One thing about Merrow's Glastonbury books: they make a person want to visit the tor, even a person who would take a hard pass on the solstice celebraOne thing about Merrow's Glastonbury books: they make a person want to visit the tor, even a person who would take a hard pass on the solstice celebration.
Anyway, this is a nice sequel to Face Blind: Adam and Corin's bearded biker pal Scratch from that book -- Si or Simon, mostly, in Fool Me Twice -- gives refuge to his old boyfriend, Zig. "Refuge" because Zig, who's been earning a legitimate living, goes on the run when his criminal dad comes looking for him. It goes without saying, probably, that Simon and Zig had an ugly parting years back, and that Si has no special reason to believe that Zig isn't still working for his petty-crime-lord pa. Plus, Si's friends know enough about the history to greet Zig's reappearance with suspicion and hostility.
I was afraid Fool Me Twice was going to have one of those Dark Secret plots in which the Secret is hidden just long enough to blow up the MCs' renewed relationship, so I'll spoil things to the extent of saying that Zig comes clean early on -- well, mostly clean; clean enough to be going on with. And a feature I liked very much is that Zig's growing connections to the people he meets in Glastonbury, and to the town's institutions (library and pub, especially) illuminate the sheer loneliness of the life his father gave him, in which "friends" are just people to be milked for information, Zig himself is unvalued, and no one is really to be trusted. When Zig's father does show up with a view to ruining Zig's new life, friends step in to care for him and protect him. Zig can scarcely believe it, and as for me I teared up.
A smallish negative, but one I could have done without, is the use of the word "oriental." Possibly it's not considered offensive in the UK? But for a US reader, it jars. I hope Merrow considers changing it and has time before publication to do so.
An especially moving installment for me, because of Gabe's distress after witnessing Nemec's defenestration. Full marks to the author for conveying thAn especially moving installment for me, because of Gabe's distress after witnessing Nemec's defenestration. Full marks to the author for conveying the horror without resorting to gory description -- of course, this is possible partly because we know Gabe so well by this point, and the narrative hews so closely to his POV; but that in itself tells you how good the characterization is.
He is such an endearing character, and also his narrative style would 100% make you want to put your hand over his mouth sometimes if that was what it took to get him to stop....more
The opening scene of "Pulling Strings" has its antihero, a magic-using hitman named Fitch, nearly oversleeping for -- let's call it an appointment. ThThe opening scene of "Pulling Strings" has its antihero, a magic-using hitman named Fitch, nearly oversleeping for -- let's call it an appointment. This turns out to be his thirtieth killing, and although he's less than fully committed to his employment situation, I'd still expect a competent hitman to do a little research in advance of the job. So I did a double-take when he entered his target's office building and was "relieved to find no receptionist."
(Buildings generally have doorpeople and/or security guards rather than receptionists, anyway, but let that pass -- except, why isn't there a security guard or six?)
Once I started to pick at the plotting, more and more problems presented themselves. Fitch is notorious -- there's even a fandom, with fanart -- and people apparently know what he looks like, but for some reason it's a big problem that he's recognized while carrying out this hit. But if it's a problem for him to be recognized, then why hasn't he made any effort at disguise? (Something else that could have been planned in advance.)
The narrative then makes a point of the victim's ugliness and his PA's age (old women, ew, amirite?) and treats both of them as somewhat contemptible. I didn't love that.
Fitch sometimes seems to understand that he was coerced into joining the criminal gang run by Grimm, yet sometimes he either doesn't remember or it doesn't matter: I couldn't tell. There's a prison break during which Grimm is nearly killed; Fitch saves his life, but why? Grimm is essentially holding Fitch's younger brother hostage, and since he seems to be the linchpin of the whole enterprise, wouldn't it be expedient to let him die and thus throw the gang into disarray?
The worldbuilding was murky, too -- I didn't have a clear picture of the city where the action took place, or of the context for the politics that inform Grimm's ambitions. I wasn't even sure whether "the Capitol" was a very large building or a consequence of confusion between capitols and capitals.
Two stars because in spite of everything I did want to find out what happened next. On the other hand, I don't want to find out badly enough to continue the series.
So: Ulysses and Sam have moved in together; Ulysses's beloved brother Laz is back from somewhere in SoutheastThis series is just so underappreciated.
So: Ulysses and Sam have moved in together; Ulysses's beloved brother Laz is back from somewhere in Southeast Asia (Thailand), where he's been doing -- something? as a member of the US Air Force; Laz has PTSD and is also hurt and angry that Ulysses hasn't kept him up-to-date with Sam's existence either as romantic partner or as experimental subject/ex-deity (well, sort of ex); some shady people are pursuing Sam, and their pursuit has something to do with the deity business; oh, and the psychic bond between Ulysses and Sam has gone terrifyingly haywire.
