The Fitzie Book List

josianne's posterous

Cast in Shadow, by Michelle Sagara West

I found Cast in Shadow in the romance category of the ereader.com bestseller list. It was published by Luna, an imprint of Harlequin, so I sort of expected to have to put up with a lot of heavy breathing and throbbing manhood, but actually the love interest is only one of many layers in the novel. 

Cast_in_shadow

Kaylin is a young girl who fled the streets of Nightshade at 13. She was accepted into the Hawks, a division of the Lords of Law police force. 7 years ago, when she left Nightshade, there had been a series of murders of young children, one per month for a period of 18 months. At the time of the book opening, the murders have begun again, but only 3 days apart. Kaylin and her department are trying to solve the case. The author slowly reveals that the murders are tied to Kaylin and then, in typical fantasy genre fashion, it falls to her to save her world from evil. 

In Kaylin's world, there are many races of human. These races follow animal arquetypes. There are the Aerians who have wings and the Leontines who behave like lions when anyone in their pride is threatened. Kaylin is the protégé of the Hawklord, an Aerian and the leader of the Hawks division, and her sergeant, Marcus, a Leontine. She is good friends with several Aerian guards, including Clint, whose wife she helps midwife with her powers. There is another race, one of immortals, the Barrani. They are long-lived and seem to make up most of the aristocracy and certainly the court of the emperor. There isn't much world-building so we are left with rather broad sketches of the different races and a rather murky understanding of the politics of the world. 

The story refers often to Kaylin's early years in the force, her training and her mysterious powers, but much is concealed from the reader. I'm not sure if the ebook edition I received is missing pieces or if the author means for my inferring muscles to work hard. I found myself often mystified by the conclusions I was meant to have arrived at with minimal clues. Still, the sparse plot did mean that I read to the end trying to understand it. The series has six books, with the last one from spring 2010. I'm not sure if I'm going to be reading the other five, or rather, I don't know if I'm going to pay to read the other five. My library on Cape Cod has the books. I might just wait until I'm back in the US to continue. 

So, my verdict? Ho hum.

P.S. The links provided are my affiliate links on bookdepository.com. If you do not want to contribute to my children's college fund, Michelle Sagara West's books can also be found here on Amazon.com.

The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks

The_notebook

Jennifer Crusie is the author of many successful romantic comedies: Faking It, Welcome to Temptation, Getting Rid of Bradley. Critics accuse her, however, of writing stories of lacking in emotion. In the prologue to The Cinderella Deal she writes that writing with emotion is extremely hard for her and that The CInderella Deal was a particularly hard book for her to write because it is not a romantic comedy and she had to stay focused on the emotion. 

That is not a problem Nicholas Sparks has. His books are all about emotion. I knew when I picked up The Notebook that I was going to cry. (I haven't still gotten over Message in a Bottle.) The Notebook is the story of Noah and Allie. They met when they were sixteen, had one passionate summer together, and then Allie went off to college. Although they wrote letters to each other, Allie's mother intercepted them thinking to help Allie get on with life. 

The story is told in three different times: the summer they met, the present when Allie and Noah are both in a nursing home, and summer when they got back together. That last is the main part of the story for me. Allie is getting married to a successful lawyer and decides to go back to New Bern, the town where she met Noah, to set old ghosts to rest. In New Bern, she finds Noah living in the house he had sworn to buy for them, thanks to an inheritance he received. 

The love between Noah and Allie is strong enough to survive the years of their separation, Allie's engagement to another man, and even Alzheimer's. I'm not sure whether this novel is a testament to the power of love or a plea to the universe that love be strong enough to indeed conquer all. 

There's a movie based on the book. I haven't seen it so I can't comment. I doubt I'll see it, because like I said, I haven't gotten over Message in a Bottle.

For more books by Nicholas Sparks on indiebound.org, click here. 

And while you're shopping at indiebound.org, why not pick up a poetry book? It's April, National Poetry Month. 

The Mermaid Chair, by Sue Monk Kidd

The_mermaid_chair

The Mermaid Chair is a story about a woman who falls in love with a monk one summer. She has been married for 20 years and her only daughter has gone away to college. She returns to her childhood home because her mother has descended into madness and cut off her index finger. 

The story is told mostly in first-person by Jessie, but the monk and the husband also take point. Jessie had been restless and mildly discontented before her mother's self-mutilation and she leaves for her old home with a feeling of relief at the separation from her husband. 

