*~~~~ (1/5)

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Young Victoria ascends the throne of England, and her first lesson as queen is this: that demons are real, and they threaten the nation in a very immediate sense. Soon, the young queen herself picks up the sword, the dagger and the spinning saw axe, and does bloody battle with the fiends from hell.

While an original novel, in a manner of speaking, Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter very much reads like another offering in the recent craze for mixing so-called dry subjects with horror genre elements – a craze that tends to produce novels that are more thrilling in concept than execution. Not being constrained by another’s storyline does make the monsters in this offering more of a part of the plot, but the writing is amateurish, with scenes jumping to flashbacks and back without so much as a tense change and the language only really taking off when there is gore to be described – which, fair enough, is done with stomach-turning gusto.

Characterisation is flat when it comes to Victoria and Albert, whose fairytale romance was so poorly written it may as well have come from a pre-opening credits scene in an action movie, setting up the tragedy that would then motivate the hero – as it does in this case. This flaw does not exist across the board, though. Standing out from the rest of the cast were the entertaining duo of the amoral Lord Quimby and his zombie manservant Perkins; however, these two seem almost superfluous to the main plot. Victoria herself remains very much the bland protagonist, which is something no amount of weaponry can cure, and is also upstaged by her protector and instructor, Maggie Brown (mother of John, for you history geeks). I get the feeling this book would have been much better had it been about Maggie and the Quimby/Perkins duo, who the author really seemed to enjoy writing, too.

Given the many fun ideas in the novel, such as a zombie massacre in the Parliament, creepy street urchins, rat massacres and, well, Queen Victoria as a demon hunter, I regret having to give it only one star, but I must be honest. It was just too clumsy for more – and that’s still without going into inevitable historical inaccuracies and the demonisation of the mentally I’ll, which, while a Victorian idea and a traditional in part of the horror genre, is still a travesty.

I did find it readable, but I have a low threshold for readability, and I suppose, if given to a skilled director, it could make a fun film.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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The family of the late Mr Dashwood, consisting of his second wife and three daughters, are left with very little property after Mr Dashwood is torn to pieces by a hammerhead shark, and must remove themselves to a rattling shack on Pestilent Isle. Life settles down despite the continuing ravages of supernaturally malicious sea creatures, but the two elder daughters, the sensible Elinor and the romantic Marianne, are caught up in hopeless romances. They play out over a year of heartbreak, careful attention to propriety and the dire consequences of its lack. And some sea monsters.

One thing to be said for this novel is that it is better than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In both novels the monsters are superfluous to the plot, tacked on rather than made an essential part of the story. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters at least attempts to tie the added elements to the plot and achieves some truly hilarious moments, where ladies beset with creatures and surrounded by death and disaster still manage to discuss prospective engagements.

I would not recommend this novel for any particular fan of the Regency period or Jane Austen, because the author seems to have transported the story to the other end of the 19th century. The first decade of that century had not yet even heard of bustles, and did not favour pointed heels. Then again this could be attributed to the author’s general lack of knowledge regarding period clothing; a gentleman would never refer to his trousers – should he indeed be wearing trousers rather than the more formal breeches – as “pants”. The technology described is also more reminiscent of late 19th century fiction but, then, they didn’t have underwater cities at that point either, so we can put that down to the novel being science fiction in the first place.

I might recommend it to people with very low expectations. The Lovecraftian mood is nicely set, the best parts involve mixing convoluted Austenian sentences and repressed propriety with scenes of bloody loss of life and limb, and there is, after all, something entertaining about bloody pirates and tentacled beasts. There was a great deal of potential here, but I just don’t think that potential will ever be realized before these re-writers are allowed to rip the original text apart even more. Until then, the monsters will be nothing but window-dressing and that, ultimately, doesn’t excuse their presence, and will never truly satisfy.

***~~ (3/5)

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It’s pretty clear what Gregory Maguire’s schtick is – find a well-known story and derivate the heck out of it. He writes a very specific kind of pro-fanfic, which challenges the accepted interpretation of a beloved tale by injecting realism, death, sex and grime and telling it from a different viewpoint.

