Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Ritual by Adam Nevill

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Ritual by Adam Nevill

by Karen S. Wiesner

The Ritual by Adam Nevill is a supernatural horror novel published in 2011. Four males who were in college together decide to take a trip together on the cheap (because the main character Luke can't afford anything else). They strike out into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. While the old chums begin with intentions of escaping their individual lives (and their problems that come to light as they spend more time together in a harsh environment) as well as reconnecting as friends, it soon becomes clear that these men can barely tolerate each other's company. With conflicts surmounting between and all around them in the deepening disquiet of gloom, they foolishly decide to take a shortcut to get out of the forest. Two of the members of the party are injured and none of them possess anything that passes as survival experience or skills. Soon, they're lost, starving, and all but swallowed up by the dark, ancient forest that's remained largely untouched for millennia.

The thing this book has in spades is atmospheric setting. Here, the natural world is depicted in such a way that the reader's breath is stilled in the lungs, hesitant to reach toward exhale or inhale for fear of meeting a monster whatever way is turned. One reviewer commented (emphasis mine) on the "isolation, dreariness, and enormous age of the Swedish forest setting", which I heartily agree with because I felt that almost tangibly. The isolated, primal world around the characters becomes oppressive, suffocating, blacker and more menacing the farther in they get, growing to almost painful proportions of horror as their waking and dreaming hours are filled with nightmares that are as real as the enormous trees.

I read through most of this book enraptured by the predicaments of the characters. Mainly, I was spellbound with the setting and the imagery the author conjured in my mind. The anticipation I had was buoyed by a strong sense of expectation about where everything was heading. That crawled to a very abrupt halt somewhere near the three-fourths mark of the novel, where I was filled with startled disappointment at unforeseen and unimaginable events that, for me, came out of nowhere and hijacked the story. One minute, I was hurling headlong into a reader's dream come true and the next I was staring dumbly, going, "Um…what now?" If you don't want a spoiler, skip the next paragraph, which I've placed in very small print so it'll be hard to read without concentrated effort. If you don't mind,  you can read on:

The main character Luke wakes in a strange bed in a house literally in the middle of nowhere, all his friends gone, only to find that instead of discovering the road to salvation and rescue, he's a prisoner of a heavy metal band that worships a creature that requires blood sacrifices. What the actual heck?!

Following the event you may or may not have read about in the last paragraph, the story did get back to something of the hopes I had for a clever twist ending. Other reviewers also found fault in this pre-cursor to the end of the novel, so I'm not entirely sure if I'm in the minority feeling like that aspect didn't live up to the captivating beginning. I also kind of feel like both the book and the Netflix film adaptation (which was pretty faithful) de-evolved into something of a gore fest, something that doesn't really appeal to me.

Here's a legitimate question: Is a book worth reading if the end is disappointing? There's another author I hope to review in this column in the future where it happens with every single one of his books: I'm enthralled all through the story, but the end is without fail a huge disappointment. Was it worth reading if I found out that it ultimately didn't live up to the promise it initially had? My answer is that, yes, if I've taken something worthwhile out of the reading, it is worth the time I've taken, and maybe even the investment. After all, I thoroughly enjoyed three-fourths of the story. In the case of The Ritual, I ended up liking the very end of the novel. It was just that weird blip that ripped me whole out of the story and kind of "harshed my buzz" for a short time before getting back on the road I was anticipating.

Check out my latest novel!

 

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series.html

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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/

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Rooks and Ruin Trilogy by Melissa Caruso

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Book Review: Rooks and Ruin Trilogy by Melissa Caruso

by Karen S. Wiesner

Per my usual, I came into author Melissa Caruso's high fantasy work through the back door. In other words, I read the second trilogy before realizing there was even a first, also set in the world of Eruvia where there are two main established powers. In the first trilogy, Swords and Fire, the Serene Empire has an elected doge, a Council of Nine, and a general assembly. Raverra is the central city-state there. The second trilogy, Rooks and Ruin, the one I read, which takes place 150 years later, is set in Vaskandar, a domain ruled by Witch Lords (essentially, mages). These two empires are in conflict. However, the author intended for the two series to be "largely unrelated" aside from taking place in the same setting. She made sure there were no spoilers for the first trilogy within the second. She's said that the focus of Swords and Fire is "more political intrigue and fancy balls" while Rooks and Ruin has "more magical secrets and spooky castles". Caruso recommends reading the trilogies in order, but says either way works, which I did find to be the case.

