The Lost Souls Dating Agency by Suneeti Rekhari

Title: The Lost Souls Dating Agency
Author: Suneeti Rekhari
Publisher: Escape Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

There is a tiny prologue which I skipped as I do all prologues. If the author doesn’t think it worth putting into chapter one or later, I don’t think it’s worth reading. This is also a first person PoV novel which I normally detest because it’s all "Me!" all the time which is irritating at best. Some authors can make it work, but for most authors, it’s best avoided like the plague. This author makes it work. The story is short - only a hundred-fifty pages or so - divided into forty chapters, yet! The text is pretty densely packed, but it's a fast read.

What drew me to this novel was that the author was not another in a long line of US authors who think the US is the only place worth writing about! She's not US at all, but is of Indian descent and is resident in Melbourne, Australia. The main character, Shalini Gupta, is of Indian descent and is resident in Melbourne, Australia.... The novel flits very briefly from India to Dubai, and then on to Melbourne where Shalini now lives, attending college, while her uncle (not really - he adopted her and told her he was her uncle) remains in Dubai; then he goes missing!

My attraction to the novel in this case didn’t fail me. I loved the simple, matter-of-fact way it was written, and the perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek acceptance of the paranormal by Shalini and her two friends Neha and Megan. Not only has Shalini inherited some money from her uncle, she has also inherited a mysterious empty warehouse which actually isn't far from her apartment. The warehouse is old and run-down, but she feels compelled to clean it up. The only thing in there is a weird clock which is immovably attached to one of the walls. And the time is wrong.

As she's trying to figure out what to do with the place, a newspaper begins mysteriously appearing in he building each Saturday. Shalini quickly realizes that this is a supernatural newspaper, and she posts an ad in it advertising the warehouse as a dating agency for supernatural beings! Her first client soon shows up: Victor the cranky vampire. This part was hilarious. In fact the whole Victor thing is really amusing. Get this, for example (and keep in mind that Victor's a vampire):

'Bloody hell, Victor, you scared me! It’s daytime! How are you here?'
'I drove.'

I laughed out loud at that. Note the single quotes which Brit and Aussie novels tend to sport to demarcate speech. They look weird to me, and I grew up in Britain! Anyway, no more spoilers. Shalini takes on three cases, and gets deeper into the supernatural than ever she feels safe doing, but she meets some startling and interesting people along the way.

Be warned that this has a cliffhanger ending - it's obviously the start of a series, and I'm typically not a fan of series, but I'm not averse to reading more of this one!

Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck

Rating: WORTHY!

Richard Peck attended the same university that one of my older brothers did: the University of Exeter in Britain (the same university which JK Rowling attended), but I'd never heard of him until a review which I read mentioned this novel. I picked it up at the library, breezed through it in a few hours, and now I'm a Richard Peck fan! This saddens me because it makes me only too painfully aware of how many other authors there are out there - authors I would love to read if only I knew who they were - authors I will never read because I will never hear of them. Like I said - life is too short!

This novel shows up how badly written all-too-many YA novels are these days, wherein the girl has to have a male love interest or she can't function, or the story has to be overwrought or overdone, or to have a love triangle. There is, I'm sorry to say, a large number of female YA authors who could learn a huge amount from Richard Peck about how to create great, and strong, female YA characters, and how to build and portray relationships between boys and girls.

The novel is very well written, moves at a decent clip without being too slow or too fast, tells an amusing, slightly creepy, a little bit sad, and ultimately a very rewarding story. It's set in 1913/14, and the main protagonist is Blossom Culp, a self-possessed girl who comes from a dirt-poor background. The story begins with her thwarting a scheme she overheard discussed by local high school ruffians, to overturn all the (outdoor) toilets in the neigborhood. This venture alone is worth reading the book for. It's hilarious and inventive, and is what gets Blossom started on the story path.

Blossom's mother has "second-sight" - she's clairvoyant and has a reputation in town. She's helped the police solve a crime or two, but she's very hard on her daughter. Dad is nowhere in the picture. The most interaction they've had with him in several years is a postcard which he's had to have someone else address for him since he's illiterate, so there never is a message.

Let me say right here that I don't have any belief in the occult. I think it's all nonsense and fraud. There is no valid evidence whatsoever of anyone having any supernatural powers, or of any life after death, but I do love a good story which pretends that there is, and this was a classic example of such a story.

Blossom isn't considered to have her mother's power, but an event with a little child becoming hurt and Blossom seeing it in her mind and alerting the child's mother to the incident, leads to her having increasingly common visions, including the advent of World War One. She has to carry this horrible, horrible knowledge alone because she knows no one will believe her or try to prevent it were she to reveal it. The odd thing, though, is that she also has a vision of a massive ocean liner sinking, and a tragedy attached to it - a tragedy above and beyond the hundreds of frozen corpses which the Titanic strewed across the North Atlantic.

