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Friday, May 03, 2024

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes by Karen S. Wiesner

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes

by Karen S. Wiesner

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.

I picked up Leech by Hiron Ennes at a used bookstore and bought it because 1) it was in the science fiction/horror section, 2) it sounded like a combination of genres I love and the back cover blurb definitely appealed, and 3) I liked the intriguing cover, which, by the way, my wastewater treatment manager husband immediately said, tongue in cheek, "Look, a BOD bottle--but what's that weird, black gunk coming out of it?"

I barely know where to start with this review. I've never before read a book quite like Leech, which was published in 2022 and was the debut novel by the author, who works in the field of medicine. Leech runs the gamut when it comes to genre classification: Gothic, Victorian era literature, historical, science fiction, horror, medical mystery, speculative and post-apocalyptic fiction are some of the fitting categories, along with two others that may also (but I'm not quite sure) qualify: steampunk and body horror. In the case of the latter, I've only heard of such a thing in relation to Caitlin Starling, an author I really like who's also a narrative designer that creates art exhibitions. These could be considered (by the squeamish like myself) body horror.

The back cover blurb barely seems adequate to cover what takes places in this unusual novel. But maybe that's the best place to start, with a posting of the blurb on the book. This reveals to us what the author and publisher intended to give away freely about the major themes in the story.

Meet the cure for the human disease.

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.

There are strongly overt clues running all through this blurb as to what the underlying plot is, but it's not really something that's realized fully until the reader is well into the novel--something I'll talk about again soon.

I instantly liked this story when I started reading it because it has evocative depictions of the Victorian era--the picturesque setting (in this case, a desolate one filled with frigid, imposing mountains, dense forests, and a ruin of a "castle"); the genteel manners and mannerisms practiced by all with the classes of society always firmly occupying their proper places; the quiet, subtle, eerie, and insidious sense that absolutely nothing is as it seems on the surface. In fact, one of the things I liked most in those beginning chapters was how much the main character (who isn't specifically named through most of the story--it's written in first person point-of-view) reminded me of Jonathan Harker, a new solicitor, traveling to Eastern Europe to meet with his very first client. Leech takes place mainly in Verdira, located in a remote, frozen stronghold where wheatrock--an extremely valuable commodity used for many different things--is mined.

What the back cover blurb plainly hints at but doesn't firmly verify for most of first two-thirds of the novel is that the pathologist the Institute has sent to investigate the death of the previous one is in fact a hive-mind body host of a parasite that's replaced all medical practitioners in existence in the past five-hundred years since it established predominance over living creatures. This very same parasite was in part responsible for most human beings being transformed into mutated states while some other, unspecified (but hinted at being caused by a "{galaxy?} flying machine") physical disaster turned the world's oceans acid, shattered the moon, and created feral machines called ventigeaux ("orphans of biotechnology", as the author describes them).

Most of the characters in the book were transformed by that parasite in one way or another from mechanic hearts, to vestigial tails to Verdira's Baron being kept alive mainly through arcane machinery. The author intended it to be the norm in this world for regular patients to display "unconventional physical attributes" such as "a mechanical limb or a migratory birthmark or a literal doppelganger".

In this feudal society, while the Institute handles all medical matters, powerful barons run local areas. In addition to the misery-inducing Baron who rules over Verdira and doesn't have a kind word for anyone living in the crumbling chateau with him are his family and servants. His grown son Didier cares nothing about the lost miners and numerous massacres that have and are taking place in Verdira so long as the precious wheatrock is capable of being mined to contribute to their ongoing wealth. His wife drinks but never escapes the fact that she is, sadly, little more than a breeder. Her only worth is in producing heirs. And she knows it. Due to the mutations from the pathogen, she's suffered a long series of stillborn births. Her only surviving progenies are twin girls creepily described as "A tangle of dark hair…two small bodies sprouting like stems from its middle." Additionally, there's the tragic houseboy, Èmile, the last survivor of genocide against indigenous cave and mountain dwellers.

While the back cover blurb and the writing itself were almost blatant about touting the "symbiont" parasite that's running the medical show in this world, it wasn't immediately apparent what exactly was taking place in the story as I read through the first two-thirds. It took me that long to make all the necessary connections to comprehend that I was reading a book that was in the point of view of a pathogen for most of that time. (Guess having been in the POV of a dinosaur in another book I read isn't as odd as I formerly thought compared to this.) Only later in the story, when the previous owner of the host body re-exerted her (or them-) self and emerged despite the controlling parasite inhabiting the Institute's hive-mind also being there, did it become clear that the true horror of the story was that the main character in the host body had come to realize what had happened to her or them. At the same time, the hive-mind of that parasite had identified a brand-new parasite called Pseudomycota that killed the former doctor's host body and infected nearly everyone in Verdira.

