Tag Archives: challenge 2013

The Feathered Lover

Book Review of Tabitha Levin’s The Feathered Lover

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The Feathered Lover

I picked up a copy of Tabitha Levin‘s The Feathered Lover for free from the Smashword’s seasonal sale. It will be free using code SW100 until the end of July. 

Description from Goodreads:
It’s 1943 and Ruby Kelly just saw one of the wild men with wings for the first time in her life. He’d been captured, tied up, and was now being held in the stables at the same Inn she was staying.

She had to get a closer look. She crept downstairs toward the stable window. His chest was smooth and bare, and it glistened with sweat from his recent struggle. Butterflies erupted in her stomach when he looked her way. Did he see her?

Now she had two options, free him and risk the wrath of the thugs who caught him, or pretend she never saw him at all.

Neither would be easy.

Review:
This was an all right read, I suppose. I can’t say it did much for me though. The whole thing just felt wrong. (If that makes any sense.) Starting with Zan. He felt very child-like to me. Everything from his insta-love which reminded me of a kid’s tendency to become obsessed with anything new, to the language divide that left him speaking like a halting toddler for much of the book, to Ruby’s tendency to compare him to a pet, to his occasional tears. As a result I had a really hard time seeing him as the sexy male lead he was supposed to be. That’s a real problem in a book with as much sex as The Feathered Lover. There was a lot of it. I don’t have any real issue with this much of the time, but here it started to clutter up the plot. Everywhere they went–endangered, held hostage, trying to have a conversation was apparently appropriate for a quickie before moving on.

I did like Ruby. She had a stubborn streak a mile long and I appreciated that. She prattled on a bit, having long one-sided soliloquies regularly. I had a little trouble understanding her insta-love with Zan though. She crossed the species/social/legal divide with him based on nothing but one meeting in which she didn’t think him capable of intelligible speech and possibly dangerous. She’d been taught Voltane were wild animals after-all. So what does she do? Well, seamlessly give her virginity up to it of course. What else?

I had to wonder why exactly it was illegal to be in the presence of the Voltage to start with. Was this a species or environmental protection, basic xenophobia or racism, etc. I didn’t understand the social intention, so I had a little trouble understanding the implications of Ruby’s actions. Plus, for being feared and held separate Ruby and Zan seemed to find a lot of sympathisers with almost no effort. I get that this was meant to infer that the society was ripe for social change, but it also felt very convenient to the plot. I also thought that trying to situate the whole thing in an alternation 1943 complicated matters. I didn’t see the relevance.

The writing was fairly simple, but it was clean, perfectly readable and only had a few editorial mishaps. In the end I was left wondering what I had just read, but I imagine that the book will really appeal to some. It was a pleasant change to encounter a hero who wasn’t a bulging alpha with an alarming tendency to aggress on questionably willing heroines. Props to Levin for being willing to move away from the canned PNR.

Book Review of Maggie Secara’s The Dragon Ring

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The Dragon RingAuthor, Maggie Secara sent me a copy of the first and second of her Harper Errant series, The Dragon Ring and King’s Raven. I’ve only read the first so far, but I figured I might as well go ahead and review it.

Description from Goodreads:
Reality TV host Ben Harper has a problem: he owes the king of Faerie a favor. So now he has to track down the three parts of a Viking arm-ring, and return them to their place in time. This takes him through the wolf-haunted forests of Viking Age Wessex, the rowdy back streets of Shakespeare’s London, and a derelict Georgian country house. Partnered with caustic, shape-changing Raven and guided by a slightly wacky goblin diary, Ben must rediscover his own gifts while facing his doubts and the queen of Faerie’s minions, who will do anything to stop him.

The Dragon Ring, the first in the Harper Errant series, is a time travelling epic adventure which takes you to Old England, and beyond.

Review:
The Dragon Ring is a bit like a grownup Harry Potter, with bawdy ballads and raunchy riddles. There’s a magic book or two, endless magical music, self-regulating clothing, time travel, mystic doors, mythical beasts, prophetic icons, bewitchments, bespelling, and even an imaginative curse on occasion. And poor Ben Harper is stuck right in the middle of it all.

Image a young Alan Titmarsh, or better yet, Justin Ryan or Colin McAllister contracted by the King of Faerie to save the world. Not the likeliest of heroes I’ll admit, but Ben does a decent job of it. He seems to have an amazing knack for simply accepting the absurdities that come along with the unexplainable magic in and around the land of Fae. If he hadn’t been American, I would blame it on that much-touted stiff upper lip. As a reader, I had a little harder time of it. Some of the ‘it’s magic, just accept it’ felt a little too convenient for me. Most especially when considering the diary that miraculously held ALL the answers.