The story explores themes of love (Jessie's 20-year-old love for her husband, her new love for the monk, her love for her dead father) and grief (Jessie's continuing grief over her father's death when she was 9, her mother's over her father, the monk over his wife and unborn child's death.)

Throughout it all, the mermaid chair acts as anchor.The island is home to a monastery established in the 1930s with a parent house in Cornwall. The chair was carved for the parent monastery's chapel by an unknown carpenter. It has mermaids carved into it in honor of the monastery's saint, a mermaid turned Christian. Jessie is an artist and she explores her talent as she comes to grip with herself and her mother. 

This is a disjointed review for a marvelous book. Ignore my clumsy words and go read it for yourself; it's a story well worth reading. 

Grave Secrets, by Kathy Reichs

Grave_secrets

Between 1962 and 1996, Guatemala had a civil war. Hundreds of thousands died at the hands of the Guatemalan army and paramilitary groups supported by the army. The victims were almost all rural and of Mayan descent. Grave Secrets is set in the present and the sleuth is a Canadian forensic pathologist, Tempe Brennan. She is volunteering in Guatemala with an organization trying to locate and identify the 'desaparecidos', the missing, who were lost during the civil war. 

Many of those involved in war time massacres are still in government today and Tempe Brennan's team is hindered by their efforts. Two in her team are shot on their way to an excavation site and only one survives. The stories of the war survivors are bleak and the stories of the war victims disinterred by Tempe's team are horrifying. 
In the meantime, life and death goes on in Guatemala City. Four young women are missing. Two are found dead, one in a septic tank and one in the woods. Tempe is a renowned forensic pathologist and she is called to assist in the analyzing of the remains. She meets an attractive Guatemalan, Bat Galiano, who keeps her tangled in the case even though she tries her best to return to her massacre victims. Their initial antagonism turns to attraction, making Tempe doubt her feelings for Andrew Ryan, the policeman in Canada she has been seeing. 
This book is clinically detached throughout. It could be that I read it while I was in the throes of a head cold, but I never really cared for the characters or the story. The characters are wooden and the dialogue is stilted. The only place that I felt engaged was when she describes the atrocities committed to the massacre victims she is helping to identify. If I were the type to give stars to a book, I'd give this 2 out of 5. It's not badly written, it's just somewhat boring. 

The Way of Shadows, by Brent Weeks

Way_of_shadows

In his acknowledgements at the end of The Way of Shadows, Brent Weeks offers readers this, "you give me a couple of pages, and I'll give you a helluva of a ride." 

It's not an empty promise. The Way of Shadows starts out dark and gritty and stays that way. It is set in Cenaria, a corrupt city-state ruled in name by an incompetent king. The Sa'kagé is the real power in the city, a council of underworld lords/ladies who rule in fact in the  Warrens, the low-income area of Centaria, and in the rest of the kingdom. 
We first meet our hero, Azoth, as a child in the Warrens. He protects two younger children, Doll Girl and Jarl, against the abuse of Rat, another child who is the enforcer in their guild. The head of the guild is dying and Rat pretty much has a free hand in collecting fees and punishing those under him. Azoth, Doll Girl and Jarl dream of leaving the guild and the Warrens, but only Azoth manages that by apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint, the city's most successful assassin. The price of his apprenticeship is killing Rat. Azoth takes too long and Rat sexually abuses Jarl and kidnaps Doll Girl, horribly disfiguring her beautiful face. Azoth manages to kill Rat and with that kill, must leave the Warrens and become Kylar, apprentice wetboy. He is 11 years old.
Durzo Blint is a harsh taskmaster and a conflicted soul. He loudly claims that life is worthless, that a wetboy's victims are dead once they are marked by a client, and that love is a noose. He tries to instill that philosophy in Kylar, but he, against all odds, still remains innocent of cynicism. He has kept track of Doll GIrl, who was adopted thanks to Durzo Blint and the noble Count Drake, and sends part of his wages to her on a monthly basis. She at least, has escaped the horror of the Warrens. Jarl is not so fortunate, surviving in the Warrens by his skill as a prostitute. 
Count Drake and Duke Regnus Gyre are two noble, principled souls in the quagmire of Cenarian politics. Count Drake takes Kylar in, giving him an identity as a younger son of an impoverished noble family. Thanks to Count Drake, Kylar becomes good friends with Logan Gyre, a steadfast handsome young warrior. The Gyres are close in line to the throne but have never tried to take it. To keep Logan's father, Duke Gyre, away from court, King Aleine IX sends him to head up the garrison at Screaming Winds, where he distinguishes himself as an able commander and keeps the dreaded Khalidorans out of the kingdom. 
The Khalidorans are the true villains in the book. Their godking is set on conquering Cenaria to get a magical artifact, one of six made 700 years ago. Durzo Blint has one and it goes to Kylar, whose magical talent calls it. Kylar, however, spends most of his apprenticeship with Blint unknowing of his ability to use the magical artifact and thinking that he is not magically talented at all. 
The first book of this trilogy ends with the Khalidorans overrunning the city, with the king and Durzo Blint dead, Logan imprisioned, his wife kidnapped by an evil magician, and the city on fire. The conflicted characters, the grittiness of the Warrens, the evilness of the Khalidorans, and the true love and hope embodied in the heroes made this a book hard to put down. I'm predicting the rest of the trilogy will be just as engrossing. 