He’s not the only one. Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch springs to mind, as well as Neil Gaiman’s short stories Snow, Glass, Apples and The Problem of Susan – not to mention countless of examples from non-pro-fanfic writers. Maguire is special in writing almost exclusively within this genre, and for having shot to success thanks to that one musical inspired by his Wicked.

This one takes the story of Cinderella to Holland during the infamous tulip mania in the 17th century. Iris and Ruth are half-English daughters of Margarethe, who arrives penniless from England to her family’s home town and through many travails marries far above her station to the father of a beautiful, shy child who never steps foot outside the house. Iris, the protagonist and the “clever” sister, manages the passions of the people around her and dreams of becoming a painter. Ruth, apparently mentally disabled, hangs around in the background. Clara, the Cinderella sister, is spoiled and wilful, constantly clashing with her mother-in-law and convinced (perhaps accurately – no spoilers) that Margarethe did away with her natural mother. Eventually, Clara must be pushed and shoved by Iris into her happy ending – though the true resolution depends upon a change in Clara’s heart.

Central themes in the novel include aesthetic fascination with both heavenly beauty and deformity, mistaken impressions, riches and poverty, and sexual awakening. They are rather hammered in, and tend to be more noise than signal, but put together, they make a compelling mix.

You could say the novel was too orchestrated, too stylized to flow naturally, but personally I tend to like my fiction stylized. The one discordant issue that most hampered my enjoyment of the novel was the handling of the character of Ruth. Maguire had already raised my ire in Wicked by representing the disabled Nessarose as unrealistically helpless, spoiled, a burden and, in case that wasn’t enough, evil. Here we have the apparently mentally disabled Ruth, who may be some undefined variety of neuroatypical, but she’s presented as monstrous, animalistic, impaired – even beyond that being just how the people around her see her. But wait, she’s also faking it! And dangerous! If that doesn’t get a bingo in some ableist bingo card somewhere, I’d be surprised.

The most compelling character for me was Margarethe. If she was evil, her evil was a very human variety, and Maguire affords her a certain degree of sympathy, pointing out from the start that her anger and her malice arise from fear, and her fear arises from her intimate understanding of poverty, of the basic helplessness of a person without connections. Maguire’s habit of forcing the reader to be critical of the idea of evil and evil in other people is the thing I most appreciate about his writing, and it’s what I keep coming back for.

If only he realized his own ableism and filed his criticism of the concept of evil to an even finer point, Maguire would likely be one of my absolute favourite writers, and this review would have given him at least a star more.

**~~~ (2/5)

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When lay-about gentleman barrister Robert Audley finds his friend missing on a lazy summer’s day at his uncle’s house, he starts from a dreadful suspicion and goes on to unravel a story of bigamy, deception and murder.

It’s not as good as it sounds like.

First of all, this isn’t really a detective novel. Audley is not a detective, and the secret in almost all of its particulars can be inferred before the disappearance even occurs. It is really more of a gothic romance, save that its hero is a gentleman rather than a harassed lady; in fact, the harassed lady is the villain.

Secondly, the novel is woefully predictable. The only two twists of the plot that I did not anticipate I am inclined to think the author made up on the spot. The novel very much has the air of being written in one go, from returning in latter descriptions to earlier points in the story with a “as I have said before”, and correcting an outburst of description in the previous paragraph with “I am speaking now of his feelings in the period that…”

It almost begs to be rewritten as a real mystery, by withholding details and elements from the reader by rearranging he events and how those events are revealed.

So why two stars instead of one?

Even though many of the characters, events and situations are cliché upon cliché, on occasion the author hits upon a character portrait that’s nothing short from spot-on and charming, or a playful, naughty paragraph that shows that she ought to have been writing comedies. Squeeze out some of the sappiness, leave out the gothic thrills and have the plot be about a missing dog or what-have-you, tidy up the results in editing and amp up the comedy, and you really could have had something. It’s almost a shame to waste a slow-moving, pleasure-seeking, well-intentioned Robert Audley on all this gloomy anguish and the edifying example of a man growing to have a purpose in life. It’s a pity that Sir Harry Towers was only there for a moment to harrumph and haw and feel pleased with himself, or that we didn’t see Mr Harcourt Talboys’ harsh narcissistic personality compromised. Miss Alicia, too, could have had a delightful comedy written all about her.

