Mission Clockwork - Arthur Slade

   2018; 251 pages.  Book 1 (out of 4) in the “Mission Clockwork” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Steampunk; Young Adult & Teen; England; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Modo hasn’t had an easy life so far.  Very few hunchbacks do.  Especially when they have a hideous face to go along with the grotesquely bent spinal column.

 

    Modo is presently doing what most hunchbacks do: he’s in a cage in a traveling freak show called “Merveilles et Mort”.  This is in 19^th century England, when there’s no such thing as child labor laws.  Modo is one year old.

 

    Right now, there’s a gentleman right outside Modo’s cage, staring at him, and offering good money to buy Modo from the show’s proprietor.   How odd.  But there’s method to the gentleman’s madness.  He’s heard that the boy-hunchback has a secret talent.

 

    He’s been told that Modo is a shape-shifter.

 

What’s To Like...

    Mission Clockwork is set in Victorian-era London, primarily in the poorer, darker neighborhoods, and both aboveground, including the rooftops, and underground, especially the sewers.  One of my recent reads, Terry Pratchett’s Dodger, was set in the same time and place, and it was fun to revisit it.

 

    It’s not a spoiler to reveal why Modo’s new owner, Mr. Socrates, bought him.  Socrates runs a British intelligence agency, and sees a huge potential in anyone who can self-rearrange his facial and body characteristics.  Modo is content; he has a personal combat trainer named Tharpa, and a kindly caretaker, Mrs. Finchley, both at Mr. Socrates' expense.  It’s a much better life than being locked in a cage with people gawking at you.

 

    The first task assigned by Socrates to Modo is to infiltrate a secret group of terrorists that is rumored to be plotting some sort of spectacular destruction in London in the near future.  Efforts to infiltrate the group thus far have been fruitless, but perhaps a shape-shifter can succeed.  Now, after years of training and upbringing, the teenaged Modo is ready to go out and do some official reconnaissance work.  There is, of course, some risk to his life, but hey, such sacrifices are occasionally necessary for Queen and Country.

 

    I liked that Modo’s special talent, while unique, also has limitations.  Yes, he can transform himself into someone else just by studying them for a bit.  And yes, it feels good to not have that ugly face and uncomfortably large growth on his back for a change.  But the transformation wears off after a short while, usually in a matter of hours, so Modo is always under a time constraint when using it.

 

    The ending is both spectacular and exciting.  It's a bit over-the-top, but that's standard fare in a “YA-ish” tale.  The main storyline is resolved, evil plans are thwarted, and Modo experiences his finest hour.  Mission Clockwork is both a standalone novel, and the first book in a series.  There is an short excerpt from Book 2, Mission Clockwork: The Dark Deeps, to close things out.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Knacker (n.) : someone who buys up old horses, then kills them for their meat, bones, and/or leather.

Others: Costermongers (n., plural).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 269 ratings and 84 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.63/5 based on 3,574 ratings and 459 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    When Octavia had been a child in the orphanage, she had often dreamed a man would come to rescue her.  He would say, “I‘m your father and my ship was wrecked.  That is why you are here in the orphanage.  Now I can take you home.”  Or he would be a rich uncle.  As she grew older, she hoped it would be a young prince, and she pictured him so frequently that she could actually see his face.  In the end no one came, so one day she left on her own and began her life as a pickpocket.  (loc. 988)

 

    “I can read.”

    “Well, congratulations, Modo.”  She floated over and grabbed the book from his hands.  “Ah, Hamlet.  He’s too much of a gabber, that boy.  Wouldn’t survive a second in our world.”

    “It’s Shakespeare!”  He raised a hand as though on the stage.  “‘O, that this too too solid flesh would melt/Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!’  See!  It’s marvellous!”

    “Marvellously boring.  Though there is a good sword fight at the end.”  (loc. 1983)

 

Kindle Details…

    Mission Clockwork is usually priced at $2.99 at Amazon, although today and for a very limited time it is free!  The other three books in the series normally go for $2.99 (Book 2), or $3.99 (Books 3 and 4), and right now they too are discounted to $0.99 apiece, so I snapped them up.  This appears to be a completed series, but the author also has a more-recent 5-book YA fantasy series for you in e-book format titled the Dragon Assassin.

 

“I nodded off and fell into a story.”  (loc. 195)

    The nitpicking about Mission Clockwork is minor.  This is a “Teen and Young Adult” book, so I didn’t note any cusswords or adult situations cropping up.  You’d think that would make it a boring read for me, since I’m much older than the target audience, but that wasn’t the case at all.