It's this issue which really takes over and propels this story, and it's so well written and so inventive that it keeps you right there all the way through. I've often seen reviewers berate a story because the character shows no growth, or doesn't change, and I frankly don't get that mentality. A story isn't about necessary change or growth. it's about interesting events (if it's a good one!) and interesting people. This is a case in point because while things do change around her, Blossom really doesn't change throughout this story. We learn more about who she is as we go, but there really isn't anything to her at the end - save for experience - that's significantly different from how she appeared at the beginning, yet this story was amazing!

There is another novel set in this same world, featuring a male interest of Blossom's, and Blossom herself, but the story is told from the boy's perspective. I am sure I will be reading more Richard Peck stories. I recommend that you read at least this one, which is one of two Richard Peck novels I've reviewed, both about strong female characters, and both set in the same era.

Selume Proferre by EE Ottoman

Title: Selume Proferre
Author: EE Ottoman
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
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!

Erratum:
p16 "...t-shirt with a button-up shirt open over it a much-worn leather jacket over that and her black cowboy hat firmly on her head." was really hard to read on first pass. It needs some commas. I'd have written it: "...t-shirt with a button-up shirt open over it, a much-worn leather jacket over that, and her black cowboy hat firmly on her head."
p23 "I think you're logic is faulty." should be "I think your logic is faulty."
p23 "While some geeks wear sweater vest..." should be "While some geeks wear sweater vests..."
p40 "The house they finally pulled up to was huge, white, and new-looking, surrounded by a gate." doesn't sound right. Maybe, "The house they finally pulled up to was huge, white, and new-looking, surrounded by a gate and a fence." or "...a gated fence"?
p41 "...as if for conformation..." should be "...as if for confirmation..."
(EE ottoman, I volunteer to be a beta reader any time you need one!)

I am not a Latin student by any means although I did do a couple of years of it in high school. The title, if it's intended to be a Latin phrase, is wrong. I think it should be Se Lumen Proferre which means roughly, "Allow illumination to prevail" or "to be brought out" - or tritely, "Let there be light" (although the Biblical version of that is actually Fiat lux).

And now to the novel itself! An-An Li-Johnson is not only a mouthful of a name, it's an intriguing character which may or may not be modeled on the author, who if anyone does, has the proverbial 300 watt smile. An-An is a lesbian who works part time at a book store (cool name of 'Bookfall', and who also temps as a scribe at a spell-craft firm called Simon and Davidson which is about to embark upon an exorcism. If that doesn't grab you for a starter, nothing will!

I should say right up front (if you can call four paragraphs in "right up front"!) that I flatly do not believe in demons and angels, gods and devils, etc (and you can include ghosts, flying saucers, and the Loch Ness monster in there, too! I wrote a novel about the Loch Ness "monster" myself, so I can't pretend to be completely disgusted with this!).

I can't get with the ludicrous ritual - the power of chalk? The so-called 'holy' water, the Latin incantations! Why is Latin supposedly a language of power - really?! I do, however, recognize that these tropes are required in this kind of a novel, and I do love a good story about these things: and this one was definitely a good story.

An-An is called in to work with MC Anderson (no, that's not a DJ!), a senior employee at S&D, who's in charge of the upcoming exorcism. She's supposedly difficult to work with, which is how An-An ended up hired for the job, but An-An doesn't view MC that way. And so it begins, both the exorcism and the wonderful, dancing interplay between 'acolyte' and 'master'....

I have to say I fell in love (in a nice, manly, platonic way, of course!) with MC as soon as I learned that she watches Doctor Who and Mythbusters! Hopefully she's a bit more satisfied with this season's Doctor Who than I've been (although it did pick up commendably in episode three). I loved An-An, too, although I found her name a bit annoying. Sorry! But kudos to the author for stepping well outside pathetic YA socio-normative tedium to deliver something very different and powerful. I loved this novel!

I also have to say I had a concern about the guns which the security guards were so readily brandishing - did they really think they could shoot a demon? From a writing perspective, the guns themselves weren't the issue; that MC said nothing about them was what bothered me. A word would have been nice.

Note that this novel/novella/novelette/short story (I didn't count the words, I just read them as they went by!) is really, really short - fifty pages or so, so it's a very fast and engaging read. In fact, go read it now. I'll wait. Take your time.

The Immortal Crown by Richelle Mead

Title: The Immortal Crown
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
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.

Errata
p31 "…dropping and rolling to the ground…" should be "…dropping, and rolling on the ground…"

p98 Mead uses the word 'frequented' when she really appears to mean 'visited'.
p101 "Mae shook her head wonderingly"? Better: "Mae shook her head in wonder"
p193 "When he'd stopping their escalations before..." should be "When he'd stopped their escalation before..."

This is book 2 in Richelle Mead's Age of X series. I reviewed book one, Gameboard of the Gods a while ago, and despite finding well over a dozen errors in the advance review copy, I really enjoyed it, so I've been looking forward to reading the next installment.