Also, we're in Madison, Wisconsin, in around 1971, and someone recently blew up the UW physics building. And Vikram and Sita, the new neighbors, are alarming to Sam, each in their own way.
That's! a lot! of ingredients! But -- having read eaten up the first two in the series, I was well placed to keep track of them, and anyway Sam and Ulysses are so smart, so thoughtful, so funny, and so in love, that I would happily read about them just having a relationship and working through difficulties as they arise (see "haywire bond," above) even if nothing else was going on. The closing scene between them is better than any real-life event in that category (being cryptic on purpose here) I've ever attended. I'm a little jealous, TBH.
I had nits to pick in the previous books concerning plot points; this time I've really only got one, which is that I don't understand why (view spoiler)[Ulysses doesn't summon Dr. Ranganathan's ghost the minute his grandmother mentions her name in connection with the deity-making experiments that produced Sam, rather than waiting till it comes up again later (hide spoiler)]. But for all the space that spoiler took up, it wasn't such a big deal; just, we nitpickers gotta pick nits.
Laz's book is due out later this year, with a fourth Sam/Ulysses installment after that. I can't wait to find out what happened to Laz in Thailand, and how the lurking menace around Sam & U will be dispelled.
First things first: Is "Thunder Clap" an STI joke? Second things second: Why does Hastings Rock have "such a dingy little library"?
And now to the two mFirst things first: Is "Thunder Clap" an STI joke? Second things second: Why does Hastings Rock have "such a dingy little library"?
And now to the two mysteries: 1. Who killed the egregious Marshall Crowe, self-inserting author of the Chase Thunder mystery series? (Pause here to appreciate GA's gift for comic naming. Pippi and Stephen, OMG.) 2. WTF is up with Deputy Bobby, who is refusing / canceling / no-showing for all social occasions and instead doing nothing but taking extra shifts, working out, and surfing? And this after Doom Magnet ended on such a promising note? I thought maaaaaaaybe he and Dash were done pining, though since this is Gregory Ashe we're talking about, deep down inside I knew better.
Anyway, since in this installment of the Last Picks series Bobby is conspicuous mainly by his absence, the narrative spends most of its time on the mystery. This, to be fair, is perfectly entertaining -- I gulped down Broken Bird (yikes, that sounds terrible) as fast as I could, just as I do everything GA writes. There was much groan-laughing over Pippi and her true-crime ?podcasting? ?YouTubing? ambitions. But, like every other reader of Ashe's books, I've been trained to invest heavily in (read: obsess over) his couples, so the real payoff for me came not when Bobby and Dash arrested the murderer but when they finally had the conversation that cleared the air between them. -- Cleared it temporarily, I presume, because again: Gregory Ashe.
[ETA: I forgot to say how much I love it that in every book, when Dash confronts the murderer, they interrupt his analysis of the crime over and over and over again. Ugh so rude. Poor Dash never gets to lay out his analysis!]
Thanks, as always, to GA for the ARC, these are my honest blatherings, etc....more
Serious scholar of ancient history + dry, acidulous, and punning sense of humor + narrator perfectly in tune with the work. But that word "serious" isSerious scholar of ancient history + dry, acidulous, and punning sense of humor + narrator perfectly in tune with the work. But that word "serious" is crucial, because although Southon cracks a lot of jokes at the expense of upper-class Romans, she's got plenty to say about the sheer savagery of Roman civilization. I might not have thought there was a system of slavery worse than US chattel slavery, for example -- especially because freedmen were more of a thing in ancient Rome -- but wow was I wrong about that. Consider that when a US enslaver was killed by one of the people he enslaved, it was not the practice to crucify all of the people "owned" by that enslaver. Yes, crucify. Yes, all.
One of Southon's throughlines is that in the view of upper-class Romans, most people (slaves, actors, sex workers, bakers, basically anyone who wasn't one of them) had no special right to life, or more specifically to not be killed, and furthermore to not be killed in the cruelest way possible. Hence not only crucifixion but also gladiatorial "games," the killing of criminals by hungry and/or terrified beasts, and reenactments of famous battles staged for entertainment, death of combatants not optional. The portions of "A Fatal Thing" in which Southon discusses the kinds of killing that arose from elite Romans' understanding of what made a homicide murder rather than justified retribution or simple entertainment are horrific. No cracking of jokes here.
I fear that the above may make "A Fatal Thing" sound like nothing more than bloodthirsty recitation of Roman crimes. No. First of all, there's that throughline considering how murder is defined and what justifies any kind of killing, under what circumstances. Second, upper-class Romans have successfully seeded a popular image of themselves as dignified, upright, in many ways admirable and virtuous.
