Circling the Sun, By Paula McLain - Review

Title: Circling The Sun

Author: Paula McLain

Publisher: Ballantine

Release Date:  July 28, 2015

Reviewing:  Kindle ebook

Reason for reading:  Book club pick

The Blurb

Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa.

Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature’s delicate balance. But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.

Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who also live and love by their own set of rules. But it’s the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl’s truest self and her fate: to fly.

Set against the majestic landscape of early-twentieth-century Africa, McLain’s powerful tale reveals the extraordinary adventures of a woman before her time, the exhilaration of freedom and its cost, and the tenacity of the human spirit.

In Which I Explore LitFic
Or at least, slightly more literary than usual. About two years ago, I started a new job at a Very Very Large corporation, which has a number of clubs and organizations to help employees connect on a personal level. So of course I checked out the book clubs. I had some doubts though, because I'm pretty sure of what books I like and what I don't; I am decidedly not a "highbrow" reader; and I'm not much for reading deeply, beyond a good story and great characters.  But finally after keeping an eye on the club for a while and riding out various scheduling conflicts, I read the right book and made it to the meeting.

I was pleasantly surprised to really love the book. The book club itself was not exactly what I expected, and it turns out I didn't need to be concerned about not reading deeply enough.  The discussion was pretty much limited to "I liked it/didn't like it;"  "I liked/didn't like the characters;" "I thought it was slow" (it was); and "but feminism!" So I will bring all that extra thinkyness I had going here to the blog.

As a Novel
For me, the story broke down into two main parts -- before and after Beryl's pregnancy. The "before" traces her life from about age five, through adolescence, marriage, and several love affairs. There is another natural break in the "before" when her father leaves her to find a job some distance away, but from a style and story standpoint, it was not as jarring to me. The biggest flaw I saw was somewhat structural; I felt the "after" part of the story was a bit anti-climactic and just less... passionate.

I really loved the "before."  The author brings the landscape of early 20th century east Africa vividly to life. In some books, the landscape is a character, a theme, an all-encompassing influence over everything in the story, and that is the case for Circling the Sun. The isolation, the undeveloped land, the frequently-deadly wildlife -- all of these formed Beryl's life and character as much and more than her parents.

There are a number of defining events in Beryl's life. Throughout the book, she refers to them as "tests," which I thought was interesting. She was constantly proving herself -- but to whom? her father? maybe. Society? yes, I think so -- but most of all, to herself. Strongly influenced by the way native boys were raised in that time and place, I think strength is what she valued the most. Physical, very much so. Emotional, well as always, that is a more complex question. It seemed to me that being strong to Beryl equated to bearing the censure of others without letting it influence her course. She was not good at forming friendships or personal connections -- she was too outside the norms, even in a place where the local white society was absolutely committed to flouting British norms. But like any outsider community, they had their own requirements of conformity, which Beryl broke as easily as any other. Did she suffer for this? I think she did. I don't think she was a happy person for much of her life.

The Writing
The writing is just beautiful. It's layered and evocative, and --here's me getting deep -- I think many of Beryl's observations were reflections of how she saw herself.  Here's an example, where she is describing the rehabilitation and training of a horse who was pushed too hard when young, causing damage to her legs:

A rose-pink tide of flamingos startled around us, making their wooden sound. Tens of thousands of the birds climbed as one and then receded, settling with a clamour only to startle again. They became our timekeepers. They alone saw a kind of magic begin to happen as Wise Child grew stronger and surer of herself. She had been wounded, nearly broken. You could still see her fear each morning as she tested those first steps gingerly, as if the mud might hold knives. But she had a warrior's courage. When she opened up now, we could see trust and willingness in her, and something more than speed.

Beryl is describing a horse here, but it so much applies to herself, also. Another passage, on safari:

For most of a day we walked through alkali flats, the white crust like a frosted layer of salt that rose into a powder when your boots punched through. We wore the chalk on us everywhere--up to our knees, in the creases of our fingers, clenching the rifle strap, down in the cavity between my breasts, and in my mouth, too. I couldn't keep it out and stopped trying. I couldn't keep anything out, I realized, and that was something I loved about Africa. The way it got at you from the outside in and never let up, and never let you go.

So I would agree that the pacing was a bit slow, but I thought that was appropriate for the pace of Beryl's life. Tons of description can bog down a story, but in this book I felt it was necessary and integral, particularly because the landscape is so alien, at least to me.

But Feminism!
Some of the women at bookclub felt that the preoccupation with Beryl's romantic (or not so romantic, even) partners diluted the feminist power of the story (I'm taking liberties here with the comments that were made and inferring in a little). There was one affair in particular that seemed pretty overtly mercenary. "She was always defining herself by a man!" first her friend Kibii, and her father, her husband, several affairs, and finally, when she gave up horse training and took up flying, it was pretty directly attributable to the tragic difficulties with her second husband and the birth of their child.

As a romance reader primarily, I suppose I have a different viewpoint. I like reading about relationships and how they change us. I do think that affairs and marriages can re-define us. Not exclusively, to be sure. I mean, I'm sure that if I'd lived through a lion attack, I would consider that something of a defining moment as well. But Beryl's various attachments each marked a transition in her life. I viewed them as less of a cause of the transitions and more of a result. She was drawn into the "Happy Valley Set," where tangled affairs and partner-trading seemed quite common. Unfortunately, Beryl's first husband hadn't got the memo and the scenes he caused again put Beryl at outsider status.

The "After"
Beryl's second marriage was entirely different from the first, and possibly even more disastrous. Mansfield Markham was an English peer. It seemed that Kenya brought out the best in him, at least for Beryl, and when they returned to England for the birth of their child, he fell back under his domineering mother and blamed Beryl for their child's serious birth defects. When he retreated from her entirely, she turned to flying.

I felt like this was the weaker part of the book. I never felt that she loved flying the way she loved horse training. We never saw what motivated her to fly across the Atlantic.  The flight itself consumed precious little page count. The book leaps from her first solo flight--just the takeoff, mind you-- and flashes out to the end stage of her trans-Atlantic flight. It was definitely a let-down, and the final scene -- alone, bleeding, crawling through a boggy marsh in Newfoundland-- is not what I wanted for this extraordinary woman.  It made me miss my Happily Ever After endings rather fiercely.

After "the after"
It wasn't until I finished the book that I realized that it was about a real person, which obviously limits a bit what the author can and can't do with the story. It does make me want to know more about that time and place; to go read All The Hemingway; to watch Out of Africa (whose cast of characters overlaps significantly), and to read West With the Night, Beryl's own account of her life. I just might do all that.

Announcing: McNaught-E November; Whitney My Love Excerpt

While I don't normally post purely promotional material from publishers here on Alpha Heroes, I agreed to be part of Simon and Schuster's McNaught-E November because I'm a big fan of Judith McNaught, and having her backlist made available in e-format is big news, as far as I'm concerned. You can read my thoughts on McNaught from the early days of this blog. Over the next several weeks, we'll be publishing excerpts from a number of McNaught's newly e-published backlist, so check back here every Monday.

