The Sunken by SC Green

Title: The Sunken
Author: SC Green
Publisher: Grymm & Epic
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This novel had a prologue which I skipped as usual. My position is that if the author thinks it unworthy to put it all in chapter one or later, then it's not worth my time reading it. I've never regretted not reading a prologue! Unfortunately I did have regrets about reading this novel. It sounded interesting to begin with, and the premise certainly held promise, but for me this promise was a preemie.

This is a steam punk novel set in London (of course!) in 1830, eight years before the reign of Queen Victoria began. In this world, dragons live in swamps outside the city. Why, I have no idea. King George is on the throne and he is at best an evil, short-tempered man. I have no knowledge of what he is at worst, since I never read that far.

In this world, religion has been upturned completely. Now people worship science, which is just as wrong-headed as worshiping fictitious gods. Yes, science is a powerful and proven method, but no, it isn't a religion, nor should it be. But this is fiction, and in this world, engineers and inventors are the priests and prophets, running their own churches! Within the city is 'The ward' - an enclave, the purpose or meaning of which I never found out. Perhaps its significance and origin are gone into in parts of this novel which I never reached, since I DNF'd it.

The novel tells the story of white men, and it was one big turn-off. There were no significant women featured at all, nor were there people of color - not in the portion I read. Ah! you may exclaim, there were no women or people of color who rose to prominence as engineers and scientists during this era, so why should a writer include them? My response to that is that neither were there dragons, yet we find them on prominent display in this novel! What's napalm for the dragon is palmetto for the dragonette, surely? Otherwise all we have is a holocaust, this time giving us the sanctity of Aryan men, with women and darker skin tones eliminated to protect that bleached, phallic purity.

Even that might have been something I could have grudgingly put up with had the story been truly compelling or original, and had it drawn me in, but it did not. I found myself increasingly wondering why I should be interested in or care about these irritatingly self-absorbed and ultimately boring characters who seemed uninterested in moving anything along, let alone an actual story. Why should I care about mutants under the city when there are so many repulsive versions of them above ground? I could find no valid answer to that question and ceased further perusal of this tome.

I made it to about one third the way through, and then I simply could not make myself read any more. It just was not appealing to me at all. It didn't help that the novel kept going back and forth between first person (which I detest) and third. The fact that it had to do this speaks powerfully against first person as a valid writing vehicle. There are instances where it makes sense, but for the most part it's a mistake because it's all "Me!" all the time and that's not only irritating, but worse, it's completely boring.

With an insane George the Third ruling in England, England at war with France, dragons attacking citizens in London, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel being issued a royal contract to build an underground railway linking Buckingham Palace and Windsor castle, you'd think that there would be enough there to concoct a really engrossing story, but it did not pull me in, not in the least. There was too much rambling on and on about politics and far too much telling of plot, with no showing and almost nothing of interest happening at all.

The author is female which made it even more remarkable there's almost no female presence in this novel - not in the first third, at any rate. I couldn't help but wonder why. It's not like it's a true-to-life historical novel, and even if it were, there were plenty of women of note whose names and activities could have been included. They were not. As it was, this novel ventured deeply into fantasy land, and it would not have been a problem at all to have included a plethora of female characters of note, but none appeared other than in tangential or minor roles. Again, I can't speak for the entire novel, but from what I read of it, this was worse than neglectful - it was inexcusable.

I cannot recommend this novel. Sunken is a great title for it.

Mad Tinker's Daughter by JS Morin

Title: Mad Tinker's Daughter
Author: JS Morin
Publisher: Magical Scrivener
Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
p71 "Erefan knew of sunlight, of wind, clouds, and birds, bathe had given all that up..." should be "Erefan knew of sunlight, of wind, clouds, and birds, but he had given all that up..."
"...think fingers..." should be "...thick fingers..." (I forget the page number)

This is yet another author who doesn’t know the difference between 'stanch' and 'staunch' (21% in). I'm finding an increasing number of such authors. Are we undergoing a language change or are some authors not quite as literate as perhaps they ought to be? I know we all screw-up at times, but to see so many make the same mistake is as notable as it's lamentable. It’s the 'bicep' phenomenon again!

Mad Tinker's Daughter (not to be confused with The Tinkerer's Daughter by Jamie Sedgwick) is a steam-punk novel with emphasis on character rather than gadgets. This makes for a refreshing change, but it also came with other problems. The main character is Madlin. Or it’s Rynn. Or it’s Chipmunk. They're all the same character - at least that's what I thought initially, but it's actually not quite that simple. It was unnecessarily confusing.

This was like reading the second novel in a series without having read the first, and there was a good reason for that, but it's not something with which the author will help. I've run into this problem before, but never quite like this. This novel is very misleadingly listed as book 1 in the 'Mad Tinker Chronicles' (anything with 'Chronicles' in the title is very nearly guaranteed to turn me off, as this one proved!). This description is effectively dishonest, because it’s really book four of the "Firehurler trilogy"!

By that I mean that it’s set in the same universe as the original trilogy, but the author doesn't lift a finger to help a reader to find their feet and feel at home if they haven't read the original trilogy. I wasn't even aware that you really have to have read the first three books to be clued in to what’s going on here. Take it from me: this really isn't book one. It's book four.

I resent that immensely, but it is how authors and Big Publishing™ seem to operate in "YA world" these days, isn’t it? Why write one book and then move onto something new and different when you can trap readers like bugs by sucking them into a series where even readers who rate the first or second book as a 'one star', end up gushing that they simply have to buy the second or third to find out what happens?!

It’s like PT Barnum supposedly said, but instead of one born every minute, it’s more like dozens born every volume in the case of YA fiction. It's effectively a license to write bad books and it’s shameful. It’s even more sad in this case for me, because I really was enjoying this book, but instead of becoming less confused the more I read, it was just the opposite. I finally reached the point where I really thought I'd missed something, because I simply could not figure out what the heck was going on!

I'd read the first 25% of this novel under the now evident delusion that there was only one character, Madlin, who had two other aliases. In her primary persona as Madlin, she was working for her father, the mad tinker, in a secondary one, she moonlighted as a maid in a university under the name of Rynn, so she can read books and steal supplies on the sly for her own tinkering, and her third identity was simply a code name for Rynn, 'Chipmunk' under which she conducted night-time acts of terrorism.

Frankly this seemed bizarre to me because the author would write something like the following (note that this isn't a direct quote, merely an example of my own, based on an event in the book, to show what I mean): Chipmunk went down into the basement with the others. Rynn sat down and said, "I don't believe you. What happened to the rest of the money?". It's annoying at best, but once you understand the two are the same, it’s readable, if still profoundly stupid.

I thought the three character names all applied to the same person, but I had no idea what 'twinborn' meant, since it was never explained. I was forced into the assumption that the names were simply a device intended to portray different aspects of Madlin's life. They are not. Madlin is a completely different character on a different planet! Chipmunk/Rynn is evidently her 'twinborn', but even having finished the novel, I still have no idea what that really means beyond guesswork.

I had to go read some reviews to try and figure out if I was just being way more dense than usual, or if something was really odd here. That's how I found out about the two-worlds concept: not from the author, whose job it is to tell me the story, but from a fellow reviewer. That's sad!

The author will neither tell you nor give you any hints. The author's position is evidently that you’re a moron for not reading the first three volumes before you began this new trilogy, even though the two are not connected (as far as I know) other than being set in the same universe. The publisher isn't going to tell you. No one but a reviewer is going to tell you that you really need to fork out more cash for the first three volumes in order to maximize your return on this one. No excuses, just do it. That's the Big Publishing™ ethic.

It was irritating and frankly, I think it's patent dumb-assery to put this over on readers without giving them SOME kind of indication as to what’s really going on here. Would it have been so hard to actually advise readers on the cover or in the blurb that they really need to have read the first trilogy in order to properly understand this one? Would it have been so hard to offer a few hints and a bit of a recap sprinkled into the text for someone coming into this not knowing that it’s really book 4, and not book 1, as we're dishonestly expected to believe? Evidently neither the author nor the publisher cares.