Just a Little Run Around the World, by Rosie Swale Pope

Just_a_little_run

On June 12, 2002, Rosie Swale Pope's husband died of prostate cancer. She wanted to do something in his name and to raise awareness of the importance of cancer screenings. On October 2, 2003, she sets off with a backpack to run around the world. Her route takes her from her native Wales through Europe to Moscow through Siberia. She crossed the Bering Strait on an airplane, then resumed running from the Alaskan side of the strait through Canada, down to New York and Boston. She flies over the Atlantic Ocean to Greenland and then from Iceland back to Wales. The run took her 5 years, 53 pairs of shoes, one jogging stroller and three trailers. 

Along the route, Ms. Pope runs into wild animals, forbidding landscapes, subzero temperatures - Siberia and Alaska in the winter! -, a few crazies and many, many wonderful people who help and encourage her. Her son created a website, http://www.rosiearoundtheworld.co.uk/, that continues to promote her cancer awareness raising efforts. 

The book begins with a moving account of her husband's illness and his determination to live his life to the fullest despite the cancer. The rest of the book chronicles her run. There are so many shining moments in what must have been daily drudgery: spending her Christmases under the stars, sharing her run with wolves and wild dogs, the generosity of strangers on every phase of her run, becoming part of the land by running over it, and always foremost, her success spreading the word about early cancer screenings. 

A Little Run Around the World was fascinating and inspiring to read. I'm not going to jump up to run even around the block, but I am making sure that my husband goes for his screening and I'm scheduling my own annual mammogram - which hasn't been all that annual but since this woman ran around the world on her own to tell me how important it is, I can't procrastinate anymore. I hope you don't either.

So, from Rosie Swale Pope, here's an important message:  EARLY SCREEN SAVES LIVES. Visit her website, http://www.rosiearoundtheworld.co.uk, to donate to her charities and to follow her progress as she sets out to run 26 marathons in 26 days. 

Devil's Corner, by Lisa Scottoline

Devils_corner

Devil's Corner is another engrossing read from Lisa Scottoline. She writes detective and legal thrillers set in Philadelphia. Her sleuths are Italian-American female lawyers. Many of her books feature four lawyers in the firm of Rosato and Associates, with the lead role circulating among the four in each different book. Of those four, my favorite are Judy, who dresses in neon colors and Anne, who was once the mysterious outsider. 

Devil's Corner is not about any of the Rosato four. Instead, the protagonist is an assistant US district attorney who lives by William Penn's statement, "Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it." To keep true to herself, Vicki Allegretti puts her job and her closest friendship at risk. 

It all starts with a tip gone wrong. Vicki Allegretti and her ATF partner, Morty, go to meet an informant. Morty stays outside to finish a cigarette and Vicki enters the house, only to find she's interrupting a burglary. The teenage thief holds her at gunpoint and she is trying to get him to relinquish his gun, when Morty comes in, unaware. The teenager shoots him dead. Mary manages to escape but the informant is found dead on the second floor. 

