Alanna by Tamora Pierce - one of the good things about having friends who are librarians is that they introduce you to all sorts of cool authors you'd never heard of, Diana Wynne Jones being one and Tamora Pierce another.
Alanna is the first of a series of four books, collectively known as Song of the Lioness, with our eponymous protagonist being determined to find her own way in the world and end up as a knight, rather than meekly accepting the convent where her quite-disinterested scholar of a father is sending her. Her twin brother was meant to become a page, but instead he heads off to study and Alanna takes his place. She is, of course, the smallest of the pages but makes up for it with stubbornness and determination.
I can imagine had I read this book when I was younger I would have absolutely loved it, and as it is I enjoyed it immensely. I hadn't read any of Pierce's books before (and she's written quite a few) so I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this series (which continues with In the Hand of the Goddess) and then her numerous other series will be on my wishlist.
Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold - this is another one of those Tor e-books, once again the first in a series in the 'hey, the first hit is free!' way that company has. Through Wolf's Eyes is the first of 6 books set in this universe to date, so once again Tor is working on getting people hooked into buying the rest.
Our protagonist, Firekeeper, is a human girl who has been brought up by wolves from an early age, the only survivor of an attempt by humans to settle lands the other side of a range of mountains. That settlement was the brainchild of a prince of Hawk Haven, and when there is a dispute over who should become the heir of Hawk Haven's elderly king, an ambitious nobleman and his retinue come looking for the prince and his heirs in order to try and gain some kind of royal ear.
What's interesting about this book is Firekeeper's attempts, once she agrees to go along with the humans, to understand and adjust to their ways. Much of the book is written from her point of view, with those sections often being by far the most interesting (in my opinion). The universe in which Through Wolf's Eyes and its sequels are set is pretty much your generic sword-and-sorcery setting, though it is also one where there are no difficulties in terms of both men and women undertaking almost any task, including fighting in battle and commanding armies, let alone ruling. The issue becomes about their own personal qualities, rather than their gender, which is quite a pleasant change.
The downside of the complexity of this universe, let alone the various members of noble families vying to be named heir, is that there is often significant chunks of exposition to deal with, which could easily have overwhelmed everything else. Somehow, even though this book is nearly 600 pages, Lindskold just about keeps the plot ticking over and sets things up for the next book in the series, Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart.
In the Midnight Hour by Patti O'Shea - another one of the Tor free e-books, which turned out to be sufficiently popcorn for the brain that I could read it alongside something else without any difficulty.
Ryne is a troubleshooter, dealing with otherworldly creatures who threaten human beings, all the while tormented by her own past as an apprentice and the pull from darker forces to which her mentor succumbed. Discovering that a television show she watches is more than meets the eye, Ryne undertakes to free the soul she discovers is trapped within a cartoon detective, little realising how this will change her life forever.
I'm no prude, by any stretch of the imagination, but frankly I found the frequent sex scenes in this quite vexing - once Ryne got over her hang-ups about having sex at all, she was suddenly at it all over the place. And naturally, for an urban fantasy heroine, she is both feisty and beautiful although (naturally) she doesn't realise/accept this. Meanwhile her new man is both sensitive enough to get his own way most of the time while also being manly enough to satisfy her (frequently). There's an element of tension in that the two of them discover that the situation they thought was fixed was only temporarily assuaged, but it's clear that it's the romance/sex that's the main attraction here, not the world-building - shame, because the world-building was potentially much more interesting, for me at least.
The Face of Time by Camille Bacon-Smith - this is another of those books I picked up in Nova Scotia, this one clearly so obscure that it required a user to put up a photo of the cover on Amazon (which for some reason the Vox feed doesn't pick up, but if you're curious then go look...). It sounded interesting, so I thought I'd give it a go, particularly as it wasn't book 3 of 17 or something like so many of the science fiction/fantasy books I was looking at.
Anyway, The Face of Time is ostensibly about two British police officers, who end up travelling to the home town of one of them where a bunch of archaeologists have been brutally murdered. Alas, it's clear from page 1 that this is a British book written and published in the US so there are a few things all the way through that may make any Brit reading it go 'say what now?', but I guess that can't be helped.