That said, and as I indicated, I really liked this book to begin with, not because of the obfuscated world-building, but because the story in general, and the main two or three characters appealed to me - again, to begin with. I was really confused about the aliens and how they managed to traverse space yet still be in a steam-punk era! Of course, it occurred to me that they haven't actually traversed space, but are simply three sentient (and by that I mean human-like sentience) species, of which humans are the underdogs, all resident on the same planet - rather like Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series. It was only later that I started to realize that this series may indeed be a bit of a rip-off of his series, that is if it wasn't a bit of a rip-off of Planet of the Apes.

I finally grasped that when Madlin sleeps, she experiences Rynn's life - or vice-versa (even that is unclear), but nowhere does the author actually make this clear in this novel until it's almost over. Again, this was initially revealed to me via a review. Maybe how that works - without the brain being overworked, and psychoses setting in - is explained in the first trilogy, but given how vague this volume is, I honestly cannot trust that it's so!

So, not only is the main character an enigma, the entire world is. Is this is set on another planet or in an alternate universe. Who knows? There are two varieties of what appear to be aliens on this planet, although nothing is said about them other than to identify that they're different. Apart from that, I can't tell you a thing about them because the author has literally not described a thing about them save for one vague reference to the zuduks' bulk and solidity. The zuduk are the ruling class on Rynn's home world, but how this happened is a mystery. The author sure as hell won't tell you!

Why steam-punk novels insist upon labeling certain skilled people as tinkers is a mystery as well as being an insult to engineers, but Rynn and Madlin are "tinkers". Rynn's proudest invention is a long-barreled inductor gun which fires ball bearings accurately over long distances with great power. She routinely carries a revolver with a foot-long barrel which can fire eight shots, but she's so incompetent that she frequently loses her inventions.

I should have realized at the beginning that she was not a nice person, but for the longest time I rooted for her. it wasn't until the very end - the cliff-hanger end, be warned - that she shows her true blood-thirsty and extremely selfish colors. That's when I completely stopped liking her, and finally lost my last vetige of interest in pursuing this mindless, nonsensical series.

Second Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn

Title: Second Daughter
Author: Susan Kaye Quinn
Publisher: Susan Kaye Quinn
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

This is the sequel to Third Daughter which I reviewed positively today. I have to say I was a bit surprised, since I'd had the impression (wrongly, it seems!) that each of the three novels in the trilogy would be told from the perspective of the particular daughter to which the title referred, but it does not seem to be that way since this novel opens not with Seledri, the second daughter to the queen, and her adventures, but with Aniri (the third daughter) focused on her imminent wedding to Prince Malik. Indeed, the second daughter plays very little part in the story although she's the trigger for some major events.

This novel takes off from pretty much where the previous one ended, and is told from Aniri's PoV (again, not first person thankfully!). At the end of the previous novel it looked like there was a second sky ship out there which could still threaten Dharia, Aniri's homeland. In addition to that, Seledri has long been married to a Samiran lord, and living in that nation. If the two countries go to war, then her life - or at least her welfare - may be at risk.

With regard to the proposed wedding, I have a hard time believing that in Victorian times, there was a 'wedding rehearsal dinner'. Yes, they had a wedding rehearsal if they were wealthy enough, but this was a very private thing, quite literally to rehearse the wedding itself. The author here has created her own world, and she can do whatever she wants, but this rehearsal with a huge number of people in attendance struck a really false note for me. Of course, if she had not written this, then it would have been impossible to interrupt it with the dramatic news of an attempt on the life of Aniri's sister, the second sister of the title, Seledri.

This is where the novel (and the series) took a downturn for me. I was already soured with all the frivolous pomp of the 'wedding rehearsal', but to have Aniri take a big step backwards in her development, and to be dithering and fretting and panicking, and then to decide to postpone the wedding (scheduled for the very next day), and thereby failing to cement the alliance with Jungali, for no reason other than to hie herself to Samir to find out what happened to her sister was just plain stupid! It was foolish in the extreme and not at all in line with what we had learned to expect from Aniri in the previous volume, so for me it was a really poor start to this novel.

Aniri was taken prisoner and her life threatened by the Samir ambassador, and now she's going to voluntarily put herself at the mercy of these people, traveling pretty much alone into the heart of the enemy territory and give them a second hostage? This behavior is moronic. Clearly it was only done to elevate the drama between herself and Malik, but it was done badly, falsely, and amateurishly, and this wasn’t to be the first time. Things seemed to go determinedly downhill with one farcical daytime TV melodrama after another cropping up.

About half-way through this I was getting ready to ditch it and down-rate it, but it turned itself around somewhat - at least sufficiently fro me not to be able to rate it badly! I have to say I was disappointed in it. Aniri was nowhere near as good as she was in the first one, and the novel quite literally went around in circles ending-up at pretty much the same point as it began. It definitely had MTV (Mid-Trilogy Vexation) syndrome.

That said, there were sufficient good parts, particularly when Aniri gets her head out of her gaand and starts trying to make good on her deficits, that I felt I could uprate it in the hope that the third volume would be truly a worthy read like the first volume was.

Third Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn

Title: Third Daughter
Author: Susan Kaye Quinn
Publisher: Susan Kaye Quinn
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
P65 ""…secret us away…" should be "…secrete us away…"
p212 "...you have been the one to secret me to the sky ship's hiding place..." makes no sense. "secrete me in"? "spirit me away to"?
P332 "She threw him and arched look..." should be "She threw him and arch look..."

Third Daughter is part of a trilogy which features the exploits of a young princess from a nation (Dharia) modeled loosely on India, but set in a purely fictional world and sprinkled lightly with elements of steam punk.

I love exotic India, so this drew me in immediately and effortlessly, but it would have just as easily kicked me out again, had the main character, Aniri, been a wet blanket or a wilting violet. She isn't! Kudos to the author for providing a non-white strong female character! These are very rare! Treasure them!

Aniri is the third daughter of the queen, so not in line for any throne, and not laden with expectations. We meet her climbing down the palace wall via a rope of knotted sheets to visit her boyfriend Devesh in the palace gardens, and she's a feisty, independent, rather love-struck young girl, but her plans this evening are thwarted by Janak, the queen's bodyguard, who is there to tell her that she must attend upon the queen.

Aniri resentfully visits with her mom only to learn that she has been put forward as a marriage candidate for Prince Malik, ruler of the rugged, northern, purportedly barbaric Jungali nation. Aniri wants no part of this, but when she realizes that her withdrawal from this pledge might mean war, she agrees to go, under the pretence that she will marry Prince Malik after a month's courtship, but really acting as a spy to discover if rumors of the Jungalis developing a flying machine are true.

Now how this works - sending a young girl with only two attendants into what’s considered to be a primitive and dangerous territory remains quietly unexplained, but Aniri doesn’t see Prince Malik as a threat. He seems reasonable, and decent, and she can get along with him. He is understanding that there is no love here, and that this relationship is purely for promotion of peace both across and within borders. He tells her outright that this will be platonic and that if she wishes to have a secret lover after they are married, she's most welcome to do so.

They board the train and begin their journey to the border. Aniri has only Priya, her young personal attendant, and Janak, the queen's most trusted bodyguard with her. Now why Janak is abandoning the queen to protect the daughter goes unexplained.

There was a really poorly written and very YA attempt to get the two of them into each other's arms by having Aniri get so close to a fire that she sets her cloak on fire, and then having Malik not even notice this until it's burning, whereupon he doesn't simply warn her that her cloak is on fire or tear it off, but grabs her and holds her to him, and then beats at the flame with his hand? Weird! And badly written! But not as bad as it might have been.

After that things really take off, with Aniri turning out to be very much the strong female character I was hoping she would be. That alone, for me, is sufficient to rate this as a worthy read. The love story ultimately turns out to be very natural and not forced or amateurish at all, and Aniri turns out to be a smart and capable lead character, and an admirable adventurer, with some foibles of youth haunting her, but not hobbling her, which is exactly how it ought to be.