Think of Cicero: it's pretty well known that he had not only a talent for oratory but also a gigantic ego; now how does it affect our image of him to remember that he attended and apparently enjoyed gladiatorial spectacles and beast killings? The ever so respectable (and also radically right-wing) Cato Institute is named for, as Southon puts it, "a man so dreadful even the Romans barely liked him." Here's a quotation from a public-domain translation of his De agri cultura: "Sell worn-out oxen, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, hides, an old wagon, old tools, an old slave, a sickly slave, and whatever else is superfluous." Also, when slaves are sick their rations should be cut back. What an admirable dude.
A terrific book, sharp, insightful, often appalling, excellent material to aim at anyone in danger of feeling too much esteem for those legendary "classical virtues."...more
Unlike many of GA's fans, I have always been fond of Nico -- fight me, Nico-haters! -- so am very glad to have his backstory and also to watch his relUnlike many of GA's fans, I have always been fond of Nico -- fight me, Nico-haters! -- so am very glad to have his backstory and also to watch his relationship with Jadon take shape. Now I'm sitting here itemizing all the aspects of this book I loved, but as I have a work deadline I shall say only that I bitterly resent Gregory Ashe for introducing me to Kierkegaard, whom I'm now evidently going to have to read, or at least read about. Ugh, why does Nico have to be so smart.
Four stars rather than five because this wasn't quite as polished, technically, as most of GA's books, and because there was one post-quarrel resolution that I thought came too easily. ...more
I've never read a "cozy mystery" before, and I'd never have begun except that this is Gregory Ashe, for whom I am a notorious stan. So, let's face it,I've never read a "cozy mystery" before, and I'd never have begun except that this is Gregory Ashe, for whom I am a notorious stan. So, let's face it, I'll be reading this series, and it will be fun ... but on the basis of my n of 1 so far, cozy mysteries are never going to be anything I seek out by any other writer.
The mystery here is enjoyably twisty and the mansion setting is Ridiculous Gothic turned up to 11 (secret passageways galore!). Dash x smoldering looks exchanged with brown-eyed, less than happily partnered Deputy Bobby: promise of future romance with, I assume, less mutual damage inflicted than by GA's other couples (looking at you, J-H and Emery). I loved Fox, the funniest drama llama every to drama:
“Dashiell is going to be joining us at Hemlock House, Fox. Do you have any words of wisdom for him as he settles in at Hastings Rock?”
“Never love or cherish or hope for anything,” Fox said in a broken voice. “Life is a trap.”
My chief reason for giving Mystery Magnet four stars rather than five -- because, really, even if cozy mystery is never ever going to be a go-to genre for me, I can identify good work when I see it -- is the character of Millie. Think Shaw, but minus the smarts and sensitivity: she's loud and intrusive and she comes off as frankly stupid. I quailed every time she showed up and if GA decides to kill her off, or at least put her on a regular dose of benzodiazepines, I will be glad.
Many thanks, as always, to GA for the ARC. Despite Millie....more
In theory, I should be giving this four stars rather than five. Because the premise is, holy cats, quite a stretch: Icarus's father, Angus, has raisedIn theory, I should be giving this four stars rather than five. Because the premise is, holy cats, quite a stretch: Icarus's father, Angus, has raised him to become a burglar. At Angus's behest, Icarus steals artworks from Stuart Black's mansion (he gets in by climbing up the outer wall) and replaces them with forgeries made by Angus. He's been at this since middle school. Angus's reasons are worthy of a Jacobean revenge play, which isn't a complaint but does give you an idea of the OTT-ness of it all. The really, truly, super weird version of Catholicism practiced by Angus and Icarus, ditto. They pray in Latin, for Pete's sake.
It turns out that Mr. Black has a son, whom he's keeping prisoner for reasons that are explained but that don't necessarily make, you know, all the legal sense in the world. The prince in the tower is named Helios. Is this seeming a little on the nose? Just wait till you get to the climactic events.
Besides all this there's the disjuncture between Icarus's life as a burglar and his life as a senior in high school, where he is, for the first time in his life, beginning to make friends, something that his father has forbidden him because of the need to keep their life of crime a secret. But Icarus is, among other things, a teenager, and he's begun to resent his father's control over his life.
This is bonkers, right? But here's the thing: Icarus is one of the most endearing characters I've read about in some time. He's smart, generous, lonely, unfailingly kind, brave, and hungry for human connection; all the OTT trappings are ultimately in service of the book's heart, which is the story of how Icarus begins to form those connections apart from his father and to nourish friendship and community. And, of course, to rescue the prince in the tower.
A strange, wonderful book that might remind you of a sweeter-natured sibling of Daniel May's books -- some of the dialogue, in particular, reminded me of May. File under Not for Everybody, but lucky you if it's for you.
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperTeen for the ARC....more
I could write a long review, or I could simply say that as soon as I finished Death in the Spires, I got grumpy, and the reason I got grumpy was that I could write a long review, or I could simply say that as soon as I finished Death in the Spires, I got grumpy, and the reason I got grumpy was that I could no longer read Death in the Spires for the first time.