Stated in an interview on the BookPage website as the author's main influence for writing Leech are "…the stories science can tell us about our own cells. … Deep in our mitochondria lives a strand of DNA…an essential piece of our cellular network without which we would die. …Scientists…propose it is the genome of a foreign organism that hitched a ride inside us back when we were single-celled. It’s been sitting there ever since, perpetuating itself. … Does it care about me, or does it only care about my reproductive success? … You stay awake so many nights thinking about stuff like that, and eventually you write Leech." I found this to be one of the most unique premises I've ever heard for a story. It's part of why I found it so tantalizing as I tried to piece together the tapestry of what was happening.

It's a brilliant story that was well-written…up until the last bit of the book, where the narration shifts from hive-mind parasite to former host-body consciousness. While this does make sense in the theme of the story, the end made for a lot of curse words strung together with poor grammar in an almost too modern tone of voice that I don't believe fit the previous Victorian style. Or maybe that was the point. I also felt like the book dragged on too long near the middle. Firmer editing in both these situations wouldn't have been remiss.

Beyond that, the unfortunate side effect of keeping readers in the dark about the basic scenario of the story is that, when details are finally given to fill in the many, many gaps that'd been deliberately left hanging earlier in the story, now suddenly readers are overwhelmed, smothered, even crushed beneath the weight of it all. I found the last third of the book very hard to process, and quite honestly, I didn't understand the end scene one iota. It almost seemed to imply that one of the characters turned into a werewolf or a dog, like the ones he cared for at the chateau (gulp! a ventigeaux???). I wasn't entirely sure, and I could be completely off about that.

In reflecting after I finished reading the book and then allowed myself to research it so I could figure out all the things that seemed foggy while I was reading, I asked myself if I actually liked the story. My answer is kind of the same answer as I would give for Never Let Me Go written by the absolutely brilliant author Kazuo Ishiguro. You can read Margaret Carter's review of the book here on Alien Romances Blog: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/01/clones-as-organ-donors.html. Ishiguro is the same writer who gave us The Remains of the Day, which will probably always be in my top ten of favorite novels. When I read Never Let Me Go, I felt like I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle--the one in fact that would give everything else there focus an intense meaning. Without it, nothing made sense. I had flashes of feeling like I understood what was going on in the story while reading it, but nothing cohesive, nothing strong enough to help me bridge the gap. When I finished the book and then, again, allowed myself to research it, I found myself deeply and irrevocably disappointed. If the author had given me one crucial bit of information, I would have not only liked the book I would have loved it. Instead, I felt disgruntled by the lack of clarification that should have been given within the book--in my opinion, as early as possible. Without it, I had no sense of cohesion or resolution, and I felt cheated. I was left angry enough to not read another Ishiguro book to this day. I know, sad. I've decided this manner of not quite finishing a book in a way that brings everything full circle isn't really my cup of tea when it comes to reading.

In a similar but nowhere near as drastic way, Leech kind of gave me everything other than the illuminating key to understanding the whole book until the very end, at which point I did eventually get most of what was needed for clarity and closure. Nevertheless, I did feel that a search for deeper explanations to bring everything together was needed even then. Unfortunately, a lot of the websites that I found information about Leech saw this as an allegorical tale. Like Tolkien, I distrust and abhor allegory, and I try not to include it in any of the books I write. So I passed over all that without reading much, not wanting or even being willing to read "real world parallels" into a fictional story. I do recommend Leech, especially for those who love speculative horror set in the backdrop of Victorian-era-like literature.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Friday, January 19, 2024

Karen S Wiesner: The Conundrum of Spoilers or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

The Conundrum of Spoilers

or {Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

Several criteria guide book-buying strategies, which is something I've spoken of at length in articles as well as in my book Writing Blurbs That Sizzle--And Sell! (Fiction Fundamentals, Book 7). Personalizing those standards, here's what guides my decisions on whether or not to commit to purchasing a book to read:

First and foremost, for me, is the author. If it's one I've loved his or her past offerings, that may be all that's necessary for me to sweep up every new release and get to the checkout ASAP. If it's an author who I inconsistently enjoy their work or a brand-new writer for me, I may waffle about buying. The format, price, genre, and subject matter would all have to come into play for me to cross the threshold of firm decision in whether to buy something from them.

Second, whether the book is available as a paperback almost always plays a significant role in my choice. There are almost no authors I would automatically buy a hardcover book for. In my opinion, hardcovers are too expensive, unless you can get them on sale. I only buy ebooks if there are no other formats available--because I spend far too many hours every single day looking at screens, it's hard for me to choose electronic reading material for pleasure, given the strain on my eyes and brain. Inevitably, I wait until the paperback edition is available before buying, period, even for my most favorite authors. However, I do occasionally make exceptions.

The third factor for me is the genre. If I'm sold on the previous two criteria and it's a horror story, it's a done deal--as in, I can't get to the cash register fast enough. My second favorite genre is (sigh!) all other genres. Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, Regency romance, thriller…you name it. I wish I could choose between them, but they're all in constant competition with each other and my interest at a particular moment.

