I just finished reading How to Talk to Girls at Parties, by Neil Gaiman, which is available absolutely free for Kindle here. It’s actually a short story, presented along with a free preview of Gaiman’s next novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

The title obviously interested me from the git-go (though it didn’t actually help in that department), but the story in itself is a pretty clever one, combining a sensitive portrayal of teenage shyness and angst with a space alien story. I think saying anything more would spoil it. Pretty good, and hey, it’s free.

Full disclosure: Author Robert Treskillard is an internet friend of mine, and I got my review copy free.



You’d think it would be hard to do a fresh take on Merlin and the Arthur saga, but Robert Treskillard delivers a story that’s quite original in Merlin’s Blade, throwing out parts of the traditional tale, altering others, but hewing close enough to the main points to satisfy most enthusiasts, I think.

My review has to be mixed. I found the story creative and compelling, and the characters – mostly – well developed and interesting. The execution of the narrative, however showed a number of weaknesses.

We meet Treskillard’s Merlin as a young man, the son of a village blacksmith, nearly blinded in a wolf attack (wolves keep trying to kill him, for reasons only hinted at), but able to get around fairly well in his familiar environs. A strange rectangular stone, originally a meteor, is brought forth by a group of Druids, bent on reviving the old religion among the Christian Britons. Merlin finds himself, along with his friends from a nearby monastery, drawn into a political conflict, not only between Christians and heathens, but between various chieftains carrying old grudges. He falls in love with the local magistrate’s daughter and joins the high king’s court as an apprentice bard, but old secrets threaten his life, his family, and his faith itself.

I enjoyed the story – indeed, I was reading compulsively by the end – but the writing got in the way too often. Author Treskillard hasn’t mastered his wordsmithing. He blends modern slang and antique diction, to sometimes jarring effect (he also doesn’t know how to use the “-eth” suffix, on the one occasion he attempts it). People do and say things now and then that don’t feel in character, but seem forced for the sake of a plot point or exposition. There are also movie tropes present which bother me, but probably won’t bother others – swords always scrape on metal when drawn (they don’t usually do that. Most sheaths were leather, and metal furniture was on the outside). Swords are worn on the back (generally impractical and anachronistic).

The best historical detail in the book involves a description of swordsmithing, something the author knows from experience and dramatizes with authority.

I think less critical readers (this book is aimed at young adults) will not pick as many nits with Merlin’s Blade as I did. Generally recommended. Very little objectionable content.

[Weather] said, “Look, whatever – I’m not talking about all of that. I’m talking about our daughter.”

“I know you are,” Lucas said. “And like I said, we’re all a little crazy, but basically, and overall, Letty’s okay.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s just like me,” Lucas said. “And I’m okay, mostly.”

I’ve praised John Sandford’s “Prey” novels, starring Minnesota state cop Lucas Davenport, more than once in this blog. It’s a pleasure to be able to report that Stolen Prey, the latest volume in paperback, maintains the high quality of a series that a lesser writer might reclined on.

My main complaint – though I think I understand his reasons – is that author Sandford starts the story off with a truly appalling crime – the torture and rape murders of a family of four in a suburban Minneapolis home. Gut-wrenching crimes have become an earmark of the Prey series, but I don’t think the story would have lost a lot if the kids had been left out of it. At least the family’s suffering is over by the time we arrive at the murder scene.

Having got past that, the rest of the ride is excellent. The police are convinced that this is the work of a Mexican drug gang, though they can’t figure out what the murdered father – an investment manager – could have had to do with that. The FBI and the DEA join in the investigation, along with a male/female Mexican police team. Continue reading Stolen Prey, by John Sandford →

Because I enjoyed Throne of Bones, Vox Day was kind enough to send me a copy of his new release, The Wardog’s Coin, which consists of two shorter stories set in the same universe.

I enjoyed them both, in different ways. The title story is more immediately accessible, being (so far as I can tell – I may have missed some subtext) a pretty straight war story about human mercenaries fighting an army of goblins and orcs for an elven king. It’s a rousing and tragic tale of men and war.

The second story, “Qalabi Dawn,” is more challenging but interesting on a couple of levels. It’s the story of a desert race of rational creatures who seem to be a cross between humans and big cats. A ruthless ruler conquers all the prides in order to defend his race as a whole from human aggression. Aside from offering a kind of metaphor for the place of Islam in the world, this story deals very successfully with a challenge I’ve tried to tackle myself in the past, with (I fear) debatable success – the conception and communication of a wholly alien ethos, imagining what creatures who really thought differently from us might be like.

Well done. Recommended.

