Tag Archives: challenge 2013

More Deaths Than One

Book Review of Bryan Islip’s More Deaths Than One

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More Deaths Than OneI won a copy of Bryan Islip‘s More Deaths Than One through Goodreads’ Firstreads program and I should start by apologising to the author for taking a full year to get around to reading it. I have excuses, but I figure they’re probably pretty irrelevant to anyone but me.

Description from Amazon:
Thomas Thornton has settled down to expatriated family life in Saudi Arabia. He is wrongfully caught up in shariah law on drugs dealing charges then finds himself implicated in a far more universal situation. Injustice is a bitter pill – potentially a fatal one where your landing card is headlined in red italics: Death For Drugs Dealers. Even with a past life as explosive as that of Thomas Thornton’s, what odds against a future for himself, his family; what of his love for the ways of Arabia?

Review:
Thomas was the best of the best. But even the best get tired of the game at some point. His attempt to make a go of it as a civilian goes spectacularly wrong and luckily those old skills hadn’t gotten too rusty. I really liked Thomas as a man, a soldier, and a main character. Despite being exceedingly dangerous he also understood the value of human life, the splendid variety in human cultures, and the importance of love and family. All of his comrades were likeable too, though it did feel a little like England must be an exceptionally small island. Despite the small size of the SBS unit he managed to run into a whole heck of a lot of Ex’S’s in the course of regular business.

The book starts out with a rather long prologue that chronicles the highlights of Thomas’ life until the point he decides to leave Her Majesty’s Service. While making for a slow start it does give the reader a strong impression of what sort of man Thomas is and why. 90% of the rest of the book is dedicated to Thomas’ attempt to extricate himself and those with him from a whole web of lies, betrayals, double crosses, etc. That remaining 10% or so is all we are given of Thomas as a civilian businessman, husband, father, friend, etc. It’s an important 10%, but the reader is expected to extrapolate for a lot of it. I could have done with a little more details about this life he was trying so hard to get back to.

I haven’t decided how I feel about the moral implications of The Planter’s scheme. The book had a definite message to impart on the subject of the drug trade. And Thomas seemed to take it all in stride there at the end. I wasn’t sure how exactly he rationalised the whole thing in order not to feel incredibly betrayed. I think I would have.

There are some typos in this book, not a huge number of them and they seem more frequent in the second half, but there are enough to be worth mentioning. The story, however, is a really good one. All-in-all I’m thrilled to have finally gotten around to reading it. It’s almost a humanised James Bond. Islip is a really talented writer (as well as painter, poet and more apparently). I’ll definitely be looking out for more of his writing.

Book Review of James Gordon Bennett’s My Father’s Geisha

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My Father's Geisha

I picked a secondhand copy of James Gordon Bennett’s novel, My Father’s Geisha up at Goodwill for $0.70.

Description from back of book:
Teddy’s on his way to an ulcer before he’s old enough for a driver’s license. His silver-screened sister Cora is convinced that “Army families are all alike, which is why they have to keep us moving.” And move their family does, following first the blue then the red line in the road atlas to their next assignment. When every parental confrontation seems to end in stony silence, Cora predicts a permanent separation (“I’ve seen the movie”). Teddy wishes his heart could be freeze-dried then thawed back to life, so that from that moment on, everything and everyone might be absolutely new…

[I might also point out that, interestingly, almost every sentence of that description is somewhere in the book.]

Review:
I can’t honestly say I liked it. But I can’t say there was anything intrinsically wrong with it either. I much preferred the first half of the book, when the main character and his sister were still children. I liked that the narrative addressed very adult issues (life in the military, a crumbling marriage, etc) from the hazy perspective of youth. I found the last half, their adulthood, disappointing though. I’m afraid I lost sight of the moral of the story at that point.

I realise that part of the running theme of the book was the family’s inability to communicate, but I felt really cheated by never getting to see the father called out for being an insensitive ass. The happy ending felt brittle. In the sense that it was only happy for some and only possible because the mother was finally dead. It almost made her feel like the bad guy for hindering that very eventuality. But come on, she wasn’t the ever absent philander! Did the father and his mistress really deserve a happy ending at everyone else’s expense? Was the fact that the heavy price the family paid for it was years past suddenly make it OK? I didn’t think so, at least not without having to concede some sort of apology. Yes, real life is messy and maybe that makes this book more gritty and real, but I found it a most unsatisfying read. I wanted to see the father forced to face the consequences of his own decisions and the children finally given a little consideration. I never got it and I finished the book a bit disgusted with the lot of them.

I did find the writing excellent (though the passage of time was often unclear) and I enjoyed some aspects of the characters. For example, the fact that Cora was so often patronised and ignored, but was also almost always right. Chapter 2, Brats, was by far the best of the book IMO. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading the book and I’m not disappointed to have read it myself. Can’t say I enjoyed the last half all that much though.

Review of Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers (Vol. 1)

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Soul Screamers

About a year ago, I won a copy of Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers (Volume One) from BooksandBlossoms.com.

Description from Goodreads:

My Soul to Lose
Kaylee is just your average girl shopping at the mall with friends—until a terrified scream bursts from her that cannot be stopped. Taken to a hospital ward, will she be able to save her mind—and her life?