Back cover blurbs tend to be the tie-breaker for all the previous directives, and it's the make-it-or-break-it point of whatever came before. If the back cover blurb doesn't sell me, that's it. It's either hello, or sorry thanks for coming goodbye. Most importantly, a blurb can't be too short. I need to know who the characters are, what they're facing, and what the stakes are. I want details up until the point of spoilers but never beyond. If I don't get the information I need in a blurb, little can convince me to move forward since the risk of buying something that doesn't have enough persuasive evidence to warrant spending money and time on is too great for me. Though back cover blurbs are the fourth and last factor in whether or not I may a book purchase, it's the one that plays the most significant role in my decision.

Note: Cover art and reviews--bad or good--aren't considerations in my book-buying choices even one iota. I would buy a book with a cover that doesn't appeal to me if it meets my four crucial requirements. As for reviews, I don't read them at all until the book has been purchased and I'm just about to start reading it. I absolutely hate it when a back cover blurb is little more than a publisher thrusting a fistful of reviews or accolades at me in place of the blurb, like most book distributors (Amazon!!!) do these days, as if any of that matters to me in the least.

Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling has had many genres attached to it. I think psychological horror sums it up best. Some reviews mentioned science fiction as a potential genre, but I don't really see how that fits after having read it. (Too much of a stretch in my mind to classify this title that way.) Techno-thriller could also fit because there is a lot of technical information given about physics, technology, computers, engineering, etc. In any case, the horror aspects were what appealed most to me for this story.

I was eagerly awaiting Starling's next release, given how much I enjoyed two of her previous books. See my reviews for them here:

The Luminous Dead: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/06/karen-wiesner-book-review-luminous-dead.html

and

The Death of Jane Lawrence: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/07/book-review-death-of-jane-lawrence-by.html

The basic idea of this story is that a brilliant scientist with almost no moral boundaries embarks on ground-breaking research that leads to the city she's living in sinking. She's funded by an equally immoral corporation--though it's respectable on the surface--that retains a "bully" who makes sure none of the prone-to-lunacy scientists goes too far off the edge of the world. The scientist's own private research is actually the cause of what's happening to the city and that makes the consequences not only diabolically personal but universally dangerous.

The hardcover and ebook editions came out October 10, 2023. I held out until November 11, 2023, hoping to see the paperback release become imminent in that time. For reasons involving reaching a low point in my TBR pile and the additional motivation of Christmas only a month away, but mainly because I was very eager to read this author's next book (the genre and blurb utterly sold me), I decided to splurge and get the hardcover.

After I held the hardback with the wraparound paper cover art in my hands, I studied the cover for a long time. It was an interesting design, showing eight women who all looked identical. One of the women, the one in the spotlight, sat at the bottom of a staircase and was the central focus of the design. The others were obviously listening to her and giving her their attention. The fact that they so closely resembled each other intrigued me. Having read the back cover blurb earlier, before my purchase of the book, I started to form clear ideas about what the book's central themes were.

Next, I re-read the back cover blurb that was printed on the inner leaf of the slipcover. From there, I had a very strong concept of the plot. This was followed by reading the back cover of the book, which had no fewer than nine reviews put forth from other authors of the genre, I assume (I'd never heard of any of them, though some accolades were included for most of them). The reviews stunned me a little bit because they gave away what felt like crucial elements of the story conflict that I wasn't sure should have been leaked prematurely.

Let me inject here that I've never understood what people consider spoilers. An article on Wikipedia states that, "A spoiler is an element of a disseminated summary or description of a media narrative that reveals significant plot elements, with the implication that the experience of discovering the plot naturally, as the creator intended it, has been robbed of its full effect." On the sitcom Big Bang Theory, Sheldon calls a spoiler anything revealed that "pre-blows" the mind; as in, the only place the mind can and should be blown is where the writer intended shock and awe to dazzle like fireworks within the viewer's individual brain.

The only part I've ever been sure of when it comes to spoilers is that I'm apparently guilty of giving crucial information away too often. I've lost count of how many people have screamed out in the middle of an active discussion "Spoiler!", as if I committed a murder or worse. I know people who won't read a synopsis of a book, movie, or videogame in advance because those handful of words might wreck something for them. How do they know if it's something they'll like without reading even that much? I don't get it. Even after being called on it, I can't fathom why the perfectly innocuous thing I'd said is being viewed as an illegal revelation of vital plot elements that would have otherwise been an awestruck surprise to the one who hadn't yet read the story, seen the film, or played the videogame.

To so many people, spoilers are a serious miscarriage of justice. In the past, for me, I've actually enjoyed spoilers. I'm the type of person who reads as much as possible about a story (whether it's a book, a movie, or a videogame) in advance of submerging in it. For videogames in particular, I prefer not to have big surprises hit me while I'm immersed. I always read in-depth walkthroughs in their entirety before undertaking any game I'm interested in. I don't want to miss anything vital to gaining the best possible ending just because I didn't realize I had to say something specific that isn't obvious to anyone but the game developers. It's possible to miss or lose so much in videogames if you're not aware in advance of the event that causes potentially disastrous consequences. I once played a game that took about 25 minutes from start to finish. I solved all the extremely challenging puzzles, made the correct choices, and did literally everything right. I had a single misstep. I said something I didn't realize was even a bad thing to say; at the time, it seemed like the best choice of the few options I was given. The ramifications of that decision led to an ending that didn't seem fair. Though it was a short game, it was an exhausting one that I didn't want to ever repeat. I rue now that I didn't read a walkthrough first so I could avoid the seemingly fatal mistake of not reading the developer's minds. I haven't made that mistake since.

