C.A. Gray's Blog, page 15
July 14, 2023
The Echo of Old Books
Delightful – and with a surprise happy ending!
I’m not entirely sure how I’d even classify this book. It’s part romance, part mystery, and part fantasy (though it’s urban, and the main character has what Orson Scott Card would call a micropower: she can read the emotions in old books left over from the person who last owned them). It’s also told in a very unique style: two arguing manuscripts from former lovers, and the reader, Ashlyn, in between, as she digests the story.
Ashlyn is an owner of an old bookstore, which is perfect for her, given her particular gift. She’s had a rough life, and takes refuge in the books she loves. When she gets a donation of two strange bound volumes, without author names or publication pages, she becomes curious, particularly when she’s hit with the overwhelming sense of heartbreak from both of them. Yet she finds that the two volumes are a set, a he said/she said recapitulating a romance gone wrong. Even in the volumes, neither of them names the other except for by nickname: he calls her Belle, and she calls him Hemi (which seems to allude to Hemingway, as he is apparently a writer himself).
Ashlyn becomes so engrossed in their stories that she determines to track down the donor, and stumbles upon Ethan, related to the man who donated them. Ethan is a writer too, and while he brushes her off at first, eventually she interests him in the sleuthing process of who they were and what happened to them. Ashlyn feels strongly that there has to be something they’re missing, since both writers seemed to equally believe themselves to be the wronged party. In the process of investigating, Ashlyn and Ethan delve into their own romance.
The end of the two manuscripts ends unfinished, but Ashlyn and Ethan deduce that “Belle” is actually Ethan’s estranged great-aunt. This leads to unraveling the rest of the mystery. I won’t spoil it except to say that Ashlyn’s instincts are correct. While nothing in the story led me to believe that there would be a happy ending for Hemi and Belle, when there finally is, it’s very satisfying. Barbara Davis endings usually are!
My rating: ****1/2
Language: none
Sexual content: it’s there, but in a fade-to-black kind of a way
Violence: none that I recall
Political content: none
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The Bird and the Sword, by Amy Harmon
Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of The Bird and the Sword.
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July 7, 2023
Caves of Glass RELEASE WEEK
Today’s podcast is about my new high fantasy release, Caves of Glass, which you can pick up here! Here is the back cover copy:
The illegitimate son of a peasant, Rion of Tryferos has very limited prospects with only one remarkable talent: when he plays the lyre, he ushers in the supernatural balm of peace to all who hear. This turns out to be his ticket into the palace, where he nightly plays for the restless, rejected king. King Hector of Tryferos is paranoid, because he knows his days on the throne are numbered. What he doesn’t know is that his anointed successor is Rion.
Princess Genevieve is a spare to the throne of Mageia, shunned by all but her mother out of fear of her magical gift: she possesses the power to manipulate the thoughts and desires of those around her. But Ginny would do anything just to be normal. When a fulfilled prophecy of her mother’s untimely death also foretells that Ginny will ascend the Mageian throne, Ginny wonders whether she has any control over her own fate at all, or whether everything is predetermined.
Both Rion and Ginny are drawn to the forbidden Caves of Glass at the icy pinnacles that border their two perpetually feuding nations. According to legend, the Caves are either a place of strange forbidden magic, or else a place where all deception is stripped away, leaving only clarity and truth in its wake. As Rion flees for his life and Ginny struggles against her destiny, in the Caves of Glass, they find both each other, and themselves.
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Caves of Glass Release Week!
This was the hardest book I’ve ever written, I think, with the possible exception of Intangible (just because I’d never written a full length novel before at that point!) I suspect that it seemed so difficult because I was trying to both draw from a real historical event (the lives of the biblical kings David and Saul), and also intersperse fictional elements. In this case, I set their story in a fantasy world with magic, added a love story with a princess of a rival kingdom, and at least initially attempted to interweave snippets of the story of the Knights Templar. All of this required massive rewrites, as my instinct is very much to do either a straight retelling (as in the Biblical Retellings series), or else to make up the whole story from start to finish. I probably won’t ever try anything like this again, but I’m glad to say I’ve done it once!I also enjoyed bringing David’s story to life (Rion, in the realm of Tryferos). He’s one of my favorite biblical characters.
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June 30, 2023
The Longevity Solution, Fung and DiNicolantonio
Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of The Longevity Solution.
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June 28, 2023
The Longevity Solution
It’s rare that I’m truly impressed by a book on health. Most of them say the same (albeit good) things: eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, minimize your stress. That seems to be the last half of nearly all of them, and in many cases the final portion is taken up with recipes. Because this is what I do all day (naturopathic medicine), I’m looking for something truly new that can expand my toolbox for treating patients.
Many people are interested in how to age well and stay healthy longer, but usually longevity too seems limited to aesthetics, or studies that show this or that supplement might lengthen telomeres, decrease inflammation or oxidative stress, etc. This book offered something new, though: a broader context for why certain treatments might work.
First, it introduced me to the concept of hormesis, which I knew quite well before without knowing what to call it. Now I realize that most of my favorite modalities work exactly this way: giving the body a push in the direction it’s already going so that it will self-correct in the opposite direction. Having a name and a concrete description of the concept seems to broaden my understanding of other things that might work in a similar fashion, too.
Second, and along those lines, it pointed out that there’s a trade-off between growth and longevity. I knew that Growth Hormone was highly regulated and not generally recommended, but not why. Now I have a better philosophical idea of the reason: too much GH might seem to reverse the clock, but at a cost. The phrase “better to burn out than to fade away” comes to mind, though the book’s argument is the exact opposite, since longevity is all about persisting rather than burning bright and then dying young. This also may help inform discussions surrounding other “youth-promoting” treatments, too. The body is wise; it’s best not to work against its natural processes when possible.