One thing I did have a huge problem with is Janak. I already mentioned him as Aniri's mom's bodyguard, which makes it inexplicable how he comes to be traveling with Aniri, rather than guarding the queen, but the real problem is that his attitude sucks. "Off with his head!" I say! I don't have any respect for royalty myself in real life, but I do not go around insulting them. In a novel like this, it's inconceivable that a bodyguard would get away with being outright disrespectful to a princess as Janak does routinely.

This did not sound at all realistic to me, nor did Aniri's putting-up with his forceful, insulting, and domineering attitude towards her. I'm serious, his attitude and behavior is intolerable; I don't care what secrets he knows about Aniri's father, it's no excuse for his behavior whatsoever, yet he repeatedly gets away with it. That was bad writing and makes Aniri look weak, ineffectual, and juvenile, which is the very last thing she needed heaped on her after she'd shown herself to be a sterling main character in the previous chapter.

One thing which made no sense was this focus on the 'flying machine'. I can see how it would be considered a weapon of war, but Prince Malik's assertions that it would be a tool for trade between Dharia and Jungali made no sense given that they already have railways. It's far more economical to send goods and materials by train than ever it is by 'sky ship'. Yes, the sky ships can access the mountainous regions in Jungali where trains might not be able to reach, or where it might be difficulty or expensive to lay tracks, but in terms of trade between the two nations, I didn't see the value of it.

There were a couple of other issues where the writing was nonsensical. For example, at one point, Aniri is on an airship which is described as being thousands of feet in the air. She has already exhibited some instances of being short of breath because of the thin air in the high mountain region, yet we're expected to believe that she's clambering (yes, clambering!) around outside the airship - at thousands of feet, without even remotely becoming light-headed? Not credible!

But these are relatively minor points in comparison with how well, and how engagingly, the rest of this novel was written. The only oddball exception to this of which a mention still seems required, is that of the clothing Aniri wears. It was a really good idea to set a steam-punk novel in a place other than London, but if you're going to move it all the way to India (or more accurately, a setting rooted in India) - a move of which I approve, I have to say - then why would you drag Victorian clothing along with you? I don't get the point of having women in a nation strongly reminiscent of India dressed in corsets and stays when they could have saris and Punjabis. Why make the location exotic if you're not planning on doing anything with it? It seemed like the author was afraid to stray too far from steam-punk convention, which ironically makes her lurk rather timidly in comparison with the main character she's created!

But in conclusion, I have to say that this novel was truly remarkable and very addictive. I loved the setting, the characters in general, and specifically the main character Aniri who is a kick-ass strong female character. I loved that the love was in no way overdone and that it fit in with, but did not high-jack or derail the main story. Apart from a trope or two, it was normal, ordinary, and natural, like real love is.

So I fully recommend this novel. It has some issues, but overall the story is wonderful and refreshing. I was less thrilled with the sequel, a review of which I'm also posting today.

The Girl and the Clockwork Cat by Nikki McCormack

Title: The Girl and the Clockwork Cat
Author: Nikki McCormack
Publisher: Entangled
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This steam-punk novel drew me in immediately, making me want to read it and keep reading it until it was finished. I wish I knew the secret formula for doing that, but while I can tell you if a novel brings me aboard or turns me off in the first few pages, I can't tell you why it does. Maybe I should spend some time trying to analyze why this is? Could be useful down the road!

However, it wasn't all plain sailing. There were some real issues I had which I shall relate, but looking at this novel overall, and considering how involved it did make me feel overall, I favor it. It was engrossing, it had plenty of action, an interesting female lead, and it moved along at a good clip.

Be warned, however, that it's set in Britain with a lot of Brit slang (which the author does quite well), and there's no glossary, so you might want to refer to my slang guide elsewhere on my blog if you're not up to speed! If the word you've looking for isn't in there yet, let me know and I'll add it. Keep in mind that I haven't lived in Britain for some time, so I'm a bit rusty myself! Seriously, I am.

The novel is about the misadventures of Maeko, an English girl with a Japanese mom, who took off for the street life when she overheard her mother's plans to put her into an orphanage. So serious kudos to the author there for a non-WASP/Aryan main character. I loved that!

Maeko eventually took-up with fellow street urchin Chaff, carrying out jobs for him in a very comfortable, but platonic, working relationship. The novel opens with her being apprehended - after robbing a store - by the 'Lits' (the Literati) who are the police in this world. There's no explanation offered as to exactly who they are or why they have this title, which was dissatisfying. This arrest occurs shortly after she's discovered a cat which has a clockwork leg in place of one of its natural limbs. The plot thickens!

The first real problem I had was with the inevitable YA love triangle, which is always a no-no for me. First, there's Asher. Ash has gorgeous eyes. We know this because we're pummeled brutally with this datum on numerous occasions. Every dozen pages or so we're reminded of how green they are, how pale they are, how beautiful they are, etc., et-boring-cetera. It's nauseating. I get it already! He has pretty, pale, green eyes. Uncle! There I said it!

The truth is that Ash is a sullen jerk who inexplicably uses the form of address "Ms" when speaking to a woman. Major anachronism! Ms, believe it or not, was coined in the 17th century, but it fell out of use until last century, so it's highly unlikely anyone would have used it in Victorian times. Not that I was there. Honest. I wasn't. No, really!

The second candidate was Chaff, who has known Maeko since she was eight years old and failed to make any advances upon her. Procrastinate much, Chaff? I guess he always thought he owned her and didn't need to bother? This makes him a jerk too, in my book. Or rather, in Nikki McCormack's book! It doesn't help that he insists on calling her 'pigeon' which frankly made me want to barf every time I heard it. The Brits call girls 'birds', but I've never heard 'pigeon' used to describe anyone. OTOH, I've never lived in Victorian times, either. Seriously, I haven't....

Chaff has an irritating habit of pronouncing her name as Mayko, which makes zero sense unless he can read, and has seen it written, which is highly unlikely, unless Maeko actually wrote it down for him. It's never suggested that she has, and why would she? This means that Chaff can only have heard the name from Maeko actually saying it, so his only mistake could be from mis-hearing (willfully or otherwise), and there's no way to get May-Ko from hearing her say Ma-ay-ko! That didn't work for me.

My blog is just as much about writing as it is about reading, so I have to highlight this particular observation as a writing problem. It's caused by a writer focusing far too much on the word on the page rather than the word in the real world. It's something I don't doubt that we all do, and of which we all need to be aware. We're putting down the story on the page, but it's supposed to be a story taking place in a real world, about real characters who live and move, and breathe in 3D, not on a flat page or screen, and who have their senses: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and touch all in play all the time. It's a lurking pitfall of which we should all be aware.

The first real dip this took for me was in chapter 11 starting on page 157, when Chaff and Ash fought. At this point both these guys proved themselves to be willing to go beyond being a mere jerk, and roll completely off mission. This was understandable for Chaff since he wasn't invested in it to begin with, but he was supposed to be keeping a low profile. Fighting in public isn't achieving that aim, which means he's an idiot and acting out of character to boot. It was even more inexcusable for Ash, who had a lot riding on this plan they were supposed to be executing.

But such boys do fight, so the problem here wasn't so much that as it was the question of how Maeko could even countenance either of these boys at this point. Her investment in this operation was even more questionable, because I didn't buy her getting on board with helping Ash. Given how he had treated her, and what we'd been told of her family history and her attitude towards her mum, it felt completely wrong to me to have her feeling all gushy about fixing Ash's family problems. It didn't work.

I'm not saying she would never do it, just that I personally felt I hadn't been given anywhere near sufficient justification for her throwing her lot in with him when there wasn't anything in it for her. I didn't buy the promised cash reward, since she had no real justification for aiming for it, given her attitude towards her mum, and she had no reason to trust that Ash would give it to her anyway, even had he the cash to give.

This fight and her acceptance of it really goes back to the sunk cost fallacy. She had an investment in both of them to one extent or another, which was no doubt hard for her to give up on. But this remains as one more example of a really strong character being subjugated to a boy or a man for no reason other than that this is what authors think they're compelled to do with their YA girls. I wish they would think more outside the book.