Twisty plot: check. Extraordinarily appealing detective with morally complicated love interest: check. Broody setting: check. Satisfying and unexpected form of justice: check.
At the end of the book mention is made of "K.J. Charles's next page-turning historical mystery." Show of hands for more of brave, big-hearted Jem? -- Yes, I thought so.
Thanks to Storm Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.
I often find, with Gregory Ashe's books, that I have to work my way up to reading them or take breaks from them. What with, you know, the suspense andI often find, with Gregory Ashe's books, that I have to work my way up to reading them or take breaks from them. What with, you know, the suspense and the emotional intensity and the general rough ride.
As for The Evening Wolves, I fled for a solid week about two chapters in, because John-Henry Somerset had just been arrested for child porn. False-accusation narratives terrify me anyway, and the secondhand shame and humiliation (child porn, FFS!) just about undid me. Mantra: Greg Ashe always pulls it out of the fire at the last minute. Greg Ashe always pulls it out of the fire at the last minute. Greg Ashe ...
Yes. Yes, he pulled it out of the fire. By the way, this is also the Hazard-and-Somerset novel for anyone who might just possibly have felt that maaaaaaaaaaaybe John-Henry has gotten off a little lightly for his atrocious behavior as a teenage bully and overall golden boy whose rich, influential parents can always make his troubles go away. Here's the reckoning, folks.
*laughs weakly*
Also -- here's a teaser, because I'm a terrible person -- you know how Shaw is always going on about how he and Emery are soulmates? They are. Oh, they are.
Thanks to GA for the ARC; this is my honest, and very shook up, opinion. ...more
Fabulous premise: widower (Linc) falls in love with the recipient (Milo) of his dead wife's donated heart. Just take a moment to contemplate the angstFabulous premise: widower (Linc) falls in love with the recipient (Milo) of his dead wife's donated heart. Just take a moment to contemplate the angst. Beautiful, right? And there's a meeting between Milo and his cardiologist that suggests Laura Jordan did some research into heart transplants; it's always so encouraging when a writer seems to be getting their facts straight. Plus, Linc has a Teancum Leon-like habit of dropping arcane, depressing scientific facts into conversations, which is automatically endearing for fans of Gregory Ashe's Lion and Lamb series. Plus the dialogue between Linc and Milo is often sharply funny, which -- hey, wait:
A (white) widower who teaches Shakespeare, owns a gun, and has a history of bar fights reluctantly falls for a younger (brown) man, who's built much smaller than the widower and has a grade-A praise kink; they chirp each other about the age difference; the widower is unfamiliar with many of the younger man's cultural references.
The light dawns: this is First Quarto fanfic with the serial numbers not very thoroughly filed off.
This would be fine, honestly. Greg Ashe himself gave Cold, Cold Heart a warm review here on GR, so clearly he doesn't have a problem with it. I like GA a lot both as a writer and as a person, so I kinda hope he's not reading my reviews, because I am here to dissent. Things fall apart for a couple of reasons.
1. Like GA's Theo, Linc has a temper; unfortunately, he turns it on Milo, who has escaped from a physically abusive partner and consequently is terrified by being shouted at. I have no personal experience of intimate partner abuse, and I was cringing, so that gives you an idea of how intense "being shouted at" gets. As a fan of GA's Hazard and Somerset series, I have a high tolerance for love stories involving crappy anger management, but in the context of Milo's history, Linc's behavior tipped over into outright abuse. I was trying to let this go, because Laura Jordan really does have a knack for sharp dialogue and building sexual tension, plus I'm a sucker for sexuality awakenings, but ...
2. Every single goddamn woman Milo and Linc encounter in the course of their investigation is a caricature. Also every single goddamn woman Linc's best friend sets him up on dates with before Milo enters the picture. A subtle pattern begins to emerge, etc. And ...
3. The investigation itself. The way Linc's dead wife encoded her speculations is a little eyerolly, but I could just about stretch my suspension of disbelief that far. I lost faith at the point where M&L are looking for information about someone whose first name, Jimbo, is almost all they know, though they have reason to think he might have done something newsworthy in the past. They go to the library (good) in order to research articles in the local newspaper (good), and ask for the last three years' worth of "archives," because that's when the crime they're investigating took place (okay, I guess, although why they're so sure Jimbo didn't make the news before that is unclear). But -- here comes the WUT moment -- they start looking through "every edition of the Willow Falls Herald from three years ago filed under J." No, they're not looking through an index, but through the actual issues, and anyway as you might've noticed, "Jimbo" is not a surname. Also, this is not a historical novel, but the records are on microfilm, which ... never mind.