Third, the specific concepts of mTOR, IGF-1, sirtuins, and AMPK and how they relate to longevity was well and thoroughly answered. These are buzz words in longevity medicine these days and I had long intended to do a deep dive into them. I plan to go back through my notes and do just that.
I also loved how they reviewed inhabitants of various Blue Zones throughout the world, with the highest percentage of centenarians, and showed what their lifestyles did (and didn’t) have in common. There’s good balance to the plant-based argument, as well as to often-vilified substances like wine and coffee.
Highly recommended!
My rating: *****
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: none
Political content: none
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June 23, 2023
Just Haven’t Met You Yet, Sophie Cousens
This week’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Just Haven’t Met You Yet.
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June 22, 2023
Review of Just Haven’t Met You Yet
This was a cute, engaging chick lit romance, with some drawbacks.
Laura is in her late 20s, about the age of nearly every chick lit protagonist – still single and trying to find who she is, with her 30th birthday looming. Her mother was her best friend, but she died a few years earlier. Laura now works at an online magazine, specializing in interviewing couples on how they met one another. This only makes her feel lonelier, and like it’ll never happen for her. She pitches an idea to her hot-and-cold boss Suki that she could go back to the Channel Islands where her parents met, and recreate their love story, and to her surprise, Suki goes for it.
When Laura gets there, though, she accidentally picks up the wrong suitcase at the airport. She opens it, and believes from the serendipitous things inside that this case must belong to her dream man–and the universe has conspired to bring them together. She is determined to give it back to him in person. Meanwhile, local cab driver Ted agrees, after a rocky start to their relationship, to take her around the islands to all the places that had been meaningful to her parents’ love story.
As soon as Laura starts to notice how hot Ted was, I knew where this was going, but that didn’t make the process less enjoyable. Of course when she meets Jasper, “the suitcase man,” he’s perfect for her on paper in every way, because he had to be in order to give her a real choice. In the midst of this love triangle, Laura also learns that her parents’ love story wasn’t at all what she’d believed it to be, and she has to choose between pleasing her boss and being true to herself… all the typical elements of chick lit. All of this was fine. When Laura and Ted get together, there’s quite a bit of sex, but that’s kind of par for the course in the romantic culmination of most chick lit books too, and you can skip it (sort of, it comes back again later). The main surprise of the book comes after this, and made the whole thing overall a lot less predictable, though only for the last 30 minutes.
My only objection to the book was some of the subtle messaging. Laura’s job starts out being all about “happily ever afters,” and she’d always thought of her parents’ love story that way. At the end of the book, she’s led to what’s supposed to be a more realistic view that not everything ends happy, and that’s okay, and if all you have is now, you might as well enjoy now. It’s one thing to say, “enjoy the moment,” and that is *part* of the message… but the larger theme was that romance doesn’t last, and you should be okay with that. It’s very sad, and makes me wonder what our culture is settling for.
My rating: ***1/2
Language: it’s there. In some places it’s a lot, but it’s always done in a lighthearted manner. Does that help?
Violence: none
Sexual content: quite a bit, but it’s all concentrated at the end. Once you realize it’s coming you can skip the rest of that chapter… though it recurs in the next chapter too, some.
Political content: it’s there, and it’s peppered throughout – but it doesn’t influence the actual story. There’s just obvious references that make it seem like, “any decent person will admire this individual, or support this cause.” Which annoys me as kind of subtle brainwashing.
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June 16, 2023
Review of A Thousand Heartbeats
The plot had potential, but the execution left much to be desired.
In a high fantasy world, one semi-idyllic kingdom thrives while a pseudo-nation of castaways, once part of the original kingdom and now rejected, seeks to take them down.
Princess Annika loved her mother more than anything, but she went missing several years ago, and was never heard from again. (In fact I thought this relationship in retrospect was the most believable relationship in the book.) She still has her beloved brother and her ladies’ maid (who–spoiler alert, though it’s fairly obvious early on – is secretly in a relationship with the Crown Prince), but her father is cold and distant. Her father has also betrothed her to Nicholas, an alternately pathetic and loathsome character, but Annika thinks that marrying him will bring stability to her nation, so she’s willing to go along with it.
In the neighboring territory, Lennox is a warrior who blames Annika’s nation for murdering his father. When Annika’s mother becomes their prisoner, Lennox has the unpleasant task of executing her. But she’s haunted him ever since, because she died so well. Later, when Annika becomes his prisoner too, he puts together who she must be.
At least the romance doesn’t blossom between them right away. She escapes, with the knowledge that Lennox believes that their tribe are the rightful rulrs of her nation, rather than her family. When all-out war later breaks out, they encounter one another again on the battlefield. A series of convenient catastrophic weather phenomena and terrain challenges conspire to bring them together while preventing them from killing each other, which leads to their very rapid enemies-to-lovers conversion. “Love sounds like a thousand heartbeats”–that’s where the title comes from, so you can pretty well guess how nauseating the ensuing scenes are of the two of them together.
And yet I kept listening until the end, I guess because it was just entertaining enough, and it was clean (which in and of itself is remarkable). The characterization was poor, but there was a slightly too perfect happily-ever-after, complete with an epilogue of babies. I did a little eye-rolling at that, I’m not gonna lie, but I prefer that to tragedy!
My rating: **1/2
Language: none
Violence: fantasy only
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
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A Thousand Heartbeats, Kiera Cass
Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of A Thousand Heartbeats.
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