Fortunately, Maeko has a lot more going for her than just this, so this didn't kill the story for me, but this triangle felt like such a knee-jerk reaction: Oh, it's YA? Then we simply have to have a love-triangle with two polar-opposite guys who the main female protag inexplicably finds equally attractive. Oh, and at least one of the guys has to insist that he owns her - however indirect or subtle it may be expressed, and she cannot find anything wrong with this attitude! Frankly, it makes me puke. Who made a law saying that the girl has to have a guy, let alone two? Is she so weak a character that she can't carry the novel on her own?

One final brace of bitches: the plethora of coincidences in this novel in a place the size of London, with the same characters conveniently showing up to advance or thwart the main character's plans was a bit much! Yeah, I know she was wandering around in circles like a headless chicken, but really? Once in a while a coincidence or two is fine, but for them to be a routine part of the novel was way stretching credibility. And while I can accept a cyborg clockwork cat in a steam-punk novel, I found it hard to swallow that the cat was so human in its behavior. It wasn't even called Lassie.... That aside, I have to repeat that the story was inventive and compelling, and the characters interesting for the most part.

Soooo, all kibitzing aside I'm going to uprate this because it had so much going for it, it was a cool idea, and the last thing I want to do is dissuade a new and talented writer from spreading her wings! So I'm going to recommend this one. Way to go, Entangled! Another winner, and thanks for a chance to review it.

The Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson

Title: The Mark of the Dragonfly
Author: Jaleigh Johnson
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

The audio book very ably read by Kim Mai Guest.

This novel is set in the land of Solace which is so ironically named as to be almost a method of torture. Every day the land is pummeled by meteor storms. The thing is that there are three oddities about these storms: they're confined to a fairly well-defined area or zone, they're accompanied by a toxic green dust, and they contain artifacts which you wouldn't normally expect to find in a meteor - such as a watch, or a music box.

Because of the reliability of the storms and the value of what they bring, a scavenging and trade culture has flourished around them. Towns have grown up - 'scrap' towns which are so lowly and unstable that they're numbered, not named - along the boundary of the storm zone, and after every meteor fall, once the evil dust has settled, the local residents, known as scrappers, charge into the area to see what they can find to sell. The faster you get in there, the more likely you are to find a 'treasure', but if you get there too soon, there's not only the dust to contend with - you might get hit by a late meteor strike.

Piper Linny (note this was an audio book, so the spellings are guesses!) is a thirteen-year-old who lost her dad to an industrial accident in the city, and is now alone, trying to eke-out a living on her wits and skills, which fortunately are significant.

Piper never had a chance to bury her father's body because she couldn't afford to have it shipped home, much less go to the city herself to attend his burial. She's poor, but she scratches out a precarious living, and she has her family home's roof over her head. She's a 'scrapper' who raids the meteor fields and trades what she recovers, but she's also a gifted mechanic (inappropriately described as a 'machinist' in the novel) who can sometimes fix-up a find before she sells it on, and thereby making far more 'coin' on it.

Piper has a close friend, the young Micah, and he's a bit too precipitous with the meteor game. One day he goes out during a storm and Piper crazily plunges out after him. This makes zero sense because Micah is only 'important' in the beginning of the novel After that, he disappears and is never heard from or mentioned again. Obviously he was only a very clumsy and amateur tool which Johnson uses to propel Piper out into a storm she would never risk otherwise.

Why does she brave the storm? Ultimately, it's in order to find Anna, not Micah. Anna is a special case and it soon becomes quite obvious 'who' and what she is. So Piper finds her as a broken girl in a wrecked traveling party, caught away from shelter when the meteor storm hit. Despite her being at death's door, it would appear, Anna recovers under Piper's evidently magic touch.

Anna is as damaged as Piper in many ways, and she becomes even more interesting when Piper discovers that she's the girl with the dragonfly tattoo, indicating to all that she's under the protection of the neighboring king. Piper realizes that Anna is her ticket out of hell - literally, since she allows the two of them free passage on the 401 - a steam engine which runs passengers and freight across the territories. With the expected reward for returning Anna safely to her family, Piper can set herself up on in the city and finally have the life of which she's long dreamed.

So far so good, but from that point on the story plummeted downhill, and while I kept wanting to like it and wanting to rate it highly for its originality and strong portrayal of the two main girls - unusual in a steam-punk, much less a YA novel, the mind-numbing tediousness of the train trip was what killed it for me - that and the fact that nothing is explained. There's no indication that this is part of a series, although I suspect it will be, yet we learn absolutely nothing whatsoever about what's going on here.

So while I willingly grant kudos for an original concept, and for two strong female characters, and I love the concept of "The 401", the male love interest for Piper was a complete bust - he was a non-entity, the villain was wishy-washy, the train ride tedious (anyone who can make a steam train ride tedious has serious issues), and the lack of resolution truly disappointing if not down-right angering. Where was the editor here? Once again Big Publishing™ = epic fail.

I don't know how old Jaleigh Johnson is, but she looks like she's fifteen, and this novel had too many of the elements of a fifteen-year-old's fanfic touch. Some of it was brilliant, but it takes more than brilliant bits to make a novel a worthy read, and this one didn't get there. I will, however, be keeping my eyes on her work for the future. If she steps away from this messed-up world and tries something different (that doesn't involve elves and fairies), I will want to read it.

Take Back the Skies by Lucy Saxon

Title: Take Back the Skies
Author: Lucy Saxon
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Rating: warty

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Errata:
P101 - 101 are three instances of the case being wrong: "Dalivia have control of Kasem" should be 'has control' and "if the Angliyan government don't..." that last work should be 'doesn’t'. "The rest of Tellus have…" that last work should be 'has' - this kind of error appears several times.
P103 "Everything was up in arms" should be "Everything was up in the air" maybe?
P140: Saxon makes the "bicep" mistake (it's biceps).

I don't get the title for this novel. The story has nothing whatsoever to do with taking back any skies! Lucy Saxon, it turns out, is not only a really cool character from Doctor Who (and what could be a sweeter name for a character than that?!), she's also a real life woman who wrote this novel. By all accounts, she did it when she was sixteen, which is quite a remarkable achievement. That said, the fact that this was written by a sixteen-year-old shows a little too uncomfortably. The writing isn’t bad. In fact in general, it’s technically rather good, but the amateur plotting highlights her inexperience, and it also proves that Big Publishing™ is a guarantor neither of big success, nor of big quality.

This novel was too long, and it needed an editor who wasn't afraid to risk upsetting a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old by pointing out that it needs some serious tightening. This is ironic, because this is a steam-punk novel which begins with its main character quite literally learning the ropes, and having to tighten knots and bolts on the sky-ship. This character is 14 year old Catherine Hunter, who lives a privileged life on a world named Tellus, where familiar but rather twistedly-named nations (Adena, Angliya, Dalivia, Erova, Kasem, Mericus, Ropastal, Sibarene) are at war with one another.

Catherine doesn't want to lead a life of "privilege" shackled to an obnoxious suitor in an arranged marriage and quickly slips away from her father during a trip to discuss her unwanted upcoming nuptials. She stows away on a fine-looking merchant sky-ship named Stormdancer, which appears to be built like a sail-ship but it flies. This crew also does a little smuggling on the side - or more accurately in the false bottom. Cat (as she now renames herself) is improbably quickly accepted onto the crew - all of whom think she's a boy now that her hair is cut short and she's dressed in old, dirty pants, and a baggy shirt.

And that's one big problem with this novel: everything was far too too easy: from Cat's initial escape from her father, to her finding the perfect sky-ship, to being accepted onto the ship, to learning about the government's plot, to bringing down this same government. There were no hiccups, no problems, no set-backs, no tension. If this novel had been written for pre-teens, then this would have still been a problem in my book, but much less of one. Unfortunately, Cat is in the YA age range, and this is not good enough, although given the low standards of all-too-many readers, it might take off. I'm guessing that’s what the publisher is gambling on. And who knows, as the author matures and grows in experience (and assuming she can find an editor who is willing to put quality ahead of a writer's feelings), maybe future volumes in this series will be significantly better. That's something for which we can hold out a hope.

