Monthly Archives: January 2018

Last year, I requested and listened to GreenWood Cove, by Celia Roman. Then, the narrator Rebecca Winder contacted me about reviewing the next two books in the series, The Deep Wood and Cemetery Hill. As I enjoyed the first one, I agreed.

Greenwood Cove:
Technically this is a review from last year, but I’ve pasted a copy here so that all three can be together.

I quite enjoyed this, both the story and the narration of the Audible. I struggled at first with Rebecca Winder’s version of a rural accent. It, combined with Roman’s phrasing, came across as artificial at times, more of a stereotypical mountain-speak than anything realistic. But I got used to it eventually.

I generally liked this. I liked the characters, the mystery, and the romance. But I struggled at times feeling like the romance overpowered everything else and, well, this really doesn’t feel like a first book. The characters have a lot of history and a certain amount of background is left unexplained. I kept feeling like there must be a prequel out there somewhere. (There isn’t as far as I know.) Some of this feeling probably would have been ameliorated by fleshing some of the plot points out a bit and bringing her whole paranormal investigation into the open earlier. As it was, I wasn’t even sure she’d had paranormal cases, outside of her lost son, before the events of the book, until it was finally mentioned toward the end. It felt like yet one more thing readers were just supposed to know already.

All the same, it was a fun read. There was a certain amount of humor and I’d be open to continuing the series.

The Deep Wood:
Again, I enjoyed my time with Ms. Sunshine Walkingstick. This isn’t a book of fast-paced action, but more of slow developments and strength of character. I happen to enjoy that, but if you’re looking for shootouts and car chases, or dramatic clashes of humans versus monster, you’ll be disappointed.

What I like most is Sunshines voice. She’s…Appalachian I suppose is what I’d call it. In the first book, I struggled a bit with it, but here I quite enjoyed it. Both the way Roman wrote it and the way Winder voiced it. Maybe it just took getting used to.

While I understood Sunshine had trust issues, I eventually became confused about why she was so unable to recognize Riley’s intentions toward her. He’s certainly not hiding his feelings. The whole of this is starting to stress the bounds of credibility. Similarly, considering the events at the end of the book, I’d have expected to see a bit more stress on his part.

All in all, however, I very much enjoyed this and am looking forward to book three.

Cemetery Hill
I think maybe this series is just getting better, though it’s getting to the point that reviewing each individual book becomes difficult. After all, the voice, characters, world, etc is all the same. I liked it in the past two books and I still like it here. This particular mystery and monster didn’t seem quite as important as some of the past ones, maybe because it’s a middle book.

I’m still finding Sunshine’s resistance to her relationship with Riley a bit too much to believe. But I appreciate that the reader sees Riley’s frustration with this.

All in all, I’m still all in for Sunshine Walkingstick and look forward to future books. I think I’ll stick with the audio too. Winder is still doing a lovely job.

Book Review of Last Witch of Cahokia, by Raymond Scott Edge

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I picked up a copy of Last Witch of Cahokia, by Raymond Scott Edge, in my continued effort to read local books.

Description from Goodreads:
In the darkest hour of the night, a man dressed solely in black moves quietly among the tombstones. Finding the one he’s looking for, he begins to dig. The next morning the community of Alton, Illinois discovers that the remains of the cemetery’s most illustrious resident, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, are being held for ransom. The illusive grave robber Ghost Dancer demands a simple trade, the return of Lovejoy’s remains for the immediate reburial of thirty-six female skeletons taken from a Native American burial ground.

While Daniel struggles to respond to Ghost Dancer’s demands, his mentor and senior colleague, Fredrick Eldrege, is in China attempting to unravel the mystery surrounding an ancient painted buffalo skin found in the archives of Beijing University. Is it authentic? How did it get there? Are the thirty-seven women portrayed on the artifact associated with the recently excavated burial ground? If so, who is the 37th woman, and why is she dressed in silk?

Review:
I picked this up because it looked interesting and because I live about 25 miles from what’s left of Cahokia Mounds. At its peak, where I live was probably part of the extended populations. I even visited the park just a couple of weeks ago. So, I thought a novel about the local area could be interesting. It was.

Apparently, Last Witch of Cahokia is actually the third book in a series, which I didn’t know when I decided to read it. But I was perfectly able to follow it. The past books are referenced. For example, the first book in the series (Flight of the Piasa) is actually supposed to be written by one of the characters in this book and published by the publishing company that truly publishes the series. (Very meta, I know.) But none of that knowledge is necessary to follow this plot. So, it wasn’t a problem.

The story itself is interesting, both the modern and past plots. I liked the diversity of the characters. Several groups are represented well that you don’t see often, Mormons for example. You don’t see them painted as good people too often, outside their own fiction. Similarly, Native Americans, Chinese, a Chilean, and several white Americans are shown to have healthy, functioning relationships, and work lives. (I don’t remember any black characters. Certainly, no main character was. I’m hoping I just don’t remember a side character, maybe a student.)

There was some lazy plotting. For example, when one of the characters needed a chance to make up with his love interest, he chased her out a back door and, despite it being like 15 seconds since she exited, he still managed to find her being accosted and almost raped by a couple of rough biker types. Really, Edge couldn’t find a more creative, less often used, and more relevant-to-the-story way to reunite these two? I’m pretty sure I’ve read this same scene in about a million books, probably even including the bikers. It’s lazy writing of the worst kind. And making the ruffians bikers is stereotyping to boot, and not even accurate. It’s 2017, hasn’t Edge gotten the memo that most leather-clad bikers these days are actually upper-middle aged proctologists. They’re the only ones who can afford it anymore. I mean, have you been to Grafton? One to the characters in the book has, he ought to know.

Similarly lazy is the fact that one character is reading a manuscript, apparently, only a page or so at a time, since it took him weeks. But he does so each night after speaking to his wife, who goes to bed first and then wakes up over the book the next morning. This happens four or five times. Surely it’s not necessary to recycle the same scene like that.

Lastly, as someone who studied anthropology/archeology and focused largely on Native America, I was interested in that aspect of the book. But even I have to admit that though the repatriation of remains debate was really important, the last half of the book got REALLY preachy and didactic. When the author branched off to lecture on the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, I forgot for a moment I was reading a novel and not a textbook.

All in all, the writing was good and the editing was pretty clean. I noticed a couple of small things, like yin (yin and yang) becoming yen. But mostly it wasn’t distracting, which is good enough for me most days. I’d be willing to read another Edge book.