Tara Chevrestt's Blog, page 34

The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman Contains More than Just Fisticuff Fights

...they'll say whatever they will to please themselves, and you'll not stop them. But you can stop them from hurting you...

I thought this was going to be about ladies boxing in 18th-century England. While it contains some boxing amongst females, only a very small amount of the story actually focuses on the subject. Most of the story seems to center around a theme of addiction and dependency. Gambling addiction. Alcohol addiction. Dependency on both the mentioned vices and on other people. Laziness--unwillingness to make do for oneself--seems to be another theme as it's common amongst almost all the characters.

Ruth is the toughest one, the one who despite the fact she comes from a house of ill repute, learns to make her fortune using her fists rather than her...well, you know. And I greatly admired her despite the fact she is mostly under Mr. Dryer's thumb until she's left to her own devices without food or water and then becomes a shell of herself. She can't look after herself at all, can't find help, look for work, gather stuff for burning. When not fighting she's useless and dependent. HOWEVER, in the end I was really impressed with her once again. She is by far my favorite character. Just like people in real life, the characters in this novel face set-backs.

Charlotte is raised to be a lady but had the pox and now lives with a man who doesn't care for her at all. She imprisons herself in an alcoholic haze of being miserable and picking at her scars. (What a gross and weird habit). She replaces one addiction (or two if you count the picking at herself) with another: fighting. As a matter of fact, when Ruth and Charlotte began training together--that's the best part of the book, in my opinion. But it isn't till the end. Regardless, Charlotte, too, impresses me in the end. Besides being about addictions and fighting, this is a story of women making the best of their situations in a male-dominated world.

George is a dandy with the gambling addiction, completely dependent on Perry, another dandy (and alcoholic dependent on a fortune left to him and unable to care for himself) and Charlotte's brother, for everything but the air he breathes. This is my number-one issue with the book. What is the point of George? While he nicely fills in the blanks between Charlotte and Ruth's bits, as to what's happening, I feel the book would have been a lot better had it just stuck to Ruth and Charlotte's POVs. I disliked George immensely and felt his POV did not add to the story at all but rather detracted.

Then there's Mr. Dryer, not a POV, just a character and a major one, dependent on the fists of others for his fortune and Tom dependent on Mr. Dryer and another lady, Ruth's sister, also dependent on Mr. Dryer. When you look at all the dependency here, it's like a circle of dependency, one person unable to live their life without the other and so on...

I feel like I'm missing something here, some moral, some food for thought. The theme of dependency just keeps striking out at me. Are any of us really "tough" whether we fight with our fists or words? Or are we all dependent in some manner on others? Are we all in some way or form using someone else?

And if I come off as complaining, I'm actually not. Though not what I expected, I found this book very engrossing and it completely transported me to another time and place. I took away new words I'd never read before--I now know what a catch-fart is! I had a few good chuckles despite the darkness of the stories.

Have you a padlock on your arse, that you've to shit through your teeth?

And the lady boxing, when the story finally truly focused on it, was fabulous, gritty fun. And the characters...though at times I was disgusted with them and had a hard time understanding their actions or lack of actions, they were real. I felt I knew them regardless of my personal feelings toward them.

I received this via Amazon Vine.

Boca Undercover (Dirty Harriet, #4) by Miriam Auerbach: Trouble in Rehab

...people keep coming to me with killings. I guess it's like being a doctor. You might be a pediatric podiatrist, but that doesn't stop people from asking your advice on their pathological prostates.

Harriet is a P.I. Her thing is scams. But people keep bringing her murders...and that's no exception in book four of this Dirty Harriet series. Her former flighty Boca babe friend is in rehab to get clean from a coke addiction. While in there, she's certain that teenagers are being murdered daily... At first Harriet thinks her friend has lost her marbles, but a visit to the clinic has her checking in herself (and her inner vigilante).

And don't think for a second that Harriet's being checked into a clinic means she doesn't manage to get a little help from her friends and our favorite characters: Enrique, her new stepdad, the Countess...

And who knew Lana the alligator had a great nephew?