Another problem was that there's a bit too much fluttering of heart at sight of bare chest and at slim strip of bare flesh above waistband when the Mary Sue trope male interest shows up. I could have done without that. It’s possible to depict a character as liking another, or as experiencing a growing attraction to another character without hammering me over the head with it every few pages, but YA authors don't seem to have grasped that, except in a few rare and precious cases.

So anyway, Cat and Fox (cute, yeah?) are thrust inevitably exactly where we expect them to go: into tired and clichéd YA romance situations, such as when she sees him "accidentally" with his shirt off, and when she and he have to hide in a cramped closet together. Note that this isn’t a problem of a sixteen-year-old's writing. All-too-many YA authors, who are older and more experienced, and who really should know a lot better, write these same appallingly drab trope scenes. I live in hopes of finding writers who can tell a story about a strong female main character without her necessarily needing to have a guy (or a girl for that matter) in tow, or at the very least, spin the yarn with some inventive and new flirtatious situations in which the couple may find themselves. Otherwise tale becomes stale, and that's the end of it for me.

At one point, Cat comes off as repulsively arrogant. Fox has a problem with another guy, and she determines that it must either be that guy's personality or it must be the way he looked at Cat! Seriously? That struck a really sour note with me. This is not the Cat we were promised in the beginning of this novel. What we have here is bait-and-switch. We were promised a strong female, but what we were given is actually a wussy, fluttering Harlequin romance chick!

The problem is that this behavior kicks against everything Cat has been thinking prior to this point, and there's nothing worse than a main character who obsesses over herself. As if that were not bad enough, on the very next page we have Cat spontaneously blurting out that she wouldn’t marry the guy. That really started turning me off this novel - her slavering, simpering addiction to the secretive Fox, who childishly treated her like dirt when he discovered that she was a girl, and who calls her 'girlie' (seriously? Way to demean and belittle your partner), and about whom she knows quite literally nothing. I lost all respect for Cat at this point.

As for Fox, I never did like him. He's so trope-ish as to be a caricature. As I mentioned, he's also a Mary Sue in the traditional sense, in that he could never do a thing wrong: he could get them out of any situation and he could fix or solve any problem. Unfortunately he couldn't fix his own juvenile attitude towards Cat when he adopted a surly and argumentative attitude towards her after he discovered Cat's true gender. This was entirely unrealistic and ham-fisted as he was shown being alternately antagonistic and then conciliatory towards her.

Cat further goes down the toilet when she and Fox, snooping around a government institution, discover something horrid, and she turns into a spineless coat-clinger. This is the same girl we were introduced to, 200 pages before, who was feisty, determined, self-motivated, and all but fearless. What a 180 we’ve done! Do boys in this world emit some sort of brain-deadening pheromone which girls absorb through their skin, and which then destroys their brain cells? At this point, the once feisty and independent Cat refuses to go to sleep unless Fox is next to her, holding her hand. This is truly pathetic! Note to YA authors: do not suck the spine out of your main female character - no matter what! - and especially not when you've set her up so well, only to cheat us out of the very character you promised you'd deliver.

But worse than all this, the plot ceases to make sense at this point. It’s hard to explain without giving away more spoilers than even I'm known for, but let me try. There is an element of child labor and child abuse in this novel, and there's also an element of steam-punk robotics. The child abuse consists of children being forcibly appropriated from their family at the age of thirteen, in order to fight in a never-ending war. It turns out that the children are actually more connected with the robotics, but given how advanced the robotics are in this world, this plot point makes absolutely zero sense. It was here that I lost interest in this novel and lightly skimmed the rest of it (about a quarter or a third of it).

In an interview, the author is reported as saying, "I find the whole concept of a strong female character to be incredibly frustrating in that it implies it’s an unusual thing for women to be strong", but if this is what she actually said, then she's simply not getting it. Those of us who demand strong female characters aren't saying that women cannot be strong, or that such people are unusual or unexpected. What we’re saying is that YA writers (all-too-many of whom are female ironically enough) are giving us weak, spineless, dependent female characters - characters who are effectively slaved to guys (yes, plural! Where do you think the sad and tired trope love-triangle came from?!). This is where they're weak - in the stories, not in real life.

The female characters we get in the stories are air-headed appendages, who are ineffectual and ultimately uninteresting. They simply do not get it done. That's the problem, and writers like Saxon are contributing to it with characters like this. Yes, there's a host of amazing, wonderful, fascinating, intriguing, amusing, enthralling, irresistible and kick-ass women in the real world, so the real issue here is: why don’t we see far more of them in novels, especially in novels written by female authors, and especially in novels which are read by young women who are being done a major disservice by these authors, because they're not being given the female leads they deserve, need, and have earned.

I will grant Saxon the twist at the end. That was not what I expected, but even it is a trope, given that this is purportedly the first in a series, perhaps a hexalogy. This ending also unfortunately makes a liar out of Cat, but worse than that, it makes no sense. Maybe I missed something critical in my skimming which would adequately explain this, but given what I have read, I honestly have no faith that there actually is such an explanation to be had. From what I understand, the series will not necessarily follow the same characters in future volumes, but it will be set in the same world, so maybe this will make future volumes worth the reading. As it is, I cannot see myself pursuing this series. It just doesn’t have what it takes to be great. I’d recommend to Saxon that she read the Jim Butcher Codex Alera series to learn how to create a strong female character, particularly in the form of Kitai, who's my all time favorite.

On the positive side, Saxon definitely looks like she does have something to contribute as she matures, and hopefully writes material outside of this canon. Maybe then, I'll come back to her and try again, but this novel I cannot recommend unless your standards are really low and you're desperate for any kind of adventure reading material! It seems to me that this is one of those novels where a publisher is less interested in delivering a quality read, than it is in getting its hooks into a writer whom it felt it could milk for a few volumes, and I despise that attitude vehemently. Maybe they felt they saw a young Jo Rowling here, and maybe in time, that's what Saxon can become, but she's not there yet.

A Spark Unseen by Sharon Cameron

Title: A Spark Unseen
Author: Sharon Cameron
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WARTY!

So what's the third volume to be called? A Bark Untreed? A Quark Unbecoming? Maybe there should be a competition? A Spark Unseen is the second novel in the series which kicked off with The Dark Unwinding, which I reviewed favorably back in early July, but wasn't sure that I would pursue the series. I guess I decided to go for it, because I didn't hesitate to pick this up from the library as soon as I found it there. I got three sequels off their 'new' shelves one after another. What an exciting moment that was! I couldn't believe it! Unfortunately, two of the three have so far turned out to be really awful, including this one.

Anyway, it's two years on from that original story (for reasons unknown) as this story begins with two French guys breaking into Katharine Tully's bedroom to kidnap uncle Tully, but they fail, and when the British government shows that it’s hell-bent upon holding Tully and Katie hostage while they try to get him to develop a torpedo in the shape of a fish, Katie takes drastic action. Why they waited two years - why everyone paused for two years is completely unexplained and makes zero sense.

Katie declares that her uncle has died, and she orchestrates his speedy burial before the government can take herself and her uncle into their "protective custody". Secretly, she dumps her (drugged) uncle inside a trunk and removes him from his modest estate, heading to France where she hopes to discover what has happened to Lane - her favored young man who preceded her to France two years ago and has since been reported dead - by the British government. So, other than the fact that Cameron evidently doesn't know that 'pence' is plural (p15 "...one pence..." should be "...one penny...") we seemed like we were off to a good start. But little did I know....