 

    The book is written in Canadian, which is logical since the author grew up in Saskatchewan.  Therefore you occasionally run into weird spellings such as favourite, and greying, but at least worlds like judgments and recognized are spelled in “Yankee” fashion.  I spotted a couple of typos, such as Her/He, and wolf like/wolflike, plus one uncapitalized first word in a sentence: humour.  Overall though, I thought the editing was done well.

 

    Consistent with its target audience being Teen-&-Young-Adult, the storyline contains lots of action, with very little blood and gore, despite a couple of fatalities occurring along the way.  Yet it still entertained me from beginning to end, and I'm way out of the target age bracket.

    So if you’re looking for a kewl Steampunk adventure, set in a fascinating historical time period, loaded with thrills, intrigue, and having a hunchback shape-shifter for a protagonist, Mission Clockwork will be a perfect match for you.  Regardless of your age.

 

    8½ Stars.  We should not neglect to mention the story’s costar, young Octavia Milkweed, who is also one of Mr. Socrates’ agents.  She and Modo start off on the wrong foot, then spend a lot of time learning to work together, and more importantly, trust one another.  It all works out, of course, and I'm fairly certain  (is that an oxymoron?) that Octavia is going to become a recurring character.  But will she also be the catalyst for this series developing a Coming-of-Age plotline?  Who knows, but stay tuned.

Otherlands - Thomas Halliday

    2022; 305 pages.  Full Title: Otherlands – A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Paleontology; Paleobiology; Ancient History; Evolution.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Here's a brief recap of our planet’s existence, as given in the introduction of Otherlands:

 

    The geological history of the Earth stretches back about 4.5 billion years.  Life has existed on this planet for about four billion years, and life larger than single-celled organisms for perhaps two billion years.   (…)  If all 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history were to be condensed into a single day and played out, more than three million years of footage would go by every minute.  (…)  The mass extinction event that extinguished pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and all non-bird dinosaurs would occur 21 minutes before the end.  Written human history would begin in the last tenth of a second.

 

    In short, very little of Earth’s history involves us humans.  Even the dinosaurs are relatively late arrivals.  A great number of plants and animals have appeared, in the seas and on the land masses of our planet.  Most of them have since disappeared.

 

    What happened to them?  What conditions, or changes to their habitat, caused them to become extinct?  It might behoove us homo sapiens to study these past inhabitants of our world, and determine the reasons for their demise, so that we can avoid, or at least delay, our own departure.

 

What’s To Like...

    I liked the way Otherlands was structured.  After an overview introduction, Thomas Halliday works backward through time, dividing the subject matter into 16 chapters.  The first six are the relatively recent epochs (such as the Eocene) going from 12,000 years ago to 66 million.  The next ten are classified as periods (such as the Jurassic), and take the reader back to 635 million years ago.  Things close with an Epilogue which focuses on where our present world might be heading, extinction-wise.

 

    Each chapter generally starts with a description of some portion of the world during that epoch/period, then proceeds to detail some extinction event, which may be gradual or sudden.  My favorite chapters were:

    #02 (Pliocene – first humans),

    #03 (Miocene – filling the Mediterranean Sea),

    #06 (Paleocene - the Chicxulub asteroid),

    #10 (Permian – Pangaea),

    #14 (Ordovician – Gondwana)

 

    Each chapter starts off with a map of the world during that age (important, since landmasses and tectonic plates are constantly shifting) and features an awesome illustration of some animal or plant that lived during that time.  There’s a handy "Table of Eras" chart in the front; bookmark it, you’ll be referring to it a lot.  The title reference is on page xiii of the Introduction, and kudos to whoever set up the links to Notes; they worked great!

 

    I was introduced to a couple of neat acronyms along the way, including LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) and mya (million years ago).  I also learned some evolutionary tips, such as why chicken legs are dark meat but chicken breasts are white meat; and why zebras developed black and white stripes.  See the end of this review for the answer to that last one.

 

Kewlest New Word…

Regurgitalite (n.) : Fossilized vomit.

