Category Archives: books/book review

Book Review of Sunshine Walkingstick, #1-3, by Celia Roman

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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.

Last Witch of Cahokia

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.

Review of Danny’s Grace, by Dawn Hawkins

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Saint Louisians have gone from wondering if we would get a winter to being freezing. My family and I have been drinking our volume in hot chocolate as a result. I paired some of it with a copy of Danny’s Grace, by Dawn Hawkins.

Description from Goodreads:
Danny Rush is a master manipulator with an ego the size of Texas. He lives a secluded life in a cozy beach house, with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. His whole life, he has avoided facing the issues that threaten to destroy the remainder of his sanity . . . Danny will lead Grace, and his subconscious, through a maze of lifelong injustices, horrifying revelations, bad decision-making, twisted ethics, and his unconventional means of survival: his childhood, his sudden rise to fame, his disgraceful and tumultuous fall to the depths. His narrative is like no other, evoking both sympathy and outrage, often simultaneously. But remember, Danny is an expert at misdirection . . .

Aside:
As an interesting aside, I picked it up in a local used bookstore because of the “local author” sticker on the cover. I’ve been trying to read more authors from my own area. I later noted that her bio says she lives in Maryland, despite the ‘local author’ sticker and a sales sticker from STLBOOKS. My best guess is maybe the book is published by a Missouri publisher.

So, I may or may not have successfully supported a local author. Regardless, I won’t be doing it again. As I did a quick google search for clarification on if she is or isn’t local, I found articles by her published on Breitbart and* references to anti-Woman’s March/Pro Trump posts on her blog. She officially just jumped onto my not-to-be-read (anymore) list.

Regardless, I’ll review the book outside of her politics (and maybe being a horrible person). I just won’t buy or read anymore of her work to support her. That’s my option as a reader, American and human being.

 

Review:
This started out interesting, as a fictional autobiography of a fictional rock star. It’s set in contemporary times, with him looking back and relating events to a novelist who intends to write a novel about it. But he’s also talking directly to the reader. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of a third wall, with the reader being asked questions and admonished for their lack of interference in Danny’s memories. It’s an interesting narrative choice that takes time to get used to. But despite being a bit repetitive, it did work.

Further, while Danny was a notably unreliable narrator and the reader is never sure if he’s really as unlikable as he presents himself or truly just a horrible human being, as a female reader, I found being in his head distasteful and a long, long way from enjoyable.

The book eventually spirals into prosaic debauchery and loses the spark of anything new and untrodden that it started with. Unfortunately, it only worsened when it then culminated in a plot twist that frankly way too much to be believed.

I would have liked to know Danny’s age at the time of narration, so that I had more of a sense of how far he’d traveled from the events being related. How long had he lived with his history? The writing, however, isn’t bad and it seems well edited. If Hawkins’ open political stances didn’t place on my do-not-read list, I’d have been willing to give her books another shot.

*Edit Jan. 21, 2018: Ms. Hawkins has stated quite emphatically, in comments, that I have the wrong person above, she’s never written for Breitbart, I’ve judged her unfairly, and I’ve overstepped my bounds by including political feelings in my review. So, just to be sure I’d done due diligence, I spent the evening reading her blog, nothing else, just her blog. And whether she wrote for Breitbart or not (and I’ll take her word for it), I can again say without doubt, that we are almost complete political opposites, as I’d gathered earlier. I still don’t wish to read any more of her work. (And I’ll reiterate that I reviewed her book on her book’s qualities, not her politics or my feelings about them. These are two separate entities, believe it or not.) 

While I respect her dedication to addressing child abuse, almost everything else she said in her blog posts I disagreed with. So, based on no google searches, but rather from her own blog posts and comments below, my opinion hasn’t changed. We both have the right to hold the positions we do and to think the other wrong. And perhaps it was bitchy of me to bring it up here, but what use is having your own blog if not to post your own opinions? Ms. Hawkins doesn’t seem to have any issue doing it herself.

The passage above, about Ms. Hawkins the person, is the result of my lived experience. I read the book, wrote a review, was curious about whether she was a local author or not and googled her. I encountered her blog. This was all part of the experience that went into writing this post. It was organic and unplanned, but it was real. This blog is part book reviews, part personal journal, part social commentary, and part whatever else I feel like. I don’t limit or censor myself when writing it. I post what seems important in the moment. And at the moment, “Oh look what I found on her blog…” was prominent in my mind and, therefore pertinent. 

I can appreciate that it sucks to go online and find some stranger has stated they dislike your opinion and maybe even you. But if you’re going to put your political opinions out for the world to be read you have to assume people will read and respond to them. I accept that with this blog. I accept that I wrote about Ms. Hawkins, she read and reacted to it. That’s what happens on the internet. It will happen again. No doubt I’ll find myself on both sides of the occurrence at some point.