At only one third the way in, I was definitely not enjoying this novel. I was already skipping what I considered to be boring parts. Uncle Tully became tedious in the extreme. The problem is that nothing is happening but artificiality: cheap "scary" moments, annoyingly vague threats, absurdly mysterious men. Yes, in other words, it’s really badly and amateurishly written. This is the problem with the ubiquitous, creeping, insistent trilogy of YA fiction. You may love the first, the last or even the middle, but you rarely love all three volumes. Why, other than the obvious avarice, do publishers demand them? Why do writers cave-in and write them? What was the last trilogy you read and found completely pleasing in all its parts? When did you read one which honestly told an engaging story which could not have been completely, competently, satisfactorily, and adequately related in only one volume?

Let's talk about insane coincidences in A Spark Unseen (if a spark is unseen, does it really spark?!). How did it happen that a friend (Mrs Hardcastle) of her despised Aunt Alice is living quite literally right next door to her new home? What are the odds of that happening by chance? Yet not a single person in Katie's entire group even thinks for a second that there's anything remotely suspicious about this entirely artificial arrangement. Not only is she too dumb to even imagine a problem, she actually creates one with her snooping. I don’t get Katie's romping around Mrs Hardcastle's house exploring, uninvited, upstairs and listening at the walls. It isn't important at all to do this, yet she does it and gets caught thereby making herself far more suspicious than she would have been had she done nothing and instead simply let them wonder about any odd noises coming from their new next door neighbor.

And the bullshit M. Marchand? Amateur. It’s probably Lane in disguise, although if it is, Katie would have to be even more stupid than she already has proven herself to be to not recognize him, and he would have to be a complete jerk not to announce himself. I don’t know what his story is, but he's altogether too oily for my taste, and Katie is altogether stupid and entirely indecent in allowing him to escort her alone. And what’s with letting her new servants walk all over her? I was actually liking the DuPonts (the servants) better than any other characters, even as obnoxious as they are. That ought to relate something of my experience with this novel!

At about half-way through, there's no sign of Lane and many signs of how awful a character Katie is! I found myself living in hopes that he wouldn't show just for the hell of it! That would have been refreshing. Marchand is probably Lane's brother. I got to thinking that maybe it’s time to ditch Lane as an ally and tell him to take his street smarts and hit the road now their relationship has become a cul-de-sac? But the question remains: how are Katie and her uncle better off in Paris than if they'd simply taken the government's offer? And how can Katie be so selfish as to do this to her uncle for nothing more than pursuing her own selfish interest in finding Lane? At this point I not only didn’t like the novel, I neither liked nor respected the main character.

So I count this as a warty DNF! I was so tired of uncle Tully's madness, and of Katie's total lack of a spine, and one one asinine mystery piled on top of another, with neither sight nor sound of any of them ever being resolved, and with a sure conviction that the bulk of them were red herrings anyway, I said, "Enough is enough!" Life is too short to waste on trashy novels when there are so many good ones clamoring to be read!

A Study in Ashes by Emma Jane Holloway

Title: A Study in Ashes
Author: Emma Jane Holloway
Publisher: Gallery Books
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review.

Wow! Nine ebook reviews in three weeks was the challenge and I just met it! Now I see one of Net Galley's patented 'three week deadline' notices has just popped up on this one, as well! Never again will I offer to read so many ebooks in so short a time! Fortunately some of those nine (three or four) were real clunkers, so I didn't have to read them all the way through before I knew how to rate them! The rest were acceptable enough that reading them didn't seem like a slog at all.

Anyway, this is the final review in my foray into the first three of Holloway's niece of Sherlock Holmes novels! And yes, I promise you it is the final review I shall do of any of her novels in this series. I have absolutely no desire to read any more. A Study in Ashes is a truly fitting name for a conclusion to this series since it all came to ashes in the end. I reviewed A Study in Silks at the beginning of October, and A Study in Darkness towards the end of that month. The first of these two I liked, the second I thought was awful. The third went downhill from there.

The problem with this series is that it's fundamentally fraudulent: I mean, why even mention Sherlock Holmes in your novel and book blurb, let alone boast a main character who's his niece, and then betray every single thing for which Holmes stood by rendering his supposed Protégé into a complete Mary Clueless, who actually does near to zero investigating? Why invest in a girl who has shown herself to be completely undisciplined, a non-thinker, slow, witless, shiftless, thoughtless, and boring? She's much better qualified to pursue what she does best, and incessantly: bemoaning her fate, and pining for Nick-ed the thief, aka worthless piece of trash, and when she's not suffering the wilts and the vapors over him, pining for Toby-ass the worthless piece of trash. I can't respect a character like that, much less actually root for her, or want to read about her. The idea for this series was really cool, but it was sorrowfully wasted in execution (execution is what these stories begged for!). The pseudo steam-punk was a nice touch, but it never really got off the ground in any useful sense except for sensationalism. I could have done happily without the Deva's, notwithstanding how amusing Bird and Mouse were, but even they would have been tolerable had the detective we were implicitly promised actually showed up for work. She never did.

I tried to get into this particular volume three or four times, but after wading through the first half-dozen or so chapters and skimming some of the others, I could find nothing in it to even generate my interest, let alone sustain it! The most interesting character, Imogen, was completely AWOL in the portions that I read. Evelina, supposedly the main character, did nothing but show herself to be clueless, impotent, incompetent, and morbidly self-centered. She once had a job (in volume two) where she could learn everything she wanted, but she had evidently passed that up (for whatever reason) by volume three, to go to a school where all she's allowed to learn (in that era) are 'proper lady's' topics. She's apparently content with this since she resists being thrown out of the college.

Toby-ass proves himself to be an even bigger shit in this novel than he achieved in either of the previous two, which takes some believing: now he has a wife and a son neither of whom he gives a damn about. I can see some logic to his having problems with a wife who was forced upon him, but I cannot countenance his treatment of her. She was a good, fun, and interesting person, and his behavior towards her is not only ungentlemanly, it's thoroughly unconscionable in someone who is supposed to be one of the good guys. Why would I like a jerk such as him, or be interested in what he wants does, thinks, or feels? Alice, his wife, is nowhere in sight in this novel either (not in the portion I read), which is a shame, because she was my second favorite character after Imogen.

But it's not his treatment of her which completely writes him off, since I fully expect this numb-nuts to behave badly towards women; no, the killer is his treatment of his son. That's completely unacceptable to me, and for Evelina to harbor feelings for this jerk tells me a lot about her - a lot of unpleasant things, that is. I have no interest in learning any more about any of these privileged losers, so I said, "The hell with this series!" Life is too short to waste it on pointless, uninteresting, and even downright irritating prose. I'm glad to be done with this un-nourishing stubble and moving to graze on greener pastures.

A Study in Darkness by Emma Jane Holloway

Title: A Study in Darkness
Author: Emma Jane Holloway
Publisher: Gallery Books
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review.

I reviewed A Study in Silks, the first novel in this series, here.

I reviewed A Study in Ashes, the third novel in this series, here.

Yes, I know I said I was just starting this one! I did start it, but I had to put it on a hasty hold when I discovered, much to my dismay, that several books I have for review for Net Galley were showing "three weeks" deadlines in the reader: read it by then or lose it forever! I've never seen that before, but then I've never had so many ebooks lined up for review before, either, so I had to go take care of some of them before I can get back to this one! Sorry! Corporate responsibility and all that jazz....

However, I find myself this weekend not in a position to read the current deadline novel. There's no kindle edition of it, the Adobe reader doesn't work on Ubuntu, and Kindle won't read the PDF which is a protected file! Yes, they have it nailed down tightly, but that means I can't do what they expect me to do: review it for them! So I'm back to reading the "Study" series, but I have to report mixed feelings about what I'm reading. On the one hand, she doesn't know the difference between a decent romance and YA crapola. On the other, and this is a very pleasant surprise, Holloway does know the difference between stanch and staunch! Kudos to her for that much at least.