I was extremely disappointed in the treatment of Mellis’, Ben’s wife, character. Her role was important as a motivator to Ben, but she seemed to be pointedly left out of much of the book. She might as well have been a cardboard cutout. Then, in the mere 10 or so percent at the tail end of the book that she was active for, she managed to fall and twist an ankle (though I give her credit for not whinging about it) and lose an important artifact. As enamored as Ben was with her, I would have liked her to have a little more depth.

The narrative style is marvellous. There is a lot of humour in it. The writing is tight and elegant. It strikes the right tone for a book about Oberon and Titania. The book does feel a tad like it goes on forever and a day, though. Plus, it isn’t the sort of book that builds to a peak and then settles back down before ending. It kind of builds to a plateau and then continues on until the end. Ben is given his tasks, and then he systematically goes about completing them until he is finished. It’s very much a ‘quest to collect the magical shards’ kind of story.

I’d especially recommend the book for music lovers. There are a lot of music references and melodies play an important role in the story. Additionally, thespians and Renaissance festival regulars will likely have little trouble relating to Ben and his personality. All-in-all an interesting read. I have the sequel, King’s Raven, which I also look forward to reading. (Speaking of Ravens, Raven was my all-out favorite character in the book.)

Book Review of Rachel Francis’ Life on Fire

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Life on FireYesterday, as I was trolling my TBR list, muttering to myself about how I could have so very, very many books and still not pick anything to read, my daughter reached over and said, “How about that one? It looks interesting.” Well there you go, decision made (and proof positive that covers matter).

Rachel Francis‘ PNR novel, Life on Fire, was downloaded from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Anna grew up in the peace of Caroline, a small East coast town barely warranting its own school district. When that serenity is shattered by murder, no one feels safe. One, two, three attacks and no end in sight, Anna falls into a deep depression, spurred onward by the sudden departure of her best friend.

It’s then she notices the strangers around town. Anna enters a world of magic when she comes face to face with two of the newcomers, leaving her changed forever. Saving her hometown may be second only to keeping a centuries old war from boiling over.

Review:
Life on Fire takes the same old, same old and spruces it up enough to be interesting. Anna is a regular, small town girl until her life is endangered and she awakens to her inherent, and previously unknown, paranormal powers. These powers are of course the most powerful there can be. But not to worry, there is an emotionally damaged hotty available to fall in love with her and help her through the transition. She in turn will of course sooth his injured soul in a way no one has been able to before. As well as effortlessly help and earn the admiration of everyone around her.

I’m being trite I know. I did say the same old plot was livened up a little bit though. It’s the characters that add the spice. Wendrick is a wonderfully conflicted character, by far the best in the book IMO. He carries his own heavy burden of ability, responsibility and basic guilt for what he is. David and Rosalyn have an interestingly tempestuous relationship, and Anna has a strong, loving family. Anna was my least favourite of the bunch. In a book that walked the standard genre line so unwaveringly it was the small divergences that kept it from being boring and Anna didn’t stray too far from the standard PNR heroine. She therefore didn’t hold my interest very well. I didn’t hate her or anything. She was just kind of a null for me.

Her and Wendrick together were pretty good however. This isn’t exactly a case of instant-love, or rather I think the author tried to pull it back from insta-love. It’s pretty quick though. And even if not quite instant, the love between Anna and Wendrick solidifies with very little outside influence. He is inexplicably drawn to her and she pretty much goes on a systematic campaign to make him her own. There isn’t really any falling in love as much as finally accepting the love.

Though the main character is 22, this reads like a YA book. Anna still lives at home with her parents. Wendrick is several hundred years old, but acts like a stroppy teenager. David sulks through the whole first half of the story and Anna has dealt with one of her best friend’s crushes for years. There is one mild, largely inexplicit sex scene. It’s the only reason I hesitate to call this YA.

My main complaint is that the dialogue is incorrectly formatted throughout the book, such that a spoken sentence is often on the same line as the response of the person spoken to. Creating confusion about who is actually speaking after all. A made-up example (cause I’m too lazy to go find my kindle and pick out a real one): ”Sit there.’ John sighed, but sat.’ In this case John would be the person spoken to, not the speaker. It’s obvious on a second glance, but it takes that second glance and disrupts the flow.

For an easy, mindless couple hours of entertainment Life on Firefits the bill.