Review: Bewitched and Betrayed

Posted on April 29, 2010 by superwench83

Bewitched and Betrayed
by Lisa Shearin
Ace Books – $7.99

Any novel that begins with the words, “I was being chased by a pissed-off naked guy with a knife,” is a hook for me. And in typical Lisa Shearin style, Bewitched and Betrayed continues to hook the reader beyond the first line, pulling you along cliffhanger after cliffhanger, barbs and gibes in ready supply.

If you haven’t yet fallen in love with Raine Benares and her weapon-laden, spellsinging companions, now is a fine time to pick up the first book and work your way up to Bewitched and Betrayed. You could read them out of order, I suppose, but I recommend starting from the top. Bewitched and Betrayed resolves a series-long subplot thread which you will be dying to learn the answer to. So unlike those of us who have devoured each book as it came out, you don’t have to wait for the resolution. Instant gratification!

As for those who have long anticipated this release, you won’t be disappointed.

In Bewitched and Betrayed, it’s business as usual for Raine–which means it’s not usual business at all. She’s fought goblins and dark mages and hordes of demons, but this time she’s fighting death itself, in its many and varied forms. It seems that her dead enemies don’t have the courtesy to stay that way, and the lives of people she loves–one of whom she’s finding out just how much she loves–are at risk. Meanwhile, Reapers have set their sights on Raine, who is a source of thousands of souls, thanks to her bond with the soul-sucking rock called the Saghred. But even these concerns must be set aside when a dear friend is falsely imprisoned and a high-ranking official is put on an evil mage’s to-kill list.

Not typical for most girls, but then again, Raine has never been average.

I always find it hard to discuss sequels and series without giving something away, yet without speaking in such general terms as to make my words completely useless. So for already-established fans, let me just say that you can expect more of the stuff you love about the Raine Benares books–sexy goblins and sexier (in my opinion!) elven Guardians, wry and witty humor from Raine, explosions, political intrigue…and pirates, of course. Oh, excuse me, not pirates. They’re “seafaring businessmen.”

Plot-driven adventures with characters so vivid you feel like you’re right there with them through every disaster. These books are like potato chips–you can’t stop eating them up. It’s a rare gift to craft a book as riveting as Bewitched and Betrayed. Lisa Shearin has written four of them. The adventure continues with Con and Conjure next spring, and I cannot wait!

Review: The Mall of Cthulhu

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Tia Nevitt

The Mall of Cthulhu
by Seamus Cooper (on Twitter)
Night Shade Books – 13.95

The Mall of Cthulhu by Seamus Cooper is the funniest book I’ve read since Kimberly Frost’s Barely Bewitched. I laughed so hard that at one point, I thought I was getting chest pains. It was a muscle cramp, but for a moment there I wondered if this novel would put me in the hospital — or even on my eventual date with destiny.

Ted and Laura are bound by a shared supernatural experience that they still have not gotten over, ten years later. When they were freshmen in college, a nest of vampires tried to lure Laura into a fateful bite. Instead, young Teddy becomes an ax-wielding vampire slayer and rescues her. Neither can ever share the incident with anyone else and be believed; thus, they remain in each other’s lives.

Except since Laura is a lesbian, they can’t get too closely into each other’s lives.

Now, ten years later, Laura is a junior FBI agent and Ted is a barista at a Starbucks — er, at Queequeg’s, a coffee shop. Readers of Melville will recognize the reference. Ted has perfected the Latte, using a slightly altered version from Queequeg’s prescribed ratios.

Unfortunately, when a man comes in and orders a half-soy, half-caf, Ted knows there’s something wrong with him. Who ever orders half-soy? He is a total jerk, so Ted doesn’t bother to tell him when he accidentally leaves a CD behind. Instead, he pockets it and uses his break time to deliver Laura a cup of coffee.

When Ted comes back, he discovers that the disturbed coffee drinker is back, and he’s shot up the entire store. He demands the CD from Ted at at gunpoint. Ted unleashes his hidden evil-fighting talent, and eventually discovers a plot to call forth the sleeping elder god/horrific monster, Great Cthulhu.

As with most really humorous novels, it is difficult to summarize the plot. You simply have to be there. So I’ll just go over some highlights.