So, look, I feel a little bad about negatively reviewing a book by someone who's clearly a huge fan of a writer I'm also a huge fan of. And I love fanfic. But when it comes down to it, I think if you're publishing a mystery with a view to making some money off it, you have an obligation to make the investigation and solution credible. Two and a half stars, rounded up because the aspects of this that were good really were good. ...more
The third in an odd little series, and I don't mean that as an insult -- I mean that the whole Mont Blanc series is almost exactly the opposite of whaThe third in an odd little series, and I don't mean that as an insult -- I mean that the whole Mont Blanc series is almost exactly the opposite of what you might expect from a romance/mystery whose MCs are a police forensics specialist (the POV character) and an elite bodyguard. Low-key, light on the violence (little to none of which is committed by the MCs), fade-to-black, with slow, low-drama relationship development during which the MCs -- again, quietly! -- open up to each other emotionally and deepen their commitment. You could call Annick Trent the anti-Gregory Ashe. (Which is also not an insult to Gregory Ashe!)
Maybe the Swiss/French setting helps explain the tone here, who knows.
I feel a little protective of these books. I read the second one in the wrong mood and was somewhat bored; but on revisiting the series I don't think it's boring at all. It could seem that way if you approach it expecting the MCs to run around and punch people, or at least unmask an Uncle-Ronnie-level villain (IYKYK); but if you're looking for quiet books in which grown people think things through and have feelings, they're lovely, really....more
Half price in the winter Smashwords sale. The opening struck me as a tad rushed but there was also something appealing about the POV MC and the prose Half price in the winter Smashwords sale. The opening struck me as a tad rushed but there was also something appealing about the POV MC and the prose was looking good, so I took a flyer on it, and let's put it this way: I am 100% buying the next in the series when it comes out.
I don't think I have it in me to write an extensive review tonight, so resorting to lazy itemization:
- murder mystery in which the perspective is decidedly suspicious of the police as an institution - academic (Daniel Rosenbaum)/ auto mechanic (Tony d'Angelo) - but the auto mechanic isn't an Alpha Male - neither is the academic - oh yeah, the passages describing the academic's field and his research interests are (wait for it!) smart and interesting! NO REALLY - Daniel's cat is named Worf - Worf loves tuna but "Daniel tries to keep the tuna for special occasions out of a halfhearted hope he’s somehow helping with climate change and chronic overfishing at least a little bit." - Tony doesn't have a thing for cars just because he knows how to fix them - there are no hardbodies to be seen (Tony's muscly, for example, but he's also got a bit of a belly, and Daniel's self-conscious about his own looks) - character growth! - what I think of as unaffected diversity, in that there are characters of color who are actual characters and whose experiences of race aren't just life lessons for the white characters - lots of slyly funny bits, like "the 9W Motel, which is scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as Daniel’s concerned. Naming the motel after the road it’s on is tantamount to admitting its only claim to fame is being better than sleeping rough."
Mind you, there were annoyances! Daniel's anxious overthinking leads him into pointless suspicions, to a degree that I found exasperating; also, a couple of the things that make him suspicious have blindingly obvious explanations -- as in, so blindingly obvious that I spotted them, and I am pants at solving murder mysteries. I never know who did it.
. . . I knew who did it. Though, to be fair, S.B. Barnes dropped the clues neatly and subtly; I identified the murderer only by meta means, namely that (view spoiler)[they seemed like the least likely suspect (hide spoiler)].
Also the denouement was a bit OTT (but maybe that was intentional? I'm not sure).
So, you know, 4.5 stars? But rounding up, because this was a delight even though I read it while visiting my er challenging mother-in-law, and then in coach on the itty-bitty jet home, and a book that you can enjoy under these conditions has a lot going for it....more
Full review maybe TK, depending on time constraints, but I'll just say that I bought this halfway through the library loan, Daniel is heroic but he's Full review maybe TK, depending on time constraints, but I'll just say that I bought this halfway through the library loan, Daniel is heroic but he's basically a guy who's smart and brave, not an Uplifting Disabled Person, and most of the one-star reviews seem to be from readers pissed off by the progressive politics (Daniel's and, obviously, the author's). Which: eat my whole ass.
This can't be called "own voices," because Leitch doesn't have spinal muscular atrophy, but in his afterword he describes his personal connection and the research he did. And, as Daniel himself says, most people are one bad fall away from using a wheelchair, and all of us are going to die, so there's that. I tagged this "heartbreaking" because there's no getting around Daniel's limited life expectancy, I was halfway in love with him by the time I was a couple of chapters in, and the nature of the plot required -- this really isn't a spoiler -- that Daniel undergoes Some Things.
The secondary characters are also terrific: Daniel's friend Travis; his caregiver and friend Marjani; and Daniel's mother....more
Although it's Shaw who's suffering more overtly in Spoil of Beasts -- unregulated empathy is a bitch when you're embroiled in a case even more awful tAlthough it's Shaw who's suffering more overtly in Spoil of Beasts -- unregulated empathy is a bitch when you're embroiled in a case even more awful than the usual GA-inflicted baseline -- this is really North's book.
