D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

book review

REVIEW – Cadoc’s Contract by Chris Rosser

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Cadoc’s Contract:

I’m a fan of Chris Rosser. His The Weaver’s Boy was a delightful look into his forthcoming The Lords of Skeinhold, and Cadoc’s Contract, a prequel to The Weaver’s Boy, does not disappoint as a new addition to the series.

It’s a rough tale peopled with soldiers whose lives, like those of all soldiers, have not been easy. The story begins on a ship bringing Captain Cadoc and his men back home from war, and Rosser has a gift of phrasing that puts the reader on the ship as it fights its way through a storm with our hero on board. We can feel what Cadoc feels, and as we learn more about the bargain hinted at in the title and then the first chapter, we begin to recognize he’s paid and is still paying a high price for his own survival in the war, and it’s begun to wear on him.

Rosser is a consummate wordsmith. His metaphors and similes are perfection, and his ability to draw us into the moment with the hardened-soldier voice of his narrative evokes all the right emotions. Cadoc is a warrior returning home from war. It’s Ulysses in brief, and although he’s only been gone a year, it’s as though a lifetime has passed.

In brief, Cadoc’s Contract is one fun ride.

Wild Ride: All the Pretty Bones by Camela Thompson

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All the Pretty Bones by Camela Thompson is a fun ride for the paranormal reader. Check it out. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

Details: Things can’t get much worse for Olivia Kardos. Stalked for the greater part of 10 years by a psychopath, Olivia learns that she is dying of cancer. So where can a storyteller take the reader from there? Sounds closer to the end than the beginning. Au contraire!

Olivia decides that before her life is over she is going to free herself from the crazy man forever watching her; she’s going to kill him. Does she succeed? I’m not telling. But the head-spinning twists and turns this amusement park ride of a tale inflicts on the reader are significantly more than satisfying.

What I particularly enjoyed about this story was the way in which none of the characters is truly all bad or all good. Nobody gets away with phoning in their performance. Even the psychopath, though unsympathetic, occasionally comes off as sad as he is horrific.

I highly recommend All the Pretty Bones. It’s a smart book. Ms. Thompson posits a world where vampires and demons exist just below the surface of what humans are aware of, and she weaves them in and out, taking her time revealing them. I love the way she ties the knot tighter and tighter as we approach what the reader knows is going to be a complicated ending, then brings everyone on stage to play their parts exactly as she has planned.

Review – Veronica Phoenix

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The opening chapter of Veronica Phoenix by Jim Proctor grabbed me and catapulted me into a great and glorious journey with Carl Wilkins, captain of a deep-space salvage vessel. Early on, it becomes clear that poor Carl has not yet learned the lesson that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. However, Carl is a believable character with whom I became invested almost immediately upon meeting him, and I enjoyed this book for its nail-biting adventure and Carl’s personal development as he works his way out of the life-threatening fix he’s ended up in.

I found the prose easy to read, and I appreciated the careful knack Proctor has of navigating the pitfalls of technical details—educating us without overwhelming us with information. His writing style is well crafted, and he moves the story along, handing us new revelations just at the moment when we need them and not before.

I did have a problem with the ending. I felt that Proctor lost focus, skipping over Carl’s redemption, while the ah-ha moment of an unlikable, minor character gained an importance it (and he) didn’t deserve. The writing remained consistent, but the story took a dip there for me.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to readers of Science Fiction and those who appreciate the character study of a well-defined anti-hero. Proctor has written his finest work yet, and although I could only give it 4 stars because of my personal quibble with the ending, this book is well worth reading.

Feedback from the Masses

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Must keep the blog going. That’s what they say. If you want to keep your platform steady, the blog is the way to do it. Well, god knows, I can’t tell my platform from my brand from a hole in the ground, but I’ll keep the blog active.

Next, I must come up with a topic. Shoot. What the heck do I write about? About the cat I had to euthanize last week? (No, too sad, and I’d really rather not go there.) About how my new work in progress is moving with starts and stops? (Probably not since I want to inspire people, not leave them wondering if a writer’s life is all that great.) Oh, I know.

Reviews.

First, my books are slow in picking up readers and reviews. Because of that platform thing, you know—my blog (and my Facebook page and Twitter and Google+ and, oh lordie, I can’t seem to do any of this right). Stop it, Hart. Back to topic.

Reviews.

Try again.

First, I appreciate every single review from readers. I feel especially moved by the reviews from strangers—you know, the people who have no reason whatsoever to like your book but they do anyway. (Which has been the case for me so far. Although I am waiting for that 1 star review that’ll kill me but say unequivocally that I’ve arrived.)

Reviews are the recognition spot, the point where the writer discovers whether or not they’ve gotten the story across. Did you get it? Because I really worked hard to set this, that and the other thing up so you—the reader—would say “ah” at the denouement. (And by the way, the denouement—or as I prefer to call it, the “punch line”—should be short and sweet. As a writer, I have to hit it and run.)

So did you say “ah”? Oh, good, you did.