Others: Outwith (prep.); Schiltrom (n.); Catawampus (adj.); Jouking (n.); Stramash (n.); Eyot (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 580 ratings and 86 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.14/5 based on 3,495 ratings and 568 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    The hot Pangaean wind is rising, and from the top of the Earth, the Arctic is about to send down a blast unlike any other.  Siberia is about to erupt.  When it does, it will expel 4 million cubic kilometres of lava – enough to fill the modern-day Mediterranean Sea – which will flood an area the size of Australia.  That eruption will tear through recently formed coal beds, turning the Earth into a candle, and drifting coal ash and toxic metals over the land, transforming watercourses into deadly slurries.  Oxygen will boil from the oceans; bacteria will bloom and produce poisonous hydrogen sulphide.  The foul-smelling sulphides will infuse the seas and skies.  Ninety-five per cent of all species of Earth will perish in what will become known as the Great Dying.  (loc. 3071)

 

    Focusing on your hand in front of your face, you will not see in detail the pictures on the wall beyond.  However, the eyes of some trilobites, in existence by the late Cambrian, are bifocal, using a lens made of two materials with different refractive properties.  This allows them to simultaneously focus on small objects floating only a few millimetres away and far objects, theoretically at an infinite distance, without any modification, an ability that few other species have ever evolved.  (loc. 4289)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, Otherlands is priced at $12.99 at Amazon.  This appears to be the only e-book Thomas Halliday offers, although it is available in several different languages.

 

Even in the early days of bilaterally symmetrical animals, it’s a worm-eat-worm world.  (loc. 4204)

    Finding anything to gripe about in Otherlands is challenging.  As you’d expect from a science book, there is no cussing.  The closest we come to that is the mention of a marine worm aptly named the “penis-worm”.  Anyone who finds that offensive is overreacting.

 

    Some reviewers didn’t like the Epilogue’s message that things like global warming, deforestation, and carbon emissions could lead (or is already leading) our planet into a new Extinction phase.  They’re entitled to their opinions, but Science is on the author’s side on this issue.

 

    The Amazon page for Otherlands will tell you that the Kindle version is 409 pages long.  Don’t let that length deter you from picking up this book; the last one hundred pages are Notes and a Glossary.  The text stops at page 305.

 

    Finally, be aware that the author was born and raised in the highlands of Scotland.  So you get some “un-American” words and spellings such as encyclopaedia, outwith, plough, sough, scarper, faeces, and the indecipherable quango.  The unit of weight for 2,000 pounds is for some reason spelt two ways: tons and tonnes.  But cheer up, at least the “z” words like fertilize are spelt correctly, unlike in that crazy language the English use.

 

    But these are all petty quibbles.  I found Otherlands to be a fascinating and enlightening read.  I could see the progression (albeit, in reverse order) of life as it developed on this planet, struggled to cope with fluctuations in its habitat, and adapted-or-perished as a result.  We’ll close this review with one last bit of wisdom from the book that is applicable to another threat to our existence: overpopulation.

 

“Migration cannot save a population if there is nowhere to go.”

 

    9½ Stars.  Why do zebras have stripes, you ask?  Because the pattern prevents flying insects from being able to easily judge landing distances at close range.  So a striped zebra ends up suffering less insect bites than an unstriped one.

The Emperor's Second Wife - Zoe Saadia

   2012; 270 pages.  Book 3 (out of 7) in the “Rise of the Aztecs” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Mesoamerica; Historical Fiction; Intrigue.   Overall Rating: 8/10.

 

    Kuini and Coyotl have made it to the big city!  In this case we’re talking about Tenochtitlan in 1419 CE, at the time, the largest metropolis in the Americas.  Nobody takes any notice of the two lads; they enter the city dressed like a couple of commoners.  They’re here to see if they can meet up with Coyotl’s half-sister, Iztac.

 

    Iztac will certainly be better dressed.  She’s married to Huitzilihuitl, the emperor of Tenochtitlan, and her official title is “the Emperor’s Second Wife”.  Not quite the queen of the hill, but close to it, and above all but one of the other half-dozen or so wives of the emperor.

 

    But that’s a mixed blessing because Huitzilihuitl is in poor health, and probably has only a year or so to live.  The Emperor’s Wife #1, hereafter simply called “the Empress” has done her duty and birthed a son who’s next in line to succeed Huitzilihuitl, but he’s still just a lad, just barely teenaged.  Until he’s an adult the Empress will rule as his regent.

 

    Everything would change though, if either The Empress or her son dies.  This makes the Empress very wary of any and all of the other wives and their offspring.  If and when the Emperor dies, the first thing she’ll do is get rid of any of them she perceives as a threat.

 

    And guess which one she perceives as her greatest threat?

 

What’s To Like...

    The Emperor’s Second Wife is the third installment in Zoe Saadia’s 7-book Rise of the Aztecs saga. Mesoamerica consists of a bunch of altepetls (think “city-states”) that spend most of their time and resources trying to conquer their neighboring altepetls, then extracting tribute from them.  At the moment, the top altepetl is Tepanec, to which Tenochtitlan (think “Mexico City” and/or “the Aztecs”) and many other cities in the region, bow.