Now, fresh off the press from Simon & Schuster:

We are excited to share with you that the fourteen Judith McNaught titles listed below are available for the first time in E-Book today, November 1^st! If you previously read any of these amazing titles, revisiting them in E-Book is not “All for Naught,” as each E-Book will contain original, new content (a letter) from Judith McNaught.

 

Excerpts:

To celebrate this abundance of new material from Judith McNaught, we kick off McNaught-E November today with an excerpt for Whitney, My Love ($2.99 special price November 1^st - December 4^th, 2016). Please check back on McNaught-E Mondays (every Monday in November) to enjoy additional excerpts for the other thirteen E-Books.

 

Promo Code Giveaway:

For McNaught-E Cyber Monday (11/28) we will announce the winner(s) of 14 promo codes, one promo code for each title. Enter to win today! You can enter on all blogs on the tour listed below, but you can only win once.

Here's how the giveaway will work for Alpha Heroes: leave a comment on any of the McNaught-E November posts between now and November 21. Leave your contact email in your comment, or send it to me (be sure to include your screen name so I can associate it with the right person). You can comment on all four McNaught-E posts for a total of four entries. I will delete/disqualify obvious spam. The way I do giveaways is to enter all the entries in an excel spreadsheet, sort using a random number function, and choose the top 14 results.  All winners will be announced on November 28.

Excerpt:

Whitney, My Love
Chapter 1
________________________________________

As their elegant travelling chaise rocked and swayed along the rutted country road, Lady Anne Gilbert leaned her cheek against her husband’s shoulder and heaved a long, impatient sigh. “Another whole hour until we arrive, and already the suspense is positively gnawing at me. I keep wondering what Whitney will be like now that she’s grown up.”

She lapsed into silence and gazed absently out the coach window at the lush, rolling English countryside covered with wild pink Foxglove and yellow Buttercups, trying to envision the niece she hadn’t seen in almost eleven years.

“She’ll be pretty, just as her mother was. And she’ll have her mother’s smile, her gentleness, her sweet disposition . . .”

Lord Edward Gilbert cast a skeptical glance at his wife. “Sweet disposition?” he echoed in amused disbelief. “That isn’t what her father said in his letter.”

As a diplomat attached to the British Consulate in Paris, Lord Gilbert was a master of hints, evasions, innuendoes, and intrigues. But in his personal life, he preferred the refreshing alternative of blunt truth. “Allow me to refresh your memory,” he said, groping in his pockets and retrieving the letter from Whitney’s father. He perched his spectacles upon his nose, and ignoring his wife’s grimace, he began to read: “ ‘Whitney’s manners are an outrage, her conduct is reprehensible. She is a willful hoyden who is the despair of everyone she knows and an embarrassment to me. I implore you to take her back to Paris with you, in the hope that you may have more success with the stubborn chit than I have had.’ ”

Edward chuckled. “Show me where it says she’s ‘sweet-tempered.’ ”

His wife shot him a peevish glance. “Martin Stone is a cold, unfeeling man who wouldn’t recognize gentleness and goodness if Whitney were made of nothing else! Only think of the way he shouted at her and sent her to her room right after my sister’s funeral.”

Edward recognized the mutinous set of his wife’s chin and put his arm around her shoulders in a gesture of conciliation. “I’m no fonder of the man than you are, but you must admit that, just having lost his young wife to an early grave, to have his daughter accuse him, in front of fifty people, of locking her mama in a box so she couldn’t escape had to be rather disconcerting.”

“But Whitney was scarcely five years old!” Anne protested heatedly.

“Agreed. But Martin was grieving. Besides, as I recall, it was not for that offense she was banished to her room. It was later, when everyone had gathered in the drawing room—when she stamped her foot and threatened to report us all to God if we didn’t release her mama at once.”

Anne smiled. “What spirit she had, Edward. I thought for a moment her little freckles were going to pop right off her nose. Admit it—she was marvelous, and you thought so too!”

“Well, yes,” Edward agreed sheepishly. “I rather thought she was.”

*  *  *

As the Gilbert chaise bore inexorably down on the Stone estate, a small knot of young people were waiting on the south lawn, impatiently looking toward the stable one hundred yards away. A petite blonde smoothed her pink ruffled skirts and sighed in a way that displayed a very fetching dimple. “Whatever do you suppose Whitney is planning to do?” she inquired of the handsome light-haired man beside her.

Glancing down into Elizabeth Ashton’s wide blue eyes, Paul Sevarin smiled a smile that Whitney would have forfeited both her feet to see focused on herself. “Try to be patient, Elizabeth,” he said.

“I’m sure none of us have the faintest idea what she is up to, Elizabeth,” Margaret Merryton said tartly. “But you can be perfectly certain it will be something foolish and outrageous.”

“Margaret, we’re all Whitney’s guests today,” Paul chided.

“I don’t know why you should defend her, Paul,” Margaret argued spitefully. “Whitney is creating a horrid scandal chasing after you, and you know it!”

“Margaret!” Paul snapped. “I said that was enough.” Drawing a long, irritated breath, Paul Sevarin frowned darkly at his gleaming boots. Whitney had been making a spectacle of herself chasing after him, and damned near everyone for fifteen miles was talking about it.

At first he had been mildly amused to find himself the object of a fifteen-year-old’s languishing looks and adoring smiles, but lately Whitney had begun pursuing him with the determination and tactical brilliance of a female Napoleon Bonaparte.

If he rode off the grounds of his estate, he could almost depend on meeting her en route to his destination. It was as if she had some lookout point from which she watched his every move, and Paul no longer found her childish infatuation with him either harmless or amusing.

Three weeks ago, she had followed him to a local inn. While he was pleasantly contemplating accepting the innkeeper’s daughter’s whispered invitation to meet her later in the hayloft, he’d glanced up and seen a familiar pair of bright green eyes peeping at him through the window. Slamming his tankard of ale on the table, he’d marched outside, grabbed Whitney by the elbow, and unceremoniously deposited her on her horse, tersely reminding her that her father would be searching for her if she wasn’t home by nightfall.

He’d stalked back inside and ordered another tankard, but when the innkeeper’s daughter brushed her breasts suggestively against his arm while refilling his ale and Paul had a sudden vision of himself lying entangled with her voluptuous naked body, a pair of green eyes peered in through yet another window. He’d tossed enough coins on the planked wooden table to mollify the startled girl’s wounded sensibilities and left—only to encounter Miss Stone again on his way home.

He was beginning to feel like a hunted man whose every move was under surveillance, and his temper was strained to the breaking point. And yet, Paul thought irritably, here he was standing in the April sun, trying for some obscure reason to protect Whitney from the criticism she richly deserved.