Rooks and Ruin features Ryx as the main character. She's the Warden in her home domain, Morgrain, ruled over by her grandmother. Four hundred years earlier, the Nine Demons came into the mortal world and thrust humanity into chaotic horror and suffering. Since then, the creatures were trapped behind a gate in the Black Tower of Gloamingard Castle, which ended the Dark Days. Ryx's family are caretakers of the gate the demons are trapped behind. Not surprisingly, someone wants to open the magically sealed Door and bring forth what was banished.

Ryx is an intriguing character. From an early age, her magic has been "broken". She drains life from everyone and everything she touches. Her home is as much a prison as it is a haven--and a lonely one for her at that. Rooks and Ruin begins with the villain succeeding in unlocking the gate and Ryx, along with the Rookery (a "magical troubleshooting squad"), having to clean up and contain the mess made. A lot of destructive, twisting secrets are revealed along the way to this goal. The cast is compelling while the world building caused me to seek out previous stories set in this world. That's when I found out about the first trilogy I'd somehow missed.

In truth, the first book, The Obsidian Tower, is the one that captured me the most with the magical mayhem I'm always on the lookout for, compelling me to want to finish the trilogy. The two novels that followed, The Quicksilver Court and The Ivory Tower, were well-written in every regard. However, I found my attention less transfixed with them. I suspect this was the case, in part, because of what one reviewer called "empire politics and political intrigue" dominating subsequent entries in the trilogy. Since the author self-described Swords and Fire as also being focused in the same way, I do worry I might find myself withdrawing from them as well, but I do intend to read them at some point. In any case, lovers of quality fantasy should love all the related books in this series.

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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/

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Bird Box by Josh Malerman

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Book Review: Bird Box by Josh Malerman

by Karen S. Wiesner

Bird Box is a post-apocalyptic horror thriller published in 2014. Most people know of the story because of the 2018 Netflix movie starring Sandra Bullock, something that is actually a very worthy adaptation of the novel. However, being a proponent of "the book is usually better than the movie", I had to read it before I watched it. Discovering that this was the debut novel of a singer/songwriter in the Detroit band The High Strung was a bit of a surprise to me. Josh Malerman wrote 14 novels between shows on the road with his band. A high school friend of his in the book business encouraged him to submit something, and the rest is history.

The main character in Bird Box is Malorie. The present story--4 years into the situation referred to as "The Problem"--is woven with flashbacks from two other time periods. The first is when Malorie discovers she's pregnant from a one-night stand. This happens alongside international news reports of people seeing some undefined creature outside that causes them to go mad, then kill others before killing themselves. The second time period is after Malorie is forced to leave the home she'd been living in with her sister in order to seek shelter with other survivors. One of the other women in the safe house is also about four months pregnant (a bit unbelievable, if I'm honest, especially when the two women go into labor almost exactly at the same time). While sequestered with all the windows covered, they discover they can use birds in a box as an alarm system in case anything comes near the house.

In the present, Malorie is alone, raising another woman's child and her own and not distinguishing one from the other in any way. In fact, the reader doesn't know for most of the story which one is her kid. In order to keep them save, she's used harsh training techniques (one being the use of a blindfold) that have heightened the senses of the four-year-olds. She refers to the children as only "Boy" and "Girl". When they have no choice but to seek out a refuge Malorie has heard of that has medical supplies, food, and safety, they venture out into the world again--blindfolded the entire time they travel, even while in a boat.

This is a very intense, suspenseful novel centered around an unlikely scenario that wouldn't have worked at all if it wasn't written as a character driven story. The plot would have fallen apart in a second if not for that, in large part because, as one reviewer said, "The reason for all the bloodshed is never explored or explained."

The main character's choices do prove to be problematic for me, as do some of the scenarios that stretched belief a little too far. First, the "harsh training techniques" give me pause. Malorie is only once shown to be physically abusive toward the children. Outside of that, she's just cold with them, withholding affection. I'm bothered by this because, of course, it makes no sense to me why someone would think that treating others poorly actually makes them physically safer. Maybe it selfishly makes Malorie emotionally safer because she's lost a lot and it would be hard for her to trust again after that. That would have been a better motivation for her than that she actually thought it made the children safer. Additionally, after four years raising these children completely alone--raising them from newborns--I find it 100% unrealistic that she wouldn't have developed a strong, loving, affectionate bond with them. She must have had to hold and feed (breastfeed, I'm sure) both of them. It would have been nearly impossible for her to separate herself from the tenderness a mother feels naturally doing that. Also, because she can't draw attention to herself, she must have had to soothe them both often to prevent excessive crying. But the other part that didn't strike me as realistic is how she managed to keep them safe all by herself for so long. She would have had to either leave them alone or bring them along to get supplies. How she did that was skirted over by telling instead of showing, so it didn't play a large part in the tale. But I found it more than a little unlikely.