 

    There is some discontent within the ranks of the Tenochtitlan nobility with their kowtowing status vis-a-vis the Tepanecs.  A few key figures are developing plans to rise up, although so far, very little action has been taken for fear of the Tepanecs finding out.  Just how our three protagonists, Kuini, Coyotl, and Iztac, will fit in with these plots is unclear, but here in The Emperor’s Second Wife our heroes do make contact with the Resistance.

 

    Once again, I loved the attention to historical detail in the storyline.  Although there is some fighting involved, it remains on a personal level, due mostly to hotheaded Kuini shooting his mouth off at Aztec warriors, including a new character, Tlacaelel, who I have a feeling will be developed into a fourth protagonist.  Yet the story never becomes boring due to the scarcity of bloodshed.  Instead, intrigue, on both a personal and altepetl level, abounds.  There is also a fascinating love triangle, Dehe-Iztac-Kuini, which does not get resolved; I look forward to seeing how that plays out.

 

    Once again, I enjoyed the bits and pieces of the Nahuatl language that are woven into the text.  And once again I chuckled at the invented profanity: “dung-eaters”, “frog-eaters”, “little piece of dirt”, and the more-protracted “dirty, stinking, disgusting filth-eater”.  Two deities are also briefly mentioned: Camaxtli and Huitzilopochtli, but Mesoamerican religious factions don’t seem to make much of an impact here.

 

    The ending is satisfying—full of intrigue and unexpected acts with unexpected consequences.  None of the overthrow scheming gets resolved, but when the dust clears, Tenochtitlan has taken its first step towards throwing off the Tepanec yoke.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 187 ratings and 58 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.43*/5, based on 159 ratings and 220 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Why do you eat this?” asked Kuini, mostly to take the conversation off his motives for breaking into the Palace.

    “Health troubles.”  The Aztec shrugged.  “I’m an old man, you know?  Should have died on the battlefield, a death of heroes.  Instead, here I am, watching over young hotheads, taking baths in the middle of the heat, eating disgustingly healthy, trying to prolong the inevitable.”  The wide brow creased with a frown.  “I’ve already covered most of the distance of my Path of the Dead.  There is not much left to walk.  Still, one tries to prolong the way when his time is nearing.”  He shrugged again.  “Warriors should die before they grow old.”  (pg. 131)

 

    “Did you talk to the Empress?”

     “Well, yes.  And it was anything but pleasant.  Don’t do this when your time comes.”

    The young woman blinked.  “What did she do to you?”

    “Oh, nothing.  She locked me in a small room, with no baths and no food, and told me to think it over.”  Iztac shrugged, amused by the open dread in her companion’s eyes.  “So, today I told her I had thought it over, and that I won’t make any more trouble.  And that was that.”

    “And she just let you go back?”

    “Well, you know the Empress.  She made some difficulties.  I had to convince her that I meant it.  I had to cry and make pitiful noises.”

    “You?  Cried?”  (pg. 179)

 

“There can be only one empress, so it’s important that you should not nurture any ideas of you becoming one.”  (pg. 6)

    The quibbles are minor.  As mentioned earlier, almost all of the cussing is delightfully invented, but with four exceptions, two involving eschatology, two involving an excretory function.  There’s also one roll-in-the-hay.

 

    It would’ve been nice to have a Cast of Characters to refer to, even better if it included the deities.  And although all the Nahuatl words and phrases are either translated when introduced or else clear enough to where you can suss them out, having a Nahuatl-English Glossary would’ve come in handy.

 

    As in the earlier books, typos abound: gap/gape, breath/breathe, envelope/envelop, and the spellchecker-challenging Chimalpopoca/Chimalpapoca.  There were more, but I tend to cut indie authors some slack when it comes to spellchecker errors.

 

    My main quibble has to do with the names of characters: a couple of them simply don’t have any.  The most notable of these was the Tenochtitlan Empress/Regent herself.  She’s pretty easily identified by her title, but there are two Tenochtitlan warlords in the storyline; one active and one retired; one of which has a name given, the other which doesn’t.  And keeping those two straight in my head was no small feat.

 

    So much for the nitpicking.  The Emperor’s Second Wife is another solid entry in this series, deftly advancing the overarching plotline (the growing prominence of the Aztecs) while still keeping me interested in who is going to do what to whom.  So far, this has been a great series, although I do recommend reading the book in chronological order.

 

    8 Stars.  In checking at Amazon, it appears the author’s last published book came out in late 2019.  That’s a bummer, since I enjoy the geographic setting of her tales: the pre-Columbian Americas.  One of the minor characters in The Emperor’s Second Wife, Kaay, is noted to be of Mayan heritage.  I’ve always been intrigued by the Mayans with their more-accurate-than-ours calendar and their end-of-the-world predictions.  It would be really neat if Zoe Saadia were to resume her writing career with a series based on the heyday of the Mayans, a millennium before the Aztecs.