I have to say that while I definitely don't think anyone will ever laud Richelle Mead of being a great literary writer (she could use a crash course in the difference between 'less' and 'fewer' for example), she does a pretty decent job in general; however, there are some fingernails-on-chalkboard moments in her writing, where she employs bastard 'words' such as, for example: 'politician-y' and 'orangey-red'. Any writer can do better than that. Note that these things appear not in a character's speech, which would have been perfectly fine because people do speak like that, but in her own narrative, which is a bit too much, since she's not telling this in first person as though she's a character herself.

This novel continues the story of Mae Koskinen, a soldier in the so-called 'Praetorian' guard - some sort of super-soldier outfit in Canada/the USA (known as the RUNA - the Republic of United North America). Mae is Finnish by descent, and a genetically healthy woman in a world where a plague has struck down much of humanity and disfigured many of the survivors. Mae is assigned as bodyguard to Justin March, a religious investigator for the RUNA government. The RUNA doesn't like religion, because in this world, there really are gods vying for a following amongst the humans, and in this volume, they appear to be gearing up for a war.

After receiving a vision via a special knife which was an anonymous gift which Mae received, she comes to believe that her niece, an eight-year-old who was lost to her family and whom Mae has long sought, is being held in Arcadia, a nation not known for it's generosity of spirit towards the female half of the population. Coincidentally, Mae has the chance to go there on official business.

This story, I should forewarn you, is over 400 pages long and it moves with a proportionately sluggish pace, which I found annoying. In addition to a decidedly more lively narrative, something else I would like to see in this series is the termination of this non-existent relationship between Mae and Justin. Not only does it not exist, it doesn't work. There's no basis for it and it's neither appealing nor realistic, so at the risk of giving away spoilers, I was rather thrilled with the ending of this volume, although I am sure it's not any kind of an ending in the long run. Going there, would take a writer with some real guts!

Perhaps I should explain. Volume one featured a quickie between these two characters before Mae knew that he was the guy she was supposed to be body-guarding (he knew who she was, but he never let on). Justin, who is being sought as a devotee by the god Odin, had a revelation that if he started getting it on with Mae, he would simultaneously be selling-out to Odin, and becoming the god's priest (read: pawn). He doesn't want that, so he rejected Mae in a rather callous way. She does not know his motivation, and simply accepts that he's that kind of a guy, but unrealistically, this does not prevent her from obsessing over him unhealthily. This causes me to seriously question Mae's smarts!

So, end of story, right? Naw! For reasons beyond human understanding (which is sadly all I'm equipped with), the two are still attracted to one another. I can see why he would be still hot for Mae - he's a lech and a womanizer and she's attractive (not that that's a requirement given the premises), but there's no reason why she should be, especially not after his behavior towards her. The problem with this relationship is not only that it doesn't exist in any romantic sense, it's that even in a romantic sense, it's non-existent.

It didn't work in volume one, but there was enough going on to render that a minor matter. Now that the pace is reduced to a limp in volume two, the interaction between the two really stands out as a pairing which needs paring. There is no chemistry; there's no tension, sexual or otherwise, and there's no reason at all why the two should be so focused upon one another in any way other than purely professional.

The first mistake Mead makes I think, in this novel (other than including the first hundred pages, that is) is after there's a attack on Tessa, Justin's young, female ward. Because of the assault, which was actually aimed (so we're told) at Justin, Mae and some of her friends at the Praetorian volunteer to watch the house. Mae also hires a dedicated, retired soldier named Rufus as a more permanent guard, and here's where the problem lies.

We're given to understand that both Justin and Mae are really shaken-up by what happened to Tessa, yet Mae hires this guy, a stranger, at his first interview, and with zero background checks! This is a guy whom she quite literally just met. That struck me as gullible at best, and stupid at worst, neither of which traits Mae has exhibited before. Just saying! It felt like bad writing to me, and I never trusted Rufus.

It was only when we got past page 100 (that is, some 25% the way in) that the story got to where I felt I could become honestly interested in it. That first 100 pages could be completely skipped and the story would not suffer for it. Also, the sections in which Tessa appears could be skipped. I liked her in the first novel. She contributes nothing in this one. If this had been a first time novel by a newbie, any competent editor would have advocated this, but once you're established, it seems that no one dare say boo to you. Go figure!

In chapter nine, they've finally arrived in Arcadia (read Alabama) and their military escort is deprived of its weaponry, yet not a single one of them raises any sort of protest. This struck me as being really dumb and unrealistic. Why did they even take their weapons with them if they were going to be robbed of them anyway? It made no sense. To me, this was poorly written. Think about it in a modern context. If the President was going to Iran, and the Iranians wanted the Secret Service guards to be robbed of their weapons, would this be acceptable? No! Then why is it here?

Worse than this was the the way the females in the party were treated. They were forced to be silent, to cover up, and to undertake menial household chores! Seriously? Could you see that happening in the real USA? No one would stand for it, least of all the women. This was entirely unrealistic and it really degraded the quality of the novel for me. Fortunately, it was right after this that things improved dramatically and turned it around for me, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to rate this novel favorably, which would have saddened me, being a fan of Mead's (at least of her Vampire Academy series!).

