Deception by Working Partners Limited

Rating: WARTY!

Here's another middle grade book which disappointed me. The main problem is that it was set in 1569 yet it read like it could have been written about events taking place yesterday. Obviously you don't want to write a novel in the actual language which was used over four hundred years ago, but you do want to try and imbue your writing with a little bit of antiquity. This one didn't feel that way. Worse than this, it's written in first person PoV, and worse than that, it's written as diary entries. These never work for me because they're patently unrealistic, recounting exact details and word-for-word conversations. It constantly throws me out of the story in disbelief. Worse than this, the author is so focused on including all her research in detailing daily events in Elizabethan times that the story loses all immediacy and urgency which is the whole point of using first person PoV (not that I agree there is a point!).

This is a series which, judged by the titles (Assassin, Betrayal, Conspiracy, Deception, and so on), is intended to run to twenty six volumes. I can't think of anything more tedious than that. It's penned (and I mean that in both senses of the word) by anonymous writers who all contribute under the pseudonym of 'Grace Cavendish', the main character. She's a young maid of honor who is supposedly a pursuivant - an investigator for Queen Elizabeth. 'Pursuivant' didn't actually mean that, and in Elizabeth's time was far more likely to have still been used in its French version, poursuivant.

Even if it were as the writer claims, and while the head of state was a woman, in 1569, they didn't even have adult women in any positions of responsibility, much less running around investigating anything. They would certainly never have had a young girl doing so, especially one who was so dis-empowered that she had to sneak around deceptively to get anything done instead of being allowed to pursue her investigations, None of this made any sense. Neither did it make sense that a woman of nobility, such as Lady Cavendish supposedly was, would have to kow-tow to, and live in fear of the "common" women who were employed on the palace staff.

In 1569, Elizabeth was in her mid-thirties and had been queen for over a decade, yet here she's portrayed as a petulant, ill-tempered brat who lacks control, and who has less maturity than the youthful story teller! Nonsense! Elizabeth was coolly navigating the waters of avoiding marriage - at this point to a French Valois - and dealing with the Pope's rejection of her as a valid monarch. She was hardly the spoiled child we see here.

Though this is supposedly set in late 1569, in the grip of an icy winter, at this time in that year, three Earls from the north of England were leading a rebellion against Elizabeth. They were trying to install Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne in England, yet we're expected to believe that the sole thing bothering a petulant and spoiled Elizabeth was the introduction of a new silver coin? I'm sorry, but I cannot take this series seriously or pursue it. I guess I'm just not pursuivant enough!

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

Rating: WORTHY!

Dark Triumph is the second in the "His Fair Assassin" series (I reviewed the first, Grave Mercy here) and it takes off right where the first in this series ends, but it does so from the perspective of another of the assassin nuns: Sybella. In volume one, Sybella was one of the colleagues of Ismae, the main character and narrator of that volume. Sybella appeared very briefly, but on several occasions, yet she was never really graced with an introduction. Now she has her own story, and it ain't a happy one! She's resident in the castle of Count D'Albret, and living in fear of discovery. She has only one ally, Julian, and he's hardly her friend - not unless he can get something out of her in return for his "friendship". Indeed, Sybella's intimate history is rather florid, it would seem, and Julian has played an intimate part in it, although LaFevers appears too terrified of scandal to delve into it in any form other than hints and allusions.

In this novel, Sybella is pretty much under house arrest in D'Albret's purloined palace, and is watched closely. She is nominally the Count's daughter, but believes herself, like Ismae, to be actually a daughter of Mortain, the god of death. In passing, it's interesting to note that Mortain is actually the name of a city in Normandy, situated very close to the border with the region of Brittany.

Why Mortain chooses to rape women and have daughters who become assassins is left unexplained, but if there is one consistency in the history of humankind's invention of gods it is that these gods are useless, and require human intervention on a routine basis to help them out. They're also well-known for raping women, including the current popular god, Yahweh, the god of the world's three foremost monotheistic religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. According to the Christians, that god raped Miriam to produce a son for slaughter. But Mortain seems to be particularly incompetent in that all he can do is mark people for death! He cannot kill them himself, but requires one of his female slaves to, er, undertake this? How ridiculous is that? What a pathetic and ineffectual god he is!