In any case, for books and movies, I need to read the back cover blurbs, any reviews I come across, and if I happen to hear too much detail in advance on social media or elsewhere, I don't mind. For mysteries or psychological thrillers, I generally guess the finer details almost immediately after starting the story. As a writer, I love the reverse engineer process of that. It doesn't ruin anything for me. If anything, it makes it more exciting for me as a writer. Yes, a twist is always welcome in any type of story, but, up until Last to Leave the Room, I'd have to say I've never minded spoilers at all, no matter how explicit and thorough. Ultimately, I'd say I've had a major blind spot where spoilers are concerned.

With Last to Leave the Room, something happened to me that I'm not sure has ever occurred before except in the case of most of M. Night Shyamalan's films, where the big reveal will forever change the story for me as I initially knew it. While most of Shyamalan's movies are still really good once I know the core element, that big twist in the story is the point of it for me. I don't want that ruined in advance. His promoters are good at telling the fringe edges of the story in the blurb and previews so nothing crucial is ever given away thereby wrecking the shocking twist to come.

After viewing the cover for this particular Starling tale, followed by reading the blurb and reviews slipcover, I felt like I went into starting the story with far too much information--revealed with too on-point cover art and reviews that sabotaged the jolt I'd been looking forward to getting while reading the story. I guess without really realizing it, I'd allowed this author to be the one I wanted to give me a horrifying shock or several in the course of reading her books, the same way I feel about Shyamalan movies. For the first time, I really understood why people got mad at me for, in essence, telling the punch line of a joke before giving the lead-up.

For those who don't mind spoilers, I'll include details below in very small writing about what it was that was "spoiled" or given away before I started reading Last to Leave the Room. If you don't want spoilers, don't read it and don't look at the book cover or reviews too closely.

The cover of the book shows nine identical women, eight of whom are circled around the central figure in the light, who's obviously the leader, almost looking like she's teaching them. Given that the back cover blurb speaks of the main character Tamsin finding a door in her basement that wasn't there before the distorting dimensions leading to accelerated subsidence affecting the entire city of San Siroco, and that an exact physical copy of Tamsin emerges from that door, it was easy to deduce that whatever this phenomenon destroying the city is, it creates doppelgängers--possibly many of them. In fact, Tamsin's cat also gains its own doppelgänger early in the story, after Tamsin's copy emerges. So I went into the story aware this would be the focus of the story. Reviews on the back cover talk about other focuses and conflicts, like gender, identity, and memory being central in the story premise. All of the things in this paragraph led to further deductions on my part, which were borne out almost exactly how I imagined they would be in reading the actual story.

I read through the first part of the book (titled "The City", comprising the first 28 pages), the second "The Door" (40 pages), and the third "The Double" (136 pages) with almost no surprises revealed that I hadn't already figured out before I ever started reading the book. I'll also add that on page 96, I felt compelled to re-read the back cover blurb and realized that the blurb contained information that was either highly inaccurate or wildly misleading. Again, so I can't be criticized for spoilers, here's what that is below, in tiny print that you'll really have to strain to read if you want to know:

The back cover blurb states emphatically that, at the bottom of the stairs, Tamsin "finds a door that didn't exist before--and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her." Point of fact, the door never actually opened in the story at the point before the doppelgänger appeared. If it did, it happened off-screen. Which is to say, it didn't happen at all, or the author was trying to trick the reader--blatant cheating when it comes to giving readers foundational facts. The opening of that door is a pivotal conflict in the story! In fact, the opening of the door is almost shown to be impossible throughout the story until the end. So telling the reader in so blasé a fashion in the blurb that the door opened (when it won't and can't and seems unlikely to within the story) and Tamsin's copy came out of it when the reader would find out soon enough that that event happened off-screen was beyond toleration for me. As a reader, I was denied seeing that take place within the story. I see this as a gross error on the part of the author or the publisher, or blatant cheating. Either that part of the blurb was accidentally or deliberately wrong, or it's wildly misleading, and, as such, in my opinion, is completely unfair.

Readers have to be given certain, foundational facts in the setup of a story. On the face of it, those foundations have to be valid from start to finish, or there have to be at least two very different perspectives that are equally true in order to justify the setup. Any alteration has to feel natural and be properly built-in from the beginning. In this case, I don't believe it was. I feel this inaccuracy unfairly altered and colored my perceptions pre-read. At the very least, I believe the word "presumably" should have been added to the blurb (in the area I spoke of in my last spoiler paragraph) in order to allow it to stand where it does as a foundational fact. Providing that one little word would have allowed me to feel satisfied on this point. I would have accepted everything as is with its inclusion. Without it, I couldn't help feeling that I'd been unreasonably deceived from the off by the author. This eroded some of my trust in the author-reader contract. I believe I will be wary about the next book she offers and worried she won't play fair again.