But no. Gloom and anguish it is, and horrors of madness and blackmail, and my lady punished cruelly with what, really, amounted to not being able to get divorce papers before remarrying and temporary insanity – at least until she tried to protect herself against accusations of the same.

I would not recommend this novel, unless you’re specifically curious about Victorian detective novels (or novels that could broadly fit that description), as I was. The predictability and the slow rhythm of the novel may very well be too much for any casual reader, and the virtues of it are few in comparison.

http://www.tananarivedue.com/

****½ (4.5/5)

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Jessica has the perfect marriage, but her husband has a secret. He’s a killer. He’s also an immortal with blood that heals.

That summary does no justice to the scope of this novel. It’s remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of it is the slowly oppressive style, the attention to detail and historical accuracy and vivid, realistic character portraits. It’s also remarkable in that it’s a fantasy novel in which most of the characters are black.

Jessica doesn’t find her husband’s secret sexy or exciting like she might in a lesser novel. She doesn’t stay with him after she finds out he’s a murderer. She reacts with horror, as you would, but at the same time has trouble breaking off the family bond she had with him. She is a Christian, but her religion is neither touted as the one true way nor made to look silly or insignificant or false; it simply is a huge part of her, and informs how she reacts to the knowledge that there is real, true magic in the world. Dawit, the immortal whose story this is as much as, if not more than, Jessica’s, goes through a hell of his own trying to protect his family and keep his secret, even as he bloodies his hands again and again.

The plot takes elements that have become downright cliché in genre novels – immortal lover, idyllic American home hiding terrible secrets, a mother protecting her child, an ancient occult order hunting the protagonists – and applies research, realism and a sense of real tragedy to them. On occasion I found this incongruity jarring, jerking me out of the novel and back into my analytical head, despite the fact that I love the idea of reclaiming clichés in this sense. The only other criticism I can levy is that the plot’s slow inevitability sometimes made me impatient and I found myself sneaking peeks at coming events just to assure myself I hadn’t figured out absolutely everything that was to come, yet. I hadn’t – and in any case, the rich storytelling made every turn of the plot, anticipated or not, a delicious read. I can see, though, how this might make it difficult reading for some. I find that sometimes a book and its reader need to match, or the rhythm of the novel might make reading it impossible, despite its length or literary excellence. I was just a touch out of rhythm with My Soul To Keep.

This is not a very fun book to read, but it’s compelling, powerful and just plain impressive. It’s the sort of novel that makes you look askance at the other fiction you’ve been reading and think, “Shouldn’t they have tried a little harder?” Due is a brilliant author, and I am happy she chose to write in one of my favourite genres.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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Now, I know what you’re thinking, but William Shatner is funny. You can’t say he isn’t. Have you seen Boston Legal? Shatner reading Palin’s poetry on Conan O’Brian’s show? Yeah. I haven’t read his autobiographies, but I’m informed they are hilarious. Intentionally! So I started reading this book with fairly high expectations.

The story follows young Kirk and young Spock’s first adventure together, back when they were both teenagers in San Francisco, Spock staying at the Vulcan embassy and Kirk living with his brother doing who-knows-what for a living. The two brothers are on the lam from their father, who wants them back on the farm, while Spock is having raging fights with his father. Vulcan fights, of course, which means they politely voice doubts regarding the soundness of each other’s logic.

The way the book opens up can only be summed up as: fangirl-bait. It also makes it seem highly likely that J.J. Abrams, the director of the recent Star Trek reboot film, or the script-writers Robert Orci & co., have read this book. In Chapter 1, Kirk steals a car. In Chapter 2, Spock visits a strip joints. Few more chapters in and they’ve started a barfight and end up exchanging their names at the back of a police car. Oh and Spock has long flowing hair.