Still, as a whole I bought the premise of Bird Box and went along with it because it really is a well done story. I was caught up with Malorie's life and the situation, regardless of the dubiousness of the minor moot points I mentioned earlier. Many times while I was reading the book and watching the movie, I thought it worked extremely well that the source of the horror wasn't revealed in more than fleeting glimpses. Often, when a shadowy corner has been brought into the light, we discover there's nothing to fear lurking in it. Instead of heightening the terror by seeing it fully, sighting it dissolves the tension. In this case, it was much better to almost see the monster through the cracks between our fingers--or, more aptly, in peeks stolen through the top or bottom of a blindfold. That puts the reader on a constant knife-edge of uncertainty.

Incidentally, while writing up this review, I discovered a sequel was released in 2021 called Malorie, which I'll be buying ASAP, and hopefully reviewing here sometime in the future. It sounds like with that follow-up, "the reason for all the bloodshed" is finally explored and explained. Additionally, a spin-off sequel called Bird Box Barcelona debuted on Netflix in July 2023. It doesn't star the same cast, though it has exactly the same premise as the previous movie, only with a male parent and his child searching for a refuge from The Problem. I do intend to watch that as well to see if it's any good.

Bird Box is a unique take on horror that should have readers not wanting to put the book down.

Check out my newly released novel!

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series.html

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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/

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

by Karen S. Wiesner

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is an epic "alternative history" fantasy that was the author's debut novel. Clarke spent ten years writing the book, which has an interesting history of its own. Clarke first developed the idea while she was teaching English in Spain (lol). She'd had a waking dream about a man in 18th-century clothes…and felt strongly that he had some kind of magical background--he'd been dabbling in magic, and something had gone badly wrong."

Shortly after returning to her home country, she signed up for a writing workshop, co-taught by a man she would eventually become romantically involved with. Students attending the workshop were expected to come with a short story they'd written, but all Clarke had were "bundles" of materials for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. As the tale goes, she'd extracted a piece of it about three women secretly practicing magic who are discovered by Jonathan Strange. (Later, this tale was published in the Starlight 1 anthology as well as included in the author's own collection called The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.) The workshop co-host was so impressed by this work, he sent an excerpt to his good friend, fantasy author Neil Gaiman who was astounded by the author's "assurance": "It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata."

Interesting to note that Clarke's agent sold the unfinished novel in 2003 to Bloomsbury. They were so impressed with and certain it would be an international bestseller that they gave her a £1 million pound advance as well as printing an unheard of number of hardcover copies in three separate countries simultaneously while having 17 translations begun before its first English publication.

Learning how Clarke went about writing this book explained a lot to me. Apparently, she didn't write it start to finish but in fragments that she then had to "stitch" together. I found everything about this long novel meticulous and well-written, if a little slow moving and, at times, lacking in finely honed purpose and action. It was also written in the style of many 19-century books, like those written by Jane Austen. Not surprisingly, I love stories like these, and Clarke's felt authentic to me right from the first page, as it's set in a 19th-century "alternate" England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. At the time the story opens, magic use has faded into the past, but Mr. Norrell intends to bring it back. How he does that involves raising a woman from the dead in a highly public way that puts magic back in fashion, as well as summoning an army of ghostly ships that terrify the country's enemy. Another novice magician (introduced much, much later in the book, other than in a footnote in the first chapter) emerges in opposition to the first, and one who is the very antithesis of Norrell.

In what I consider a stroke of genius, the author puts her own invented magical history in 200 footnotes throughout the book, something that apparently Clarke didn't expect to be published but which added an authenticity that the story might have otherwise lacked without it. The author believed that grounding magic in real life surroundings was what produced realism in the fantasy aspects of her story.

I don't deny that some reviewers and readers were put off by how "the plot creaks frightfully in many places and the pace dawdles" and insisted that trimming was necessary. Still, others like myself found it an engaging read filled with imagination and style. The origin and/or the source of magic has thus far almost always been left uncredited in countless works of fiction, as if somehow magic just appears in the fingertips of some people. How can that not beg a thousand questions about where it came from and what was done to put it there? Here in this novel, we're at last clued into the fact that magic is given or bargained for from beings that exist in another realm. That's one of the things I liked best about this book. Additionally, there's an exploration here concerning how magic sometimes manifests in ways the wielder isn't intending. These two concepts make Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell the logical favorite of mine because there's an eerie backdrop that questions the morality and lack of responsibility magicians give their art as a whole.