The informant had pointed a finger at Reheena for a straw gun purchase. That is when someone buys a gun with an intent to resell. Reheena Bristow was convicted for that and spent a year in prison, so when Vicki catches up with her trying to figure out who and why her partner was killed, she's understandably angry at the world and white female lawyers in particular. To make things worse, her mother was murdered in the morning of the day of her release from prison. The relationship between Vicky and Reheena is at first adversarial but as they unravel the puzzles of Morty and Reheena's mother's murders they become friends. 

Scottoline's books are not romance novels, although her female characters do sometimes find love during a case. In Devil's Corner, Mary is best friends with Dan, another AUSA, with whom she has worked for the last year. Problem is, Dan is married and shows no romantic interest in Mary. 
Devil's Corner was a fun read and it whiled away the hours on a 7-hour bus ride, so I won't fault it for throwing in Dan the Man to heighten the emotional tension even more. It really wasn't necesary as there's plenty of that: Vicki's feelings of guilt over Morty's death, her feelings of inadequacy before her parents, her need to get through Reheena's anger so that she can enlist her help, her obsessive commitment to finding Morty's killer. It's not overdone, though. Ms. Scottoline does  a good job of making all these emotional demands realistic, and that makes the book memorable. 

Shop Indie Bookstores

More book's by Lisa Scottoline on indiebound.org

 

The High King's Tomb, by Kristen Britain

High_kings_tomb

The High King's Tomb at Indiebound.org

The High King's Tomb is the third book in the Green Rider series. The author is at work on a fourth book and has had her contract extended by her publisher so we can expect more adventures in Sacoridia.

The High King's Tomb starts out in Mirwell province where the refugees of the Second Empire have fled. Their leader is Grandmother, a practioner of traditional weaving art. She is chillingly devoted to bringing about the Second Empire, and to that end sets off a series of events that will gravely threaten Sacoridia.

In the meantime, happily unknowing of the doom above them, the kingdom rejoices in the upcoming nuptials of King Zachary and the Lady Estora, daughter of the Lord-Governor of Coultre, most renowned beauty in the land, and secret lover of Green Rider F'ryan Coblebay, who died in service to the Riders.

Our heroine, Karigan Glad'heon, is happily recuperating from the events of the preceding summer, told in First Rider's Call. She is resolutely ignoring all the wedding hoopla and trying to avoid King Zachary, who declared his love for her in the second book. To keep them separate, Captain Mapstone sends Karigan off on a four part message tour with a new Rider, Fergan Duff. Fergan heard the call but has not yet been paired to a horse. Of course, she ends up discovering the threat to the kingdom and is again instrumental in saving it.

There are several new characters, including the new villian, Grandmother. She has recently come into the fullness of her power and believes it is the favor of their God. I think it's more likely to be Mornhavon the Black, banished ancient enemy of the realm who was banished to the future by Karigan. Another new character, one of the good guys, the Raven Mask is a gentleman thief and alter ego to Xandis Amberhill, an impoverished nobleman and distant cousin to the king. Fergal Duff is a new Rider, son of an abusive knacker. Karigan is paired with him on her long errand but she isn't the best mentor material, something which she is the first to admit. I felt like the author too lost interest in Fergal as the book wore on and in the end she may have kept him only as a convenient companion to the Lady Estora.

If you're a fan of the series, you'll know Alton D'yer. He spends most of the book trying to repair the D'yer Wall, the magical barrier erected thousands of years in the past by unimaginable magics but frustrated by the Wall Guardians' refusal to let him in as he was responsible for almost destroying it in the second book while under the effect of vile poisons. We learn a lot about the Wall and its making, probably setting up for the fourth book. Grandmother and her Second Empire refugees cross the Wall at the end of this book and she sets about waking the Seekers. With that intention, the book ends and now we wait, probably for another two years.

The Amazon reviews were rather harsh. The book did take a long time to get going. I'm guessing it's because of the additional exposition the author needs to do now that the series is going into its fourth book. Still, it remains an interesting story, with engaging characters. I hope the series doesn't drag out to Robert Jordan proportions and I do hope the author will let the king and Karigan get together, but as long as she doesn't keep us waiting too long I'll hang around for more adventures.

 

Old Wine Shades, by Martha Grimes


Shop Indie Bookstores

Ah, Martha Grimes. After only my third Richard Jury novel that I realized that even though the murders themselves were delicious puzzles, it was really to get back with the characters that I was reading Martha Grimes mystery novels. The characters are beautifully drawn and the names! Ms. Grimes must have such a great time choosing her proper nouns, from the names of the pubs that title her books to the characters, main and small. Melrose Plant. Vivian Rivington. Dick Scrog. Marshall Trueblood! Boy, do I love those names.