Anyone following my blog will know that I've identified (if I recall) three writers of late who do not know the difference, and as a writer, I think things like this are important because they tell us something about the author, and about book editors. If you cannot trust your publisher to get the cover right, and you cannot trust the blurb writer to get the back-cover right, and you cannot trust your editor to catch things like confusion between two similar words with entirely different meanings, then where is the advantage of going the legacy publishing route? Self-publish! But only if you are strong in your written language, and confident in being able to do the job yourself. However, if you got the other route, do be prepared for serious cluelessness, blindness, and moronic publishers who do not recognize talent when they see it. Recall that the following record companies turned down The Beatles in the early 1960's: Columbia, Decca, Oriole, Philips and Pye. Decca told them that guitar groups were on the way out, and that The Beatles had no future in show business! Don't lose heart. Unless, of course, you write romances as badly as Holloway does!

I must now address a serious shortcoming which shows up disturbingly in the first ten percent of this novel, and which is the sad debasing of Evelina. You will recall if you read volume one in this series that Holloway smartly tore up her playbook at the end, and scattered her four main protagonists, which I considered a very good decision. Imogen, Evelina's best friend was separated from both Evelina (who was banished from Lord Bancroft's home), and from her beau, Bucky, who was banned from her life. Niccolo, whom I consider to be a complete loser, became a pirate. That should convey all you need to know about his worthless hide, and that's also all I need to say about him - except to add that once I discovered that he was in this novel, I decided to skip every chapter in which he plays a leading role (which meant gliding happily past all of chapters five and six, for example). My worst fear is that he will not be hunted down and hung, but will come roaring back into the story, and it seems that fear is to become a reality. Indeed, Holloway starts this story with him, which I found depressing enough as it was.

And what of Evelina? Well, we learn nothing of her summer except that she was in Devon, a county in south-west England, but is now back staying with her uncle Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street, where she receives a letter from Imogen begging her to join herself and Alice Keating for a month before Tobias (or sorry-ass if you prefer - I do) marries Alice. Evelina has an attack of the wilts and the vapors over this, at which point she lost me as her champion. She's supposed to be a smart, strong, astute, incisive sleuth, but she's none of that so far in this novel, nor at all in the first novel. She displays none of her uncle's intellect whatsoever. Holloway actually uses the term "star-crossed" to describe Evelina and Tobias, which pretty much made me puke all over the Kindle (not advised).

Holloway needs to buck-up Evelina and get her mind away from that loser Tobias, who purposefully shot her uncle and would have killed him if he could. How did Che put it in Don't Cry for me Argentina: "Why all this howling hysterical sorrow?" This pathetic juvenile fainting away over him is entirely stomach-turning. Evelina needs to be given a new beau: someone worthy of what she can be, and she herself needs to become worthy to have him. Right now she's worthless as a character and as a human being. Holloway seems to have got it right with Imogen and Bucky (although there is precious little of either of them in this volume), so hopefully she'll bite the bullet and get it done for Evelina too, but I have grave doubts on that score. I think she's far too in love with her characters to ever dare kill them off, either practically or metaphorically, but maybe she'll surprise me.

Or maybe she won't. I almost tossed this novel at about 20% in, and moved on to something else. Sad-sack Tobias, of course, shows up at the hunting jamboree organized by Jasper Keating, the "Gold" King (steam-punk supremo). There was absolutely no surprise what-so-ever there. Neither was it a surprise when trollop Evelina and scum Tobias, fiancé of Alice Keating, (who happens to be a friend of Evelina's) flung themselves into each other's arms, neither of them caring two figs for Alice. So exactly how Dumb is Evelina? Don't get me started. And what kind of a lowlife jerk-off is Toby-ass? Evelina had one simple task at this hunter-gathering: to dig up useful information for her uncle and she blew it the very first chance she got, wilting like a used condom in the arms of the useless piece of trash who shot her uncle and contributed to building a bomb which blew up Holmes's home when he and Evelina were both in it. And now this faithless wench is having palpitations over this terrorist?

This novel was entirely unrealistic even within its own framework to this point. Evelina, supposedly a strong female lead, has shown herself to be completely worthless in her character's rôle, and nothing more than another air-headed appendage of a guy. And the guy is - how did Colonel Brandon put it in Sense & Sensibility? - "...expensive, dissipated, and worse than both." Alan Rickman's Colonel Brandon described Toby-ass's character best in the movie version: "the worst sort of libertine". I need more than this in a main character if an author wants me to follow a series; much more. But at least we now know where the novel's title came from: it was in Keating's study, in the darkness, that they kissed, and Keating and Imogen found them in flagrante de lick spittle. Now not only is Toby-ass under Keating's thumb, so too, is Evelina. Way to go, Ms Stupid Bitch! Seriously: is it Holloway's intention to make a reader detest her characters? If so, then why?! If not, then why write this crap?

Fortunately, I didn't ditch the novel at that point. Though I was revolted by Holloway's ham-fisted handling of Evelina-Toby-ass train-wreck, I kept reading and was rewarded. So she gets kicked out of the hunter-gathering and heads back to London incognito as a spy for Keating, and she ends up working for Magnus - the guy who got blown up in volume one, but who we all of us knew for a fact would be back, because why invent a new villain when you can quite literally resurrect an old one?! Right now my favorite character in both of these volumes is Magnus. At least he has something going for him - like a spine maybe?!

Magnus is laying low, and apparently working for (or perhaps merely pretending to do so) King Coal, another of the steam barons. He runs a puppet theater, although why he does, I have no idea; there's no reason whatsoever for him to be doing this as far as I can see, especially if he has King Coal's patronage, and Holloway offers none. He is maintaining a stable of automatons, one of which is the very Serafina doll which was purportedly destroyed in volume one. No explanation there as to why she's still hale and hearty, and Serafina has a life of sorts. She's very advanced, verging on being sentient if not already there, and Magnus assures Evelina that he has killed no-one and no animal to create her as she is. OTOH, this novel is set during the era of Jack the Ripper - the very villain about whom Imogen is having very realistic dreams. I am now suspicious that Serafina is Jack the Ripper and these deaths are what animate her. But then we all know exactly how great my guesses are!

So now Holloway has married off Toby-ass to Alice Keating, the only way she can get Toby-ass and Evelina together is to kill off Alice. Will she do it? She really jumped the shark, fell short, and landed ass-first in the fish's maw with the kiss in the study in darkness, because the only witnesses to that event were Evelina, Toby-ass, Keating, and Imogen. But now Holloway expects us to believe that the story somehow magically "slipped out", and has spread so that everyone at the reception knows of it. How, exactly, did that happen? No explanation. Everyone is evidently blaming Evelina, but there's no word yet on whether Alice has even heard the tale.

Well, I got to 50% through this novel and became so ill that I could no longer continue. It sucks. There are some really brilliant pieces, but all of that is lost in a foul miasma of tedious pedantry and brain-dead story-telling. It turns out that Toby-ass seduced Alice during the summer and impregnated her, and then he doesn't have the gallantry to spend their wedding night with her or treat her like a human being. There is no way in hell this piece of human gutter-trash will ever get back into my good graces, and if Evelina ends up with him, then she's scum too as far as I'm concerned! It's that simple. Why would I care what happens to these whiny-assed losers? The sad thing is that I have a third volume of this to which I'm committed for a review. I have the horrible feeling that I may indeed end up committed - to an asylum when I start delving into that volume! But rest-assured I am going to take a serious break from this before I read episode three!

This novel is WARTY!

A Study in Silks by Emma Jane Holloway

Title: A Study in Silks
Author: Emma Jane Holloway
Publisher: Gallery Books
Rating: worthy!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review.

Erratum:
p262 "His mouth twitch with ire." should be "His mouth twitched with ire."

I reviewed A Study in Darkness, the second novel in this series, here.

I reviewed A Study in Ashes, the third novel in this series, here.

Evelina Cooper is a niece of Sherlock Holmes. I had thought this must be through his older brother Mycroft, but it was a case of identity: Holloway has invented a non-existent sister called Marianne, who ran away to the circus! Now Evelina is an orphan with an overbearing grandmother. I was not impressed by this. I have to ask, Holloway my dear, What's on? I chose this novel and its two sequels (so I can review all three in a row) because it sounded like a great idea for a series, and I really loved the opening few pages: it really got hold of me and pulled me in, but I was led to expect a Holmes-esque novel and did not get one.