Now, my uncritical fangirl mind is full of glee. It’s like a smorgasbord of delight. More delights follow, though the mood is sort of brought down by constant flashblacks to the Tarsus IV massacre and, you know, piles of dead children. It turns out that the reason Kirk hates Starfleet (!) and is living a life of dubious morals in San Fran instead of working at the family farm is PTSD. The reason his brother Sam is doing the same is that he’s a symbol of human weakness on a greater scale than a hero like Kirk can be allowed to be – drug-addicted and bumbling, apparently unable to get off his ass to fix his life, depending on Kirk even for feeding the fish. For Kirk, the real story turns out to be getting back on his feet, so to speak, through adventure, heroics and joining the military. For Spock, it’s a process of liberating himself from a confined life of an ambassador’s son and his father’s stern influence via – well, adventure, heroics and joining the military. And crime. Let’s not forget the few dozen laws they break to get their way. But that’s just how these guys do it. (Sam manages it via fish, by the way.)

In the end, though, the novel failed to deliver its promise, even for a fangirl. I mean, I never went into it expecting high art. It’s a Star Trek novel, which can be all sorts of things, but which mostly boil down into sci-fi adventure. That’s what I got! There was something in the way it was written, in how little I took it seriously, that even the massacre seemed like light reading. It’s probably only so, though, because I never had to live through such atrocity in real life. It could have been awesome, entertaining, high-flying, legendary sort of sci-fi adventure, though, such as Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice was, but nope. It’s okay. We can’t all be LMB. It was a fairly entertaining novel, and kind of just worth it for the police car anecdote and the occasionally hilarious Vulcan/human interaction.

A few more observations:

- Kirk’s girlfriend Elissa is coded as uptight but a good person. The bad guy Griffyn’s two evil girlfriends, however, are coded as H-O-T-T. I’m just saying I notice.
- Elissa gets points for dumping Kirk’s ass by the end of the book.
- Surprisingly little homoerotic subtext, but maybe I was just hoping for more from the raging Kirk/Spock ‘shipper Shatner.
- Kirk reverses the “show some leg” trope by seducing one of the evil girlfriends. Oh Kirk.

**~~~ (2/5)

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The plot: Seth Grahame-Smith adds to and occasionally re-writes Jane Austen’s classic to be about Regency Kung-Fu masters battling zombies as well as looking for love. Miss Elizabeth Bennet has her warrior’s honour besmirched by the rude Mr Darcy, but somehow events and the undead prevent her from killing him before he has proven himself worthy of her affection.

The judgement: I really wish this novel had been better, but it was mostly just a hilarious idea badly realised. Grahame-Smith’s self-confessed lack of talent doesn’t really excuse the fact that the “Oriental” influences were not sufficiently explored, the warrior’s code seemed haphazard, the characterisation was all over the place and, frankly, it was a bit boring.

If there was on touch of genius in Grahame-Smith’s additions, aside from the idea of re-writing Austen with zombies in the first place, it was in the handling of the infected Charlotte’s story. It was exactly the right amounts of funny, gross and tragic. Had the whole novel been like that, it would have been – excuse my Internet colloquialism – epic.

Still, as reasons to re-read Pride and Prejudice, this was not a bad one.

I’m now hoping to see fanfiction written for the zombified Austen universe that is much better than Seth Grahame-Smith’s original. The possibilities go far beyond what we saw here and I would love to see those possibilities explored further. And yes, I’ve already ordered Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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This short novel or novella concerns the adventures of a pirate crew, headed by a pirate captain, who have lost their ship in their previous adventure, which was with scientists. In a fit of macho bravado, the pirate captain decides to purchase the most expensive ship being offered by the fearsome Cutlass Liz, and so the crew now needs to find a fortune of 6,000 doubloons. Along the way they repeatedly run into the eccentric Captain Ahab, who is looking for his whale. The search takes them to many strange places, adventure, gambling and floor shows.