My Soul to Take
She’s always felt different, but now Kaylee discovers why. The screams that cannot be denied mean that someone near her will die—and she can never save them. Because saving one life means taking another….

My Soul to Save
Going on dates with her boyfriend is still new to Kaylee. But when the singer of the band they’re seeing dies onstage and Kaylee doesn’t scream, she knows something crazy is going on. Soon she discovers souls can indeed be sold….

I’ll round up to 4 stars. I gave the prequel a 3 because it was well written and interesting, but almost nothing on it’s own. I gave the first book a 4. I enjoyed it. But dropped a star form book 2 because there was so much recap and info-dumping. It’s probably easiest to just post the three reviews.

Reviews:
I don’t usually cite star ratings on this blog as I think they often muddle the review. It’s too easy to just glance at the number and gloss over the written review. But for this omnibus, I think it’ll be easier if I reference them.

I’ll round up to 4 stars for the volume as a whole. I gave the prequel a three because it was well-written and interesting, but almost nothing on its own. I gave the first book a 4. I enjoyed it. But dropped a star from book two because there was so much recap and info-dumping. Here are my thoughts on the individual works. 

My Soul to Lose
An interesting start to the series. My interest is piqued, and I’m curious to see how it progresses, but on its own, it feels incomplete. Nothing is resolved. More questions are presented than answers provided. In fact, almost nothing is concluded. I’d call it a prologue to something else, as opposed to a book (or even a story) on its own. [Plus, having finished books one and two, now I can officially say that nothing in it is touched on again. The girl who helps Kaylee never shows up again. That feels like a missed opportunity right there.]

My Soul to Take
I liked it alright. Kaylee was a good, strong heroine. Nash was wonderfully supportive. There were a few good twists. I generally liked most of the characters and it was well written.

The book did have a few irritants, though. For one, Kaylee was nowhere near angry enough with her family for lying to her her whole life. Nowhere near angry enough! I felt cheated by her lack of venom. Plus, I still don’t understand why they did it. I understand why her father sent her to live with his brother, but why wasn’t she told about her heritage? That was never addressed. For another, Nash seemed to have fallen instantly in love with Kaylee. I generally hate insta-love, but that wasn’t what this felt like. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll be vague. But, other than their parents, they were the only two of what they were, and it felt very much like this was the basis of his infatuation.

Yet another irritant was the fact that even amidst all the new, mind-boggling information Kaylee was assimilating, we are somehow supposed to believe that she alone noticed the mystery in need of solving. Then, despite the fact that her theory was practically based on fairy dust (i.e., nothing substantial), she was right. I thought the very fact that she knew something was wrong felt almost miraculous.

Lastly, there seemed to be a little bit of a plot hole between the fact that those who claimed the souls of the departed were doing a job they were recruited for, while Kaylee and Nash had a natural-born skill. These two tasks seem to be connected, flip sides of a coin almost. So how is one something you are born to do and the next something you are essentially hired to do? It seems to me that both would either have been natural or not, but how can they be so closely related if they haven’t evolved together?

All-in-all, I enjoyed the read. I have the next in the series, My Soul to Save, and I’ll be reading it next.

My Soul to Save
I’m still enjoying this series. Kaylee is still a wonderfully strong heroine who depends on her boyfriend a lot but isn’t dependent on him. (If that makes any sense.) I like that. I also really like Tod. He’s an interesting character who often brings about thought-provoking moral quandaries. I like that, too, and the fact that Kaylee (who is usually the decision-maker) doesn’t always do the ‘right’ thing. It makes for an interesting read. I also just plain like the narrative style. Plus, the unmistakable similarities between the evil empire (Dekker Inc.) and Disney were golden. Golden I say!

Like the first book, however, there are a few aspects of the story that leave me scratching my head. Again Kaylee managed to take some small snippet of information, almost nothing really, and weave a theory around it. Then, miraculously succeed with it. This time, based on one overheard sentence, she needed to find one demon of a specific sort, of which there could be many. The first ‘person’ she asks is able to tell her where he is; he’s the right one; they find him immediately and are able just to walk right in and see him. Not to suggest that there were no difficulties, but it all seemed to go a little too easily.

Then there is the basic question of why exactly Kaylee feels like she and she alone has to save everyone. It never seems to occur to her to ask for help. I also had a little trouble grasping the whole drama around being grounded. I probably would have been able to relate to this if I was younger; I admit. But it seemed to me (and Tod, apparently) that normal teen drama issues would just get blown off in the face of saving souls and all. On a similar note, she seems to accept her father’s reappearance and overzealous parenting with ease. Her internal thoughts were often appropriately acerbic, but she never vocalized them. Maybe I’m just mean, but I think after 13 years he deserved a little guilt. I kept waiting for her to lay into him finally and she had plenty of opportunity. But she never did.

My main complaint about this particular book, however, was that the first half was really cluttered with info-dumps and recaps of book one. For a little while, it felt like every paragraph had some sort of catch-up clause in it, and it really broke up the narrative. I got pretty frustrated with it after a while.

The bottom line, though, is that I basically enjoyed it. If I come across book three at some point, I’d be more than happy to give it a read.