A pretty girl, several years younger than the others in the group, glanced at Paul. “I think I’ll go and see what’s keeping Whitney,” said Emily Williams. She hurried across the lawn and along the whitewashed fence adjoining the stable. Shoving open the big double doors, Emily looked down the wide gloomy corridor lined with stalls on both sides. “Where is Miss Whitney?” she asked the stableboy who was currying a sorrel gelding.

“In there, Miss.” Even in the muted light, Emily saw his face suffuse with color as he nodded toward a door adjacent to the tack room.

With a puzzled glance at the flushing stableboy, Emily tapped lightly on the designated door and stepped inside, then froze at the sight that greeted her: Whitney Allison Stone’s long legs were encased in coarse brown britches that clung startlingly to her slender hips and were held in place at her narrow waist with a length of rope. Above the riding britches she wore a thin chemise.
“You surely aren’t going out there dressed like that?” Emily gasped.

Whitney fired an amused glance over her shoulder at her scandalized friend. “Of course not. I’m going to wear a shirt, too.”

“B-but why?” Emily persisted desperately.

“Because I don’t think it would be very proper to appear in my chemise, silly,” Whitney cheerfully replied, snatching the stableboy’s clean shirt off a peg and plunging her arms into the sleeves.

“P-proper? Proper?” Emily sputtered. “It’s completely improper for you to be wearing men’s britches, and you know it!”

“True. But I can’t very well ride that horse without a saddle and risk having my skirts blow up around my neck, now can I?” Whitney breezily argued while she twisted her long unruly hair into a knot and pinned it at her nape.

“Ride without a saddle? You can’t mean you’re going to ride astride—your father will disown you if you do that again.”

“I am not going to ride astride. Although,” Whitney giggled, “I can’t understand why men are allowed to straddle a horse, while we—who are supposed to be the weaker sex—must hang off the side, praying for our lives.”

Emily refused to be diverted. “Then what are you going to do?”

“I never realized what an inquisitive young lady you are, Miss Williams,” Whitney teased. “But to answer your question, I am going to ride standing on the horse’s back. I saw it done at the fair, and I’ve been practicing ever since. Then, when Paul sees how well I do, he’ll—”

“He’ll think you have lost your mind, Whitney Stone! He’ll think that you haven’t a grain of sense or propriety, and that you’re only trying something else to gain his attention.” Seeing the stubborn set of her friend’s chin, Emily switched her tactics. “Whitney, please—think of your father. What will he say if he finds out?”

Whitney hesitated, feeling the force of her father’s unwaveringly cold stare as if it were this minute focused upon her. She drew a long breath, then expelled it slowly as she glanced out the small window at the group waiting on the lawn. Wearily, she said, “Father will say that, as usual, I have disappointed him, that I am a disgrace to him and to my mother’s memory, that he is happy she didn’t live to see what I have become. Then he will spend half an hour telling me what a perfect lady Elizabeth Ashton is, and that I ought to be like her.”

“Well, if you really wanted to impress Paul, you could try . . .”

Whitney clenched her hands in frustration. “I have tried to be like Elizabeth. I wear those disgusting ruffled dresses that make me feel like a pastel mountain, I’ve practiced going for hours without saying a word, and I’ve fluttered my eyelashes until my eyelids go limp.”

Emily bit her lip to hide her smile at Whitney’s unflattering description of Elizabeth Ashton’s demure mannerisms, then she sighed. “I’ll go and tell the others that you’ll be right out.”

Gasps of outrage and derisive sniggers greeted Whitney’s appearance on the lawn when she led the horse toward the spectators. “She’ll fall off,” one of the girls predicted, “if God doesn’t strike her dead first for wearing those britches.”

Ignoring the impulse to snap out a biting retort, Whitney raised her head in a gesture of haughty disdain, then stole a look at Paul. His handsome face was taut with disapproval as his gaze moved from her bare feet, up her trousered legs, to her face. Inwardly, Whitney faltered at his obvious displeasure, but she swung resolutely onto the back of the waiting horse.

The gelding moved into its practiced canter, and Whitney worked herself upward, first crouching with arms outstretched for balance, then slowly easing herself into a standing position. Around and around they went and, although Whitney was in constant terror of falling off and looking like a fool, she managed to appear competent and graceful.

As she completed the fourth circle, she let her eyes slant to the faces passing on her left, registering their looks of shock and derision, while she searched for the only face that mattered. Paul was partially in the tree’s shadow, and Elizabeth Ashton was clinging to his arm, but as Whitney passed, she saw the slow, reluctant smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and triumph unfurled like a banner in her heart. By the time she came around again, Paul was grinning broadly at her. Whitney’s spirits soared, and suddenly all the weeks of practice, the sore muscles and bruises, seemed worthwhile.

*  *  *

At the window of the second floor drawing room overlooking the south lawn, Martin Stone stared down at his performing daughter. Behind him, the butler announced that Lord and Lady Gilbert had arrived. Too enraged at his daughter to speak, Martin greeted his sister-in-law and her husband with a clenched jaw and curt nod.

“How—how nice to see you again after so many years, Martin,” Lady Anne lied graciously. When he remained icily silent, she said, “Where is Whitney? We’re so anxious to see her.”

Martin finally recovered his voice. “See her?” he snapped savagely. “Madam, you have only to look out this window.”

Bewildered, Anne did as he said. Below on the lawn there stood a group of young people watching a slender boy balancing beautifully on a cantering horse. “What a clever young man,” she said, smiling.
Her simple remark seemed to drive Martin Stone from frozen rage to frenzied action as he swung on his heel and marched toward the door. “If you wish to meet your niece, come with me. Or, I can spare you the humiliation, and bring her here to you.”

With an exasperated look at Martin’s back, Anne tucked her hand in her husband’s arm and together they followed Martin downstairs and outside.

As they approached the group of young people, Anne heard murmurings and laughter, and she was vaguely aware that there was something malicious in the tone, but she was too busy scanning the young ladies’ faces, looking for Whitney, to pay much heed to the fleeting impression. She mentally discarded two blondes and a redhead, quizzically studied a petite, blue-eyed brunette, then glanced helplessly at the young man beside her. “Pardon me, I am Lady Gilbert, Whitney’s aunt. Could you tell me where she is?”

Paul Sevarin grinned at her, half in sympathy and half in amusement. “Your niece is on the horse, Lady Gilbert,” he said.

“On the—” Lord Gilbert choked.

From her delicate perch atop the horse, Whitney’s eyes followed her father’s progress as he bore down on her with long, rapid strides. “Please don’t make a scene, Father,” she implored when he was within earshot.

“I make a scene?” he roared furiously. Snatching the halter, he brought the cantering horse around so sharply that he jerked it from beneath her. Whitney hit the ground on her feet, lost her balance, and ended up half-sprawling. As she scampered up, her father caught her arm in a ruthless grip and hauled her over toward the spectators. “This—this thing,” he said, thrusting her forward toward her aunt and uncle, “I am mortified to tell you is your niece.”