A running theme of the Borealis series is the contrast in how the MCs approach masculinity. Shaw pretty much blows it up, with his hair in a bun, his feet in espadrilles, and his in-between in capri pants but, thank you very much, freeballing; his emotions clear and accessible to himself and everyone around him; and his shadow side, ruthlessly protective of North. (IYKYK.) For all the difficulties his empathy and his history of trauma cause him, if I had to decide whether he or North was a less troubled soul, I would say it was Shaw, because North is so locked in struggle with his own manhood that he often can't seem to even see the struggle.
In The Spoil of Beasts, he's tearing himself to pieces and taking it out on everyone around him. His behavior toward everyone except Shaw (and Tean, because even someone who's constantly lashing out in pain just can't make a target of Tean) is appalling -- he's beyond acting like an asshole, he's just plain nasty. Shaw reminds him repeatedly that the people he's treating so badly are their friends, but North can't seem to hear it, and honestly I got to the point where I wondered why any of them were putting up with him anymore, Hazard and Somerset possibly excepted because they have a longer acquaintance with him. The more frightened and worried for Shaw North gets, the less access he has to those feelings and the more he lashes out.
This being a Gregory Ashe novel, of course things turn around in the end. The scenes in which Hazard offers North friendship and then North and Shaw finally talk properly broke my heart: North manages to acknowledge his emotions to himself even if he can't manage to express them fully in words. And the comic-relief set piece that follows, in which all eight men go out drinking and dancing (etc. etc.) till dawn, made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe.
But for me that pivot point is exactly the problem that keeps me from delivering the straight 5 stars I can usually throw at a GA book without a second thought. Because we're in North or Shaw's head throughout, we can tell how much North is suffering and we can feel for him the way we'd feel for any injured animal that bites. But the trouble is that his wretchedness isn't visible from the outside -- there's a hint in the narrative that Jem sees North's ... call it wounded gentleness, but it's a mystery to me why Theo, for example, would see any redeeming features in him, especially after he responds so viciously after (view spoiler)[Auggie saves his and Shaw's lives (hide spoiler)].
I would have liked, or let's say needed, a few more moments in which North's asshole facade cracked in front of other people to make me believe in their ability to forgive and even enjoy his sharp tongue. In a rate-this-author-against-themself moment, I'm giving this 4.5 stars and rounding up, rather than my usual blissed-out 5 stars.
It's the year 1087 and the city of Bari has two problems: (1) an epidemic of the pox; (2) insufficient tourist revenue. Inconveniently for himself, thIt's the year 1087 and the city of Bari has two problems: (1) an epidemic of the pox; (2) insufficient tourist revenue. Inconveniently for himself, the monk Nicephorus has a dream about St. Nicholas, which he takes to mean that he should go into the city and tend the sick, but which the Barese powers that be decide, conveniently for them, signifies that they should hire the Tartar saint-hunter Tyun to [euphemism incoming] collect the saint's bones from the city of Myra, where they have lain for hundreds of years giving off a sweet ichor that has some beneficial effect or other, such as for example being saleable.
Nicephorus is sent off with Tyun in the good ship, I kid you not, Epiphany.
The subsequent adventures have a picaresque quality -- road trip, mayhem, more mayhem, yet more mayhem. I'm not, in general, a fan of the picaresque; Lazarillo de Tormes et al. bored me to tears. Nicked did not bore me for one single solitary second, however. It's funny, for starters, with just the right touches of bitterness and salt. Take, for instance, the account of how St. Nicholas saved the city of Myra during a famine, by performing a variation of the loaves-and-fishes miracle. It ends like this:
So Myra was saved. I am not sure what they did about the famine down the coast a few miles at Antiphellos or Phoinike.
God’s mercy is infinite— an infinite eye— which, seeing all, favors none, and makes no particular distinction in quality between those who eat and those who starve.
Nicephorus is dryly observant, honest, and kind-hearted (and he mostly manages to hang on to his moral compass throughout -- I say mostly; he's surprisingly good at lying by telling the strict truth). Tyun the saint-hunter is harder to describe; he's amoral, he's out for the shiny shiny ducats, and he tells Nicephorus awful stories about his childhood that he later claims he made up, except that occasionally he finds himself unable to maintain a blithe tale-telling air, which suggests that some truth is creeping in around the edges. I was fascinated by the way Anderson depicted the growth of their relationship, with minimal direct narration of their feelings. They talk; they touch each other more than necessary, though only Nicephorus appears to be at all disconcerted by this; most tellingly, we see other people seeing them -- only that; we're not told exactly what they see, only that they see. It's not a "romance" as a 21st-century reader expects a romance to unfold. Rather, Anderson uses storytelling and characterization in a way that feels authentic for the period. (I don't mean that it is authentic, exactly, but it's well suited.)