Marked By Magic - Lindsay Buroker

   2023; 337 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the “Tracking Trouble” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Humorous Fantasy; Dragons; Urban Fantasy.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    Nobody likes dark elves.  Arwen Forester has her own particular reasons for hating them.  She has a spider tattoo on her arm to remind her of that.  You can see it on the book’s cover image.

 

    Arwen lives quietly on her father’s farm out in the sticks.  One day she is visited by an elf warrior who demands she tell him where to find the local dark elves.  He was rather uppity about the whole thing.

 

    The elf found Arwen by assuming the form of a dragon, and using a dragon’s heightened sense to locate her.  That means he’s probably a cross-breed: half-elf and half-dragon.

 

    Nobody likes half-breeds.  They even have a pejorative word for them: mongrels.  Arwen knows all about being called a mongrel.  She’s half human.

 

    And half dark-elf.

 

What’s To Like...

    Marked By Magic is set in the present-day Seattle area, with a particular focus on the suburb of Bellevue.  It reminded me of Jim Butcher’s Chicago setting for his Dresden Files series: a minority comprised of magical creatures living among the vastly more numerous humans, with some inevitable friction and strained interactions arising between the two groups.  The main difference is that Marked By Magic is lighter in tone than the Harry Dresden books; the mood is closer to Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series.

 

    The main plotline follows Arwen’s tense relationship with the elf-dragon Starblade.  Arwen, an expert tracker, initially agrees to hunt down the dark elves for him, but later accepts money from other parties to hunt down half-breed dragons.  Needless to say, this leads to trust issues for both protagonists.

 

    If you like your Urban Fantasy books to contain lots of magical critters (I do!), you’ll love this book.  Besides the standard mix of elves, dwarves, dragons, gnomes, and ogres; there are also 7-foot-tall trolls, half-orcs, kobolds, and even the rarely seen soul drykars and vampire jellyfish.  One immortal from the magical world gets mentioned here: the spider-demon Zagorwalek (try saying that name ten times real fast).  He, and other gods, don’t play a big part in this tale, but I wonder if that’s going to change as the series progresses.

 

    There's lots of adventure and intrigue to keep you turning the pages, but Lindsay Buroker also finds ways to mix in some insightful thoughts about prejudices against others, be they mongrels, magical species, or just anyone different than what we are.  I also was thrilled to learn that the game of chess is played by the fantasy-world folks, since I’ve been a chess devotee all my life.  But over there it’s called Thyslyar.

 

    The ending was suitably tense and exciting, with a couple of neat plot twists thrown in, by both the good guys and the baddies.  The Epilogue clears up the money-for-hire angle, as well as one that concerned coffee grounds (say what?!).  The Arwen/Starblade plot thread remains open, but hey, that’s what sequels are for.

 

Kewlest New Word…

Mycophile (n.): a devotee of mushrooms.

Others: Inimical (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 1,416 ratings and 85 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.57*/5, based on 850 ratings and 48 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Are these leaves?”  Amber plucked something out of [Arwen’s] hair.  “And twigs?  Didn’t you shower and wash this . . . nest this morning?”

    “I did shower.  But then I walked through the woods to Duvall so I could get a ride over here from Sigrid.”

    “Did you drag your hair along the trail?”  Shaking her head, Amber fished out another leaf and grabbed a brush and comb.

    “It wasn’t light yet, and the branches can claw at you.  There aren’t any direct trails, so sometimes I have to clear the way.”

    “With your head?”  (loc. 2512)

 

    Amber turned back and lifted a finger, but she paused when she spotted Arwen’s bare forearms.  The loose sleeves of the jumpsuit had fallen to her elbows.  Arwen jerked her hands down.

    “You got another weird tattoo?”  Amber gaped.  “What is that?  A dragon?”

    “Yes.  It was not by choice.”

    “What?  You were walking by a tattoo shop, and the artist pounced you with an ink gun?”

    “I . . . was walking inside a dragon’s lair, and he pounced.  With magic.”

    “What is wrong with your life?”

    “Recently, a lot.”  (pg. 2579)

 

Kindle Details…

    Marked By Magic presently sells for $0.99 at Amazon.  The sequel, Bound By Blood, is priced at $4.99.  The third book in the trilogy, Driven By Destiny, is due to be released on January 10, 2024.  Lindsay Buroker is a prolific writer of both Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels, available both as standalones and in bundles, and all reasonably priced, and occasionally offered at enticing discounts.