I felt like this one was a little shorter than the other books, but that could just be me. I get so engrossed in these funny, witty stories with this tough, kick-butt heroine, I really never want the books to end. The humor, though tamer this time around, was still rampant--more in sarcasm and observations from Harriet than actual happenings. The book has mystery, anticipation (she really sorta needs to get this thing solved in 24 hours so she can see her sexy karate (Crav Magna?) instructor, humor, and this time around we also get to see a more vulnerable side to Harriet as her situation brings back things from her past.

I figured out the mystery before Harriet did, but I must give the author points for a totally new idea. I can honestly say I've never read a situation like this one. It's def unique and intriguing. I think my only complaint about this story is...the setting. Harriet is usually out riding her hog and getting into all kinds of trouble. But in this tale, she's confined to the rehab clinic. This bothered me for some reason. But it was certainly bothering Harriet too, so maybe we're intended to feel that way along with her!

Fans of the Dirty Harriet series won't want to miss this one. New readers to the series should read book one first.

Seeing scams everywhere is an occupational hazard for a Scam Buster. Kind of like seeing assholes everywhere is an occupational hazard for a proctologist.

I received this digital ARC via Netgalley.

The Reading Radar 12/27/2014

Spotted on GR Giveaways and on my wishlist: The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour by David Ebsworth.

She had simply been Marie, or maybe Anne, back at the beginning. But by the time both she and the Revolution were three years old, the name Marianne had come to symbolise the entire Republic. The folk of Provence sang of "Marianne’s Cure", a hymn to Liberty and Reason. And there were legends. About the woman of the barricades, wearing red cap and clogs, pike and musket in hand, leading the common people to their destiny.

On the bloody fields of Waterloo, a battle-weary canteen mistress of Bonaparte’s Imperial Guard battalions must fight to free her daughter from all the perils that war will hurl against them – before this last campaign can kill them both.

***
I've decided to acquire Jane by Robin Maxwell. Not sure why I didn't add it before, but I spotted it on Goodreads this week. It was listed as one of those "Readers also enjoyed" things when I was looking at another book.

Cambridge, England: 1905. Jane Porter is hardly a typical woman of her time. The only female student in Cambridge University’s medical program, she is far more comfortable in a lab coat, dissecting corpses, than she is in a corset and gown, sipping afternoon tea. A budding paleoanthropologist, Jane dreams of travelling the globe in search of fossils that will prove the evolutionary theories of her scientific hero, Charles Darwin.

When dashing American explorer Ral Conrath invites Jane and her father on an expedition deep into West Africa, she can hardly believe her luck. Rising to the challenge, Jane finds an Africa that is every bit exotic and fascinating as she has always imagined. But she quickly learns that the lush jungle is full of secrets—and so is Ral Conrath. When danger strikes, Jane finds her hero, the key to humanity’s past, and an all-consuming love in one extraordinary man: Tarzan of the Apes.

Jane is the first version of the Tarzan story written by a woman and authorized by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. Its 2012 publication will mark the centennial of the publication of the original Tarzan of the Apes.

***
A maybe for me...first spotted on Shelf Awareness: A Fireproof Home for the Bride by Amy Scheibe.

Emmeline Nelson and her sister Birdie grow up in the hard, cold rural Lutheran world of strict parents, strict milking times, and strict morals. Marriage is preordained, the groom practically predestined. Though it’s 1958, southern Minnesota did not see changing roles for women on the horizon. Caught in a time bubble between a world war and the ferment of the 1960’s, Emmy doesn’t see that she has any say in her life, any choices at all. Only when Emmy’s fiancé shows his true colors and forces himself on her does she find the courage to act—falling instead for a forbidden Catholic boy, a boy whose family seems warm and encouraging after the sere Nelson farm life. Not only moving to town and breaking free from her engagement but getting a job on the local newspaper begins to open Emmy’s eyes. She discovers that the KKK is not only active in the Midwest but that her family is involved, and her sense of the firm rules she grew up under—and their effect—changes completely. A FIREPROOF HOME FOR THE BRIDE has the charm of detail that will drop readers into its time and place: the home economics class lecture on cuts of meat, the group date to the diner, the small-town movie theater popcorn for a penny. It also has a love story—the wrong love giving way to the right—and most of all the pull of a great main character whose self-discovery sweeps the plot forward.