This novel starts out as though it were a fan fiction based on Graceling, the accomplished assassin traversing the castle steps. I had two immediate problems with it. The first is that this is another first person PoV tale. I have issues with that kind of story to begin with, but take a moment to think about it in this context: the narrator is a secret assassin, yet she's writing a true story about what she does, including names, places and dates?! Not a wise choice for a writer to make! OTOH, we do get (finally) a confirmation of someone's age in this novel: it's the Duchess (although she's crowned queen before we learn this) and she's thirteen. Some reviewers had assumed she was twelve from a sentence in the previous volume, but the sentence was so ambiguously worded that it was impossible to honestly assert with complete conviction any age IMO. This was another of Lafevers's writing failures.

The second problem I have with this is the blatant genderism - strike that, not genderism, as much as pure hatred of men! This new narrator says (on line six of chapter one!) in the context of learning how to kill "...laying out all the vulnerable points on a man's body...". For a moment (or a long moment as LaFevers would have it!), let us re-write the line: "...laying out all the vulnerable points on a woman's body...". Indeed, let us re-write the entire novel but reverse the gender roles. Would you be outraged at it then? I would. So why no outrage when that same line and that same tone in that same novel is written about men? We already learned from volume one in this series that women can be just as evil as men, so why this sustained campaign against men? It's a bit creepy to say the least.

Yes, back then (the first chapter is dated 1489AD) men typically did hold the reins/reigns (and unfortunately still do at a disproportionate percentage), but evil is not solely the preserve of men, and even where the evil is perpetrated by a man, there is often a woman who supports him, yet nowhere in either volume of this series so far, do we see any amelioration of this vendetta which is specifically and consistently directed towards men. As another reviewer pointed out, these femme vraiment fatale (or ninja nuns!) attack men, but they also work for a male god! Not very much in the way of logic there.

I was amused when, at one point, Sybella remarks upon Ismae's sharp wit, but I just got through reading that first volume and I recall none of that! Perhaps she's talking about the three years when they were in training, not a whit of which was shared with us in that first volume. That particular history is something which, done right, would have been really worth the telling, but it was not to be. More like 4F, in fact.

And now a word about the incessant use of 'demoiselle'! It's rife in these two novels! It's fine as far as it goes, but it really stands out because of its extreme frequency, rather like 'mayhap' and one or two other words did in volume one. If you go to dictionary.com and use the French - English translator there, the definition of this word is: unmarried lady; young lady; damsel; rammer, object or tool that rams! Hmm! The funny thing is if you split it into "de moi selle", it means "to me saddle". Hmm squared! Obviously this is just another thing to be cautious about when you're writing a novel!

So Sybella really, and I mean really, wants to murder this Count, but it seems she is to be robbed of the pleasure. Her instructions from the Abbey are instead, to free The Beast - the prisoner who was taken at the end of the last novel. This she does and this leads to arguably the best piece of action/adventure writing from LaFevers's keyboard in two novels. Of course, the massive telegraphing of the oncoming affair between Sybella and the Beast undermines the purity of the adventure with its ham-fistedness. This volume is definitely a league or two ahead of Grave Mercy. At least that's how it seemed at the half-way point! Unfortunately, then we have to deal with Ismae and Duval. Again. It's a pity that their divinity, Mortain, didn't have the god-like power to tell all these hapless Bretons that they were going to lose, that Anne would be forced to marry the French king, and that she would herself die before the age of forty (assuming that LaFevers follows the actual history of the region at all). Given how thoroughly reliably gods have proven themselves to be utterly unreliable throughout history, I don't find it the least bit surprising that they were invented by frightened, ignorant, and delusional humans!

Despite what I've said about LaFevers's writing in terms of how it reads, in terms of how she puts the words on paper, I have to say I have found no glaring errors until I reached p204 where she writes: "Provided the attack come from within." which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It should probably read "Provided the attack does not come from within." Another mistake I think she made has nothing to do with writing but with story-telling. Maybe that sounds like a tautology, but what I mean by "story-telling" is how she puts together her tale, her world, her mythology, and in this instance particularly: mythology. I guess others might call that world-building, if we take world-building to be understood in its very broadest sense. LaFevers claims in her novel that gods are real and powerful and worthy of veneration - just like the religiously inclined do in real life, in fact! But the problem LaFevers has is the same one the religious have in real life: their gods lack credibility and are actually completely powerless!