One other slightly off-putting aspect of this story is the way it ends. To me (and other reviewers and readers), it felt like the story was started here; by no stretch of the imagination was it finished. After I read it, I was fine with that because I assumed the author intended either a sequel or a series. I've since learned that Clarke had begun a follow-up novel in 2004 (the year the first was published) set a few years after Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell ended, continuing the tale. Because it took her ten years to complete the first, it made sense that the second might also take at least that long. But, with Clarke being plagued by chronic fatigue syndrome, she chose to write a simpler story that required less of her, and that became her second novel in 2020 (16 years after her first). As to the fate of the sequel, the author herself says it's still “a long way off” completion. Or it may simply not be forthcoming at all. I've made my peace with that, even if I hope the author has the strength to complete it someday. I suspect part of my disappointment with the way the novel ended was that I simply didn't want it to end. I wanted more of the characters and their story. However, that doesn't make the novel any less tremendous. It's one that lovers of magic and fantasy would be remiss if they didn't pick up. If the 1000-page-plus novel intimidates, the book was very faithfully adapted for a BBC miniseries in 2015, and that is also definitely worth watching.

Check out my newly released novel!

 

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series.html

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

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/

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews: The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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Book Reviews: The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

by Karen S. Wiesner

After I watched The Martian movie with Matt Damon, I immediately bought and devoured the 2014 book from start to finish. I honestly believed the author must work for NASA. But, no, Any Weir was a computer programmer and software engineer before he made it big with his first title. He didn't even finish college, which doesn't really mean anything other than I'm pretty sure most people who work for NASA do. Not surprisingly, his parents were a physicist and an electrical engineer. His website describes him as "a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of such subjects as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight". Everything in Weir's first bestseller felt so authentic and believable to me.

The concept for this science fiction story is simple: A team of astronauts is on Mars exploring, mega bad weather hits, so the part of the team that's still alive bugs out and heads home. Turns out, though, that the guy they left for dead isn't, and he has to survive until NASA (and later, the Ares III team of astronauts he came with) can figure out how the heck to rescue him…if they even can.

The actor Damon's performance was so phenomenal as Dr. Mark Watney, a botanist and mechanical engineer, I couldn't help seeing the character that way while I read the book. Watney had a sense of humor at nearly all times and a brain that just wouldn't quit as he faced every seemingly insurmountable hurdle that could possibly be thrown his way. Resourceful is a mild word for this dude. He just kept going and going even when most people would have reached the point of defeat long ago.

I binge read this book each time I pull it down from my keeper shelf. The only downside of reading it is the swearing. The four-letter word that starts with an 'f" is used so often, I'm convinced it accounts for at least 20,000 words (or 40 pages) of the book. If the author had only done a search for that word and seen just how much it's overused, I think he might have cut out most of them. If he'd just started the first few chapters with the character using the word often, we would have gotten the hint that Watney didn't actually stop using it after that point--the author just stop beating us over the head with the word. But that is honestly the only negative.

Weir initially self-published the book as a free serial on his website, then, at the request of his fans, made it a Kindle book on Amazon, where it became a bestseller. After a literary agent approached him, the book was sold to Crown Publishing Group. Andy Weir, the bestselling author, became a household word.

Interesting tidbits: The authors of The Expanse Series (which I reviewed a few weeks back in this column) were so influenced by The Martian, they gave a nod to it in that series, where the Mark Watney is a long-haul freighter used as a colony transport. Additionally, a species of bush tomato from Australia was named after the fictional botanist. In October 2015, along with announcing its next steps for a real-world human journey to Mars, NASA presented a web tool that tracked Watney's fictional trek across the planet.

  

The Martian was so good, I knew I wouldn't be able to wait for the paperback before purchasing Weir's next release in hardcover, the 2017 published Artemis. This science fiction thriller novel is set in the 2080s-2090s on the moon's first city of Artemis, populated with some 2000 people comprised mainly of tourists but a good share of criminals as well. The heroine of the book is no exception. Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara is a porter who dabbles in smuggling to not only make ends meet but to pay back a debt she owes. When the biggest score of her life comes along, she can't turn it down, even when things turn ugly and what appeared to be a mere smuggling job becomes all-out war for control of the city.

