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Currently Reading - 23-11-2014
Nov. 23rd, 2014 10:50 pmSeven Kinds of Hell,
Pack of Strays, Dana Cameron
Zoe Miller is an archaeologist of a sort, but a woman with secrets - she's grown up on the run, after her mother discovered her father was involved in a series of violent killings. Her mother just died, she's just, for reasons she doesn't understand, stolen a small artifact figurine she was supposed to be cataloguing, and her father's family may be hunting her. Oh, and she's a werewolf. Seven Kinds of Hell flows out of the consequences of this, with a 'cousin' kidnapped to force her to bring not just the stolen artifact, but the others that go with it, to a violent Russian criminal who wants to become one of the Fangborn (he's not really paying enough attention to the second part of that name). The story is confusing, at one point I think I counted eight factions. but Zoe is equally confused as the narrative shifts from Boston to London to Berlin, to Venice and then to ancient sites in Greece and Turkey, revealing a family heritage she never knew about, and she is never quite sure who she can trust as the alliances around her twist and turn. There's original stuff here, werewolves as forces of good has been done before (World of Darkness), but Cameron has some truly original takes on vampires, and the Fangborn also include oracles, who tend to have wierdly unpredictable powers. Equally there isn't a simple assumption of good=good, evil=bad, the Fangborn are driven to do good and punish evil, but what 'good' means becomes strangely malleable when politicians get involved. The author clearly knows her stuff on archaeology (you'd sort of hope that from the PhD), my initial worries when she started talking about 'provenience' being allayed when I looked it up and it turns out it actually is the US term for provenance, not a mispelling (a US spelling that's added vowels, weird!). Overall it's a little confusing due to the sheer number of factions, but a worthwhile read if urban fantasy/thrillers are your thing (the author seems to be a crime-writer straying into fantasy, which would explain why she isn't a name I know).
Pack of Strays picks up a couple of weeks later with Zoe on the run after 'lets figure out what your powers are' turned into 'lets keep you doped up, send all your friends away and figure out what your powers are'. The Fangborn are fundamentally split on whether to reveal themselves (oddly it's the conservatives who want to out themselves and the liberals saying 'this is a bad idea'), the FBI liaisons with them are lying to their Fangborn members, there are new bad guys, the Fangborn-hunters of The Order of Nicomedia, and everyone wants their hands on Zoe, including former Fangborn friends who now seem driven to rip her limb from limb (fortunately there aren't quite as many factions as last time). Plus a worldwide network of hidden Fangborn artifacts have decided Zoe is their chosen one, and are calling out to her to come find them. Zoe picks up new allies, and old, along the way, including the first fully realised oracle we've seen, and it's a way that takes her back to Europe, but with the threat from the Order of Nicomedia growing ever larger. There's an almighty climactic battle, which I'm not convinced that they'll be able to keep hidden, and the author does have a fondness for cliffhanger endings... (Cliffhanger is possibly unfair, it's more throw Zoe straight into 'And next time....')
Both novels are on offer from Amazon UK at £1.00 each, as are a couple of Fangborn short stories (one medieval, one Holmesian), which I've bought but not read yet. At that price you can't really go wrong if you like Urban Fantasy.
Bomber Girls, M J Foreman.
This is an Amazon single of about 60 pages on the wartime activities of the women ferry pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary, with a little bit of background on other women pilots such as Sabiha Gökçen, (Kemal Ataturk's adopted daughter and the first ever woman combat pilot) and the Russian Night Witches. It's got some really interesting stories to tell, but let down somewhat for me because of consistently overblown descriptions of the aircraft and that it's fairly obvious the author isn't able to place the aircraft in any sort of context of role or effectiveness, or even reliably size, which weakens the narrative if you do know your way around WWII aircraft (and I do). It really needed the attention of an aviation-savvy editor to turn it into a good book (actually it really needs the attention of an editor full stop as you're occasionally told the same thing twice, sometimes on the same page), but as it is is still worth it for the stories. I came away thinking I really should have read either of Lettice Curtis's books about her experiences (there are substantial quotes), but for the length and the price it's not actually bad and worthwhile if you want a quick, cheap intro to the women of the ATA.
Also read: a few short stories from Magic City: Recent Spells, edited by Paula Guran, which is a collection of specifically urban tales of urban fantasy (if you see what I mean). I'm not even a quarter of the way through, but an obvious standout is Simon R Green's story of a sort of magical street sweeper doing his nightly rounds of London, keeping the streets safe for the tourists, which does a really good job of evoking the seedier side of London.