By way of review, Last to Leave the Room is certainly one of the slowest moving stories I've ever read. That's not a criticism per se because I genuinely enjoyed the story, but, given that I basically knew everything foundational about the story before I started reading it, 205 pages of developing the characters, themes, and conflicts did seem a little excessive in the process of reading them--despite how well-written and compelling those pages were.

Additionally, I was put off by the present tense perspective the story was told in. On her website, the author said the reason she wrote the book this way was "in an attempt to capture that transitory feeling, of existing only in that moment in the narrative with no promise of a future, and an at times fast-receding glimpse of the past." Regardless, I lost track of how many times I had to read and re-read sentences because the present tense didn't sound quite right and I had to figure out where I was getting confused before continuing. In all cases, the present tense was the reason for why I became tripped up.

My final bit of criticism before I get into the good stuff is that Starling almost seems incapable of writing a protagonist that I as a reader can feel the slightest bit of sympathy for. She sets up a thoroughly unlikeable cast that, instead of growing, and maturing, and learning from mistakes, disintegrates page by page and frequently becomes an outright villain by the end. [It's this very reason I didn't enjoy Starling's novella "Yellow Jessamine". Absolutely nothing was redeemable by the end of that twisted little tale.] These are the kinds of characters you come to hate and secretly wish for the worst to happen to them instead of the best. As a writer myself, I don't understand that mentality in developing characters. I want readers to come to love, empathize with, and root for my characters. Could authors who create utterly despicable main characters actually want readers to root for their character's demise, pumping their fists in victory when the consequences of bad behavior inevitably come a-knockin'? I can't begin to fathom this. Regardless, I still find this author's stories utterly compelling, if for no other reason than that you simply can't walk away from these train wrecks without seeing how they resolve, satisfactorily if not happily.

On the plus side, the fourth and last section of the book gave me everything I was looking for in a Caitlin Starling novel. There was shock, disgust, horror, awe, unexpected developments, validation of several theories I'd been playing with throughout, and the answer that was pretty close to what I'd predicted before actually starting the book felt justified and captivating. I especially loved the explanation of the title. In fact, it may be what I loved most about the book. I apologize to those of you who don't care about spoilers having to read the next tiny paragraph, but in an effort not to be shouted at for revealing a spoiler, though I can't see how, here's how the title fits in with the story (and matches the cover art):

Tamsin reads endless theories, arguments, psychoanalytic reviews, and stories about doubles. In most of them, the doppelgänger causes destruction. The original usually tries to kill the double and is harmed in the process. Sometimes it disappears, other times it's the last one standing. Ultimately, the original always loses. In one particular yarn, the devil teaches black magic to seven students. The last one to leave each night forfeits his or her soul. In the case of a doppelgänger, that "shadow" is always the last to leave the room, so that's what the devil takes as payment.

While it took me two weeks to read Parts 1-3 of Last to Leave the Room, I read Part 4 in about two days, actually getting up at one a.m. one night to read more as the noose tightened. Ultimately, I found this story worth the price I paid for the hardcover. Starling never fails to deliver an impactful story with an explosive ending.

That said, I'm left with conundrums I've rarely had before about whether front-loading a story with what could easily be considered spoilers (even with my previous, blasé tolerance of them) can or will adversely influence the reading experience. About the closest I can come to an accurate response is that any spoilers, some spoilers, a lot of spoilers--it's all subjective. In the case of this novel, I was put off by what I felt was too much pivotal information being given in advance of reading a single word of it--almost to the point of fury. To add to my confusion, after finishing the book and just before writing this review, I went to the author's website. I found two essay/articles there concerning this particular story, and both gave away so much information about the plot that I was certain had I read either of them in advance, I wouldn't have enjoyed the book at all. They left little or nothing for me to discover on my own in the process of reading.

This experience leaves me with uncertainty about something that, in the past, before reading this particular title, I would have responded to very differently: At what point is a surfeit of information given in advance about the plot of a story overkill or buzz-kill, so that there's almost no point to reading the book since you can already guess the core elements? I simply don't know. Anyone else want to give it a try?

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Friday, August 25, 2023

Stop and Smell the Roses by Karen Wiesner

Stop and Smell the Roses

by Karen Wiesner

A memorial for a dear friend who passed away recently, including some of my colored pencil flower artwork.

A dear friend of mine passed away recently. I'd known her for over 20 years, and our children grew up together. They remain best friends to this day, even as she remained mine up until the end. Throughout the years I knew her, she endured multiple health issues. For the last year or so of her life, she was made aware by her doctors that her time in this world was short. When I look back now, I realize that I don't remember ever hearing her complain. I'm also struck by the fact that she didn't live like a person who was dying. She lived her life. Period. Impending death wasn't an obstacle to joy for her. She got through the bad periods, and she enjoyed the good ones. She took everything as it came. Even in her final days, she focused on what was important to her, the things that truly mattered: her husband, children, grandchildren, friends, and making the most of every moment, finding pleasure in those simple things, and never failing to let those around her know how grateful she was for their presence.