Mead also missed a great opportunity with Mae's magic knife. It's discovered in her possession, but instead of having her say that it's a religious artifact and daring this highly religious nation to confiscate it as such, Justin steps in and says it's his, and he's allowed to keep it. I found that completely irrational given that they'd just confiscated weapons from the military for goodness sakes! It made no sense and could have been written much better. I've seen several reviews on this novel which compliment Mead for her writing, but I don't see it as anything special. Her writing isn't outright bad per se, and she delivers on so great ideas, but there are some serious flaws in it as I've pointed out in the errata and throughout this review.

The reason I mentioned Iran above is that some reviewers also commented on the Islamophobic aspect of this depiction of the Arcadian nation - that Arcadia is nothing more than a surrogate for a slam at Islam, but while Islam does merit being pilloried for its appalling devaluation and marginalization of women, such reviewers appear to be blind to the problems of religion in general. It's not only the Muslim religion which is abusive of women: each of big three monotheistic religions, all of which share the same root - Judaism - are misogynistic and the root cause of that lies in the story of Adam and Eve.

People dishonestly pretend that Christianity is not as bad, but it is, and some sects of Christianity such as Mormonism and the bizarre Amish-style cults are worse. The more orthodox Judaist sects also repress women. Religion in general is very bad for women, so this isn't what those reviewers think it is; it's much broader than that narrow view and I appreciated Mead's tackling of this important topic.

Having said that, I also have to register some disappointment with Mead's own writing about women. It seems that all she can talk about as the women are introduced to Arcadia is how "beautiful" or ugly they are. She tries to hide this by depicting it as Justin's thoughts, but this actually makes it worse because from her PoV of developing him as a character, it makes Justin nothing but a shallow jerk, and yet we're somehow expected to root for him as Mae's beau? I don't think so! I for one am not on-board with him!

It's like even Mead thinks that women have no (or at best, limited) value unless they're beautiful, the hell with how their minds are, the hell with whether they're strong, emotionally stable, good providers, hard workers, reliable, have integrity, and so on. There are scores of criteria by which to appreciate them, yet Mead's sole criterion for which women are to be valued is skin deep, and that's it. I find it hard to believe that Mead writes like this, but let's face it, she does foreshadow this in her Vampire Academy series which is the only other series of hers that I've read, and which I actually - for the most part - like. Let me just say that I am very disappointed in her at this point in reading around page 114...!

Those problems aside, the interest for me definitely ramped-up as Mae was turned loose (figuratively speaking, that is - she was in fact extremely restricted) amongst the Arcadians. She didn't, unfortunately, "go all kamikaze on their asses" as one reviewer amusingly had hoped, but she did cut loose at one point and I appreciated that.

You can see that here, she proved herself to be strong, independent, aggressive when necessary, effective, capable, and resourceful, yet never is she appreciated for any of that - only for how beautiful she is. It's sad. Hopefully, from the way this novel ended, we'll see much more of that side of her and much less of the limp, uninteresting and let's face it for all intents and purposes other than as a love interest for Mae, completely pointless Justin in volume three.

Prior to this point, I had seriously been wondering if I wanted to finish this novel, let alone go on to read another in this series, but from that point onwards, it really turned around and became very readable. If Mead had started this novel chapter nine, and had excluded all the chapters where Tessa was involved, and excluded the pointless scenes of flirtation between Mae and Justin, this novel would have been perfect. As it was, it seemed to take forever to get through this, which isn't a good sign! However, it was worth reading in my opinion, but it's certainly not my favorite novel of Mead's.

Gameboard of the Gods by Richelle Mead

Title: Gameboard of the Gods
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Penguin
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. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of her story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

First, some editing notes regarding the galley copy (hopefully these will be fixed before the final version is released):
p103 "Dag had starting calling her that" probably should read: "Dag had started calling her that"
p122: "one filled with all sorts of half completed projected." I'm guessing that last word should be 'projects'. I’d also add a hyphen between 'half' and 'completed', but that's just me!
P141 "Did what he say make sense?" when it should perhaps be "Did what he said make sense?"
P157 "...thought I worry..." when it should be "…though I worry..."
P184 "...but she'd been grilled in how to be pleasant and likable..." would make more sense as "...but she'd been drilled in how to be pleasant and likable..."
P185 "...cut and dry..." would make more sense as "...cut and dried…"
P198 "...spoke legions about them..."?! That just didn't sound right. Perhaps volumes instead of legions?
P224 "Don’t record anything around her without asking me." maybe should have been: "Don’t record anything around here without asking me."?
In Chapter 19: "...but she felt more securing knowing..." should perhaps be "...but she felt more secure in knowing..."?
P305 "How much have you drank tonight?" maybe should be "How much have you drunk tonight?"
P311 "...the rest of the acquaintance over the years." should be perhaps "...the rest of the acquaintanceship over the years."?
P352 "...he reminder her." should be "...he reminded her." I think.
P400 "...her skin literally burned..." I doubt it! Metaphorically, maybe, but not literally! Picky, ain't I?
P424 "Excitable was one to put it..." should be "Excitable was one way to put it..."
P425 "Gan left at his own joke.." should be "Gan laughed at his own joke..." (it's like Mead was dictating this!)
P447 "He hadn’t really thought she'd stay on, and from that cool look on her face, she probably wasn’t thrilled that it had." Change of person doesn’t make any sense to me.
P450 "But it was the same thing Lucian had told Mae when he'd look into servitor hiring" confusion of tense? It seems like it ought to be either "But it was the same thing Lucian had told Mae when he'd looked into servitor hiring", or better, "But it was the same thing Lucian had told Mae when he looked into servitor hiring"
I notice in the ebook version, the chapters have odd case: "ChaPter instead of "Chapter"
and one more: I don't think this is an error per se, but "ArianrHood big on that kind of thing" sounds really weird!

