from Ladborg to Voslo by ship; but the latter is well inland, and would be more practical to travel to over land. But these are quite minor points! This was an excellent read, and I would highly recommend it to all fans of medieval (and especially of Viking) historical fiction.
Note: Although I was given a review copy of the series opener, I purchased this sequel, as soon as I learned it had been published!...more
Joe Vasicek is an independent author of speculative fiction, whose work I originally stumbled on back in 2020 through one of my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends. SinJoe Vasicek is an independent author of speculative fiction, whose work I originally stumbled on back in 2020 through one of my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends. Since then, I've read a couple of his other short stories (like this one, as freebies). A devout Mormon, his faith, as he notes in the Foreword here, informs all of his life including his writing; but in the SF he writes under his real name, he eschews explicit religious references. When he wants to incorporate the latter, as he does here, he writes under the pen name of J. M. Wight. This short e-story, which I ran across earlier this year, was my first introduction to his work in that incarnation, and to his series character Zedekiah Wight. (The identical last names suggest to me that the character might be something of an imagined "ideal self" for the author.) "Bloody Justice" is undoubtedly a teaser for the rest of the Zedekiah Wight corpus.
Zedekiah Wight is a fanatically religious vigilante with lethal combat skills, a penchant for quoting Scripture (his favorite book is Isaiah), and a particular zeal for stamping out sex trafficking and slaughtering sex traffickers, for which he sees himself as an instrument in God's hand. His character has some similarities to Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane (who's my favorite REH hero). But whereas Solomon is a Puritan scion of Elizabethan England, Zed lives in a far future in which the Earth has long since become uninhabitable, and humanity has spread across the stars. Since fallen human nature remains unchanged, this gives sex traffickers a much vaster scale on which to operate. Then as well as now, their "sordid business" remains illegal. But as captain of the well-armed spaceship Voidbringer, Zed and his loyal crew aren't interested in making citizen's arrests. Nominally, their primary mission is to rescue captives. But Zed takes a bloody-minded delight in inflicting lethal divine vengeance. When, early in this story, the Voidbringer intercepts what they know to be a slave ship, it becomes possible that the latter agenda might in this case preclude the former ...so the question is, which agenda trumps the other?
Our primary viewpoint character here is Eve, a super-intelligent A.I. whose holographic avatar (which "she" has internalized as a self-image) is a beautiful human woman in her 20s. She's a key part of Zed's crew, though here we're not told how she joined it; there are hints that her presence may not be wholly legal, especially since Zed's freed her from her "AI safeguards." Be that as it may, she's very committed to the partnership; she finds Zed quite interesting to work for, though even with the "emotional assessment algorithm" she's created for her own reading of his moods and character, she's not able to read him perfectly. (Since we see him through her eyes, that's an excellent narrative strategy on the author's part, preserving his protagonist's enigmatic quality.) Eve's actually a very well-drawn, and even likable character (I'm not a big fan of the whole idea of AI, but if all of its manifestations were as engaging as she is, I could be more reconciled to the technology :-) ).
Except for faster-than-light space travel (which was tacitly tolerated as legitimate even by "hard" SF purists from the very beginning of the genre's pulp magazine era in the U.S.), all of the technology here could be credibly imagined as an extrapolation from existing knowledge. This is basically straightforward action-oriented space opera, with danger, suspense, excitement and (very) bloody combat, such as might have appeared in the SF magazines of the 1920s and 30s; but here there's much more focus on character, and on human moral and spiritual issues. The tale is a quick, one-sitting read. Despite the author's Mormonism, there's nothing necessarily to indicate that Zed or his human crew are supposed to be Mormons as such. There's some mild bad language here, mostly of the d- and h-word sort, from the head villain and sometimes from Eve (we can assume that her speaking style was programmed into her by the secular-humanist programmers who created her), but none of that posed any issue for me in this context. Despite the premise, there's no sexual content.
Our villains here happen to be (or, at least, to think of themselves as) Moslems, and to be ethnic Arabs, judging from their names. This extrapolates from the fact that in the contemporary world, the only countries where slavery remains legal, and that still support a slave trade, are those where Sharia law (which regulates slavery, but doesn't forbid it) remains in force. However, that isn't to deny that in the contemporary world a great many of the traffickers who trade illegally in sex slaves are European-descended or of other ethnicities than Arab; that probably the great majority of these are of no religion rather than Moslems (and some undoubtedly profess other faiths); and that many Moslems would deprecate slave trading and trafficking as much as any other decent persons do. I would assume the author knows this, and presumes that it would be no different in the far future. Given that assumption, I didn't take the story as Islamophobic propaganda. (If I would discover that I was wrong, it would definitely affect my rating very adversely!)
A more serious issue arises from the fact that Biblical faith and ethics sees God as preferring the repentance of the wicked rather than the death of the wicked; supports the legitimate authority of the State to establish and enforce justice (provided that it actually does so) rather than encouraging lethal vigilantism in the name of God; and has as its focus the proclamation of a message of forgiveness and redemption. Viewed from that perspective, Zedekiah Wight is not genuinely a very sterling poster boy for Christian values (though he may reflect contemporary stereotypes of what Christians are like). Nonetheless, I was prepared to view him as "a work in progress," whose spiritual journey and character arc in the subsequent works of the series remains to be seen. So I was able to accept him as he is for now, and appreciate the story on those terms....more
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