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Nicked is that it hews closely -- Tyun's dog-headed pal/crewman Reprobus aside -- to real historical events. Medieval Europeans got up to a lot of shady shenanigans with respect to the touristic value of holy relics, this I knew, but I would have said the story of St. Nicholas's leaky bones was preposterous if Anderson's afterword hadn't set me straight.
A marvel of a book on every level. Thanks to Pantheon and NetGalley for the ARC.
ETA: This is one of those books where it's a bad idea for me to so much as glance in the direction of the negative reviews, because my blood pressure immediately starts climbing. Make of that what you will. ...more
Ben Austen traces the history of parole along two routes: (1) the rise of mass incarceration, increasingly harsh sentencing, and uglier conditions of Ben Austen traces the history of parole along two routes: (1) the rise of mass incarceration, increasingly harsh sentencing, and uglier conditions of imprisonment; (2) the stories of two men imprisoned for decades, who after repeated parole hearings are finally freed.
Why, he invites us to ask, is loss of freedom not in itself a sufficient punishment? Why must the conditions of confinement be brutal?
A few items from my notes:
Decades-long incarceration wasn't always the norm, even in the US; a predicate of such long sentences is that people can't change. At parole hearings, the crime takes center stage and the question is whether the prisoner can tell a more compelling story -- so a favorable result hinges on narrative skill when "the present [is] forever being pulled back into the past." How hungry and tired are the parole board members? If you're the fifth person whose case is being heard that day, and the parole board has released two others, will the board feel compelled to pull back lest they be seen as too "soft"? Someone seeking parole now is doing so in a climate where extremely long sentences have been normalized and prison capacity has been treated as limitless.
Austen takes in the history of the victims'-rights movement, which grew partly out of feminist efforts to improve the treatment of victims of sexual assault and intimate partner violence but which came to be equated with policing and punishment, not just better treatment of crime victims. He points out that the victims'-rights movement as presently constituted treats victim and criminal as mutually exclusive categories, as though no one who committed a crime had ever themselves been victimized. There were commonsense changes, such as notifying victims of trial dates, but also changes that made it harder and harder for people who had committed crimes to reintegrate into civil society. And Austen points out the dishonesty of a movement that overlooks those most often victimized. For instance, "nearly every law named for a victim of a horrific crime since the 1980s is named for a white crime victim."
You can see why I kept having to pause the audio to take notes, and why you may find yourself gasping with relief when Johnnie Veal and Michael Henderson, the two men whose stories Austen tells in greatest depth, are finally granted parole.
Correction was often painful listening, but it never dragged. The audiobook narration is excellent, with the tiny, flinch-inducing quibble that Brett Barry thinks "just deserts" is pronounced like the geographical feature. (PSA: It's "deserts" as in "what someone deserves." Not the sweet course at the end of a meal, either.)...more
So, I have an ARC of this and accordingly am torn between excitement and terror. Today's the day! *takes deep breath and jumps*
...Oof.
Well, it was obSo, I have an ARC of this and accordingly am torn between excitement and terror. Today's the day! *takes deep breath and jumps*
...Oof.
Well, it was obvious in The Face in the Water that Theo and Auggie were Not in a Good Place, so I should have been prepared. But somehow I never am. Somehow, every damn time I start a Gregory Ashe book, I'm sucked in by the opening (in this case, Theo and Auggie are leaving Lana with the rest of the gang while they have an evening out) and then a few pages later comes the sucker punch and I remember why a box of tissues is an essential accessory for any reader of GA's books.
I didn't read the preview of this book at the end of Face in the Water, and consequently got a joyful surprise during the sucking-in portion of Girl in the Wind: LANA'S HOME!!! She talks! She plays! She runs around with a leg brace and her speech sounds a bit affectless BUT SHE'S HOME!!!!!!!!!!
But back to Theo and Auggie. Theo's been decompensating for a while, and the case he and Auggie are embroiled in hits him in every last one of his pain points. In one of my all-time favorite romances, Morgan Hawes's Late Bloomer, one of the MCs is described this way: "Vincent didn't know how to be afraid without also being angry. He knew that about himself and didn't like it much." Well, Theo also doesn't know how to be afraid without being angry -- or, given his history, without being violent -- but although he sort of knows that about himself, and doesn't like it, he also sort of doesn't know it, or doesn't understand it, or doesn't know how to act on the understanding. As for Auggie, the lessons he learned at his mother's knee and, later, Dylan's, are all about how to manage a difficult person by agreeing with them and presenting aspects of himself that will please them. These lessons don't serve him well as Theo's falling apart.
So, Deep Thoughts:
- I'm in the middle of the audiobook of The Fairest Show, the third installment of the First Quarto series, and I'm wowed by how credibly GA draws the contrast between the Auggie of those days and the adult Auggie. They're absolutely the same person, with the same sensitivity, the same weakness for praise, the same talents, the same way of teasing Theo, and the same vulnerabilities installed by that unstable, unhappy childhood ... but the adult Auggie is more certain somehow. Confident of his abilities, with more perspective and better impulse control.