I understand the meaning of the phrase "Stop and smell the roses" (something my dear friend loved) because of her example. When an oncoming collision is headed straight for you, it's easier to close your eyes and shut down, shut off, hide inside yourself. It's impossible to enjoy life when you're concentrating on the advancing doom. So she did the best thing she could have done in the face of the inevitable: Although it was always there and she never forgot it, she found a way to turn away from it and focused instead on the roses blooming in the garden of her life. This is a lesson I hope I never forget, no matter how close I come to life's unavoidable finish line. My desire is to emulate such a beautiful standard. In honor of someone I'll miss, VJW, 8/13/23, here are some of my own floral creations.

@Rose colored pencil by Karen Wiesner

@Hibiscus colored pencil by Karen Wiesner

@Scarlet hibiscus colored pencil by Karen Wiesner

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Friday, July 14, 2023

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey

by Karen S. Wiesner

I started reading The Expanse Series when I found the boxed set with the first three novels in Orbit Books newsletter. I love science fiction, especially when it's combined with horror, similar to the Ridley Scott Alien franchise, which, not surprisingly, was a major influence for this particular series. The short story, "Drive", is the prequel to the entire series, and James S. A. Corey (authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, using the joint pen name) offered a free download of it from their website, which I printed and read after I'd finished the first three novels. From that point on, I purchased each novel and short story/novella as it was released. In the years the authors actively worked on this series, I followed it, purchasing each book in hardcover, since that was the fastest way to get it ASAP after release.

The premise of The Expanse Series is that future humanity has colonized most of "The Solar System", but they don't yet have interstellar travel. Mankind has settled in the asteroid belt (Ceres and Eros), Mars and the moon with domed settlements; and some outer planets (several Jupiter moons including Ganymede and Europa; Saturn's Phoebe; and Uranus's Titania). In the time the series is set, tensions are rising. Earth's United Nations and Mars' Congressional Republic are the superpowers that exert their combined hegemony over Belters--those who populate the asteroid belt. Because of the low-gravity environments they live, their bodies tend to be longer and thinner than other humans. Belters (who use a form of modified Creole speech) are the blue collar workers of the galaxy, working to provide the system with the natural resources needed by all, and, as such, they're disrespected by other humans in the galaxy. In order to fight exploitation at the "Inners" hands, Belters have formed loose military groupings within the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). The OPA is considered a terrorist organization by other humans.

In Leviathan Wakes, Book 1, readers are introduced to several of the core characters in this series. James "Jim" Holden, a former UN Navy officer from Earth, is XO of an ice hauling ship called Canterbury along with chief engineer Naomi Nagata, a Belter; pilot Alex Kamal, who's a Martian navy (MCRN) veteran; and engineer Amos Burton with a background that, let's just say, grows more interesting with each installment. These four become the original members of the Rocinate or Roci, a state of the art Martian frigate they claim as their own. A distress signal leads them to a derelict transport vessel, the Scopuli, and from there to Julie Mao, the rebellious daughter of a wealthy magnate.

At the same time, a washed-up detective named Josephus "Joe" Miller, a Belter from Ceres Station's Star Helix Security, is also searching for Julie Mao.

The investigation of Jim and his crew and Miller converges on Eros, where Julie is found…afflicted with an alien organic biohazard growth that quickly spreads across the entire station. Life as anyone knows it will change from this moment forward when humanity gains access to thousands of new worlds via the use of an artificially constructed ring network created by a long-dead race of aliens. The number of directions that this series goes as it explores all of this potential boggled my mind as the saga became bigger and bigger with each book.

While the characters mentioned above comprise the major players, there were so many fascinating, richly embellished, unique cast members. While Jim Holden always came across as a good, incorruptible man and, as such, was my favorite, so many of the characters were so complex, it was hard to pin short-sighted labels like "good" or "evil" on any of them. They were each completely human with all the moments of cringe-worthy regret and heroic larger-than-life altruism. Amos was another favorite who compelled me to think deeply as he evolved into the person he became at the end.

Some other intriguing players that make frequent appearances throughout the books are Bobbi Draper, a Martian gunnery sergeant in the MCRN; the foul-mouthed Chrisjen Avasarala, UN Assistant Undersecretary of Executive Administration on Earth; Fred Johnson, the leader of the OPA, who's a former UN marine (and the subject of the short story "The Butcher of Anderson Station"); Marco and Filip Inaros, father and son with Marco commanding a radical OPA branch called the Free Navy; Camina Drummer, chief security of Tycho Station; and Clarissa Moa, another daughter of the magnate that Amos calls Peaches.

The first installment in the series is the one that I binged-read in a matter of days because the biohazard aspect utterly fascinated me, as did pretty much anything Jim Holden did from start to finish in every story he was in. But several other stand-out offerings were "The Churn" novella and the eighth novel in the series, Tiamat's Wrath.

