THE MYSTERY AT DURVEGAN CASTLE: Edinburgh Nights Book Three by TL Hochu is a Harry Potter riff in which the protagonist Mopa — a poor black teenage medium and wizardry student — is struggling to work her way through magic school despite racism and classism. In this book, she’s staff at an important magical conference only to have a major magic Macguffin disappear before it can be returned to a visiting Ethiopian mage (it was swiped from Africa decades earlier). As part of Mopa’s job is investigator she has to crack the case but the tangled political agendas swirling through the conference prove more of an obstacle than the thief’s scheme (I’m inclined to describe this as Harry Potter only the threat is less evil than self-interest). This left me with mixed feelings: it was mostly fun and the world-building was good but the scheming rivals almost blot out the plot.
(The spider has nothing to do with these books. I just thought it looked cool).
The next book I read was from a company publishing short novels in the style of the old Ace Double books. My interest was primarily THE WRONG SIDE OF PARADISE by Raymond F. Jones as I like his work. This has a pair of spacemen fly their rocket past an official no-fly zone into the Sargasso Sea of Space, where derelict ships have been abandoned, perfect for salvage — sure, there must be some reason everyone abandoned them, but the spacers are confident they can beat the risk.
Instead they find themselves in a fantasy world where your greatest dreams — adventure, love, wealth, peace — come to pass. It’s paradise, definitely — but spoiler, there’s a price to pay! This was fun, though I found the ending gratuitously sexist.
I can’t recall reading anything by Rog Phillips before and reading THE INVOLUNTARY IMMORTALS doesn’t incline me to read more. It starts off well as protagonist Helen buries her husband under her daughter’s glaring eyes — how is it possible dad has aged a quarter-century since the daughter was born yet Mom now looks younger? Did Mom drain Dad’s life-force? What secret is she hiding?
Helen’s secret is that she’s immortal, born in the early 1800s; she’s outlived two previous husbands and she has no idea why she doesn’t age. Then she meets another immortal and learns she’s not alone — and that the others are actively working to recruit more of their kind and to learn the secret. It turns out one of them has already figured the answer and starts offing the rest — if he’s the last one, he’ll eventually accumulate enough knowledge and power to rule the world!
This has a great start and I like some of Phillips’ ideas such as becoming immortal means you have to take up intellectual challenges to keep yourself from boredom (and, of course, it’s no sacrifice for them to spend 30 years mastering some discipline). However the last third of the book bogs down in exposition so overall not a winner.
(No, the squished frog isn’t relevant either).
WRITTEN IN BLOOD: The Others, Book I by Anne Bishop is an urban fantasy where rather than supernatural creatures living among us, we live among them: the werewolves, vampires, elementals and other creatures of North America tolerate us because human manufacturing provides some nice tchochkes but piss them off and you die, and probably a lot of other people too. There’s a throwaway line in one scene that a number of women think a werewolf lover would be sexy; the wolves typically eat them after mating. They are not friendly.
Protagonist Meg is a blood prophet: cutting gives her visions of the future along with a mix of ecstasy and pain. After years locked up with other prophets and forced to give visions on command, she’s escaped; wandering a world she barely understands, she winds up taking a liaison job at Chicago’s (in this alt.world that’s not the name but I think I have the city right) Other compound, dealing with deliverymen and bureaucrats, dropping off mail, and so on. Humans don’t last long in this position and to make matters worse, freelancers are hunting Meg down for her former captors …
I liked this better than I do most urban fantasy series I sample, and I’ll probably check the next volume out of the library eventually. However the villains underwhelm: Asia, the main face of the bad guys, is a shallow, two-dimensional bitch and the mercenary team is never a serious threat except to Meg (seriously, guys with guns against vampires, shifters and the avatar of Winter?). Another problem is that while I could buy them defending Meg as someone of value to them, turning all of them into a found family is a stretch too far. Still a good read.