The plot presents issues related to both Neo-Marxist and Capitalist ideology and explores their relative approaches, as well as economic politics in general, with the other major conflict in the narrative seeing archetypes and social roles pitted against individual experience. The Pirates! In An Adventure With Whaling beautifully condenses the pirate adventure genre while crossing said genre over with other, incongruous genres and situations to create an absurdist alternate reality where all directions, including the one that goes through the fourth wall, are open to the characters, thus also challenging the reader to question the limits of accepted reality within a given emic sphere.

The pirates are on one hand driven by a monetary obligation wilfully entered into and enforced by show of strength – Cutlass Liz’s superior skills and network – which is comparable to Capitalist debt slavery, but are themselves pilferers and outlaws, by their profession driven to confiscate other people’s possessions without their say-so. This model of competitive society is tempered by the inherent humanity of the pirates. On the other hand, the apparently autocratic but essential elective model of pirate democracy can be applied also to post-Capitalist society.

The pirate captain represents not only the figure of the archetypal leader and the ideal of a pirate, but ideology itself, and also social conditioning, especially pointedly in the scene where he writes a list of occasions on which pirates are “allowed to cry”. This also works as a chilling image of government truncating human emotion.

None of the pirates have names. They are simply called by their position in the crew – the first mate, the pirate with a scarf, etc. Yet their humanity and individuality shows through the narrative, where they act for their own ends and from their own motivations, and not simply to fulfil said role. Even so they must defer to their autocratic alpha male leader, who has the best beard of them all, and has very little else to recommend him for his position – a scathing comment on the democratic election process or on the deification of leaders in certain Communist states? There is room for debate here.

Quite aside from the social commentary inherent in the plot itself, the “humoristic” or “stupid”* approach the novel takes on the art of fiction-writing itself works as a commentary on the nature of linguistic truth versus experienced reality.

For example, when the pirates sail into Las Vegas in search of the White Whale (which functions as a symbol of the elusive unseen enemy, the mythical villain upon whom blame for human misfortune is projected, ignoring any actual intricate causal chains), we’re told this impossible fact in one simple sentence. In the world of the novel, language has accomplished something that in experienced reality would require quite a feat of engineering. This is much in the spirit of the opening sequence of the remarkable film The Meaning of Life by Monty Python, in which corporate piracy is taken on by rebel accountants sailing the seas of finance in a captured office building. This linguistic trickery forces the reader to reflect on the duplicity of language and eventually to declare the world of the novel entirely fake. Some may experience this forcible disengaging of the suspension of disbelief as uncomfortable and alienating, while others experience it as “funny”.

I find the approach challenges the reader to reflect on the construction of stories and on fiction’s position between poetic expression and deceit. Language can never fully describe reality**, and on occasion associative expression can seem to capture reality*** in a more meaningful and nuanced way than language that strives to be scientifically accurate. But what happens if language is used with linguistic accuracy but in a manner that breaks all pretence of being tied to experienced reality, or when the narrative doesn’t even strive to communicate a genuine experience, save through subtle symbology? Then you get fiction like the Monty Python films, Lewis Carroll’s “nonsense” poetry or, alternatively, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Whaling.

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* Defoe’s own definition – see “Important Work I Am Doing Re: pie-Charts”.
**See, for example, Semiotics: The Basics by Daniel Chandler.
*** For a given value of reality – see for example Quantum Psychology by R.A. Wilson.

**~~~ (2/5)

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Note: Surprise Monday Romance Review Extravaganza Review #3.
These are all short reviews previously posted on GoodReads.com, re-written and expanded a little for our first random Review Extravaganza.

I gave up on the romance genre already before I picked up Ravished, but as this novel came specifically recommended, I decided to give it a chance.

The Smart Bitches talk about romance as a genre that can be “intelligent, savvy, feminist and fabulous”, and about how a large contingency of people don’t like the genre based on one book they read. I’m trying not to be in that contingency. I would love to love romances. I already read romantic fanfiction, for Chrissakes. Still, I can’t help the feeling that if a romance is actually good or actually the sort of novel I would enjoy, it wouldn’t be marketed as a romance novel in the first place; sort of like good movies aren’t marketed as romantic comedies even if they are comedies focused on a romance – well, unless they’re also British.