Lee would have to be mad to send his divisions across that field. And Hunt was sure he would do it.

When I finished reading Ralph Peters’ Civil War novel Cain at Gettysburg, I almost checked my clothing for blood spatter.

Up until now Michael Shaara’s epic novel The Killer Angels has been considered not only the best Gettysburg novel ever written, but the best possible Gettysburg novel.

It’s been a long time since I read Shaara’s book, but I’m fairly certain that, for all its virtues, it didn’t have anything like the impact on me that Cain at Gettysburg did.

Cain at Gettysburg is a tactile book. It’s written at eye level – sometimes ground level – and leaves a powerful – occasionally sickening – impression of the actual experience of the men involved, generals and common soldiers alike. We are never far from the smells of gunpowder and dysentery and decomposing bodies. We feel the itch of the uniforms, the burning heat of the July sun, and the thirst and hunger of men who can never get sufficient clean water or food. Continue reading Cain at Gettysburg, by Ralph Peters →

A mystery set in a Norwegian-American community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was bound to get my attention, so I took advantage of a free download of Past Imperfect by Kathleen Hills. The book wasn’t bad, but I can’t describe it as compelling reading.

The year is 1950, and John McIntire, a native of the lakeshore town of St. Adele, has returned at last after five post-war years in England, during which he did something unspecified for the US government and married an English woman. His neighbors have elected him constable, noting that he seems to have little else to do with his time. Nobody expects him to have to investigate a murder. But his childhood friend Nels Bertelson is found dead on his fishing boat, killed by a bee sting, to which he was allergic. But why is his syringe of antivenin missing? And why are bees found in his clothing, as if planted there? John has hardly begun asking questions before a local teenage girl is found strangled, though her body disappears before the police can get to the spot. What’s it all about? Who could benefit from these deaths?

The mystery plot of Past Imperfect was all right, but the storytelling only so-so, in my opinion. Author Hills seems to have the same problem I’ve noted in many female authors – her male characters don’t come to life. Even the ones supposed to be energetic come off as remarkably passive. And everybody talks on and on, and when they’re not talking they’re paddling the stream of consciousness. Relationships are subjected to detailed forensic analysis. Past Imperfect moves much more slowly than it needs to.

Not generally objectionable, and not a waste of your reading time, I still can’t recommend Past Imperfect very highly.

There are elements in Max Allan Collins’ Mallory mystery novels which could easily have turned me against them. But Collins’ skill in handling sensitive issues is of so high a quality that he turns them into strengths. I thought this admirable element was especially on view in The Baby Blue Rip-Off, originally published in 1983 (which I’m constantly surprised to realize is a long time ago).

Mallory (his first name is never divulged) is a former soldier, former cop, and present mystery writer who has moved back to his home town of Port City, Iowa. When the story begins he’s been talked into doing a little volunteer work, delivering hot meals to elderly people. To his surprise he enjoys it, and becomes very fond of several old ladies on his route.

But on this night he finds a van backed up to one of the meal recipients’ houses. The place has been trashed and several men are carrying valuables out. Mallory gets seriously beaten, but his elderly friend is dead.

Sheriff Brennan warns Mallory not to try investigating on his own, but he does it kind of half-heartedly, having resigned himself to Mallory’s curiosity and his personal stake in the case. As he runs down clues, Mallory gets beaten up again, re-kindles an old romance, and confronts profound questions of love, trust, and betrayal.

What particularly pleased me – and this is fairly surprising in a book whose narrator unabashedly declares himself a Democrat – is how deftly author Collins handles the politics. This especially applies to Mallory’s relationship with Sheriff Brennan. The sheriff’s son went off to Vietnam with Mallory years ago, but only Mallory came back. Then Mallory got involved with Veterans Against the War, which Brennan saw as a kind of betrayal. But in this story the two men warily reach out to one another and form a bond.

This is a masterly example of a technique many authors (perhaps even me) can’t seem to get. A failure in this department completely spoiled fellow Iowa author Ed Gorman’s Sam McCain mysteries for me. Gorman couldn’t concede that a Republican could be anything other than an idiot or a scoundrel. Collins, to the contrary, first of all includes a liberal character who is a jerk (which obviously doesn’t mean all liberals are jerks, as Mallory’s a liberal himself), and a conservative character (Sheriff Brennan) who’s a decent human being.

That’s all it takes. You don’t have to pander to the other side. Just grant them a little humanity, and admit there can be faults on your own side. It was enough to charm me completely, and enable me to get behind Mallory with enthusiasm.

Mild cautions for adult material, including Mallory committing adultery with a married woman. Otherwise highly recommended.