Last Stop Klindenspiel: A Dark Circus in Post World War II Poland

I'm always up for a circus novel.  That's why I downloaded Last Stop Klindenspiel from Amazon.  The last circus fiction I reviewed here on Book Babe was the YA paranormal romantic circus novel Girl on a Wire.  You can find that review here .  Last Stop Klindenspiel by Marta Tandori is very different in tone.  It's supposed to be a historical prequel to what looks to me like a contemporary Los Angeles noir  mystery series.  I haven't read the series, but the Kindle edition of Last Stop Klindenspiel contains several excerpts from the Kate Stanton series.  In the series timeline it is now established that Kate Stanton was once Katya Holberg.  I don't know how fans of the Kate Stanton series react to this revelation, but I found that the prequel stands very much on its own.

                                                         


My identification with Katya made this a tough read because she experienced so many traumatic events during and after World War II.  I had to take frequent breaks from the book in order to cope with its raw intensity.

 Many readers will not have heard of the Nazi Project Lebensborn.   This was as effort to increase the number of  so called "pure Aryan" children.   The term Aryan originally referred to a linguistic group, not a race. Katya was brought into the world as part of the Lebensborn Project.  Her father, a self-absorbed Nazi officer, had a sexual relationship with Sonia Holberg, a Norwegian woman who became Katya's mother.  After World War II the women who participated in Lebensborn suffered in the backlash against anyone associated with the Nazis, and so did their children.  Before reading Tandori's novel,  I was aware of the Lebensborn children, but had no real awareness of their post-war persecution.   This is an aspect of the post-war environment that should be more widely known.

The circus Klindenspiel was supposed to be a haven for Katya.  She would be able to exhibit the skills as a contortionist that she had learned from her mother.  Yet the young performers at Klindenspiel  were submerged in a miasma of fear and antagonism toward their superiors and each other.  Katya wanted to understand why there was so much negativity.   She idealistically wanted to improve the lives of everyone at Klindenspiel, and she received unexpected support from some very unlikely sources.

If you are looking for circus lore or vocabulary, you won't find that sort of thing in Last Stop Klindenspiel , but you will find some very realistic descriptions of training and choreography for acrobatic routines.  The vocabulary seems to originate from the world of gymnastics, and I have some familiarity with it.

What I appreciated about this book was the history, the character relationships the suspense, the surprising plot twists  and the imaginative concept.  Marta Tandori did everything right in this book.

I'm still mystified about how Katya Holberg eventually became Kate Stanton, but I was completely satisfied by the resolution of this particular chapter in her life. 

                                                       
                                                                                  

Woman with a Gun by Phillip Margolin

I zipped through this novel in almost a day. I love a good mystery. I love being kept in suspense. I love the idea of this story. At first it starts in 2015. A young wanna-be writer is inspired when she walks through another woman's art gallery. She determines she's going to write a book based on an unsolved murder on the coast of Oregon.

Then it goes back to 2005. Megan Cahill is found carrying a gun, staring out to sea on the beach by a photographer. The famous photo is taken, shooting the photographer to amazing career heights. Megan's husband is dead in the house behind them. Her ex-husband is found dead later that week. Everything seems to surround Megan. Surely she has something to do with it all...

It also takes us back about five years before this murder, and delves into the connection between a prosecutor investigating the Cahill case and the photographer/witness who had a drug problem.

It seems everyone is tied into the mess in some way, even if they don't realize it--a former prosecutor, a former pro football player, all kinds of interesting characters. I'd like to add that characterization was superb. Despite all the people involved and changing POVs, I always knew who was who by their distinctive personalities.

I confess I knew whodunnit a lot sooner than I would have liked, but the story still managed to keep me in suspense. While I knew who the main culprit was, I honestly thought others were involved too and was constantly trying to pinpoint just who was involved and how it was all done.