Whitney heard the smattering of giggles as the group quickly disbanded, and she felt her face grow hot with shame. “How do you do, Aunt Gilbert? Uncle Gilbert?” With one eye on Paul’s broad-shouldered, retreating form, Whitney reached mechanically for her nonexistent skirt, realized it was missing, and executed a comical curtsy without it. She saw the frown on her aunt’s face and put her chin up defensively. “You may be sure that for the week you are here, I shall endeavor not to make a freak of myself again, Aunt.”

“For the week that we are here?” her aunt gasped, but Whitney was preoccupied watching Paul help Elizabeth into his curricle and didn’t notice the surprise in her aunt’s voice.

“Good-bye, Paul,” she called, waving madly. He turned and raised his arm in silent farewell.
Laughter drifted back as the curricles bowled down the drive, carrying their occupants off to a picnic or some other gay and wonderful activity, to which Whitney was never invited because she was too young.

Following Whitney toward the house, Anne was a mass of conflicting emotions. She was embarrassed for Whitney, furious with Martin Stone for humiliating the girl in front of the other young people, somewhat dazed by the sight of her own niece cavorting on the back of a horse, wearing men’s britches . . . and utterly astonished to discover that Whitney, whose mother had been only passably pretty, showed promise of becoming a genuine beauty.

She was too thin right now, but even in disgrace Whitney’s shoulders were straight, her walk naturally graceful and faintly provocative. Anne smiled to herself at the gently rounded hips displayed to almost immoral advantage by the coarse brown trousers, the slender waist that would require no subterfuge to make it appear smaller, eyes that seemed to change from sea-green to deep jade beneath their fringe of long, sooty lashes. And that hair—piles and piles of rich mahogany brown! All it needed was a good trimming and brushing until it shone; Anne’s fingers positively itched to go to work on it. Mentally she was already styling it in ways to highlight Whitney’s striking eyes and high cheekbones. Off her face, Anne decided, piled at the crown with tendrils at the ears, or pulled straight back off the forehead to fall in gentle waves down her back.

As soon as they entered the house, Whitney mumbled an excuse and fled to her room where she flopped dejectedly into a chair and morosely contemplated the humiliating scene Paul had just witnessed, with her father jerking her ignominiously off her horse and then shouting at her. No doubt her aunt and uncle were as horrified and revolted by her behavior as her father had been, and her cheeks burned with shame just thinking of how they must despise her already.

“Whitney?” Emily whispered, creeping into the bedroom and cautiously closing the door behind her. “I came up the back way. Is your father angry?”

“Cross as crabs,” Whitney confirmed, staring down at her trousered legs. “I suppose I ruined everything today, didn’t I? Everyone was laughing at me, and Paul heard them. Now that Elizabeth is seventeen, he’s bound to offer for her before he ever has a chance to realize that he loves me.”

“You?” Emily repeated dazedly. “Whitney Stone, Paul avoids you like the plague, and well you know it! And who could blame him, after the mishaps you’ve treated him to in the last year?”

“There haven’t been so many as all that,” Whitney protested, but she squirmed in her chair.

“No? What about that trick you played on him on All Soul’s—darting out in front of his carriage, shrieking like a banshee, and pretending to be a ghost, terrifying his horses.”

Whitney flushed. “He wasn’t so very angry. And it isn’t as if the carriage was destroyed. It only broke a shaft when it overturned.”

“And Paul’s leg,” Emily pointed out.

“But that mended perfectly,” Whitney persisted, her mind already leaping from past debacles to future possibilities. She surged to her feet and began to pace slowly back and forth. “There has to be a way—but short of abducting him, I—” A mischievous smile lit up her dust-streaked face as she swung around so quickly that Emily pressed back into her chair. “Emily, one thing is infinitely clear: Paul does not yet know that he cares for me. Correct?”

“He doesn’t care a snap for you is more like it,” Emily replied warily.

“Therefore, it would be safe to say that he is unlikely to offer for me without some sort of added incentive. Correct?”

“You couldn’t make him offer for you at the point of a gun, and you know it. Besides, you aren’t old enough to be betrothed, even if—”

“Under what circumstances,” Whitney interrupted triumphantly, “is a gentleman obliged to offer for a lady?”

“I can’t think of any. Except of course, if he has compromised her—absolutely not! Whitney, whatever you’re planning now, I won’t help.”

Sighing, Whitney flopped back into her chair, stretching her legs out in front of her. An irreverent giggle escaped her as she considered the sheer audacity of her last idea. “If only I could have pulled it off . . . you know, loosened the wheel on Paul’s carriage so that it would fall off later, and then asked him to drive me somewhere. Then, by the time we walked back, or help arrived, it would be late at night, and he would have to offer for me.” Oblivious to Emily’s scandalized expression, Whitney continued, “Just think what a wonderful turnabout that would have been on a tired old theme: Young Lady abducts Gentleman and ruins his reputation so that she is forced to marry him to set things aright! What a novel that could have made,” she added, rather impressed with her own ingenuity.

“I’m leaving,” Emily said. She marched to the door, then she hesitated and turned back to Whitney. “Your aunt and uncle saw everything. What are you going to say to them about those trousers and the horse?”

Whitney’s face clouded. “I’m not going to say anything, it wouldn’t help—but for the rest of the time they are here, I’m going to be the most demure, refined, delicate female you’ve ever seen.” She saw Emily’s dubious look and added, “Also I intend to stay out of sight except at mealtimes. I think I’ll be able to act like Elizabeth for three hours a day.”

*  *  *

Whitney kept her promise. At dinner that night, after her uncle’s hair-raising tale of their life in Beirut where he was attached to the British Consulate, she murmured only, “How very informative, Uncle,” even though she was positively burning to ply him with questions. At the end of her aunt’s description of Paris and the thrill of its gay social life, Whitney murmured, “How very informative, Aunt.” The moment the meal was finished, she excused herself and vanished.

After three days, Whitney’s efforts to be either demure or absent had, in fact, been so successful that Anne was beginning to wonder whether she had only imagined the spark of fire she’d glimpsed the day of their arrival, or if the girl had some aversion to Edward and herself.

On the fourth day, when Whitney breakfasted before the rest of the household was up, and then vanished, Anne set out to discover the truth. She searched the house, but Whitney was not indoors. She was not in the garden, nor had she taken a horse from the stable, Anne was informed by a groom. Squinting into the sunlight, Anne looked around her, trying to imagine where a fifteen-year-old would go to spend all day.

Off on the crest of a hill overlooking the estate, she spied a patch of bright yellow. “There you are!” she breathed, opening her parasol and striking out across the lawn.

Whitney didn’t see her aunt coming until it was too late to escape. Wishing she had found a better place to hide, she tried to think of some innocuous subject on which she could converse without appearing ignorant. Clothes? Personally, she knew nothing of fashions and cared even less; she looked hopeless no matter what she wore. After all, what could clothes do to improve the looks of a female who had cat’s eyes, mud-colored hair, and freckles on the bridge of her nose? Besides that, she was too tall, too thin, and if the good Lord intended for her ever to have a bosom, it was very late in making its appearance.