- Something I've noted in many GA books is that while investigating the mystery, the MCs happen across people and incidents that rhyme with whatever the couple's struggle of the moment is. Same here. Fear and love emerging as anger all over the place. We see it. I think Auggie sees it. Theo's living at the bottom of a well so deep he only glimpses the sky sometimes.
- There's a beautiful moment when Theo and Auggie are trying to get a witness/suspect to talk; they're basically interrogating her and she throws them out of the house. But at the last moment, before they leave, Auggie switches gears and offers her understanding and insight -- kindness, that is -- and then she talks. "Turn the other cheek" has always seemed to me the most misunderstood of Christian injunctions: the point isn't to be passive in the face of violence, but to do something unexpected, to step out of the cycle of hit-and-hit-back. It's not always appropriate, or possible, and it doesn't always work (maybe it even fails most of the time), but it is often the only thing that has a chance of ending the cycle. Auggie's action, which Theo then joins, is a moving instance of that.
- No effing way does Emery Hazard allow Colt to play football, I'm sorry. I can hear the lecture about chronic traumatic encephalopathy all the way from Missouri to Brooklyn. Gregory Ashe, are you up to something???
Thanks to GA for the ARC. Usual disclaimer about how I know favorable reviews of ARCs from the author are suspect, but I really do mean every word....more
I wish I'd liked this as much as I did the first two.
It's something of a switch in genres: still a murder mystery, and still with Charlie solving the I wish I'd liked this as much as I did the first two.
It's something of a switch in genres: still a murder mystery, and still with Charlie solving the murder(s), but in the mood of action-adventure rather than police procedural, and the trouble with setting action-adventure in NYC is that you not only have to keep your plot straight, you also have to be intimately familiar with the city. Well, you do if you want realism.
I should say that Ripley does a better job with NYC than 9 out of any 10 writers: her version of the city is at least recognizable to someone who lives here. I did a certain amount of wincing at the edges -- it's not often that street traffic in Manhattan will enable a speedy getaway in a car (a bicycle or motorbike would be a whole lot quicker), for instance, and there's a point where (view spoiler)[Charlie is kidnapped in IIRC southern Harlem and winds up in what appears to be the Bronx so fast the kidnappers must have hit every single green on the way or maybe the kidnap vehicle was Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (hide spoiler)]. I had a couple more nits to pick with respect to the Manhattan landscape and geography: constant sirens (nah -- frequent, sure, but not constant by any means), a hospital with a food court that has every existing fast-food restaurant (nah; source: I have done a lot of time in various NYC hospitals and there might be an Au Bon Pain); Charlie at one point "not recognizing" street numbers, which, what?
There's also a moment when Charlie "sinks onto the floor" of an elevator in a housing project, and this tells me that neither Ripley nor anyone she knows has ever set foot in a housing-project elevator. (Yes, I speak from experience.)
But the bigger problems here were the plot holes, the weird factual errors, and, secondarily, some lazy writing:
- Charlie has his own phone, and Tom's, with him while he's on the run. He mainly uses a brand-new phone supplied by a secondary character, but not a word is said about locations even being turned off, never mind that my speedy Googling informs me it's possible to track a phone anyway. He does take the SIM card out of his own phone, but I don't think he ever turns Tom's phone off.
- Charlie also uses Tom's credit card at least once while he's on the run. Again, tracking.
- At one point, the aforementioned secondary character is following Charlie in a car as Charlie walks along the street, but (view spoiler)[somehow totally misses the attempt to kill him that comes a few moments later (hide spoiler)]. Driving in Manhattan is slow, but it's not that slow. Nor is it explained how (view spoiler)[the would-be killer finds Charlie at that point (hide spoiler)].
- One of the murder victims works for the FBI; Charlie, on seeing the guy's apartment, wonders whether the FBI knew where he was living. Uh ... yeah, Charlie, odds are they did.
- Charlie knows that US Marshals have "almost unlimited powers." Well ... I guess they do, in the sense that LEOs tend to do whatever with total impunity, but as a matter of their official role, no, they don't. It's a completely irrelevant detail that goes nowhere, so why Ripley included it, and without checking for accuracy, I can't imagine.
- A crucial secondary character lies to Charlie and withholds information throughout, for no reason that's ever explained (view spoiler)[(why on earth, for instance, does he not say right off the bat that he's an FBI agent? what's with the nonsense about his "precinct"?) (hide spoiler)]. We also never learn how this guy missed the boat when (view spoiler)[Charlie was kidnapped (hide spoiler)].
- There are three, count 'em, three, toxic mothers in this book: Charlie's, Tom's, and one other. A subtle pattern begins to emerge, etc.
So all in all this was something of a disappointment after the first two books. I'll give the series another chance whenever #4 appears....more
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