It turns out that the archaeologists have freed something they shouldn't have (the kind of thing you'd be avoiding Indian burial grounds for fear of awakening, if this was set in the US) but that the local is in fact the descendant of the man who dealt with that ancient evil 5,000 years earlier. In fact, because the village knew it was likely to return at some point, they have ensured that the line of succession has continued, one way or another, in order that there was someone ready and able to deal with the situation when it arose.
I've certainly read worse (and often, alas!) but this wasn't completely my cup of tea - still, I finished it and couldn't quite see where it was going, which is always a plus point in my mind. I've got another of Bacon-Smith's books (Daemon Eyes), also about detectives but this time set in the US, which I'll get around to at some point I'm sure...
Soul by Tobsha Learner - this was another one of those Tor free e-books, although this is barely brushing the edge of science fiction and is actually published by one of Tor's other subsidiaries. Soul is the story of two women, one the great-grandmother of the other, who find themselves facing betrayal from the men they thought loved them.
Julia is a geneticist, who we first meet in Afghanistan when the army convoy she is part of is ambushed and she is forced to kill a man - her life's work is studying whether there is a genetic factor involved in post-traumatic stress disorder. Returning from abroad, she discovers that her perfect life, complete with a husband she adores and an unexpected pregnancy, is nothing but a sham.
Her great-grandmother, Lavinia, is married to an anthropologist whose dalliance with a younger man leaves her distraught, even as she's trying to come to terms with entering London society after growing up in the west of Ireland. Her husband is also an opium addict, attempting to use the drug to suppress the nightmares of his experiences in the Crimea.
It's a well-written book, but not really the kind of thing I would usually read. I'm also not really sure why they felt that Leaner's books need covers with half-naked women on them, though there are other elements of the cover art that bear a little more resemblance to the actual story (or at least Lavinia's part of it).
Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead - I picked this book up just by chance in the library, though I have to say my experience of urban fantasy books has been somewhat hit and miss. In this case, Succubus Blues was definitely a hit, as I enjoyed it very much.
Our protagonist is one Georgina Kincaid - originally from Ancient Greece, she made a literal deal with the devil to try and set things right after cheating on her husband and ended up as the succubus of the title. At the time we first meet her, she's pretty much restricting herself to the lower end of the human foodchain for the energy she needs, while trying to balance having to lead souls astray with her day job in a Seattle bookstore.
Georgina has both human and immortal friends, managing mostly to keep her life ticking over within the constraints she has chosen for herself - no getting involved with humans, only preying on people she really doesn't like all that much. All of which is working okay till her favourite writer comes to town and Georgina meets a tall, dark and handsome college lecturer, both of whom will turn her settled life upside down for very different reasons.
Richelle Mead's storytelling is well-paced and interesting, though I found (probably no surprise, given the nature of her protagonist) that she lingered a little too much on the sex scenes for my liking. However, the world created in Succubus Blues is an intriguing one and I look forward to reading the next book in the series (Succubus Nights).
The Redemption of Althalus by David & Leigh Eddings - this book had been recommended on a community of which I'm a member, and for once it's a standalone novel (even if it is 900 pages in paperback!) so when the local library had a copy on the shelf the other day, I decided to pick it up.
Essentially this novel is about the eponymous Althalus, a thief who has recently been afflicted with a spell of bad luck. He's hired by a shady character to steal a book from a particular house at the edge of the world, but when he gets there he discovers that he cannot leave. It seems that one of the deities of Althalus' world has a job lined up for him in a place where both time and space are malleable.
I really wanted to like this book. I kept on right till the end to see if things changed or improved, but they didn't. The deity in question who is involved with Althalus is a goddess who apparently is smitten with him for no apparent reason - frankly, I liked Althalus much better in the first few chapters before his 'redemption' is started upon. Both the book Althalus was hired to steal, and the house in which it resides, have powers that basically mean there is no way things can go wrong in the goddess' plan and they hardly ever do, which means there's not a great deal of tension over how things are going to work out.