And though I really enjoyed this novel and mystery, I did find a few things that bugged me. 1. The lack of emotion/feeling/description. This was almost too much telling, not enough showing. I found it kind of funny when the novelist in the story thinks, "What did the wind off the ocean feel like when Megan Cahill stood on the shore looking out to sea? What did the sand feel like as she walked across the beach from her house?..." The writer in the book seems to realize she needs those details while the actual writer didn't.
2. It's almost 2015 now, as I write this, just a week to go...and I'm just your average computer user--nothing fancy--but even I know how to flip and reverse photos in Paint program. We have a professional photographer here who has never heard of PhotoShop or Paint? Seriously? Though I'm willing to give benefit of the doubt as she isn't that much of a pro in 2005 (programs were available then, however), by 2015 she'd def be familiar with that stuff, what with her career taking off. Just noticed this and thought it weird. It made for an odd ending that left me unsatisfied.

P.S. I love that this novel was actually inspired by a photograph--Woman with a Gun.

I received this digital ARC from Edelweiss.

Light Mystery, Heavy Laughs in Paw and Order by Diane Kelly

When I'd completed my "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" and returned my arm to my side, Brigit lifted her head and licked the remaining drops of holy water from my fingertips. I half expected a heavenly glow to erupt from her anus.

I was very excited about this, the second book in this series following a tough woman cop and her German Shepherd sidekick. Though the mystery was really tame and not very climatic, the humor is just fabulous and I do love a good chuckle.

The first one was more exciting, to be honest, as it followed this crazy "tunabomber" and it made me laugh out loud more. This one follows this slightly OTT twenty-one-year-old girl--come to think of it, from what I've seen of the younger generation, maybe this chick isn't so OTT after all...LOL--who feels she entitled to all the finer things in life and doesn't want to work for any of it. She wants to steal it. And she chooses the rodeo for her playground, which happens to be where Megan and Brigit the dog are patrolling.

I enjoyed the funny narrative, the thoughts everyone has, especially Brigit's, but even the bad girl's. Every single page had me smiling or chuckling or relating to some funny remark or thought.

I do dislike one thing. I hated knowing who the bad "guy" was. I like mysteries that force me to think about how it could be. Book one had it down pat. Even though it went into the perp's mind, we didn't know who the perp was, who Megan was associating with or questioning that could be the perp. In this book, Megan doesn't even run into the perp until the end and we, the readers, know it all along. The lack of connection between Megan and the perp makes for a lackluster mystery. There really is no mystery.

And some things were just off. Even Texas does background checks when you buy a gun.

While I didn't enjoy this as much as the first, I did enjoy it and plan to read book three. I can't wait to see if Megan makes detective and I hope we, the readers, go along for the ride. Dog lovers, this is one series you won't want to miss. For romance fans, there's also a very mild romance.

I received this via Netgalley.

Oracles of Delphi: Who Will Control The Oracle?

Publication Date: October 15, 2014Blank Slate PressFormats: eBook, PaperbackPages: 324
Series: Althaia of Athens MysteryGenre: Historical Mystery


READ AN EXCERPT.

All Althaia wants on her trip to Delphi is to fulfill her father’s last wish. Finding the body of a woman in the Sacred Precinct is not in her plans. Neither is getting involved in the search for the killer, falling for the son of a famous priestess, or getting pulled into the ancient struggle for control of the two most powerful oracles in the world. But that’s what happens when Theron, Althaia's tutor and a man with a reputation for finding the truth, is asked to investigate. When a priest hints that Theron himself may be involved, Althaia is certain the old man is crazy — until Nikos, son of a famous priestess, arrives with an urgent message. Theron's past, greedy priests, paranoid priestesses, prophecies, and stolen treasures complicate the investigation, and as Althaia falls for Nikos, whose dangerous secrets hold the key to the young woman’s death, she discovers that love often comes at a high price and that the true meaning of family is more than a bond of blood.