At the announcement of the last one, Leviathan Falls, I know I wasn't the only obsessed reader who felt we'd only touched the tip of the iceberg in exploring all the saga had to offer. The series left me wanting more while at the same time satisfying all my main requirements. I simply wasn't ready for it to end, though I suspect the main crew of the Roci might have, given what they went through in the countless years that encompass the whole of this exciting sequence.

As most probably already know because many sci-fi readers prefer a more visual medium over book format, The Expanse became a TV series that went through countless upheavals and ended far too soon, not covering as much ground as the book series did. The perfectly chosen cast gave it their all, and I applaud the show for how well they portrayed something so big, it was hard to contain it the way they had to. Both the novel and TV series are well-worth your time, and they've got a permanent place on my keeper shelves. Comic versions, board and roleplaying games are also available for the series.

One of the most defining factors about The Expanse was just how realistic it all seemed. I was sold completely on the premise, and I can easily imagine so many aspects of the "science" and politics to this series happening in the near future just as they're portrayed in this saga.

I do have to comment that the titles of the novels are annoying obscure and really have nothing whatsoever to do with the stories within them. Whenever I try to remember which story belonged in which novel, I'm completely lost--and that's a direct result of the fact that the titles that were saddled on the novels in the series seem arbitrary and not clearly defined. If there was a trick to understanding why they were named as they were, the authors should have given readers a clue what it was to prevent us from becoming lost and confused. That is the sum total of my complaint with this series. Incidentally, the shorts all had titles that made sense and described the stories contained within.

A quick word about the book order, which is a bit of an issue since short stories and novellas were published between the main novels that don't necessarily follow the main storyline chronologically. Frequently, the shorts covered past events as well as pivotal character backgrounds. The publisher suggests reading them in the order they were published since that way characters first introduced in the novels gain further background characterization through the shorts. With prior knowledge and familiarity, the novellas can be enjoyed and understood in context. Also, the shorts may contain spoilers to the novels, which could be a deal-breaker to some. That said, the suggested reading order is this:

1. Leviathan Wakes, Book 1

2. "The Butcher of Anderson Station" (set before Leviathan Wakes)

3. Caliban's War, Book 2

4. "Gods of Risk"

5. "Drive" (set before Leviathan Wakes)

6. Abaddon's Gate, Book 3

7. "The Churn" (set before Leviathan Wakes)

8. Cibola Burn, Book 4

9. Nemesis Games, Book 5

10. "The Vital Abyss" (set between Abaddon's Gate and Cibola Burn)

11. Babylon's Ashes, Book 6

12. "Strange Dogs"

13. Persepolis Rising, Book 7

14. Tiamat's Wrath, Book 8

15. "The Last Flight of the Cassandra" (set during Leviathan Wakes)

16. "Auberon" (set between Persepolis Rising and Tiamat's Wrath)

17. Leviathan Falls, Book 9

Note that all of the shorts are all published in a compilation called Memory's Legion that's well worth investing in for collectors.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Friday, July 07, 2023

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore

by Karen S. Wiesner

I came into the character of Drizzt Do-Urden through a side door. I hadn't read the author R.A. Salvatore's first trilogy, Icewind Dale, featuring this dark elf (or drow), nor did I have the slightest experience with the world of Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting, or the Underdark, one of its most popular locations. Nor had I ever played any of the videogames set within this realm. Apparently, arguably, Drizzt was the most famous and most influential dark elf within the fictional settings created for and by these mega popular games and books. Yet I knew absolutely nothing about him when I purchased a used, very old collector's edition of The Dark Elf Trilogy. By that time, the drow had already become a legend.

Salvatore says that the idea for this iconic character came to him in his office while he was at his day job. He'd been asked to write the second Forgotten Realms novel and the senior editor at that time wanted him to create a new sidekick for the character of Wulfgar, a young barbarian in the region of Icewind Dale, where Drizzt had settled. Salvatore said he'd get right on that…but the editor didn't have time to wait a week. She was heading into a meeting at that very moment and she needed to sell this proposal. On the spot and off the top of his head, Salvatore came up with a drow ranger named Drizzt Do-Urden of D'aermon N'achezbaeron, Ninth House of Menzoberranzan. The author intended him to be nothing more than a sidekick, like Robin to Batman. Instead, after writing the first chapter of The Crystal Shard, the first installment in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, Salvatore knew a star had been born.

I had no expectations for The Dark Elf Trilogy--a prequel to Icewind Dale that tells the origin story of Drizzt--when I opened the massive 805 page collector's edition which had all three novels inside it. I will admit that I tend to stick with the fantasy series I've known and loved most of my life--Tolkien's Middle Earth and Terry Brooks' Shannara and Landover series novels. While I've always found most fantasy novels to have some of the highest quality of writing, there's something about the sprawling, enormous tomes that intimidate me, and I think the culprit is that fantasy novels tend to be intricate and slow-moving with an almost oxymoronic amount of high action that seems totally at odds with just how plodding they tend to be in terms of their meticulous setting and character building. In fantasy stories, nearly everything has to be created from scratch--and that absolutely demands that readers have patience in allowing the development required to tell such a complicated tale.