This novel spoofs HP Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu. I’ve never read it, but I’m familiar with the story. The Mall of Cthulhu makes fun of Lovecraft’s racism — most of his villains are apparently dark-skinned — by making all the villains Angry White Men. And it makes fun of Lovecraft’s famously bad dialog — even Stephen King made fun of it in his On Writing — by having his villains go into long-winded tirades that end in the villain promising that Ted will beg for . . . well, I’ll let you read it.

The chest-pain-inducing scene came when Ted has traveled to Providence and sets up Ted to “surveil” the mall under the cover of a pushcart salesman. She doesn’t want him to get distracted by actually selling stuff, so she orders stuff that supposedly no one would ever want. Guess what happens?

Even the eventual meeting with Great Cthulhu is hysterical while remaining true to Lovecraft’s description of the monster/elder god. Cthulhu is asleep, you see, in a non-Euclidean dimension, in the dread city of R’lyeh (which I could not help but to pronounce as “Raleigh” even though I knew it was probably wrong). And Ted is bored. And when Ted gets bored, you never know what he’s going to do.

If you are at all familiar with Lovecraft, this is going to be a blast. If not, then don’t worry, because everything is hilariously explained. I loved it. It was a huge amount of fun.

Debut Graduate: The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker

Posted on April 27, 2010 by superwench83

The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker
by Leanna Renee Hieber
Paperback = 6.99
Dorchester

With radiant, snow-white skin and hair, Percy Parker was a beacon for Fate. True love had found her, in the tempestuous form of Professor Alexi Rychman. But her mythic destiny was not complete. Accompanying the ghosts with which she alone could converse, new and terrifying omens loomed. A war was coming, a desperate ploy of a spectral host. Victorian London would be overrun.

Yet, Percy kept faith. Within the mighty bastion of Athens Academy, alongside The Guard whose magic shielded mortals from the agents of the Underworld, she counted herself among friends. Wreathed in hallowed fire, they would stand together, no matter what dreams—or nightmares—might come.

Reviewed by Superwench83

War between the spirit and mortal realms looms, threatening to take first London, then the world. And according to her ghostly guide, only Percy Parker can stop it, by facing the underworld herself–by traveling into the land of the dead.

In The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker, Percy’s strangely beautiful saga continues, along with all the ghosts, gods, and ghastly apparitions. In Darkly Luminous, the battles are more intense, the characters more intense–everything is more intense. The Guard have spent their lives trying to keep the spirit and mortal realms apart, and now they face a possibility they never considered–that they themselves may be the ones to open the way for the underworld to flow into their own. But even greater is their fear for Percy, fear that she may have to travel literally into hell and back…and fear of her promised betrayer yet to come.

A great deal of character development takes place in The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker. Percy grows from a timid, mousy girl into a woman who, though sometimes meek, can be a force to be reckoned with, capable of holding her own. Michael has a much more expanded role this time, his powers as Heart of the Guard given more time onstage. The plot itself facilitates character growth; to survive this darkness, The Guard must be united, all differences set aside, their hearts laid bare. No more can they hide their secrets.

As the title might suggest, Darkly Luminous is at times lovely, at times chilling. Strangely Beautiful featured devil-dogs and voices in the dark. Darkly Luminous features hordes of underworld minions, demons made of ash, and a kingly though skeletal figure swathed in robes that match his ruby eyes. When Percy cuts her hand and a creature of Darkness greedily laps from the pool of blood, this is only a taste of what’s to come.

I did see a couple flaws in the continuing romance. The conflicts between Percy and Alexi seemed immature at times, their emotions changing rapidly and for seemingly petty things. I think it’s because there wasn’t enough space in the book to develop their fears and inner plights fully. I also found the dialogue overly sentimental at times. But these critiques are only a blip in what was a wonderful book.

I do want to give a heads up to any other Catholics out there that there are a couple things that might make you cringe a bit. No attacks on the Church or anything like that, just things that don’t jive with Catholic belief. But it absolutely will not prevent me from reading this one again. There is no offense, no malice at all intended.

After her stunning debut novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, Leanna Renee Hieber had a lot to live up to, and she passed the test. Another chapter in the struggle between worlds is brought to an end–but still the Great Work goes on.