Weak-kneed, her chest heaving with each labored breath, Anne topped the steep rise and collapsed unceremoniously onto the blanket beside Whitney. “I-I thought I’d take . . . a nice stroll,” Anne lied. When she caught her breath, she noticed the leather-bound book lying face down on the blanket and, seizing on books as a topic of conversation, she said, “Is that a romantic novel?”

“No, Aunt,” Whitney demurely uttered, carefully placing her hand over the title of the book to conceal it from her aunt’s eyes.

“I’m told most young ladies adore romantic novels,” Anne tried again.

“Yes, Aunt,” Whitney agreed politely.

“I read one once but I didn’t like it,” Anne remarked, her mind groping for some other topic that might draw Whitney into conversation. “I cannot abide a heroine who is too perfect, nor one who is forever swooning.”

Whitney was so astonished to discover that she wasn’t the only female in all of England who didn’t devour the insipid things, that she instantly forgot her resolution to speak only in monosyllables. “And when the heroines aren’t swooning,” she added, her entire face lighting up with laughter, “they are lying about with hartshorn bottles up their nostrils, moping and pining away for some faint-hearted gentleman who hasn’t the gumption to offer for them, or else has already offered for some other, unworthy female. I could never just lie there doing nothing, knowing the man I loved was falling in love with a horrid person.” Whitney darted a glance at her aunt to see if she was shocked, but her aunt was regarding her with an unexplainable smile lurking at the corners of her eyes. “Aunt Anne, could you actually care for a man who dropped to his knees and said, ‘Oh, Clarabel, your lips are the petals of a red rose and your eyes are two stars from the heavens’?” With a derisive snort, Whitney finished, “That is where I would have leapt for the hartshorn!”

“And so would I,” Anne said, laughing. “What do you read then, if not atrocious romantic novels?” She pried the book from beneath Whitney’s flattened hand and stared at the gold-embossed title. “The Iliad?” she asked in astonished disbelief. The breeze ruffled the pages, and Anne’s amazed gaze ricocheted from the print to Whitney’s tense face. “But this is in Greek! Surely you don’t read Greek?”

Whitney nodded, her face flushed with mortification. Now her aunt would think her a bluestocking—another black mark against her. “Also Latin, Italian, French, and even some German,” she confessed.

“Good God,” Anne breathed. “How did you ever learn all that?”

“Despite what Father thinks, Aunt Anne, I am only foolish, not stupid, and I plagued him to death until he allowed me tutors in languages and history.” Whitney fell silent, remembering how she’d once believed that if she applied herself to her studies, if she could become more like a son, her father might love her.

“You sound ashamed of your accomplishments, when you should be proud.”

Whitney gazed out at her home, nestled in the valley below. “I’m sure you know everyone thinks it’s a waste of time to educate a female in these things. And anyway, I haven’t a feminine accomplishment to my name. I can’t sew a stitch that doesn’t look as if it were done blindfolded, and when I sing, the dogs down at the stable begin to howl. Mr. Twittsworthy, our local music instructor, told my father that my playing of the pianoforte gives him hives. I can’t do a thing that girls ought to do, and what’s more, I particularly detest doing them.”

Whitney knew her aunt would now take her in complete dislike, just as everyone else always did, but it was better this way because at least she could stop dreading the inevitable. She looked at Lady Anne, her green eyes wide and vulnerable. “I’m certain Papa has told you all about me. I’m a terrible disappointment to him. He wants me to be dainty and demure and quiet, like Elizabeth Ashton. I try to be, but I can’t seem to do it.”

Anne’s heart melted for the lovely, spirited, bewildered child her sister had borne. Laying her hand against Whitney’s cheek, she said tenderly, “Your father wants a daughter who is like a cameo—delicate, pale, and easily shaped. Instead, he has a daughter who is a diamond, full of sparkle and life, and he doesn’t know what to do with her. Instead of appreciating the value and rarity of his jewel—instead of polishing her a bit and then letting her shine—he persists in trying to shape her into a common cameo.”

Whitney was more inclined to think of herself as a chunk of coal, but rather than disillusion her aunt, she kept silent. After her aunt left, Whitney picked up her book, but soon her mind wandered from the printed page to dreamy thoughts of Paul.

That night when she came down to the dining room, the atmosphere in the room was strangely charged, and no one noticed her sauntering toward the table. “When do you plan to tell her she’s coming back to France with us, Martin?” her uncle demanded angrily. “Or is it your intention to wait until the day we leave and then just toss the child into the coach with us?”

The world tilted crazily, and for one horrible moment, Whitney thought she was going to be sick. She stopped, trying to steady her shaking limbs, and swallowed back the aching lump in her throat. “Am I going somewhere, Father?” she asked, trying to sound calm and indifferent.

They all turned and stared, and her father’s face tightened into lines of impatience and annoyance. “To France,” he replied abruptly. “To live with your aunt and uncle, who are going to try to make a lady out of you.”

Carefully avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes, lest she break down then and there, Whitney slid into her chair at the table. “Have you informed my aunt and uncle of the risk they are taking?” she asked, concentrating all her strength on preventing her father from seeing what he had just done to her heart. She looked coldly at her aunt and uncle’s guilty, embarrassed faces. “Father may have neglected to mention you’re risking disgrace by welcoming me into your home. As he will tell you, I’ve a hideous disposition, I’m rag-mannered, and I haven’t a trace of polite conversation.”

Her aunt was watching her with naked pity, but her father’s expression was stony. “Oh Papa,” she whispered brokenly, “do you really despise me this much? Do you hate me so much that you have to send me out of your sight?” Her eyes swimming with unshed tears, Whitney stood up. “If you . . . will excuse me . . . I’m not very hungry this evening.”

“How could you!” Anne cried when she left, rising from her own chair and glaring furiously at Martin Stone. “You are the most heartless, unfeeling—it will be a pleasure to remove that child from your clutches. How she has survived this long is a testimony to her strength. I’m sure I could never have done so well.”

“You refine too much upon her words, Madam,” Martin said icily. “I assure you that what has her looking so distraught is not the prospect of being parted from me. I have merely put a premature end to her plans to continue making a fool of herself over Paul Sevarin.”

________________________________________

 

Phew. That's one harsh dad. OTOH, it does sound like he has a point.

 

Please visit participating blogs on the tour below for additional chances to win a promo code:

 

Blog Tour:

*****Harlequin Junkie: Spotlight Q&A with Judith McNaught!

A Midlife Wife

Agents of Romance

Alpha Heroes

Always Reviewing

Art, Books & Coffee

Black ‘N Gold Girl’s Book Spot

Books and Boys Book Blog

Books, Movies, Reviews! Oh My!