 

Out of the cranberry bog and into the pig wallow.  (loc. 1048)

    I couldn’t find much to quibble about in Marked By Magic.  There’s only a smattering of profanity (6 instances in the first 25%), and that helps keep the story’s tone light-hearted.  There are, however, a couple of “adult situations”, but those keep the story’s tone from becoming too juvenile.

 

    I only noted one typo, an Amber’s/Arwen’s mix-up, and even then, I only caught it when choosing the first excerpt for this review.  Whoever the editors were, they did a good job.

 

    Last, and least, Arwen apparently is a character in an earlier Lindsay Buroker Urban Fantasy series, who now gets to be the main protagonist in one.  There were a number of references to Arwen’s backstory, all of which were lost on me since this was my first book by this author.  But that’s not her fault, it’s mine for choosing a spin-off series.

 

    That’s all I can gripe about.  Marked By Magic was a literary treat for me, and a great introduction to an author I’ve been meaning to try for quite some time.  So if you’ve read all the Sookie Stackhouse books, and are looking for a similar type of world-setting, I highly recommend you give this one a try.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  The brief mention of soil amendments strongly resonated with me.  My 45-year career as a chemist was with a company whose main line of products were soil amendments.  They’re the reason you and I aren’t starving despite huge amounts of farmland being turned into housing developments.

The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse - Tom Holt

   2023; 303 pages.  Book 8 (out of 8) in the “J.W. Wells & Co.” series.  New Author? :No.  Genres : Humorous Fantasy; Christmas Tie-In; Mythology.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    The end of the world is nigh!  We’re all going to die the same way the dinosaurs did—by having a big asteroid smashing into, and obliterating, planet Earth.

 

    Well, there are a few differences.  This asteroid is being steered by a Mesopotamian goddess who was locked inside it a couple of millennia ago.  Her name is Tiamat, and she’s divorced, mad as heck, and living up to her nickname “the Destroyer”.

 

    Maybe we should fly up to the asteroid in a rocket, unlock the door to her enclosure, get her out, and change the path of the asteroid.  Too bad nobody knows where the key to that cell door is anymore.  Okay then, maybe we can get her ex- to talk to her and persuade her to alter course.

 

    Or not.  For starters we don’t know who her ex- is and where he might be, and chances are a conversation between him and Taimat will just enrage her further.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse is the latest absurdist fantasy novel from Tom Holt wherein equal parts of Doomsday dread and office politics are combined with a healthy dose of Holt’s trademark wry British humour.  It is also a return, after a 12-year hiatus, to his “J.W. Wells & Co.” series, which features a firm whose clients and employees are mostly of the magical ilk.  Here, though, the focus is on a rival company of JWW&C., Dawson, Ahriman, and Dawson, and their team of Thaumaturgical & Metaphysical Engineers.

 

   We follow the efforts and wiles of several DA&D employees, some in Upper Management, others further down the corporate ladder, including an intern and a receptionist.  That might sound boring, but corporate subterfuges abound and it turns out a lot DA&D’s workforce are out-of-work deities (shades of Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Marie Phillips' Gods Behaving Badly!) just hanging out until they can find another world to reign over.  It was fun trying to figure out Who was masquerading as whom in the god/human charade.

 

    As usual, Tom Holt weaves a plethora of plotlines into the tale to keep things interesting.  These include a mysterious gray polymer package, a photobomb fanatic, missing paintings, and whether a jolly fellow named Nick will find gainful employment again.  You’ll also play the Riddle Game with a Gollum-like character, desperately look for a “Get Out of Death Free” card, and dream of acquiring a Bottomless Purse.

 

    You might think a killer asteroid is easy to fix for a bunch of out-of-work gods, but they waver between apathy (“We’re immortal.  We’ll survive anything.”) and angst (Ye gods!  There’ll be no one left to worship us!).  Everything builds to a pleasingly absurd ending, with a pleasingly overlooked character stepping up to save the day.  Things close with what appears to be a teaser for a sequel.  I for one certainly hope Tom Holt is working on one.

 

Excerpts...

    ”There is no—”  Mr. Teasdale froze, as thirty years of sincere trusting disbelief crashed round his ears like a Philistine temple.  “There really is a Santa Claus?”

    “Yup.  As a matter of fact, he was in my office only the other day,  Nice chap, but a bit scary.”

    “Are you sure?”

    The look on Mr. Teasdale’s face.  Half an hour ago, Mr. Dawson was pretty sure he’d never laugh again.  It was nice to find out he’d been wrong.  “Sure I’m sure,” he said.  “The man himself.  Even came down the chimney.”