Jazz is very similar to the character of Mark Watney. She's smart, resourceful, always fighting when life throws the worst it has at her, and none of it defeats her. Instead, it hones her, bringing out the best, most innovative aspects of her.

I wanted to dislike Artemis. Jazz makes one stupid decision after the other, not 'fessing up to her own initial crime that caused her to become a criminal in order to pay back the very personal and still tender "debt" she owes. When the truth is finally revealed, I couldn't help feeling for Jazz and even believing the best of her. I rooted for her to win and overcome the demons hounding her for bad choices in the past that led her where she ends up in this novel.

I read Artemis very fast, unable to put it down, just as I do each time I read The Martian. It's an irresistible story of a good girl in a bad situation that she brought about herself with poor choices. Though it's been optioned and reports of the script being written have cropped up, the movie prospects are a bit uncertain. It may be renamed Project Artemis and might star Scarlet Johansson and Chris Evans--yeah, you read that right. Black Widow and Captain America...in space. Weird. No release date has been set.

  

The title of Weir's third science fiction, published in 2021, threw me for a loop. I couldn't imagine, based on the name, what it could be about, thought religious, spacy connotations were at the forefront. But, no, not at all. In fact, Project Hail Mary goes back to Weir's roots with The Martian.

Set in the near future, a global dimming event with the potential to bring about the extinction of the human race is what forces the world's first cooperative government to try to solve the problem. They make Ryland Grace, a high school teacher and former molecular biologist, into an astronaut and send him to study alien microbes that consume all forms of electromagnetic radiation, using radiant energy to move. Because it consumes energy from the sun and also feeds on Venus' carbon dioxide, this organism is named "Astrophage" (star eater). Astrophage has also infected and dimmed nearby stars. Only Tau Ceti, which is 12 lightyears from Earth, resists. Scientists figure out how to use Astrophage as rocket fuel, they build a starship, the Hail Mary, and send Grace off on a suicide mission to figure out why Tau Ceti is resistant so they can reproduce the effect. Unmanned mini ships will return his findings to Earth.

The book opens with Grace waking in the Hail Mary from a coma, initially afflicted with amnesia. As his memory comes back, all the intelligence and resourcefulness in the face of extreme challenges that motivated Weir's previous main characters Mark and Jazz are evident in Grace. His spaceship reaches Tau Ceti, where Grace meets "Rocky", an alien with a stone-like exoskeleton from 40 Eridani, a planet also plagued by the Astrophage infection. Rocky is a skilled engineer and the last survivor of his crew, sent for the same reason Grace was.

What follows in the story after that is a much more sophisticated and emotionally compelling version of Enemy Mine, best known from the 1985 sci-fi action drama featuring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. but originating from the Barry B. Longyear novella of the same name published in the September 1979 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

I was engrossed in Project Hail Mary until Rocky's introduction, at which point I became full-on, single-mindedly absorbed. Even as I saw the silly connections the book had with that sappy old movie Enemy Mine, I couldn't help falling for Rocky. Grace was a compellingly drawn character, but Rocky was the star of this show. I rooted for both of them in the face of absolutely impossible challenges. Two guys from separate planets had to design a language they could both understand before they could even communicate were somehow supposed to save the entire universe? Come on! But I desperately wanted them to succeed, and the thought that they might not (and, wow, did it look bleak and black right up until the final moment!) was devastating. I'd be hard-pressed to remember a time I wanted a happy ending more for both these main characters. For sci-fi fans, this one is a must-read. With Ryan Gosling signed on to star in and produce Project Hail Mary, it was announced in May 2023 that the film would begin production in early 2024. Fingers crossed the movie comes to fruition. Until such a time, if any, I'll just have to re-read the book.

Andy Weir has a lot of works available (which used to be available on his website but not currently even mentioned on it now https://andyweirauthor.com/), and I confess I haven't been as interested in the ones that aren't science fiction and aren't published by a major conglomerate like Crown Publishing. That could be a failure on my part, as well as short-sighted. Even the tie-prequel to The Martian, "Diary of an AssCan", has me hesitating in no small part by the title.

I will say that Weir found a winning type and stuck to it. It's very true that this trio of books stars very similar lead characters and they're all placed in impossible, no win situations. There's a theme that's haunting familiar from one book to the next. I don't doubt it. I doubt the author could refute the claim. But the bottom line is, it ain't broke and there's no need to fix this. So what if these stories are all variations on the same theme? I like that theme, and I want more of it.