*****REVIEW*****

I've read previous books about the Oracle of Delphi in both fiction and non-fiction.  So I was aware that  according to legend it was a site sacred to the Earth Goddess Gaia that was taken over by the Sun God Apollo. I did find one scholar who apparently thinks that this myth shouldn't be taken literally.  Her name is Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood and she wrote in a 1999 article called "Myth As History: The Previous Owners of the Delphic Oracle" that this legend represents a symbolic defeat of dark chthonic (underworld) forces by Apollo.  She states that Delphi wasn't an active sacred site during the Mycenaean period.  I only read a summary of this article, so perhaps Sourvinou-Inwood cited archaeological evidence for her argument and perhaps she neglected to do so.  Not being an authority on ancient Greece myself, I have no way of evaluating her scholarship.

  I have never previously read a novel taking place in the transition period when there was a Gaia Pythia and an Apollo Pythia present in Delphi's Sacred Precinct with the priests and priestesses opposed to one another. I would have thought that a conflict of that nature would have taken place much earlier than the 4th century BCE which is when the events of Oracles of Delphi occurred. Sites that I have consulted online place the transition during the mythic "archaic era".  The only one that I could find which gave specific dates when it may have happened was Pagaian Cosmology which is a website belonging to Australian feminist scholar Glenys Livingstone who states that the transition would have occurred between the 11th and 9th centuries B.C.E. if not earlier.   I would certainly have imagined that this conflict had already been resolved by the 5th century B.C.E. Golden Age of Athens when Socrates taught his students to ask uncomfortable questions.  Yet let us suppose that this struggle between the priestesses of Gaia and the priests of Apollo was taking place when Alexander the Great's father, Phillip, ruled in Macedon as Marie Savage contends in this novel.  I am certainly willing to entertain such a premise for the sake of a good story.

The main advantage of setting this story that late is that there can be a central character who has received some fairly scientific oriented training from a priest of Amun-Ra in Egypt.  I should mention that Althaia would definitely have been a pioneer of these techniques in ancient Greece.  The earliest Greek anatomist that I found online is Herophilos who dissected cadavers in Alexandria, but he was born some twenty years after The Oracles of Delphi took place.  I find this credible because, as a woman, Althaia would always keep a low profile about doing autopsies. She knew that it wasn't acceptable for an Athenian woman to have such skills.  So she wouldn't have been part of the historical record.

I really liked Althaia, her mentor Theron and both her slaves.  They were all sympathetic while also having some degree of complexity.   Yet I was struck by how many of the characters who lived in Delphi were actively engaged in criminal activities.  It was as if the nature of  Delphi as a place where people went for assistance and advice encouraged the convergence of thieves and confidence men prepared to take  advantage of them.  There were also many valuable objects within the Sacred Precinct that seemed to invite theft.  Sincere and honest people seemed relatively scarce in what was supposed to be a spiritual environment.  This meant that Althaia and Theron's investigations had no shortage of suspects. 

There was an element of romance in this novel. The sentimental side of me was pleased by the thoroughly HEA ending, but the realistic side of me wondered how HEA could last for Althaia in particular given her circumstances.  I imagine that the author is setting her up for continuing conflict in her personal life in future books of the series.



Buy the Book


Barnes & NobleBook DepositoryIndieBoundAbout the Author Marie Savage is the pen name of Kristina Marie Blank Makansi who always wanted to be a Savage (her grandmother’s maiden name) rather than a Blank. She is co-founder and publisher of Blank Slate Press, an award-winning small press in St. Louis, and founder of Treehouse Author Services. Books she has published and/or edited have been recognized by the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), the Beverly Hills Book Awards, the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction, the British Kitchie awards, and others. She serves on the board of the Missouri Center for the Book and the Missouri Writers Guild. Along with her two daughters, she has authored The Sowing and The Reaping (Oct. 2014), the first two books of a young adult, science fiction trilogy. Oracles of Delphi, is her first solo novel.