Then, there are those who see my Lisen of Solsta trilogy as pure fantasy and adventure. That’s a tad disappointing, but maybe their subconscious hasn’t finished working it out. I’ll give them some time. And if they enjoyed my world building and the excitement of the chase to the end, then I’ve still achieved something.

Yes, reviews, like it or not, are a book’s barometer. They tell the writer whether or not she’s succeeded. So far, my reviews have told me everything and nothing about my achievement, but, as I said above, I do appreciate every review some reader takes the time to write. Because a review means I’ve touched something. (Or, maybe it means they’ve got their own egos in the mix. Either way, it’s good to hear back from people who otherwise would remain silent in their response.)

Thank you, Amazon and other venues, for opening the review process up to everyone.

I am Malala, a Review

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“A Talib fires three shots at point-blank range at three girls in a van and doesn’t kill any of them. This seems an unlikely story, and people say I have made a miraculous recovery…. I know God stopped me from going to the grave. It feels like this life is a second life. People prayed to God to spare me, and I was spared for a reason—to use my life for helping people. When people talk about the way I was shot and what happened, I think it’s the story of Malala, ‘a girl shot by the Taliban’; I don’t feel it’s a story about me at all.”

From Chapter 24, “They Have Snatched Her Smile,” I am Malala

Malala. I write that name, and the recognition is near-universal. Like Cher and Madonna and others before her, only one name defines her—Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban and survived.

In October of 2012, awareness of Malala Yousafzai, though worldwide, exploded as the news of the attempt on her life lit up every cable news network, every news web site and the social media. She had been shot in the head, and we couldn’t help but believe that her sweet, strident voice in support of education, especially for girls, had been silenced forever. That she survived, mind, voice and values intact, is a miracle. She gives the credit to God and her doctors, and I agree.

I began reading I am Malala: The Girl who Stood up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban and immediately heard her voice telling the story. Christina Lamb deserves a great deal of credit as co-writer because although Malala is an intelligent, talented young woman, certainly capable of writing this autobiography on her own, when in this last busy year could she have found the time?  Instead, Ms. Lamb, a journalist familiar with Pakistan and its history, obviously completed a great deal of detailed research as well as many, many interviews in order to share not only Malala’s story but the history and culture of the region of Swat where Malala grew up.

I spoke of the voice in the book. It never falters. I was constantly aware of a young girl’s love and joy surrounding her family, her friends and her teachers. With the amount of historical information conveyed, one would assume that it could get boring to those of us who find history tedious. But, no. I felt as though Malala herself was whispering in my ear, occasionally putting her hand up to her mouth as she sometimes does during interviews. And the beauty of what she was whispering!  The valley of Swat appeared before me as a little bit of heaven dropped down to earth, and rather than enticing me to close up the book with a yawn, the chronicles of its people, the Pashtun, and of Pakistan going back hundreds of years enthralled me.

This is a marvelous book, beautifully written, and one as important as The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. I highly recommend it, especially to girls in middle and high school.

At the very end of the book, Malala says, “I am Malala. My world has changed but I have not.”  I think that about says it all.

Fatal Retribution by Diana Graves, A Review

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I love finding a new female hero who steps onto the stage at the beginning of the book already strong and willing to grow stronger. Raina Kirkland is just such a hero. Raina lives in a world no one I know has ever visited even though Fatal Retribution is set in the Pacific Northwest. Her world is our world turned on its head, where elfs and vampires and witches and many more paranormal entities reside, existing within a society which knows them and for the most part accepts them as part of the landscape. To me, a novice to this particular subset of urban paranormal novels, the only word I could use to describe it is steampunk.
Raina’s tale begins with her joining her siblings for a camping trip which turns into the camp-out from hell as they are attacked by a raging newly “born” vampire. Two of her brothers are bitten and must undergo dying and being reborn in a VCC (Vampire Care Center–see what I mean about an alternate reality?) before being allowed back out into the world. For some reason, Raina, part elf, part witch and part human, survives her bite and must learn what it means to be a “living” vampire. It all has to do with genetics, and I must say that Graves does an admirable job of explaining the physiology behind vampirism as she takes us through Raina’s experiences and the experiences of her relatives and friends, old and new.
Raina, like any only slightly post-adolescent young woman, suffers from self-esteem issues and endures a meddling mother who means well but refuses to admit that her little girl is a grownup. (Living at home doesn’t help.) And yet, she is feisty and forever questioning what she doesn’t yet understand. No waiting for some guy to come along and save her; this gal has spunk and she uses it as she becomes involved in the mystery of who is illegally offering humans the opportunity to become immortal by shooting up altered vampire blood.
My only quibble with Fatal Retribution is the grammar and word usage issue. Graves is an excellent storyteller, but too often one gets caught up in the lack of punctuation that could have helped a sentence make sense and the use of the wrong word, usually a homonym of the correct word. I would have given a 5-star review had the quality of the text come up to the delight of the storytelling. Regardless, I do recommend it and look forward to more from Graves’ prolific imagination.