creative derivative

A Gentle Tyranny by Jess Corban

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: feminist speculative fiction

Review: This book is what you would get if you combined the gender-segregated society of Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country with the capital extravagnce and high stakes competition of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games.  Which is to say that this book is more than a little derivative.  Is it still worth reading?  Yes.

Corban takes the ideas behind these two books and runs with them, adding in descriptions of the jungle setting that are beyond lush.  Reina's naivete at the beginning of the book was troublesome to me, but Corban places her in situations that force her confront her own lack of knowledge and gives her the motivation to overcome it.  Reina's growth is realistic and believable in a way that many authors can't pull off.  And we learn that her ignorance isn't entirely due to her sheltered upbringing or her own passivity.  There are things in her society that are just not talked about, and which will probably turn out to be its downfall.  We'll have to wait for the sequel to find out, though.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

feel the burn

In the Quick by Kate Hope Day

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: science fiction

Review: At an unspecified point in the probably-not-too-distant future, humanity has a solid start at space exploration, with bases on distant moons and regular liftoffs of supply rockets.  It looks a little different from what we might expect; for one thing, rocket launches take place somewhere that's very cold.  For another thing, the whole program seems to be organized around the protégées of Peter Reed, who invented a new kind of fuel cell that makes long-distance space exploration possible.  This fictional space program also seems a rather down-and-dirty affair, not the gleaming high-tech of NASA.

When the fuel cells on the first long-distance mission malfunction, though, all long-distance exploration is on the verge of being scrapped.  Everyone assumes the crew is dead, except for June Reed, Peter's niece, a young and difficult genius in her own right.  Only twelve at the time of the malfunction, she must bide her time training for space before she can set her plan to save the crew in motion.  It is six long years before she is assigned to the moon that was meant to the be the gateway for supply runs.  Here she is able to collaborate with one of her uncle's students, and together they try to reconfigure the fuel cell so that they can mount a rescue mission, and reopen deep space to humanity.

The harshness of space is not new to the science fiction reader.  In Kate Hope Day's hands, that harshness feels very immediate, as June trains for, and then tries to work in space.  Giving equal measure to the human and the science is the mark of the best science fiction, and Day is more than up to the challenge.  June is the only character to get full authorial treatment, but seeing the universe through June's eyes, and walking with her as she struggles to see her vision realized is a treat for the reader.  She's a character who won't soon be forgotten, and her dream is one to build on.

FTC Disclaimer: I recieved this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

'ware the mob

Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: The Wildes are the newest family on Maple Street, a quiet crescent-shaped street on Long Island that faces a large park.  The families on Maple Street are a fairly close-knit group, complete with block parties and the children roving through the backyards together in the summer.  In the summer of 2027, tensions are running high due to a collapsing economy and worsening environmental conditions, and when a sinkhole opens up in the park during the Fourth of July block picnic, things get out of control and the Wildes get blamed for it all.  By the end of the summer an entire family will be dead.

Apparently, what happens on Maple Street captures the public's attention, and by 20 years later all the surviving participants will have been interviewed numerous times, books will have been written, and there will even be an interactive Broadway play based on the events of that summer.  But what actually happens on Maple Street?

The later analysis and interviews that are included lead the reader to believe that there is some confusion about who is to blame for what happened, but the contemporary narrative makes things fairly clear.  It comes down to mental illness.  As a result, debating responsibility was less interesting than watching the reactions of the residents of Maple Street.  This is a modern-day Crucible, with sexual abuse replacing witchcraft.  Peer pressure and mob mentality are undisguised, but what was most interesting to me was how some people doubled down on their accusations, even in the face of actual evidence to the contrary.  It was fascinating.

Langan's writing is very vivid, evoking the heat and the smells of that summer (although apparently many things smell like candy apples) as well as the actions of the characters.  My only complaint about this book is that there are far too many neighbors, and I couldn't distinguish among them.  In terms of bringing the mob to life, this is very effective, but in terms of establishing individual motivation it is, of necessity, less effective.  Unfortunately, not having a sense of many of the characters as individuals took away from the story for me.  Still, this is a powerful book, and an important one, in a world where "truth" seems less and less concrete.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

very enjoyable

The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: mystery

Review: This book is just plain enjoyable.  Fans of British royalty will enjoy it.  Fans of mysteries will enjoy it.  I certainly enjoyed it.  Bennett's take on the royal voice is spot-on (at least if The Crown is a reliable source) and one never tires of feeling like one is inside the Queen's head as she ponders the mystery of who killed a young Russian pianist right in Windsor Castle.