Everything the Bretons do is aimed at staying free of the French, and maintaining their independence and their old gods, so why are they worshiping these gods in secret? Why are they forced to venerate them as saints instead of as gods? Who, exactly, is it who is repressing these old gods in LaFevers's Brittany? She never explains this, but if the gods are real and powerful and Brittany so weak, then why are the gods not helping?! And on another note, how is it that some people see this as a feminist novel when the Duchess is so weak that she must marry a man to save her and her province? This isn’t a feminist novel at all, it’s quite the opposite, because not only does the Duchess need a man, so too do the assassins featured in each volume.

LaFevers uses the term "High-traffic areas" which is such an anachronism that it really jumped out and reminded me, yet again, that I was reading fiction that has high traffic in the area commonly known as 'poorly written'. LaFevers also seems to suffer from chronopsia. This is a word I've coined to described those people who are unable to gage the passage of time accurately. Here's why I think this is the case with LaFevers: Sybella goes to visit The Beast when he's recovering from injuries in a local convent. When she leaves his bedside, it’s "not quite morning". She returns to the palace and sleeps "a short while" and then has to go to a council meeting. When she leaves the council meeting very shortly afterwards and goes outside, she's in the "cool night air"! Where the hell did the entire day go? It’s not morning, it’s night because she sees downtown that the bars are open and people are reveling. She slaughters two of these revelers, who happen to be D'Albret's infiltrators and who are reveling all over a poor innocent woman. But suddenly it’s almost daybreak again! My, how the gods make the sands of time run at their bidding!

Despite all this, I do still prefer this novel to its predecessor, but LaFevers seems determined not to make it easy to like it. She has this hardened assassin (Sybella) agonizing over what people will think of her now they know she is D'Albret's daughter even though she really isn’t his daughter because she's Mortain's daughter. Are you still following this? It's seriously and amateurishly confused. She frets and worries most of all over what The Beast will think of her, and I found this to be at first annoying, followed by irritating, and finally truly nauseating. It is so out of character for Sybella. But at least she gets the goods on what Mortain really wants: she learns from Ismae that the marque does not command them to kill someone. It’s merely an indication that the person bearing it is going to die soon.

But enough of this rambling banter! In conclusion, and this might surprise you, I am in fact going to rate this as worthy if only because it was significantly better than LaFevers's previous sortie into this series. There were still many problems with it, however, which is why I have really no interest in pursuing this series any further. I committed only to the first two and that was plenty! They were worth reading but not addictively so. Hopefully, should you choose to read it, you will be able to offer it a warmer reception that was I!

Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

Rating: WORTHY!

I hate Robin LaFevers. Let me explain how this circumstance came to be…. I started reading The Rithmatist but my son wrestled that away from me (yeah, he kicked my butt; I am so abused…) so I had to resort to the next on my list until I could scheme and plot to snatch it back from that evil brute of a son when he least expects it. The next on the list would have been LaFevers's Dark Triumph, but that's number 2 in the "His Fair Assassin" inevitable trilogy. Fortunately, in a rare instance of Extreme Organization™ (a highly dangerous sport. I advise you not to practice it) I had Grave Mercy on order at the library and they, Masters and Mistresses of Literature that they are, came through for me. Of course, having been thrashed to within a hinge of my life (hey, I was at death's door), and in a state of tremens-dous delirium and self-doubt from practicing extreme sports, I was a pushover for LaFevers to take cruel advantage of my thoroughly helpless state. It’s all her fault.

Ismae Rienne is fifteen years old, and has a deep red stain across her back from her left shoulder to her right hip: a trail of ugly welts and scars left by the herb witch's potion which failed to abort her. Fourteen or so years later, her father sold her for three silver coins to Guillo the pig farmer who abused her on their "wedding night", but never consummated the marriage once he saw this scar. Locked in a root cellar as evil incarnate, she was rescued by the same hedge priest who married her. He arranged for her to be transported across Brittany (France) to the coast. Considered to be a child sired by death, Ismae is taken to an island where she will be subject to the oversight of the abbess of Saint Mortain, the patron saint of death.

The abbey proves to be a denizen of genderist wenches whose entire waking day seems to center around plotting the demise of all mankind. That's sad, because I was on board with this until I read that part! More on this anon. After being extensively trained in pretty much everything for three years, Ismae is sent upon her first assassination, and she succeeds with admirable efficiency. Disturbing huh? What LaFevers did here is to stealth-creep her prologue right into chapter one and make me read it! Pretty savvy of her to discover how to undermine my allergy to prologues. The problem is that this is sold as a YA novel and yet here she is on the cusp of adulthood already! Sneaky, huh?