My current approach is to read only romance novels that have specifically been recommended to me. If even these don’t float my boat, I’ll at least know I gave it a fair try. For most genres, seven books is a fair try, wouldn’t you say?

Right.

I can see why Ravished was recommended. The heroine, Harriet, is rather delightful – a fossil-collector who talks a great deal and is used to having her way, who is not easily spooked and who looks past This Month’s Douchebag’s imposing exterior to the whatever underneath.

I love Harriet obsessing over her fossil tooth. I love Harriet geeking the hell out in a museum. I love Harriet giving a fellow collector the baleful eye when he questions her about the cave where she’s been excavating. I love the Fossils and Antiquities Society. All in all, if you take away everything in this book that isn’t about fossil collecting, you have a rather likeable short story, though not much of a plot.

The plot involves Harriet’s virtue being compromised by a big ol’ viscount dude who marries her to preserve her honour and in the process ends up convincing Society that he probably didn’t disgrace that other girl six years ago despite what everybody said. It’s rather dull, but it leads to a climax where Harriet hits a rapist over the head with a fossilized fish. So that’s something.

As for the few sex scenes: I like how much cunnilingus you get in romance novels, i.e., once per book in five out of seven books, in my experience, which is kind of a lot. The non-licky sex scenes in this novel were pretty simple, though, and surprisingly lacking in pain despite the rather fetishistically described size difference between the hero and the heroine (he, of course, is the bigger one).

There was entirely too much repetition. I don’t know how many times Harriet told people not to call Douchebag “the Beast of Blackthorne Hall” – I lost count around five. The villainy of the villain was so neatly nefarious that it absolved the hero of all wrong-doing in one fell swoop. It was all pretty stupid. I’m already forgetting the details. I don’t mind stupid, though. Many of my favourite novels are occasionally stupid. I do sort of expect them to be more entertaining and likeable, though.

I may have to go through the book and pick out the fossil collecting parts and collect them together somewhere for people like me. That would have pushed the novel well into the three-star range.

*~~~~ (1/5)

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Note: Surprise Monday Romance Review Extravaganza Review #2.
These are all short reviews previously posted on GoodReads.com, re-written and expanded a little for our first random Review Extravaganza.

The first thing you should know about this historical romance novel is that the hero is utterly repulsive. Oh no, wait. The first thing you should know is to not pick this book up if you have rape/abuse triggers. The second is… you know what, it kind of follows from the first.

Or does it? I gather from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books that many romance readers (not the illustrious, funny and very recommended Bitches themselves) like their heroes committing the occasional sexual assault.

I KNOW. WHAT.

Don’t get me wrong, this fellow merely blackmails the heroine first into wearing a shaming see-through negligee, and later into sex, though he takes it back after nothing more than a lot of touching and inserting his finger into her vagina forcefully which, oh, come to think of it, IS RAPE.

Apparently “romances” used to be a lot worse than this. I came to the genre a perfect innocent and never knew. I thought people were ashamed of these novels because they were mushy, light and not very well written, not because they’re actually chock-full of heteronormative, rape culture sustaining bullshit like this.

Anyway. If this is the sort of thing you enjoy, let me tell you more. The setting is an unspecified era in England when women wore corsets and British troops were stomping about India. The plot involves heroine whatsherface receiving into her home a man who looks a great deal like an emaciated version of her dead, abusive husband, claiming to be said husband come back from the dead. Turns out he’s not, but she likes him better because he rapes her more gently. She rescues some grubby-faced orphan angels and he reveals he has always loved her, always, and didn’t actually concoct this hoax for her money at all. She believes him. The way we know they are both good people is that their taste in interior décor is better than the next people in line to inherit the manor.

The novel was not badly written, as such, not like Midshipwizard Halcyon Blythe or The Snow-Kissed Bride, which it still amazes me ever saw publication. If you like your heroines dull and your heroes repulsive, you might enjoy Stranger In My Arms. There was also a pretty sexy almost-cunnilingus scene that was almost not rapey, and many descriptions of hard rippling muscles.