There's a wood sprite which appeared when Evelina was escaping from an attic by climbing out of the window and into a nearby tree. Yes, I was expecting elementary and got an elemental! Clearly the publicist is the man with the twisted lip - or is he the crooked man? So I'm thinking: did I just get duped by a freight and ditch? This was not at all what I come looking for when I'm told by a book blurb that this is a novel about Sherlock Holmes's niece! So we have Holmes, magic, fantasy, paranormal, automatons, demons, detectives, and steam-punk. Hmm. Why make her a relation of Sherlock Holmes and then leave me Strand-ed, betraying everything Arthur Doyle stood for in his delivery of the Holmes adventures? This Baker Street irregular made no sense to me, especially since there's really nothing in this novel, not even the appearance of Holmes himself, which reflects anything of the Doyle novels. Should I give it the five orange pips?

After getting past the beginning with no issues, I quickly started having some really mixed feelings about it. Okay, so we finally get a murder and Evelina is really doing a cracking job of sussing-out the clues, but no sooner do we have what I actually came looking for in this novel than I get handed the second stain: Holloway tosses in a completely gratuitous and appallingly tropish love triangle between her and a high-born heir to a lordship and also a lowlife from the circus. Honestly? Why in hell do women of all genders, aspire to write novels about strong female characters, and then hobble these same women with a crippling need for, and attendant dependency upon, the validation of not one but two, count 'em, two dancing men? And iffy men at that: these men are such clichés as to be truly, seriously, painfully pathetic.

I have to confess that she does make an effort with these two - to try and give them some substance - but at that point she'd already lost my good faith and wasn't making enough of an effort to regain it! I committed to reading and reviewing three of these novels (the first three in what is evidently an ongoing series), so I found myself dearly hoping this would improve, and Holloway started to come through for me as I read on, but she was too inconsistent, making me first enjoy what I read and then making me regret it by turns! For example, she made me fall in love with her for this one sentence on p123: "Silence resounded with all the majesty of an oriental gong." I have no idea why, but that just hit me right where my pleasure nodes are. Unfortunately, she came around one hundred eighty degrees right after that and saddened me.

She has now presented Evelina as secretly wanting marriage all along, and only deflected from that course by her impoverished circumstances. That seems unnecessarily genderist even in these circumstances. I know that Victorian women were raised this way, and all-too-many girls still are today, but even in reality not all Victorian women felt that way, nor traveled that path. There is no reason at all to present a fictional woman as being brain-washed by that idea unless your plot demands it. In this case, Holloway's plot does no such thing as far as I can tell; quite the opposite in fact, so why sell her main character down this particular river? I was very disappointed with this approach. However, as much as Holloway toys with my affections, addicting me one minute, and repelling me the next, I decided it was worth it, on balance, continue to read this. I pretty much have to if I'm going to proceed to volume two, and thence to three, anyway!

Here's another reason to love Holloway: "Even a stupid servant was more versatile and cost a fraction of the price." (p153). I am so glad she's smart enough to see the impracticality of a lot of the steam-punk stuff, favoring servants over automatons (although morally, it ought to be the other way around!) - so why can't she apply those obvious smarts to relationships and love triangles?! It's a bigger mystery than was Boscombe Valley, but that's not a patch on this howler exactly one third the way in describing an interaction between Evelina and one of her two male interests, Tobias, the wealthy son of a lord: "Her palms brushed the front of his jacket, feeling the soft, expensive fabric and the swell of firm, young muscle beneath. An ache throbbed deep in her body, blotting out common sense." Seriously? Evelina loves her a firm young muscle...!

Holloway improves things as she continues the story of the relationship between Evelina and Tobias, and it starts to mature intelligently and does have a real surprise at the end, which I didn't expect, so I can tell you without giving too much away that this love triangle did not go the way I had feared it would when I first read of it. Nick OTOH, is unsavory at best and pretty much went exactly where I thought he ought to end up even as I feared he wouldn't go there! I can say that Evelina continued to impress and develop, and that was where my main interest lay. And the story did stay focused, more or less, on the thing which first attracted Evelina's attention before it side-tracked into the magical.

Page 271 was interesting from my own oddball writerly perspective. I felt I'd entered a time loop when I clicked back a page. I had clicked back because I thought I'd clicked two pages forward instead of one (I hadn't, but this is a problem with ebooks and the Kindle). This page starts with "At a quick calculation, Evelina counted a dozen men who were baronet or better." and ends with "The barons are catching us, one by one, by holding our pocketbooks hostage." So what happened to me was that in clicking from that page to the same page, thinking it was the next, I read: "The barons are catching us, one by one, by holding our pocketbooks hostage. At a quick calculation, Evelina counted a dozen men who were baronet or better." It flows perfectly and took me a second to realize what I’d done. Minor weirding-out there!

But that’s not an authorship problem; in my case, it was a clueless reader problem! Maybe it's also of interest to an author interested in writing one of those self-navigation stories. These used to be common at one time, but are rare now. They’re interactive in a limited way, because at each page, you choose which page to jump to next from a selection of options presented at the bottom of the page. You could have your reader weirded-out quite nicely with a page like this one!

P271 was also of interest in that it sported this sickening sentence: "His hand on her arm sent a pleasant shiver down the back of her legs." It was a bit much, especially after I'd been feeling better about the YA trope romance between Tobias and Evelina. The worst parts were offset somewhat by Holloway's detailing of how smart Evelina was, for example when she turned away from the crowd and whispered to Tobias in order to avoid being overheard or having her lips read. Some might call that paranoid, but in the context of the novel it was very smart and I loved Evelina for doing it and, in turn, Holloway for writing that bit! Yes, I'm a sap for that kind of thing and not ashamed to admit it into polite company!

But later, Holloway makes the mistake of having Tobias use this Americanism: "I've always known you came from someplace different..." No son of a British lord, and especially not one in Victorian times, would use 'someplace'. It's 'somewhere'! That's a minor faux pas, but I kept getting vertigo from getting to a high point where I really enjoyed the writing, and then having the text swoop down low for one reason or another, before climbing back up again with the next Evelina bounty. And rest assured Evelina was not the only character who was worth the reading. Her best friend Imogen was equally entertaining, and didn't get anywhere near enough air time for my money (not that I paid any actual money!). Her relationship with "Bucky" was charming and entertaining to a wonderfully high degree - but not enough!

I do not, however, love Nick. The the final problem is that he is the creeping man, and not at all the kind of person with whom I would wish for a young lady of Miss Cooper sensitivities to spend her time. Holloway needs to kill him off heroically (she doesn't!). He is nothing but a horn-dog who has little respect for Evelina, spends the bulk of his time lusting after her, and comes uncomfortably close to raping her at one point in the novel, when he's in the throes of a magical communion with her. It's actually rather sickening, and even scary given his penchant for stalking Evelina. I don't like him at all as a character or as a friend of hers, so I was glad that he went the way he did, but not at all happy to discover that he's featured in the second of this series, as, I assume, is Tobias, or Toby-ass as he now ought to be known.

So in summary, I am rating this novel a worthy read, even though I did have a few issues with it. I had hoped for no magic or steam-punk, no fantasy, and definitely no trope romance, so why Holloway went there, I don't know, and given that she obviously had decided to go there, I can't understand why she chose to have Evelina related to Sherlock Holmes, unless it was nothing more than a cheap ploy to try and pull in readers. I suspect Holmes fans will be as annoyed and resentful of this ploy as I was. It seemed underhand to me to talk the reader up one way and then pull the rug out and send them another. This is no Sherlock Holmes tale, not even in spirit (and he is the dying detective!). It is, however, an entertaining tale for the most part, and even some of the magical stuff, particularly, Evelina's robotic mouse and bird, was really entertaining. The novel would have stood by itself without the Holmes Crutch to lean on. I have to wonder why no editor advised Holloway thus. But I am still giving this the the engineer's thumb up and moving on to volume two to see what I can find there.