I'll also add that all three of these bestselling science fiction novels would make my Top 50--maybe even 25--Favorite Books list, and I'm in good company with Bill Gates and Barack Obama over recommending them--along with the movie counterparts, if the latter two ever get their own adaptations. These are all read-in-one-sitting (if you can) novels, and they're definite keepers you'll want to re-read at least every couple years.

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/

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

In the 2021 Gothic romantic horror The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling presents an imaginary, dark-mirror world version of post-war England, approximate 1890s. Jane Shoringfield is a war orphan. Her parents were killed when "Ruzka" began gassing Camhurst, capital of Great Breltain. She was young and given into the care of the Cunninghams, who raised her. After attending Sharpton School for Girls until she was 15, she's been handling Mr. Cunningham's finances for the last six years. Jane is nothing if not practical. Being of a marriageable age and realizing her guardians will be moving to Camhurst within the month for Mr. Cunningham's new judgeship position, she's done her homework. Rather than engage in courtship that would require a level of foolishness she can't abide, she proposes to marry for convenience. Finding a partner who will merit from the practicality, if not the passion, of an arranged marriage becomes her goal.

The rumored reclusive Dr. Augustine Lawrence is ideal. This skilled surgeon could command a lucrative, lofty position anywhere, yet he's mysteriously chosen to set up a small-town family practice in Larrenton in the last several months. Jane submits to her potential fiancé a written business proposal that will benefit both of them.

The first chapter, with Jane meeting with Augustine for the first time to discuss the written marriage proposal she'd sent earlier, struck me as unrealistic, strange, and very nearly lost me. However, the Gothic setting with the mysterious hero who could equally qualify as the villain and the driven, practical Jane falling in love practically at first sight when she didn't expect to at all is what kept me reading. Whether initially against my will or voluntarily step by drudging step, I was drawn into this story from that point on and could hardly put it down.

At first, Augustine is taken aback by Jane's very unromantic proposal, but she quickly proves that her business acumen tempered with unfailing commonsense and her steady hand in the surgery are boons for any man who's avoided marriage as long as Augustine unfathomably has. The fact that the two of them are attracted to each other from the start disturbs both of them. But an agreement is quickly reached between them: Following their wedding, Jane will live in town at his practice while Augustine returns to his ancestral home, Lindridge Hall, alone each evening.

An unfortunate series of events forces the newlyweds to Lindridge Hall, where Jane has no choice about spending the night in the ruin and wreck of a house filled with ghosts and previously unimagined horrors. It's there that her brand new husband becomes transformed from the intelligent, compassionate man she'd assumed she was marrying into a agitated, broken figure with a tragic, dangerous, and even immoral past. The clues to Augustine's downfall begin to manifest with a padlocked basement, the red-eyed spirit of a betrayed lover, to the coven of doctors who dabble in black magic that show up on his doorstep.

One wonders if Jane's tenacity in attempting to fix the fractures that make up the man she rapidly falls for--despite her fear of him, his lies, and all he might have done to deserve the catastrophes he's brought upon himself--is wise or even warranted. Part of Jane's problem is that math rules her world just as the promise of magic once ruled her husband's. Instead of seeing math as magic, magic is seen as math in Jane's eyes, and this is an equation that she alone must balance--at all cost.

One of the most memorable scenes of The Death of Jane Lawrence came early on, and it was unknowingly a foreshadowing of all that was to come. When Augustine's patient dies, Jane, who has never before assisted in a surgery, blames herself for her inexperience and the way it distracted the doctor while he was trying to save a life. His reply captures the heart of this novel: "Jane, if the fault lies in anybody, it lies in me. I am the one with training and, more than that, I was the one in charge of the operating room. You cannot blame yourself. That shame is a path you cannot come back from, once you start down it…"

The author describes the difference between shame and guilt in this way (emphasis is mine): "Guilt is over something you have done; shame is over something that you are." In The Death of Jane Lawrence, shame is both a motivator and a horror that drives the pragmatic heroine to seek redemption for her beloved--even if he's a monster who may not deserve the forgiveness she seeks to procure for him, nor the happily ever after she wants for the two of them.

I admit, the end of the story became a frenzied, uncertain, blood-soaked mess in which I was never quite certain what was going on. I didn't believe for a second a joyful resolution was possible, yet strangely the author's love of "not happy endings" but "endings with potential" ultimately satisfied me.

Lovers of Gothic fiction complete with (if not loveable than nevertheless) likeable, compelling lead characters, and extreme amounts of horror and epic romance will enjoy this unconventional walk on the macabre side of love as much as I did.

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/

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/