To the review! I just started getting into this one in spare minutes here and there, and it was really hard to go with it for the first chapter, with its rather pretentious faux Roman nonsense with the misnamed Praetorian Guard which is the elite military force in the RUNA (Republic of United North America) nation. I was offered no valid reason why the nation had developed like that. It also didn't help to read constructions like this: "...would get bored of him..." or the weird contractions Mead might've used a bit too frequently and should've used less often IMO...! However, after the first few pages, I began to appreciate the story more, and started to get into it enough that these distractions didn't throw my stride.

It wasn't long before I was immersed in the fiction rather than in the writing of it! I have now finished it and wholeheartedly recommend it. This was the kind of book I've been sorely missing lately and it made me want to track down other Richelle Mead novels and read them. Unfortunately they seem to be of the young-adult paranormal romance variety and they didn't exactly trip my trigger, so I'll have to wait for the sequel to this one!

This novel however was in general well-written, had interesting multi-dimensional characters and a good plot. I loved that it was based in an atheist society and had no problem when the supernatural started invading because I was expecting it and it was done really professionally. The two main characters, Mae and Justin were believable, flawed, multi-faceted and endearing. I loved the awkward way they were forced into prowling around each other not because of some inexplicable whim of the author's but because they were written skilfully into this situation by the circumstances and by the plot. Mae in particular was one of the most kick-ass female protagonists I've encountered, especially of late and she was so welcome! If she continues to grow on me in sequels as she did in this novel, I'll have to put her up there with the all-time greats such as Molly Millions in William Gibson's Neuromancer, and Kitai in the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher, which are the benchmark for me.

Mae is one of the best of the praetorian guard, but after a fight at the funeral of one of her fellow soldiers (for whose death, some held her to blame), she's re-assigned to the lowly task of delivery girl, taking a message to some guy in Panama City. That someone is Justin, a drunken lech who preys on women with enchanting stories of his exotic, hi-tech homeland even as he's suffering silently from his forced exile from it (he was expelled for reasons which are revealed later and which smoothly tie into the story).

Justin finds himself in an alley behind a bar, and Mae coincidentally steps in to fight off six assailants who are there to exact revenge on Justin for what he did to someone's sister. Mae doesn't realize that he's the one she's supposed to be delivering the message to, especially since he lies to her about his name. Annoyingly, Mead stops the action right there to rewind the video and show it again to us from Mae's perspective. This was not appreciated; it was like a commercial popping up unexpectedly in place of the climax to a movie scene! Fortunately for my sanity, she doesn't do this often.

But in this case, instead of the action scene I was salivating over, I was dragged kicking and screaming to what appeared to be a bizarre combination of a reminiscence mashed-up with a flashback or a change of scene, from which we're led slowly back to the fight. I skipped that portion entirely out of distaste and I have never missed it! Now back to our regular programming: finally we get to the fight, wherein Mae predictably kicks ass x6, and then Justin and Mae spend the night together! No trope-ish YA nonsense here, whereby the two main characters hate each other and then fall in love, thank Mead; in this novel they fall in bed and then they hate each other! The love scene was a cliché, unfortunately, but I'll let that slide because it turns out to be part of the over-arching story.

Next we're at a meeting where we discover the reason for Justin's imminent resurrection and the reason for Mae having to deliver him that letter: there has been a series of murders of patricians (yep, you heard me right), all without clues, except for the last one - where a hidden camera recorded what appeared to be a column of smoke which resolved into a human being long enough for a silver dagger to be thrust into the victim's heart, then the figure was gone!

Justin needs to discover who the assailant is before the next full moon when the next ritual murder is likely to be committed, and Mae, who has spent the entire meeting giving him dirty looks and hard glances, is to be his bodyguard! She resents his lie and resents this assignment. Justin agrees to return to Vancouver and take up this new job offer under certain conditions, one of which is to bring his sister to Vancouver from Alaska and the other is to take a Panamanian there as well: Tessa, a young prodigy from a family to which Justin owes his life.