Celticlady’s Reviews

Dark Faerie Tales

Dear Author

Dew On The Kudzu

Dirty Girl Romance

Feeding My Addiction Book Reviews

KT Book Reviews

Live to Read

Mrs. Leif’s Two Fangs About It

Poof Books

Romancing the Readers

Romantic Reads and Such

Stephanie’s Book Reports

Temppatt

The Book Enthusiast

The Qwillery

The Romance Reviews

Undeniably Book Nerdy

Wrapped Up In Reading

WTF Are You Reading?

Treat Yourself With Books

 

 

Buy Links for Whitney, My Love:
Simon and Schuster
IBOOKSTORE (ebook)
KINDLE (ebook)
NOOK (ebook)
GOOGLE PLAY (ebook)

All 14 titles newly available (check back tomorrow for fully populated buy-links):
Once and Always
Something Wonderful
Almost Heaven
Whitney, My Love
A Kingdom of Dreams
Until You
Miracles (in A Holiday of Love)
Tender Triumph
Double Standards
Remember When
Paradise
Perfect
Night Whispers
Someone to Watch Over Me

Sunday Soup - October 9

In The Soup This Week... Devon Monk, Aaron Michael Ritchey, Laura Lee Guhrke, Elisabeth Staab, Julie Ann Walker, Kim Harrison.

Soup Dish:  on my mind/good links
Well, it's been kind of a long time since I've posted.  I keep starting these Soup posts, and just sort of not feeling like I have much to say. My social media feeds are full of the latest political horrors and it's difficult to keep up the chipper, book-loving voice I've established here.  One more month to go before the election circus is over.  But nonetheless, I've accumulated a few links that have nothing to do with the US presidential election.

✽Kim Harrison reveals her newest cover and some cover art wisdom in five parts: One Two Three Four Five. Liked the read, looking forward to the book! I'm behind on the last few books of the series, but I feel like I can probably read the pre-quel without catching up.

✽I miss Jennifer Crusie. I wish she'd go back to writing witty contemporary romance with amazing dialog. In the meantime, here's an interview with her.

✽I've been thinking about running a non-conference-related Five Words game -- I'd love to hear from my readers, do you like this feature? I thought at the end I'd offer a formatted PDF for free download.

✽ This is an ad for Ravenswood Leather. You'll like it anyway. You're welcome.
 


Saved and Sampled:  titles that caught my eye on social media, samples waiting on my Kindle to be, well, sampled. As you can see, I'm not doing my TBR-reduction plan any good. 


✽Faery Rift, by Jae Vogel
✽Fury, by Laurann Doehner. This was highly rec'd by a friend but I'm having trouble getting past the "evil scientists performing sadistic lab experiments" trope. These make me super-squeamish.
✽The Viscount's Mistress, by Claire DuLac. I like the premise, which implies the HEA might be as a mistress. I feel like that's a fairly realistic scenario for the Regency period and I'd be interested to see it play out.
✽Feral, by Laxmi Hariharan. Advertised for fans of Nalini Singh, so we shall see!

What I'm reading
✽You guys, I read a lit-fic book and I liked it! I'm dipping a toe into a book club at my office, and read Circling the Sun, by Paula McLain. I didn't realize until I read the afterwords that it is based on a real person, set in early 20th century Kenya. Basically it's the same cast of characters as Out of Africa (which I've never seen) with a different focus. It made me want to go read All The Hemingway. I did feel like it had some weaknesses as a novel, but they were structural things about the facts of the MC's life-- because real life isn't as tidy as a novel, go figure. Anyway, I liked it and would recommend it.

✽I'm almost done with Laura Lee Guhrke's No Mistress of Mine. It's not bad, but I'm having trouble staying engaged. For me, it has been put-down-able, but that could just be about my scattered attention span these days.

✽I finished Killdeer Winds, by Aaron Michael Ritchey and am way behind on a full review.  This is the second in his Juniper Wars serial, and I really enjoyed it. YA is not my usual wheelhouse, but it's nice to step outside your usual genre once in a while.

✽Death and Relaxation, by Devon Monk. A really fun new series kickoff set in a small coastal Oregon town, where deities of various pantheons go to check in their powers and relax like a regular Joe. Naturally, things get weird.  Really enjoyed the world-building.  Book 2 is out as well, and Amazon is calling it a "two-book series" -- so I don't know if it will go any longer than that.  Monk seems to have a bit of series ADD going on, skipping from one project to another. I like them all! I just hope these either resolve nicely or that there are more coming.

✽ At the Stars, Elisabeth Staab. I read this one a couple months ago, after meeting and hanging out with Elisabeth at RT16 for a while. A small town, NA romance, very sweet. Enjoyed it. 

✽ In Rides Trouble, Julie Ann Walker. Fast-paced, suspenseful, high-stakes MC/Spec-Ops romance. It's really good, but not for me. Basically, the more suspenseful a book is, the less I like it. But if that's your catnip, you'll like this one.


That's it for this week. Happy reading!

Prince of Outcasts, by SM Stirling - Review

Title: Prince of Outcasts

Series: The Change (Emberverse)

Author: S. M. Sterling

Publisher: ROC (Penguin)

Release Date: September 6, 2016

Reviewing: eARC

Reason for reading: Big fan of this series, loved the last book

 

The Short Answer

Fans will not be disappointed. We have a reluctant hero, a feisty female co-adventurer and love interest, and the return of the Big Bad.  Cliffhanger ending.
 

The Blurb

John Arminger Mackenzie wanted to be a troubadour, but fate made him the son of the king of Montival. His sister Princess Órlaith will deservedly inherit the throne of the High Kings, and it will only pass unto him in the event of her death, leaving the young Prince on an unknown path to discover his true role in the family.

The opportunity to prove his mettle comes when John’s ship, the Tarshish Queen, is caught in the fierce storm raised against the enemies of the alliance. When the clouds recede and the skies clear, John and his crew find themselves on the other side of the Pacific, in the island chains of the Ceram Sea, fighting to survive against vicious pirates and monstrous creatures of the deep, meeting new allies and mysterious enemies of this world and another.

Now, Prince John must seize his birthright and lead his people in battle against the darkest forces man and nature can conjure against them.

Series Overview
 Not counting novellas or shorts, Prince of Outcasts is the thirteenth book in the Emberverse or "Novels of the Change" series. That's a lot of books. While there are some natural breaks in the series, it would take a really open-minded reader to jump in at this point and really enjoy the book alone. However, there are plenty of breadcrumbs to serve as reminders for readers with short memories (the first book is now twelve years old, after all) and to help orient newcomers. Most new readers are probably going to want to start at the beginning of the series.