Pack of Strays, Dana Cameron
Zoe Miller is an archaeologist of a sort, but a woman with secrets - she's grown up on the run, after her mother discovered her father was involved in a series of violent killings. Her mother just died, she's just, for reasons she doesn't understand, stolen a small artifact figurine she was supposed to be cataloguing, and her father's family may be hunting her. Oh, and she's a werewolf. Seven Kinds of Hell flows out of the consequences of this, with a 'cousin' kidnapped to force her to bring not just the stolen artifact, but the others that go with it, to a violent Russian criminal who wants to become one of the Fangborn (he's not really paying enough attention to the second part of that name). The story is confusing, at one point I think I counted eight factions. but Zoe is equally confused as the narrative shifts from Boston to London to Berlin, to Venice and then to ancient sites in Greece and Turkey, revealing a family heritage she never knew about, and she is never quite sure who she can trust as the alliances around her twist and turn. There's original stuff here, werewolves as forces of good has been done before (World of Darkness), but Cameron has some truly original takes on vampires, and the Fangborn also include oracles, who tend to have wierdly unpredictable powers. Equally there isn't a simple assumption of good=good, evil=bad, the Fangborn are driven to do good and punish evil, but what 'good' means becomes strangely malleable when politicians get involved. The author clearly knows her stuff on archaeology (you'd sort of hope that from the PhD), my initial worries when she started talking about 'provenience' being allayed when I looked it up and it turns out it actually is the US term for provenance, not a mispelling (a US spelling that's added vowels, weird!). Overall it's a little confusing due to the sheer number of factions, but a worthwhile read if urban fantasy/thrillers are your thing (the author seems to be a crime-writer straying into fantasy, which would explain why she isn't a name I know).
Pack of Strays picks up a couple of weeks later with Zoe on the run after 'lets figure out what your powers are' turned into 'lets keep you doped up, send all your friends away and figure out what your powers are'. The Fangborn are fundamentally split on whether to reveal themselves (oddly it's the conservatives who want to out themselves and the liberals saying 'this is a bad idea'), the FBI liaisons with them are lying to their Fangborn members, there are new bad guys, the Fangborn-hunters of The Order of Nicomedia, and everyone wants their hands on Zoe, including former Fangborn friends who now seem driven to rip her limb from limb (fortunately there aren't quite as many factions as last time). Plus a worldwide network of hidden Fangborn artifacts have decided Zoe is their chosen one, and are calling out to her to come find them. Zoe picks up new allies, and old, along the way, including the first fully realised oracle we've seen, and it's a way that takes her back to Europe, but with the threat from the Order of Nicomedia growing ever larger. There's an almighty climactic battle, which I'm not convinced that they'll be able to keep hidden, and the author does have a fondness for cliffhanger endings... (Cliffhanger is possibly unfair, it's more throw Zoe straight into 'And next time....')
Both novels are on offer from Amazon UK at £1.00 each, as are a couple of Fangborn short stories (one medieval, one Holmesian), which I've bought but not read yet. At that price you can't really go wrong if you like Urban Fantasy.
Bomber Girls, M J Foreman.
This is an Amazon single of about 60 pages on the wartime activities of the women ferry pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary, with a little bit of background on other women pilots such as Sabiha Gökçen, (Kemal Ataturk's adopted daughter and the first ever woman combat pilot) and the Russian Night Witches. It's got some really interesting stories to tell, but let down somewhat for me because of consistently overblown descriptions of the aircraft and that it's fairly obvious the author isn't able to place the aircraft in any sort of context of role or effectiveness, or even reliably size, which weakens the narrative if you do know your way around WWII aircraft (and I do). It really needed the attention of an aviation-savvy editor to turn it into a good book (actually it really needs the attention of an editor full stop as you're occasionally told the same thing twice, sometimes on the same page), but as it is is still worth it for the stories. I came away thinking I really should have read either of Lettice Curtis's books about her experiences (there are substantial quotes), but for the length and the price it's not actually bad and worthwhile if you want a quick, cheap intro to the women of the ATA.
Also read: a few short stories from Magic City: Recent Spells, edited by Paula Guran, which is a collection of specifically urban tales of urban fantasy (if you see what I mean). I'm not even a quarter of the way through, but an obvious standout is Simon R Green's story of a sort of magical street sweeper doing his nightly rounds of London, keeping the streets safe for the tourists, which does a really good job of evoking the seedier side of London.