I disagree with the repression of religion to the extent it's shown in this novel, but I love the fact that a writer has the guts to tell a story like this. As I said, the first few pages were a trial, and the love scene was trite, but other than that I like this novel. I was surprised to find out that Mae was Scandinavian. I'd somehow got the impression that she was of Chinese extraction, which I found refreshing, but in absence of that, I'm willing to take a story that starts out in Vancouver instead of in an almost inevitable US city! The obsession with Greek and Roman culture is a bit tiresome and it's odd, given that there are a lot of elements of Chinese and Russian communism in this world combined, rather paradoxically, with Nazi Arianism! That latter observation plays a part in the bigger story, however.

I guess I should mention that Justin hears voices in his head. There are two of them: Horatio and Magnus. Horatio is the talkative one. I had no idea for the longest time, what that was all about, but it is explained and done well. There is definitely a connection between Justin and Mae: they each harbor something beneath their physical exterior, and Mae is in denial about hers!

Mead uses Tessa in the role of the old saw of putting an outsider into the tale as a proxy for the reader. It gets a bit tedious as they pass through the airport to RUNA, but it doesn't get any worse than that, and I liked the Tessa character. Unlike Marissa Meyer in Cinder, at least Mead knows the difference between koi and coy! Lol!

Tessa is obsessing on how people look and how you tell the difference between the Romanesque patrician element and the plebeians in the populace. Why would the US suddenly go Roman? Yes, they obsessed on it when the US was put together, creating the senate and imbuing buildings with an air of faux Greco-Roman architecture, but they grew out of it. What would make them regress? This isn't explained, and it isn't just a regression, it's an obsession. We learn that all RUNA citizens (there's another word!) are supposed to have a name of Greek or Latin origin! How absurd is that? And this is supposed to be a free and much-admired nation. That seemed weird to me, and I imagine the native Americans would have something to say about that, but in what's rather a slur on them, their position isn't even touched on! The complete contradiction to this is that RUNA makes land grants to ethnic groups. This is rather a stark betrayal of the stated aim of homogenizing the populace! So this society is far from ideal.

To get through immigration control, Mae puts her hand on the glass and is read in as a citizen. That's it? This protected republic (why is it even a republic?!) lets anyone in based on hand-print alone?! Given how paranoid they seem to be, that seemed less than rational! Mae has to declare her guns which she's authorized to carry. She also declares the knife in her boot, claiming that no one expects the knife. Ri-ight - just like no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

As they exit the airport they look up at the RUNA flag which is halved in purple and maroon (really?!), and which sports a golden circlet of laurel leaves (barf!) and the Latin motto Gemma Mundi which means "I get mine on Mondays". Seriously, it means "the jewel of the world", and it’s this motto from which they get the name Gemmans. I don't know if Mead did this on purpose, but that name sounds suspiciously like 'Germans' - as in Nazi Germany! I've never understood the juvenile pretension of employing Latin mottoes, but perhaps Mead is using this to tell us something about the stability, psychology, or strength of the Republic?

Tessa has to be 'chipped' in order not to trigger alarms everywhere she goes (that's the paranoid bit!). She gets a chip embedded in the little web between thumb and forefinger of her left hand. As this is going on, we learn that there was a Mephistopheles virus (seriously? Where did that name come from?! Mead actually does explain it: Mephistopheles is a manufactured virus.) which killed half the world's population during a period known as 'The Decline'. Some of the survivors had a syndrome with gave them asthma, infertility, and bad hair! I'm not sure Mead is where she needs to be on genetics, but very few of us are, and she's vague enough that she does okay, so I'm not going to get into it on this occasion!

Justin takes this opportunity to try and resolve things with Mae over their night together, and she promptly informs him that it was a one off and it will never happen again. The problem from Justin's PoV is that there is more to their one night stand than ever Mae could guess at. He had seen a halo of some sort around her head, which has a specific meaning to him: it tells him that this woman is very special, someone he's been expecting to meet. It should trigger a binding agreement he has made, but he rationalized his way out of accepting that she was the one, and thereby didn't trigger the binding (I don't know how that works!), but he hasn’t convinced himself. Exactly what the agreement is, we aren’t told immediately.

Mae takes them to Justin's sister's new home. Since this arrangement was made only the night before, it's truly really hard to swallow that they could have recovered her from Alaska and ensconced her in such a decent home in less than 24 hours. His sister has mixed feelings about seeing him again, and Mae beats a hasty retreat, leaving them to it, joining her praetorian buddies Val and Dag at a bar. There were learn that the praetorians can’t get drunk because of an implant, but they can 'slam the implant' and get a brief buzz if they drink multiple drinks very quickly, I guess Mead hasn't heard of higher proof drinks! Surprisingly, Mae blabs all about her secret mission. Even more surprisingly, we learn that even in this perfect, ideal, Greco-Roman society, the elite praetorians have to guard monuments. Now why is that?!

But on with the story. After a few drinks with her pals, Mae heads home and is confronted with a Finnish cosa nostra guy (Finnish mafia?! Shouldn't that be Meidän asia?!) who shows her a pic and gives her a hair sample. This is a pet project of Mae's, where she is trying to track down her niece (we learn the fascinating story later), for now we learn that price of discovering where this child can be found is a small favor, something which Mae is disinclined to do - and even more so when she later learns what this favor is!