For more information visit Kristina Makansi's website and the Blank Slate Press website. You can also follow Krisina Makansi and Blank Slate Press on Twitter.
Oracles of Delphi Blog Tour ScheduleMonday, December 8
Review at The Mad Reviewer
Review & Giveaway at Luxury Reading

Tuesday, December 9
Review at Oh, For the Hook of a Book

Wednesday, December 10
Spotlight & Giveaway at Passages to the Past

Thursday, December 11
Interview at The Maiden's Court
Spotlight & Giveaway at Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More

Monday, December 15
Review at Book Nerd

Tuesday, December 16
Interview at Oh, For the Hook of a Book

Thursday, December 18
Guest Post at Just One More Chapter

Monday, December 22
Review at Book Lovers Paradise

Tuesday, December 23
Review at Book Babe

Monday, December 29
Review at 100 Pages a Day - Stephanie's Book Reviews
Spotlight at Historical Fiction Connection

Tuesday, December 30
Guest Post & Giveaway at The Book Binder's Daughter

Thursday, January 1
Review at With Her Nose Stuck in a Book

Friday, January 2
Review at Svetlana's Reads and Views

Monday, January 5
Review at A Bookish Affair

Tuesday, January 6
Review at Book Drunkard

Wednesday, January 7
Review at bookramblings
Review & Giveaway at Brooke Blogs
Spotlight at CelticLady's Reviews

Friday, January 9
Review at Book Dilettante

The Firebird's Feather by Marjorie Eccles

This is a light mystery set in 1911 London. Actually, the word "light" is probably wrong. After all, a woman is shot to death in Hyde Park. That's serious stuff. But the telling of it all, the lack of emotions from the characters gave it a light feel.

Except for a nervous Bridget (the niece) and a flighty sister, the women in the story were like robots: the assistant, the daughter. The men seemed to be fleshed out a little more, namely the beau and the nephew. (The husband didn't seem as affected as I would expect.) I guess that would be my main quibble with the book and I'll just get that out of the way. The characterizations were presented to us in such a way that while we're given lots of details (some of them impertinent to the story) about each character, we never come to care for them at all. At least I didn't.

The story itself, the plot, is really somewhat exciting. A wealthy married woman who writes racy romances in her free time and has a male companion (not her husband) taking her to shows and riding with her in the park is just shot dead one day. There's missing property, Russian connections, and strange secrets about her popping up here and there during the investigation.

At the heart of it all is the possible beau who really wants the woman's daughter, the robotic daughter, a bluestocking niece, a flighty sister, a husband with a missing gun, and a mysterious assistant as well as a nephew who runs a controversial newspaper. The story throws just enough details at you to throw you off and keep you guessing. What does one have to do with the other? Is this even relevant, you wonder as you read and pick up clues.

But it's rather slow and on top of my above quibble, I also grew irritated at the "jumping" around. Example: The scene is on Marcus. He is about to go visit the newspaper. Scene ends. Then it goes to the daughter and Marcus shows up to visit her. I thought he was going to the paper? Then he sits down to tell her about his trip to the paper and we jump to that scene.... I'd prefer it be in chronological order. There was also something off with the historical aspect. It's a historical setting--with horses, dresses, rules and etiquette, and a coronation, but I never felt transported as I tend to do with good historicals.

I received this via Netgalley.

Dreaming Spies: So How Was Your Trip To Japan, Mary Russell?

I love Mary Russell.  This mystery series is Laurie R. King's revision of the Sherlock Holmes mythos that includes a female apprentice who later becomes his wife.  She  co- investigates cases with Sherlock Holmes, she is a capable fighter, excellent at playing a role, knows many languages and studies religion at Oxford.  Some would call her a Mary Sue, but she isn't perfect by any means.  She has a traumatic background that has given her nightmares, and other symptoms of PTSD-- particularly in Locked Rooms.  Yet Mary Russell is a strong survivor.

So I prioritized the ARC of  Dreaming Spies when I was approved for it at Net Galley.  This is the most recent novel in the Mary Russell series which will be released in February 2015.

                                           



Dreaming Spies is the much anticipated Japan novel.  Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes travel to 1920's Japan simply because they have never been there.  Since I truly relish novels that delve into Japanese culture, I had high hopes for this book.   One of the characters is a very capable female ninja.  We learn that female ninjas are called kunoichi. There are further revelations about ninjas, and their role in Japanese culture.  It should have been very exciting.

I really did like the Japanese cultural content and the female ninja.   As a lover of fiction that contains martial arts, I enjoyed the inclusion of a kendo scene with wooden practice swords known as shinai. I liked seeing Mary Russell at Oxford at a research library in the final section of the book that took place in England.    