Next we meet the trope du jour, who is named Gavriel Duval, of course, and inescapably, Ismae totally like hates him to the max. Yet every time he touches her she feels the penetrating heat of his hands. He has the most amazingly super-heated hands like ever! Plus, Ismae and Gavriel are inescapably thrown together because her trustily faithful horse dies and she has to ride with him. Two of them. Together. In. The. Same. Saddle.

Despite some issues, I was enjoying this until he showed up, and even his showing up wouldn't have been anywhere near so bad if this woman who had reached the age of eighteen (give or take) solely through feeding off of her extreme hatred of humankind hadn't fallen for him like a moose through mousse. Now she has to travel with him to the court of Anne, Duchess of the Duchy of Brittany, and spy. In the words of Pink:

Ever wonder 'bout what he's doing; how it all turned to lies?
The only way to be really certain is to go out there and spy
Where there is deceit there is gonna be a spy
Where there is a spy there is gonna be a counter
Where there is a counter you know someone's gonna buy,
You've gotta go hide and spy, spy, spy
Gotta go hide and spy, spy, spy
You gotta go hide and spy, spy, spy...

LaFevers is obsessed with long moments. I did a search in Google Books and she uses the phrase 'long moment' 37 times in 549 pages, so there's a long moment every fourteen pages or so. No wonder the book takes so long to read! LaFevers has as many as three of them in one chapter - and the chapters aren’t that long! Seriously? If it’s a 'moment' it is, by definition, short. Can writers not think of a better way to express themselves than this clunker? This is a serious writing failure, and it’s not the only one LaFevers exhibits unfortunately. Having said that, I have to confess that I finished this book and that I am looking forward to its sequel, hopefully not its equal.

This abysmal trope instalust which Rienne is sickening. Since rien, as in de rien in French, means 'nothing', then is Ismae Rienne a female nothing? Just a thought! Actually Rienne is the French word for Ecuador. At one point Duval wakes Ismae from a bad dream and she almost sticks a knife in his throat. As she is cleaning up the blood from his scratch, her wrist rests on his chest and when she removes it, it throbs. Excuse me, but no, no! No! And, er, NO! And what's up with Duval - he can’t clean his scratch himself? This man who is suspicious of her, and distrusts her and resents her, puts all of that on the back burner and lets her tend his minuscule wound? Why is it that in these stories it’s always the guy with his friggin' shirt off and the woman slavishly ministering his insignificant little scrapes and aches? Please let's stop this!

LaFevers is obsessed with Duval's body heat. I did a search in Google Books and she uses the word 'heat' only 15 times, which I confess surprised me, because it seems like it's employed with much greater frequency, especially since she uses the word 'body' over fifty times! It's not even as many times as she says 'mayhap' which really stuck out like a sore point because it's such an anachronism compared with the rest of her writing. Having suffered through endless mayhaps in Kushiel's Dart, I definitely wasn't ready to be assailed by it yet again in Grave Mercy!

Given that one of the major disagreements between Breton and France is that France is under the stranglehold of Catholicism whereas Breton is in the sway of the pagan gods (according to the gospel by LaFevers), it makes no sense whatsoever for the Duchess to chide Ismae for referring to Mortain as a god rather than a saint! This is another example of LaFevers's thoughtless writing - or her confusion about the world she has created.

Shortly after the Duc de Nemours - the Duchess's betrothed - is assassinated, Ismae visits his room on impulse and kills two men who are in there, one of whom had Mortain's "marque" (how pretentious! Why not simply 'mark'? I don’t see the point of this unless it was a ham-fisted effort to get Ismae injured so that she and Duval can be intimate, but this whole episode smacks of poor writing. When Duval learns what has happened, he sends a page to find his friend (referred to as "The Beast"). His intention is to have The Beast clean up Nemours rooms, and hide the bodies, but The Beast never meets with Duval until after the pointless intimate moment is taken care of, yet The Beast reports that the rooms are cleaned. How did he know what to do since Duval never told him? Bad, bad writing! Go stand in the corner, LaFevers.

So as I mentioned, I have finished this and I recommend it if you can stomach the sometimes really bad writing and the instadore. But on the good side, the ending is really, really good, and well-written, and I liked that very much. Even the instadore is competently muted. In the end Ismae transcends her lot in life and moves on to something with a much broader sweep, and I approved of this immensely. So I cautiously recommend this with the above-mentioned caveats, and as I said, I will review volume two in this series next, and I can do this with some real hope because it's evidently about a different Ninja Nun than the first volume was.