Justin, along with Mae and Tessa takes the video of the 'smoke assassin' to a friend in Portland and leaves it with him - this is an 'only copy' original, and he leaves it unattended with someone outside the organization! That seemed to me to be plain foolishness. When a writer writes something like this, it's hard to tell if they intended it to be that way, or if they simply didn't think about what they were writing. Since I don't know Mead - that is, I haven't read anything of hers prior to this - I can't comment on it other than to than to highlight it for future consideration.

And I think that's enough deep detail for this novel, otherwise I'll be telling you the entire story and robbing Mead of the opportunity to tell it her way, which I won't do. I think I already spilled a bit more than I intended, but this story grabbed me and I loved it. It would be unnatural if I didn't want to spread the joy! I can't tell you how satisfying it was, after having been read some of the stories I've fallen into of late only to find them disappointing or so-so. This one was definitely a cut above far too many of the others and kept me coming back for more. Now I'm actually annoyed that it's over! But it's up to you to decide whether you find Mead a worth read, and I hope this helps especially since you know, if you've been following me, that I'm far from a push-over reviewer and definitely not a rubber stamp.

Don't think I had no issues with this story! It would be a rarity indeed if I didn't, but they were small enough or unobtrusive enough that they typically didn't toss me back out into reality, and after a while I became so fond of the story that I was willing to let some things go by that I might have hung up on had I liked the story less than I did.

"And the loose Greco-Roman models the country had adopted had provided a new, all-encompassing culture that everyone could be a part of." That was one which didn't ring true! A culture that favors Greece and Rome over anyone's actual culture, including native American, and one that forces its citizens to choose a name that in the majority of cases has nothing whatsoever to do with their own culture? Why would anyone come up with a system like that? That bit took the sweet SoD (suspension of disbelief) right out from under me and dropped me harshly on rough concrete. And it was glaringly apparent when Tessa started school and was subject to a level of condescension that amounted to bullying. This was an integral part of the story, so it made me annoyed, but not with the author!

I loved the Poppy character, especially in that the name contrasted with the kind of person she was, but I have to say that I found it out of place, given what we've been told about those cultural pressures imposed by the state, that Tessa's best friend in school is someone named Poppy, which isn’t a Greco-Roman name at all. How did she get to be called that? Maybe we'll find out. There's a slight oddity in the relationship between the two, revealed in this sentence: "Usually, Tessa conceded to her friend's advice..." - I'm wondering if that wouldn't sound better as "Usually, Tessa acceded to her friend's advice...", but that doesn't bother me as much as the real question here: given the extremely limited time the two of them have known each other at that point, does such a sentence make any sense at all?!

Mae drops into a detailed reminiscence about her intimate relationship with Porfirio (seriously?!). He's the fellow praetorian and sometime lover who was apparently killed due to her mistake. Again I skipped this completely and entirely and didn't miss it. I could feel a mix of nausea and boredom growing as soon as I saw that flashback coming on! This is the kind of tale where I'm really not interested in any back-story: I just want to get on with the present story! However, there is a bit that's more acceptable later, where Mae's friends Dag and Val explain to Justin just what happened, and this explains a lot of things which had been bothering me. This tête-à-tête is brought about through an interesting escapade of Tessa's!

But enough! I could ramble all day about this if you were foolish enough to let me! In short I loved it and look forward to Richelle Mead's next excursion into this territory. I hope it won't be too long.

The After Girls by Leah Konen

Title: The After Girls
Author: Leah Konen
Publisher: Adams Media Corporation
Rating: worthy!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of my reviews so far, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley, and is available now.

I am not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, I don't feel comfortable going into anywhere near as much detail over it as I have with the older books I've been reviewing! I cannot rob the author of her story, so this is shorter, but most probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

This novel is very well written, although there are a few technical glitches I've noticed, FYI the author and editor:

"There were a lot of places like around here" (p5) I suspect it should be "There were a lot of places like that around here".

There's a missed carriage-return between two speeches from different characters (p98).

"Just let me know I you need me" should be "Just let me know if you need me, presumably (p106).

"...looking at Ella friend in the mirror…" (p158) perhaps ought to be "...looking at her friend in the mirror...", maybe?

"The two of them tread quietly..." (p176) ought to be "The two of them trod quietly..." (wrong tense)?

"She'd thought that his flirtation was Ella was cute…" (p234) should be (I think) "She'd thought that his flirtation with Ella was cute…"

" "He's just such a dick", he said... " (p258) should be, I suspect, " "He's just such a dick", she said... "

"She looked read the words of her song…" (p259), maybe should read "She read the words of her song…"? (remove 'looked')

Other than that, it’s really well written. I liked the way I was pulled into the story, and seduced into caring about the characters, about who they are, what they're going through, how they came to be this way. There's no fakery here. Except for some small issues discussed later, you can believe these people are real, and accept that they feel as they do and behave as they will. It's hard to believe that I'm excited about reading what is, at heart, a depressing story! Nicely done!