    “We haven’t got a chimney.”

    “I know.”  (loc. 1860)

 

    “You were going too fast,” the spokeswoman interpreted.  “Showing off.  Probably texting.  And now look what you’ve done.”

    The spokeswoman had a high, shrill voice and plenty of it, but the pilot couldn’t help noticing she was kinda cute, if you like ‘em green and frondy.  “Jump-started evolution on your world, by the looks of it,” he said.  “Hey, get a load of that Woodlice.”  And the morning and the evening, incidentally, were the fifth day.”

    “Yuk,” said the spokeswoman firmly.  “Creepy-crawlies.”

    “True,” conceded the pilot.  “Although give ‘em a day or so and they’ll be yay high, walking on their hind legs and discovering the Higgs boson.  Still, you’re probably right.  I can do you a quick flood and everything’ll be jake.”  (loc. 2184)

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Gubbins (v.) : gadgets; gadgetry. (British).

Others: Insuperable (adj.);  Qurutob (n., food); Yonks (n.); Punters (n.; I never did figure out the connotation of this word.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.3*/5, based on 97 ratings and 9 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.05*/5, based on 98 ratings and 34 reviews.

 

Kindle Details…

    The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse costs $9.99 at Amazon right now, which is a pretty good deal for a recent release.  Tom Holt has a slew of other e-books for your Kindle; they range in price from $2.99 to $9.99.  Be aware that Amazon discounts of Tom Holt novels are few and far between.

 

Oh what fun it isn’t to ride on a nine-reindeer, open-topped, dangerously overcrowded faster-than-light sleigh.  (loc. 3720)

    I’m a Holt-aholic, so it’s not surprising that I can’t find much to quibble about in The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse.  I counted 26 cusswords in the first 20% of the book, which is about average for Mr. Holt.  Eight of those were f-bombs though.  The editing is good; I noted only two typos: He/The and amd/and.

 

    Some reviewers didn’t like the abundance of plot threads.  That’s understandable, but that’s the norm for a Tom Holt novel.  It keeps the reader keeps wondering how all of those tangents will figure into the storyline, and whether they can possibly be tied up coherently.  Somehow Tom Holt succeeds in doing so every time.

 

    I guess my only beef is with the title’s implied Christmas tie-in.  Yes, there’s a short guy in a red suit whose name is Nick.  But he doesn’t live at the North Pole with Mrs. Claus and a bunch of elves.  Also, the eponymous eight reindeer don’t enter into the tale until 85%-Kindle, and it’s really only a cameo appearance.  True, the book is divided into 8 chapters, and each chapter title is given a reindeer name, but those titles have nothing to do with the chapter’s contents.

 

    Overall, I think The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse is another fine tale by Tom Holt.  The wit and absurdities are still there, so are the subtle insights into not-so-subtle topics, including in this case, the practice of worshipping deities.  This is the author's 36^th novel, if I counted correctly at Wikipedia, and he’s been putting them out since 1987.  Here’s hoping he’s still got a bunch more stories to share.

 

    8½ Stars.  One last thing.  What can you create with the following items: a cinema ticket, a packet of Oreos, a zippo lighter, a rubber band, and a tuning fork?  The fate of the planet depends on you solving this!

Huntress Moon - Alexandra Sokoloff

   2014; 364 pages.  Book 1 (out of 6) in the series “The Huntress”.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Vigilante Justice; Crime-Mystery; FBI Thriller.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s a terrible thing to watch one of your coworkers die.  Just ask FBI special agent Michael Roarke.  While on a stakeout, he witnessed a fellow agent Kevin Greer get run over by a full-sized truck as he stepped out into the street.

 

    Oh well, accidents happen when you’re in the FBI.  Agent Greer got careless while he was focused on the stakeout.  Hmm.  Or did he?

 

    Now that Roarke thinks about it, Greer started out into the street, then stopped and turned around to face a pedestrian on the sidewalk: a pretty female with blonde hair, dressed all in black, and wearing a turtleneck sweater.  Roarke thinks he recalls it looking like she said something to get Greer’s attention which caused him to pause.  In the street.  Which was a fatal mistake on his part.

 

    The woman disappeared after the collision.  Was she a factor in Greer’s death?  Is it even worth investigating?  It’ll most likely turn out to be a waste of time, but Roarke feels duty-bound to look into it.

 

    But without the blonde's name or a motive, how do you go about doing that?

 

What’s To Like...