The incessant matchmaking that goes on gets a bit wearing, as every major male character gets paired off with a woman like clockwork as clearly that's what everyone needs and everyone is straight and amenable to this. And let's not even get started on one of the female characters insisting on calling Althalus 'daddy'. Ick. Finally, unless you're getting paid by the word, this really didn't need to be 900 pages, because stuff gets discussed and rediscussed half to death.
The Dime Museum Murders by Daniel Stashower - this is the first of three books by this author featuring Harry Houdini, the others in the series being The Floating Lady Murder and The Houdini Specter. In this book, Houdini and his brother have recently returned to New York and are trying to make their way in the eponymous dime museum, though the inhabitants of that city seem rather uninterested in Houdini's escapology.
The police, however, are more aware of Houdini and call him in to assist them with the specialist knowledge he has of magic tricks when a wealthy businessman is found murdered in his locked study. The culprit appears to be an automaton, sold to the murdered man by a friend of the Houdini family who is now being held for murder. Convinced of his own abilities (both in terms of magic and detection, being a keen fan of Sherlock Holmes) and concerned for their friend, Harry Houdini determines to find out just who was really responsible for the murder.
It's clear that Stashower has done his research of the period and this is an enjoyable enough book - written from the point of view of Dash, Houdini's brother, it's unsparing in its perspective on Houdini's flaws as well as his abilities. I wouldn't make an effort to chase the rest of the books, but this was a pleasant enough read.
Sisters of the Raven by Barbara Hambly - my reading pace seems to be slowing down, as it's taking me a week to finish a single book! Oh well. This is another one of the books I picked up in Nova Scotia, not realising at the time that it's the first of a series as I was looking more for standalone novels.
The book is set in the Yellow City, where magic has always been the purview of men, to the point that while men are called wizards if they have magic, the concept of women-who-do-magic is so incomprehensible to them that there is no simple word for it. But now the magic that men wielded is fading, to the point where the Yellow City is crying out for water and the wizards are unable to get the rain to fall.
At the same time, women are beginning to exhibit strange powers, unsettling to everyone around them, though now those women are disappearing one by one even as they come to know one another. In a society where only men have individual names and women are named in conjunction with them or have names that clearly delineate their status in society, where the fanatical followers of one of the Yellow City's gods are literally demanding blood and claiming to be all-powerful, it's even more dangerous than before to be a woman-who-does-magic.
I really enjoyed this book, the world of which has clearly been given immense amounts of thought by the author. Even the unsympathetic characters are well-drawn, the male characters just as real and three-dimensional as the women on whom the book (understandably) focusses, particularly Oryn who is the king of the Yellow City and who would much rather be reading poetry in his garden than fighting wars. I'm not sure if I would have bought this had I realised there is a sequel (Circle of the Moon) but I'm glad I did and am now adding the second book to my wishlist...
Sign of the Cross by Anne Emery - that it's taken me a week to finish this book shouldn't be considered anything about the writing itself, but more a commentary on my not being in the right frame of mind to read anything. I picked this book up in Halifax, the city where the story itself is set, and enjoyed it very much.
Monty Collins is a lawyer, making a good enough living as a criminal defense attorney, when he encounters one Brennan Burke, Catholic priest. Sooner than he could possibly have imagined, Burke is involved in murder, with all the evidence pointing his way, and it's up to Collins to try and understand the man as well as defend him from the allegations made against him.
Both the main characters, and their supporting cast, are well-written and interesting individuals with their own particular flaws. If anything, I'm not a big fan of first person writing, but Emery manages to carry it off with aplomb, never descending into navel-gazing. I didn't quite beat everyone to the punch where the big reveal was concerned, though it was signposted along the way effectively enough.
As a native of Halifax, it makes sense that her books are set there, with three in print so far - the next one in the series (also featuring both Collins and Burke) is Obit, which I would like to try and get my hands on, though being the other side of the Atlantic may delay my plans to do so...