The Dark Elf Trilogy is no exception to everything I said in the last paragraph. However, I was instantly sucked into the first story, Homeland, in no small part because the Underdark absolutely enthralled me. Imagine if you will a prodigious, connected subterranean network of labyrinthine caverns and tunnels that run beneath entire continents and form an underworld for places on the surface. The prelude of Homeland begins with a description of the setting:

Never does a star grace this land with a poet's light of twinkling mysteries, nor does the sun send to here its rays of warmth and life. This is the Underdark, the secret world beneath the bustling surface of the Forgotten Realms, whose sky is a ceiling of heartless stone and whose walls show the gray blandless of death in the torchlight of the foolish surface-dwellers that stumble here. This is not their world, not the world of light. Most of who come here uninvited do not return.

Those who do escape to the safety of their surface homes return changed. Their eyes have seen the shadows and the gloom, the inevitable doom of the Underdark.

Dark corridors meander throughout the dark realm of winding courses, connecting caverns great and small, with ceilings high and lower. Mounds of stone as pointed at the teeth of a sleeping dragon leer down in silent threat or rise up to block the way of intruders.

There is a silence here, profound and foreboding, the crouched hush of a predator at work. Too often the only sound, the only reminder to travelers in the Underdark that they have not lost their sense of hearing altogether, is a distant and echoing drip of water, beating like the heart of a beast, slipping through the silent stones to the deep Underdark pools of chilled water. What lies beneath the still onyx surface of these pools one can only guess. What secrets await the brave, what horrors await the foolish, only the imagination can reveal--until the stillness is disturbed. This is the Underdark.

There are pockets of life here, cities as great as many of those on the surface…

You can read more of an excerpt at any book distributor's website. This world and the city of Menzoberranzan are unlike anything I'd ever read before this point. But it wasn't just the gasping setting descriptions that drew me into this story. The drow who live in this place worship the Spider Queen Lolth. In this dark locale of cunning, scheming, unscrupulous politics, there is no room for concepts such as honor, love, or even friendship. Drizzt was born into this society and was fated to be a sacrifice to the Spider Queen at birth. When one of his brothers kills the other, Drizzt becomes the second son, sparing his life, which is already laid out before him. Disobedience is not an option. Yet Drizzt is nothing like the others that make up this arena of ruthless and senseless violence. He's strange to those around him, an almost cheerful little boy with purple eyes and an unfathomable compassion and defiance against the norm in his disturbing world. After he's given to his sister to raise, she sends him to the finest weapons master to be had--Zaknafein--his own father, who allows Drizzt the forbidden: To think for himself.

One of the biggest reasons I was so fascinated by this trilogy was that, in normal stories, good characters are in a place where basically good is done and expected by all. A villain enters and disrupts that equilibrium. But in The Dark Elf Trilogy, we have a good character surrounded by the worst kind of evil, in a location where all of society and its' mores is centered on cut-throat survival of the fittest. This trilogy turned the anticipated right on its head and made for compulsive reading from start to finish.

Homeland leads into Exile, Book 2, and Sojourn, Book 3 as Drizzt's innate moral code is tested, develops, and leads him inexorably to the light. The fascinating characters he meets along the way only added to the intrigue of this trilogy and all the many Drizzt stories that follow. Some favorite characters of mine are Zaknafein; Guenhwyvar, the magical panther "statuette" companion that Drizzt can summon; a blind human ranger named Montolio Debrouchee; the dwarven king Bruenor Battlehammer, and his adopted human daughter Catti-brie.

I went on to read many of the other Drizzt stories, and I'll include a list of those available below, but the Dark Elf Trilogy is the one that will always hold a special place on my keeper bookshelf.

Below are all the Legend of Drizzt books in chronological order:

The Dark Elf Trilogy

1. Homeland

2. Exile

3. Sojourn

The Icewind Dale Trilogy

4. The Crystal Shard

5. Streams of Silver

6. The Halfling's Gem

The Legacy of the Drow Series

7. The Legacy

8. Starless Night

9. Siege of Darkness

10. Passage to Dawn

The Paths of Darkness Series*

11. The Silent Blade

12. The Spine of the World

13. Servant of the Shard*

13. Sea of Swords

*Book #3 of this series, Servant of the Shard, was moved to the The Sellswords Trilogy written by R.A. Salvatore, which includes Servant of the Shard, Promise of the Witch-King, and Road of the Patriarch and focuses on main characters Artemis Entreri and the Basadoni Guild instead of on Drizzt or his usual companions.

The Hunter's Blades Trilogy

14. The Thousand Orcs

15. The Lone Drow

16. The Two Swords

The Transitions Series

17. The Orc King

18. The Pirate King

19. The Ghost King

The Neverwinter Saga

20. Gauntlgrym

21. Neverwinter

22. Charon's Claw