      The FBI takes a dim view of any of its agents perishing in the line of duty, and an Investigative Team is quickly formed with Roarke heading it up.  Clues are frustratingly sparse to begin with.  It could be a revenge killing, although Greer’s service record is clean.  Or maybe it was a mob hit, since Greer had been working undercover, but would Organized Crime hire a hitman that’s a hitwoman?  Perhaps it was the work of a serial killer, but if so, where are the bodies of previous victims?  Maybe it was just an accident, and Roarke is reading too much into a chance encounter by Greer as he started to cross the street.

 

    It’s not really a spoiler to reveal that that last possibility is quickly ruled out.   This wasn’t an accident; it wouldn’t be much of a tale if it were, and the storyline in Huntress Moon follows the two main characters – Roarke and the perpetrator.  So this isn’t really a whodunit; it’s more of a “whydunit”, and a “what’s-the-killer-going-to-do-next” scenario.

 

    I liked the settings: Portland, Salt Lake City, and several stops along the California west coast, culminating with a visit to Blythe, California, a middle-of-nowhere city, at least when I used to pass through it in my college days.  The title references a rare alternate name for the astronomical phenomenon called a “Blue Moon”.

 

    I thought the storytelling was great.  We get to watch Roarke’s (and the rest of his team’s) deductive reasoning skills in action, squeezing the maximum of various hypotheses out of a minimum of hard evidence.  It was also fun to watch things unfold from the killer’s viewpoint as she carries out her carefully laid plans.  Nonetheless, Alexandra Sokoloff’s writing skills are sufficient to keep the reader (and the FBI) guessing as how the victims are, and were, selected and what motivates her to kill them.

 

    The ending is both surprising and exciting.  Hunter and huntress finally meet up, mutual respect is shown, and a bad situation is rectified.  All the plotlines are not tied up, but this is a rare case where that’s a plus, as I’m sure they will be further addressed in the next book in the series, Blood Moon.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 8,300 ratings and 1,568 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.13/5 based on 7,422 ratings and 728 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Unsub (n.) : unidentified subject (cop slang).

Others: Mediagenic (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    Sister Frances struck him as fair, if blunt.  She was also absolutely convinced of what she was saying.

    “This ‘brand of hate’ . . . was there anything political about it?”

    She frowned.  “A dash, I suppose.  He called himself an eco-anarchist.”

    Only in Portland, Roarke thought.  He raised an eyebrow and Sister Frances gave him the Cliff’s Notes version without his having to ask.  “Eco-anarchism, also known green anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, anarcho-naturism, anti-civilization anarchism . . . I could go on.”  (loc. 2016)

 

    He held up a hand between them, and forced his voice steady.  “Estancia aqui.  Te escondes.” Stay here.  Stay hidden.  He had no idea what would go down before he could get this girl to any kind of safety, but she didn’t look like she was about to move anywhere anytime soon, and for the moment, that was a good thing.

    And then, because he had to know, he asked, “¿Qué paso?”  What happened?

    She looked out at the body of her attacker with huge, dark eyes.  “Santa Muerte,” she whispered.  (loc. 4618, and it took me forever to figure out how to make that upside-down question mark.)

 

Kindle Details…

    Huntress Moon sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  The other five books in the series will run you either $3.99 or $4.99, mostly the latter.  Alexandra Sokoloff offers several other e-books at Amazon, in the $2.99-$4.99 range, and mostly Thrillers.  She also has authored three non-fiction books featuring tips about Screenwriting, which also go for $2.99-$4.99.

 

“A Bat’s got to do what a Bat’s got to do.”  (loc. 3416)

    The quibbles are minor.  I counted only 14 cusswords in the first 25% of Huntress Moon, although five of those were f-bombs.

 

    I spotted only a couple of typos: Later/later; Milvia/Marias; mantle/mantel, but overall, I’d say whoever did the editing did a good job.

 

    Be aware that, as with almost any law enforcement agency story, acronyms abound.  Some I knew, some I didn’t.  Some were explained; some weren’t.  Here’s a partial list of them: VICAP, BAU, MP report, CHP, DIY, COBOL, CI, BOLO, BFD, OPPLA, MILF.  Some of those are well-known, others were quite esoteric to me.

 

    But enough of the quibbling.  It’s always a joy to come across an author who knows how to write a page-turning thriller, and that was the case here.  The pacing was brisk, the “police procedural” portions were convincing, and I appreciated the inclusion of a couple of red herrings to keep me, and the FBI, on our toes.

 

    9 Stars.  When Roarke and his team were examining the “serial killer” angle, a femme fatale named Aileen Wuornos is mentioned.  I had never heard of her, but it turns out she was real and one of a very small group of American female serial killers.  Wikipedia has a page devoted to her; it is quite enlightening, and the link is here.