Reviewing the WHOLE SERIES would be a very ambitious undertaking. I adored the first book, Dies The Fire. Five stars to that one. I've re-read it several times, and I'm not a big re-reader. After that, in my opinion the books are a little uneven -- there's almost an ebb-and-flow pattern where one book sets up a conflict and the next book or two enacts it. Some books are more engaging than others. Even so, I look forward every September to visiting this future/past world with its vividly imagined communities, leaders, cultures, and stories. A bare-bones synopsis: Dies The Fire is a truly riveting post-apocalyptic novel that posits something like a global EMP. In an instant, every electrical, electronic, and solid-state device ceases to function. Planes fall out of the sky. Many, many people die. As a fictional twist in the Emberverse, in that moment, all such technology is permanently disabled, and also, combustion, steam pressure, and explosives cease to work as expected-- read: guns don't work, nor do engines, steam turbines, etc. I've had a few techy friends point out that if Boyle's Law is broken, there's a good chance the human (or any animal) body would also not work correctly, but my response is always, "that's where the fiction part of science fiction comes in...".

The thing I love the most about the first three books is the way Stirling rebuilds society. The aftermath is catastrophic. Food pipelines are shattered and only those in rural, thinly populated areas where crops and game are available can survive. But communities coalesce. They have to. The roles of character, charisma, luck, and especially story in the nucleation of diverse new communities is endlessly fascinating. The way that language and culture evolve is endlessly fascinating. Given the technology for travel and communications (pre-industrial), there are endless byways to explore. One of my favorite sidebars was about an enclave of Boy Scouts whose plane crashed in the Rockies, coming home from the national Jamboree.  Wikipedia has a really extensive entry on the series if you'd like more in the way of series background. 

After the third book, the nature of the series changes from post-apocalyptic-reactionary to future-low-tech-fantasy with a more supernatural spin on good vs. evil. The Big Bad takes the form of a sort of spirit or power that can possess humans. These humans lack free will, are controlled by the leader of this force, and are extra hard to kill. They're almost like golems. The possession mechanism seems to be protracted eye contact. Although there is a definitive victory in book 9, it seems that you can't keep a good demon down, and new incarnations appear. Starting with the 11th book, The Golden Princess, we embark on the third generation's adventures, which expand into the Pacific Rim with the appearance of Reiko, a young Japanese monarch whose destiny has some parallels with Órlaith, the titular princess.

OK, so FINALLY I can talk about this book, Prince of Outcasts.  Thanks for sticking with me so far! This here's a fightin' book. There are sea-battles, and jungle battles, and some nifty gadgety weapons. You know that scene with Q in every Bond movie? That happens, only with a sort of repeating-rifle-cross-bow thing. There's a sea monster in the southwest Pacific that's somehow connected to a dude in Boise. There are feuding islanders in an uneasy truce, led by Prince John and an eccentric female explorer-adventurer-quasi-royalty from Australia and England (Pip). There's a lot going on in this book.

I would call it more of a setting-up book than a big-conflict book, as evidenced by the cliff-hanger ending. There's no real resolution to the new storylines that are introduced. But if you're a fan of the series, you're going to enjoy the entrée into a new theater, an exploration of islander culture, and the hints of conspiracy threaded throughout.  As backstory for Pip, we get a little taste of the post-change Australia, re-imagined as Capricornia, and the rambunctious, stubbornly plebian society there, which is fun. There's some maneuvering back in Montival for Reiko's return to Japan.

This would definitely not be the book to jump into the Emberverse with. If you don't want to go all the way back to the beginning, I would start with The Golden Princess, or even The Desert and the Blade, just before this one. While longtime fans have run into this Big Bad before, I think the concept is sufficiently fleshed out in the last book or two that you don't need the background to appreciate the story.

Stirling's style is marked by detailed description of everyday life -- from food, to tools and weapons, to art and agriculture. He's a logistician and can tell you exactly how to move enough supplies for an army across two hundred miles of terrain. He's a strategist and can outline the military movements for archers, infantry, horse, or naval maneuvers. He's a politician and a sociologist and constructs alliances and feuds that shape his fictional universe as definitively as the 1998 real landscape of roads and raw materials. The technology of this alternate future is entirely the product of his ingenious brain but you'll believe that it sprang from a dozen different sources, products of diverse geography, history, resources, and culture. You may find this fascinating, or you may find it tedious. I admit to skimming a little bit sometimes. But mostly I love it.

He's also got a tendency to polarize the Good and the Bad. Good People are not sexist, racist, or homophobic. Good People pull their weight, do their share, and fight for what's right. Good People appreciate art and music and are respectful of each other and of the environment. Good People do not seek power for power's sake and do not take advantage of the weaker. His myriad civilizations pretty much fall one way or the other. There's not a lot of ambiguity. But while there might not be much moral complexity to the series, there is certainly no lack of texture, ingenuity, or adventure. Above all Stirling is a master storyteller, and this is one of my favorite series.

The Q-like scene (with a sample of the engineering detail):

Her prang-prangs opened up. They were basically huge crossbows with a set of leaf-springs at the front like a massive bowstave, but the devil was in the details and the engineers of Townsville Armory had come up with something quite devilish. Each had a simple hydraulic cocking mechanism that pulled a traveler back against the half-ton resistance of the springs and then released it if the triggers were held down. A hopper above fed six-inch steel darts machine-cut from rebar, given a crude point and spiral grooving to make it spin and provide some stability, letting one drop into the slot each time the traveler came back..

The power was provided by pairs of men sitting on the deck to either side of the weapon below the bulwark, the soles of their feet against each other and their hands on the bars of a rocking pump as they surged back and forth. Prang-prangs didn't have the range or the ship-killing battering power of conventional catapults. What they did have was speed.

Are you an Emberverse fan? what would you add?

Around the Web
Moe Lane (Cthulu? Really?)
Looks like reviews are a bit scarce so far. If you've reviewed this book, let me know in comments and I'll add your link!

Sunday Soup - September 4

In The Soup This Week... Book Riot, Kalisha Buckhanon, Kayla Bashe, Sarah MacLean, S.B. Divya, SM Stirling, Jeffe Kennedy, Domino Finn (as you can see, I'm still catching up on reporting out my summer reading!)

Soup Dish:  on my mind/good links

✽Bookish scrapbooking supplies! Woo! OK, they're for planners, I guess that's a thing? But perfect for my book-event scrapbook(s). I am eyeballing these stickers and this washi tape. Thanks to Jessica at Book Riot for the roundup.

✽Found this article on diverse-YA author Kalisha Buckhanon in my alumni magazine: "Fiction can live. The stories can live well past the moment and teach people much later in the future what life was at a certain moment in time for certain people. Nonfiction, besides some of the most powerful treatises or legal decisions that changed the states of the world, or anointed essayists like [James] Baldwin and [Joan] Didion, is ephemeral. It moves with the times, and time moves very fast. So it must be much more aggressive in its address. Fiction can relax, because we have novels like The Bluest Eye and Their Eyes Were Watching God that leap through time."

✽Given the rise of a fascist, racist, xenophobic, scapegoating presidential candidate in the US, Nazi-sympathizing children's books seem particularly insidious. Commentary on "A Year of Borrowed Men" -- and by "borrowed," the author means "forced labor from POWs." Hat tip to @KaylaBashe.