Debut Review: Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Tia Nevitt

Angelology: A Novel
by Danielle Trussoni (Author Website, Novel Website – great fun to page thru!)
Viking – Hardcover – $27.95 (heavily discounted at Amazon and elsewhere)
Genre: Supernatural Suspense

This is my first foray into the realm of supernatural or religious suspense. Angelology was a fascinating look at the possible fate of the offspring of Angels, referred to in the Bible as Nephilim.

Sister Evangeline is a young nun at the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. A request through the mail from a young art scholar named Verlaine sends her searching through the convent archives, where she finds a fascinating letter. Verlaine works for a man named Percival, who quickly reveals himself as a monster.

I’d hate to say too much because the plot thrives on secrets, and I don’t want to spoil any of them. The blurb itself gives very little away:

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.
Genesis 6:5

Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

Rich in history, full of mesmerizing characters, and wondrously conceived, Angelology blends biblical lore, the myth of Orpheus and the Miltonic visions of Paradise Lost into a riveting tale of ordinary people engaged in a battle that will determine the fate of the world.

The research in Angelology was fascinating. The various characters uses angel lore derived from the Bible and other sources known as “apocrypha”, which, according to Wikipedia, is books that the Christian church considers useful but is not divinely inspired. The plot also depends on a literal interpretation of Creation and the Flood, which in my experience is an unusual plot feature outside of Christian fiction. However, I would in no way categorize this as a Christian novel; rather it is a novel that treats sources such as the Bible and the apocryphal works with equal respect and relevance, along with an unexpected connection to the myth of Orpheus.

Angelology also employs a technique I’m seeing more and more often: it mixes first and third person. The first section of the novel, which is from Evangeline’s, Percival’s and Verlaine’s point of view, is in third person. Then, after a long and enlightening discussion with a fellow nun named Sister Celestine, the point-of-view switches to Celestine’s. It is a first-person account of her experience with the Second Angelological Expedition in the 40s. During this section, a series of readings from an account from the First Angelological Expedition is read, which takes place in the 900s AD. The final point of view returns to the above three, along with one or two others.

This is a very long novel, with a lot of backstory and reader education. In order to appreciate the story, you not only have to know all about the Flood, but also about the events after the Flood and the bloodlines that sprang from Noah’s sons. Ms. Trussoni manages to make all this interesting and engaging — not at all like a religion lesson. I liked all of the main characters, and I even managed to feel sympathy for Percival, even though he was utterly ruthless.

One of the few problems I had with this novel was the ending. The angelologists (including at this point, Evangeline and Verlaine) must go to four separate places as indicated by four very obscure clues in the letters from Mrs. Rockefeller. Percival, who until this point had yet to succeed in a single task his family set him on, suddenly and without explanation is able to out-maneuver the angelologists at almost every turn. I could see how they were able to be betrayed at one point, but I am unable to account for Percival knowing where they will meet to find the final item. I did enjoy the final struggle between Percival and Evangaline, even though Evangeline’s final fate was by now, not a surprise. I also would have liked to seen the parts that were set in the 40s feel more like a novel from the 40s. But the plot was so nonstop at this point that this is not a true critique. I just love it when authors include those atmospheric touches that make it really feel like you have gone back to that time period (a reason I love historical fiction).

The ending gave me a jolt until I realized there was probably a sequel planned. I do wish publishers would indicate whether a novel is part of a series somewhere on the cover or the title page. Although the main conflict is resolved here, there are a great many unanswered questions and one of the characters goes through a major change that only made me want to read more. And that was a good thing, because by this time, I had been reading for weeks.

Angelology was an instant New York Times bestseller, and it is easy to see why. I think Christians and non-Christians can enjoy this book, because on the one hand the treatment of Biblical lore is respectful, and on the other hand, it is not trying to proselytize. I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it. If you like plot-rich novels with storylines that slowly reveal themselves over hundreds of pages, if you like secret societies with secret expeditions (and who doesn’t?), and if you like stories drenched in research, then this would be a great time to catch this novel and take advantage of all the discounts. (Due to the size of it, I certainly wouldn’t want to attempt to read it as a paperback.) I think Ms. Trussoni has gotten off to a brilliant start.