The story begins when three friends, in the summer they have before they all go off to college, lose one of their number to suicide. Astrid apparently poisoned herself in the tiny one-room derelict cabin in the woods where the three of them used to meet. Ella found her, and she and Sydney are dealing with this horrific loss in strikingly different ways. The novel alternates between Ella's PoV and Sydney's PoV, but it's all told in third person. Ella is almost paralyzed by Astrid's death, not dealing with it at all well, seeing a cold, black hole everywhere in her life where Astrid should be, whereas Sydney is badly hurt by it, but trying to keep her life from sliding away because of it.

Both of them feel awful in that they think they should have seen this coming: that they should have detected signs; have been able to tell that things were wrong, and have been able to intercept this event and prevent it, and as it turns out, yes, they should have! Ella feels worse at least in part because she found the body. Sydney wasn't with her that day, and she feels bad about that. Ella is having bad dreams about Astrid. Both of them have family and boyfriends, but none of that seems to help; their boyfriends in particular are essentially blind to what they're going through, but the two young women don’t seem to be able to lean on each other, either.

Sydney is in a three-piece folk band, which gives her something to focus on. Ella, unfortunately, has to go back to work at the coffee shop owned by Astrid's mom, Grace, where she worked regularly with Astrid. Astrid's mom has pretty much shut down. She lost her husband some years before, and now Astrid, and it's looking like Grace has pretty much left, too. Her sister comes to stay for a while, and brings Astrid's cousin, Jake, who starts to become friends with Ella, but what gets really weird is when Ella leaves a message on Astrid's F-book page. She wanted to ask why this happened, but chickened out and instead posted "I miss you". The last thing she expected was for Astrid to reply in kind.

Ella is invited by Jake to come over and eat with Astrid's family. This highlights an interesting theme in this novel which is that it’s really about the young people. The adults are nothing but vaguely sketched background figures which is fine, normally, for a YA novel, but in this particular story, where someone has died and made a huge impact, I find Ella's mom's lack of engagement with Ella to be disturbing, especially in light of the fact that there is no hint of any counseling going on, or even being discussed. They're all out of school so a school counselor isn't obviously in the picture, but there's neither sign of such a person taking the initiative and contacting these young women, nor of any other kind of support system here at all, and Ella's mom seems really out of her life. Just saying! There;s also a notable lack of focus on Astrid;s mom, but I have no explanation for this, given what's going on with her.

Anyway, Ella inevitably ends up in Astrid's room and Grace finds her there and rather gracelessly loses it, essentially throwing Ella out of the house. Like a child, Ella runs off into the woods and goes into the cabin, where she finds photos of the three of them on the floor where Sydney left them, and it freaks her out. She hurries over to Sydney's place and tells her what's going on, so the next day they visit the cabin and all the photos are back up on the walls! This freaks out Ella even more, but not Sydney who thinks it’s a sick joke - the photos, the F-book comments, the phone calls - perpetrated by someone playing a trick on Ella, so Ella loses it with Sydney! Now that they're rather on the slide, Jake takes up the slack, inviting Ella to a concert, which she really enjoys. It's almost as if he planned it that way...!

So I have to wonder not only what cousin Jake is up to but also what mom Grace is up to. The pills Astrid used to kill herself were from Grace's large collection of anti-depressants. We've had it revealed that Grace was really, really strict with her - forbidding her to cut her hair, for example, and other eccentricities. Is it possible that Grace really isn’t the sweet second mom which Ella has always accepted her as? Is it possible she killed Astrid for some perceived infraction of her rules? I have to admit that this has crossed my mind! Is Astrid really communicating from the grave or is Sydney right about it all being a sick joke? What if Astrid was less of a victim than a victimizer? Or is Ella so far over the edge that she's doing all of this to herself? She has stolen Astrid's journal, after all.... These are a few of the wild thoughts which ran through my mind during my reading of this novel!

I have a bit of an issue with how the adults relate to the girls in this novel, particularly to Ella. She's talked to by her mom and by Grace and by Caroline (Grace's sister, Jake's mom) like she's a lot younger than 17! OTOH, Ella behaves as if she's a lot younger than 17! I don’t know if that's intentional, or if it's just inappropriately written, but I certainly wouldn’t like being called "sweetie" were I seventeen, male or female. Maybe that's just me!

Somehow Ella talks Sydney and Jake into having a séance at the cabin, and this novel takes a decidedly darker turn after that. There are surprising revelations about Astrid, missing pages from her journal, Sydney's change of heart about Ella's perspective. But what about Ella's shameful memory, after all her denials to herself that she had known anything was wrong, of a truly important interaction with Astrid that should have told her something? Sydney undergoes this same revelation - she should also have noticed something about Astrid given an interaction they had. Both Ella and Sydney had been blind, or distracted, or both, and when the final revelation comes, it’s almost as painful as anything else they've experienced.

I am going to recommend this one because of the quality of the writing and the characterizations; it's so well done that I was willing to forgive some loose ends and red herrings! Go ahead - give it a try and see what you think!