 Alas, Dreaming Spies doesn't rank with my favorite Mary Russell novels.  I found it relatively low key.   There is a tragic death in this book, but I felt distanced from it.  This is because we have barely been introduced to the victim when his life comes to a sudden end. It was also much less suspenseful than I would expect from a mystery.  In the first 60% of the novel, the main focus of suspense is whether Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes will get to a meeting on time.  The protagonists do lots of traveling in Japan, but don't accomplish very much.  This is the kind of book that is more about the journey rather than being about arriving at a destination.  There are some great scenes in the novel, but I'm not sure that this sort of narrative is compatible with the mystery genre.

Many other reviews have complained that Dreaming Spies is slow.  How slow is it?  Let's just say that it literally put me to sleep twice.  The first time I was on a bus and discovered I'd missed my stop when I woke up.  I kept on hoping that Laurie R. King would deliver, so I persisted.   Eventually, I was rewarded when the investigation goes into high gear starting at 66%.  Still I felt that I didn't get enough of a payoff.  The real mystery wasn't the perpetrator in the blackmail plot.  It was a secret document.   The Japanese characters were so dedicated to making certain that the contents of this document are never made public, but the reader doesn't even get a clue  about the secret that they are risking their lives to defend.  So when I closed the book I felt cheated. What was it all about? Was it worth all the danger?  I wish I knew.        

                                             
                                     

The Different Types of Sisterhood...Sisters of Heart and Snow by Margaret Dilloway

This is a very engrossing tale that shows the different types of sisterhood: that which we choose (of the heart) and that which we're born with. They are bonds of equal strength.

There are two stories here: late 1100s Japan, following a woman soldier (samurai) and her sister of the heart, her lover's wife. The women are very different, one being of home and hearth, one being a fighter. The modern story follows two sisters struggling to find themselves late in their middle age and let the past be in the past. Their childhood has molded them into people they don't always want to be.

We're kept in a lot of suspense with the modern tale. What secret did their mother keep all those years? What is their dad going to use to blackmail Rachel into giving up power of attorney? (Her mother has dementia and is in a home). Will Rachel and her dad make amends? What is going on with Rachel's daughter? This kept me reading even though at times I felt the story dragged. Don't get me wrong; I liked the book, but at the 3/4 point, I just wanted to get the answers and move on. For me the book was longer than it needed to be, for the story it contained.

I especially enjoyed the theme about control. Controlling everything and everyone isn't the answer.

I do have some quibbles.

I think the historical tale...there wasn't enough time spent on it, while the modern tale was way too drawn out. I was apparently supposed to feel this great bond between Yamabuchi and Tomoe, but I really didn't. Their bits were too short for me to really grasp any closeness between them.

The fact that Rachel's parts were first-person present tense, Tomoe's parts were third-person, past tense, and Drew's parts third-person, present tense was very jarring.

Except for Rachel, I didn't find these women very strong. They all submit or lose themselves in a man. After the way that bratty child spoke to Drew at the carnival and the way the kid's father pandered to the child, I'd have run away, fast, not subjected myself to more of that behavior. Quincy is obsessed for a man. Tomoe may be great with a sword but she's weak for a crazy man who doesn't treat her well. She always does his bidding even when she doesn't agree with him. Yamabuchi is somewhat strong now that I think on it. She faces a lot of crap and even though she's in a life she wasn't trained or ready for, she tries her best. Rachel and Drew's mother...I'm not even touching that one. Some things were still not clear to me about her in the end. I get she sold her soul to the devil to have a better life, but why be such a horrid, negligent mother? And I realize she was holding part of herself out of shame, but still...this woman was hard for me to comprehend.

Rachel bucks up in the end, once she finally stops giving her father the power to affect/hurt her. In my eyes, Rachel had the strongest story and moral and strength.

Don't give people the power to hurt you and they can't. At some point in life, you must be able to brush their words off, see them for what they are.

Despite my quibbles, I enjoyed the book and found it well written. The characterizations were distinct and consistent, something not easy to do when writing about five or six different women.

I received this via Amazon Vine.