Saved and Sampled:  titles that caught my eye on social media, samples waiting on my Kindle to be, well, sampled. As you can see, I'm not doing my TBR-reduction plan any good.

Samples:
Death Becomes Her (the Kurtherian Gambit), by Michael Anderle
NEXT! The Search for My Last First Date, by Robert James
The Dark Knight's Captive Bride, by Natasha Wild
Surrendering (Regent Vampire Lords Vol 1), by K.L. Krieg

Saved/Marked for Later
Loved by the Dragon by Vivienne Savage
All for a Rose (The Blood Realm Series Book 1), by Jennifer Blackstream
Fish Out of Water, by Hailey Edwards

What I'm reading
Some from the last week or so, some from earlier this summer:

✽A Scot in the Dark, by Sara MacLean. A lovely historical with the most brave, vulnerable heroine and amazing Scottish hero. Look for a full review this week, released last Tuesday.

✽Runtime, by S. B. Divya. Great futuristic novella about an underdog in a cybernetic-enhanced race. The world-building was really fun and layered. There were some bits that didn't seem important for this story but could play into a longer series. The author says a sequel is in the works but not sold yet. Here's hoping the world gets to read it. A little YA, a little post-apocalyptic, but to my mind, basically a classic speculative sci-fi story. Diverse characters & author, if you're tracking that.

✽Prince of Outcasts, by S. M. Stirling. Another installment of a favorite series. In the ongoing re-building of civilization, the new generation of adventurers from Montival face the latest incarnation of the supernatural "Big Bad." Cliffhanger ending. Also will get the full review treatment soon; title releases this Tuesday.

✽Pages of the Mind, by Jeffe Kennedy. I read this quite a bit earlier in the summer.  I always think the Tala books are shorter than they really are; the pages just fly by while I'm immersed in the world and the characters. This story kicks off a possible spinoff series from The Mark of the Tala series (that I loved), starring a familiar character who had the feel of a sidekick for the heroines of the first trilogy. In this book, the sidekick steps up to a starring role, and it's incredibly satisfying. It's the "always the bridesmaid, never a bride" character who gets her own hero -- and wooo, what a hero. Set on an island with an active volcano, language barriers, and very blurry lines between allies and enemies, Dafne the librarian must leave her comfort zone behind the scenes. I loved it.

✽Dead Man, by Domino Finn. I saw this one on a Facebook ad, and I thought the premise was really interesting (great cover, too). I've been looking for some new UF to try, and this was pretty good.  The Latino main character, Cisco Suarez, wakes up in the midst of danger, to an unfamiliar world and an unfamiliar body. It's a bit of a spoiler to tell you that it turns out he's been an undead zombie for 10 years. The story of how he regains his life is pretty interesting. Lots of voodoo-flavored magic paired with gangland violence, set in Miami. Three book series, I need to look into getting the next one. When my TBR permits...

I have a few more in the backlog, but I'll save them for next week...


That's it for this week. Happy reading!

Sunday Soup - August 28

In The Soup This Week... Some Pacific Northwest book events, romance books in Nigeria, Cecilia Tan, Alisha Rai

Soup Dish:  on my mind/good links

✽Dang, you know it's been a busy-- and fleeting-- summer and here I am again saying "I can't believe it's been so long since my last Soup post!  Truth is, I got a big wave of RustCity authors taking me up on my profile offer and that kept me way busier than I expected.  The conference was a ton of fun, and I want to do a small debrief, but it's still on the list.  So far, "laundry" and "back to school prep" have rated higher and I'm still not completely happy with the status quo on those to-do items... so there we are.

--addendum: I really, really tried to get this done last night but my eyes just glazed over around 11. Soup: delayed, but better late than never.

✽Romance is subversive. I never knew that, really, until I joined conversations online with other romance readers, but I believe it to be true. This article is further proof.

✽ I caught wind of a local-ish romance event in Portland, but can't make it work with my schedule. Anyone else going? (warning, the youtube video launches when you land there).  And I gotta say, it kinda hurts to give up on the Historical Romance Retreat, because I really wanted to go, but alas, my travel days/budget are all accounted for otherwise. I hope they have it next year! Finally, I'm super-excited to see that Courtney Milan is making an appearance at the Greater Seattle RWA conference this year! I won't be at the con proper, since it is really for serious authors, but I am putting the Reader Appreciation Event into my calendar right now.  Some of the names that are making me squee are Darynda Jones, Eva Leigh, and Margaret Mallory. Eeeee!  Anyone else going?  Would love to get together!

✽Unrelated to romance/reading, but the mind-stretching exercise of the moment for me is parsing through the amazing content at the Gapminder Foundation. It's truly a breath of fresh air in gaining real understanding of global issues.

What I'm reading
So my reading volume is down quite a bit, and probably half is for RTBookReviews.com. But since it's been such a long time since I've done a Soup post, I have a backlog I can talk about.   

✽Wild Licks, Cecilia Tan. Wow. Whew. Hot. Am reduced to monosyllables.  Well, almost. Anyway, I really liked it, even though I wasn't wild about the first Tan novel I picked up a couple years ago.  I will be reading the rest of this series. Angsty rock star hero, not-as-innocent-as-she-looks society sweetheart heroine.

✽Play With Me, Alisha Rai -- this is currently free, which might be why I picked it up, but I'm also a fan of Alisha Rai even when she's not giving it away. Ahem.  Reunion fantasy between two well-matched protagonists who know what they want and aren't afraid to talk about it like grown-ups. Awesome.

✽Hell Breaks Loose, a Devil's Rock Novel, by Sophie Jordan.  This wasn't my favorite read. The premise is that the POTUS's daughter is kidnapped by a gang of criminals. Meanwhile, the hero coincidentally breaks out of prison and reunites with his skeevy brother, who, you guessed it, is part of this gang. I think if you like gritty kidnap scenarios, you'll like it fine; it's tightly written with a lot of action and good characters, but it was a bit tooooo gritty for me. So more personal taste than problematic book.

✽Cast in Hellfire, SM Reine.  I was pretty disappointed in this one, it wasn't much like Cast in Angelfire, which I thought had a lot of interesting world-building and politicking. This one was set in an alternate dimension that pretty much aligns with the western concept of Hell, with the protagonists questing for Marion's memories. It was meant to be twisty and surprising, but it seemed rambly and confusing to me, with some gratuitous gruesomeness thrown in.

2016 Book Goals
✽Stash reduction - man, this is such a fail. Maybe it's the review of Hellfire above, but for some reason my mind is going to the question of Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic? If I were more creative, I would try to re-write it with books entering my house, but I don't think it would be nearly as entertaining.  Basically, sometime between now and 2030, expect a news report of a house in the Seattle area exploding due to jusssst... one... more... book being squeezed into a bookcase.

✽Nonfiction. Nope. Zero progress since April. I will shoot for one or two more books this year but 1 per month was clearly over-ambitious.

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That's it for this week. Happy reading!