But to the subject of this review, The Old Wine Shades. Richard Jury gets to talking in a pub with a stranger and he gets told a story. The stranger's name is Harry Johnson and over the course of several days he draws the story out and Jury in.

He says a woman, her son and their dog mysteriously disappeared almost a year ago. Her husband, Harry Johnson's close friend, falls into depression and checks himself into an expensive sanatorium. The story Harry tells is detailed and compelling and soon enough Jury is trying to solve the disappearance. He is temporarily in a limbo with work over the conclusion of his last case and can take this one on. He enlists Melrose Plant's help, of course, and soon we're in the middle of another great mystery.

When Jury meets Johnson, Jury has been pondering how dreams are always stories. For all that our subconscious throws out random elements in a dream it also orders them into a story, albeit not always one that makes sense upon waking. This theme gets explored with the plot device of stories within stories that Harry Johnson is telling. Melrose Plants likens it to a set of Russian nesting dolls: the story of the disappearance, the story about the owner of the property where they disappear, the story of Richard Jury solving the disappearance.

Just as with my set of nesting dolls, you reach the end and there is no surprise unveiling of the culprit, just the solid core of truth we knew we'd find and a set of stories lined up to look closely at in turn. And that is the glory of Martha Grimes. She is a master at letting the reader fill in the blanks. She shows, never tells. I was as engrossed in this book as I have in all her others, and very happy to join my friends in Long Piddleton for an afternoon at the pub.

 

Wrapagami: the art of fabric wraps, by Jennifer Playford

Photos are of the gifts I wrapped in fabric using Wrapagami.

My husband's Aunt Doris and his mother, Grandma Ginny, are very thrifty. After each holiday is over, they stock up on the day-after sales. This year, I'd tell them to forget about buying discounted Christmas wrapping paper and instead stock up instead on seasonal fabric because wrapping up gifts in fabric is going to be the next big thing - or at least MY next big thing. 

With the Copenhagen talks behind us, people are going to realize ever more that climate change starts at home. As a mom, I've always felt guilty about the amount of packaging that is wasted every Christmas and I've been telling myself for years that I'd get a big cloth bag for each of my two children to put in their Christmas gifts. I never got around to it though. 

This year, I was lucky enough to be in Hong Kong at the end of November. Since I live in mainland China and the nearest English-language bookstore is about 2 hours away, one of the main stops of any trip to Hong Kong is a visit to a bookstore or two - or three if I can manage it. At Page One in Harbour Plaza I found Wrapagami: the art of fabric gift wrap. It was love at first sight. This was what I had been waiting for.

The author, Jennifer Playford, has paired her love for fabric and her concern for the environment by creating Furochic, her interpretation of the traditional Japanese art of wrapping in fabric called furoshiki. In the introduction to the book, she includes a timeline for furoshiki and her development of Furochic, as well as the symbolism behind Japanese imagery. 

The book is divided into two parts. The first is the basic wraps, how to take a square of fabric and turn it into beautiful gift wrap.  These wraps are based on simple folds and square knots, and are very easy to master. The second part of the book is called Creative Wrapagami, and includes wraps for flower bouquets, cushions and tissue boxes, among other things. My favorite from that section is the repurposed shirt wrap, which takes a long sleeve button-down and turns it into a decorative and conversation-starting wrap. 

I had bought the book in November but of course misplaced it, so on Christmas Eve, I had to stop looking for the book in order to get my gifts wrapped in time. I had already wrapped about 5 gifts in paper when I finally found the book. I'd bought some shirt-quality cotton in Christmas colors earlier that day and I got to work. I was pleasantly surprised to find that wrapping the gifts in fabric is much less time-consuming and super easier than doing it with paper. And, on Christmas Day, when my children opened their fabric-wrapped gifts, I took the fabric back, folded it and it's now on my shelf waiting for the next gift to give. I might be giving people gifts for no reason in the near future, just for the chance to try new furoshiki styles. 

So, Aunt Doris and Grandma Ginny, forget the wrapping paper. To the fabric store - but stop at the bookstore first to pick up your copy of Wrapagami.