Of course Her Majesty can't track down leads on her own, so she relies on Rosie Oshodi, her Assistant Private Secretary, to do the leg-work.  Rosie is as discreet and sdubtle as the Queen could wish while she makes inquiries on Her Majesty's behalf, but Rosie doesn't quite have the intuitiveness, or the long view of history, that allows the Queen to make connections and follow threads to the real killer.

Bennett's writing is very smooth.  The narrative gets a little slowed down in places as the mystery takes a back seat to the majestic trappings, but one can hardly complain about a fictional, but very authentic-feeling, glimpse into the royal lives.  Bennett also switches perspectives from one paragraph to the next as elegantly as any author I've ever read.  There's a little more bite than traditional "cozy" mysteries, but more than enough for mystery-lovers of all stripes.  As the first in a planned series, I'll definitely be trying to get my hands on the next installment.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

slender and tenuous

The Lost Apothecary by Sara Penner

Genre: fiction/historical fiction

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Review: In 1791, Nella is a London apothecary who has made it her mission to help women get revenge on the men who hurt them.  She dispenses poisons and teaches women how to use them to kill the men who have shunned them, raped them, cheated on them, or otherwise done them harm.  Caroline is a present-day woman who has come to London for what was supposed to be a 10th anniversary trip with her husband.  Unfortunately, she's just found out that he's been cheating on her, so she's on her own, asking big questions about the path of her life.  Perhaps, if she'd lived in the 18th century, she would have been one of Nella's clients.  Instead, she finds one of Nella's vials while mudlarking by the Thames, and is determined to find out the story behind it.

What follows is a dual tale, tracing Nella's possible downfall as one of her poisons is possibly taken by the wrong person, and Caroline's quest to figure out the mystery of the vial and to make the hard decisions about the rest of her life.  Both Nella and Caroline are well-written characters, but their lives, both interior and exterior, weren't sketched out quite fully enough for me to understand some of their motivations.  Similarly, some of the evidence that Caroline uncovers about Nella felt much too slender to base some of her conclusions on, and the connection between one conclusion and another often felt tenuous.

Still, both Nella's and Caroline's stories are compelling, and together they create a momentum that propels the book forward quite nicely.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

real or imagined?

The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: For most of the "real" story of Agatha Christie's disappearance, or at least as much as is publically known, check out this article in the NYTimes Magazine from June 2019, which includes many clips from contemporaneous news articles.  For a fictionalized, but very believable, novel based on the same thing, check out Marie Benedict's latest offering.  Since Mrs. Christie refused to ever speak about what actually happenend, this may be as close as we get to the "truth".

Agatha and her husband take turns telling the story.  Agatha's chapters go back to the past, starting when she met her future husband and going up to the day she disappears.  His start with learning of her disappearance, and they alternate until she is "found" at a Yorkshire spa.  Her chapters are filled with a growing knowledge that the man she married is not the loving husband she thought he was and that perhaps her mother's advice to make him the absolute focus of her life to the exclusion of all else, even their daughter, is not all it's cracked up to be.  His chapters are threaded through with an overlying but vague threat that she made in a letter she left for him before she disappeared that require him to play his part in solving the "mystery".

Benedict tells this story capably, staying very close to the known facts.  So close that one wonders what the reader learns that the newspapers haven't already reported.  Of course, a novel takes us into the characters' heads in a way that journalism can't, but Benedict seems to have left her imagination by the wayside in inhabiting her characters.  Agatha matures throughout the book as she realizes that her marriage is not all that she hoped it would be, and becomes more resolute in her determination to shape her own destiny, but Mr. Christie is very one-dimensional throughout his chapters.  I suppose some characters are easier to write than others, but I hope that for Ms. Benedict's next book, she chooses a subject that alows her more free rein with her generous writing talents.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

delicious but not sweet

Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction/historical fiction

Review: Alice and her husband Nate have just left NYC for life in the suburbs.  Alice is very unsure about leaving the big city, but they think they're ready to start a family, and she's just left her high-powered PR job, and really she can't think of a reason to say no.  So off they go, moving in to Nellie's house.  Of course, Alice and Nellie will never meet, since Nellie's been dead for a year, but Alice will come to feel like she knows Nellie, after discovering a cache of letters and old magazines that Nellie left behind.

What follows is a not-unpredictable, but still satisfying, alternating of chapters.  Nellie and Alice are both keeping secrets from their husbands, but what are they and whose secrets will be found out and whose secrets may prove deadly?  The tension ramps up deliciously through the middle of the book, although Brown is a little heavy-handed with some of the clues.  Put together, the stories form two different, yet not altogether dissimilar looks at the inside of marriage, that though they may be 50+ years apart, may send that message that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.