The Iron Princess by Barbara Hambly

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

Barbara Hambly, well-known author of the Benjamin January mystery series,  returns to fantasy with THE IRON PRINCESS.

Clea is the second daughter of a very rich merchant prince, one of the rulers of the city. Far from a pampered socialite, she’s been disinherited a couple times and spent her formative years on the run, learning tradecraft from the thieves and secret fighters of her mother’s family.  She hates her father but there’s still just a bit of loyalty left.

This is a grim world. Magic used to be reliable, but over the last few generations spells increasingly go awry. The substance adamine helps it work, and so the search for it becomes larger and larger, with thousands of slaves brutally treated to dredge adamine from dangerous swamps and rivers.

Out of the five classes of mages, only the Crystal Mages seem to have control of their magic, but Clea believes they have malign intent.  Horrible monsters are erupting from the adamine mining areas, killing hundreds, and Clea has seen the Crystal Mages attempting to control the monsters for their own ends.  They also seem to have designs on her younger half-brother, whom Clea loves despite herself. Clea is determined to save her people and her little brother.

She goes in search of a legend, the incredibly powerful magician Ithrazel who supposedly destroyed an entire city 75 years ago, and was punished for it – bound to a rock in another world, with giant eagles disemboweling him every day only for him to resurrect each night.  Of course she’s going to find him. Then it’s just a matter of forcing him to work with her…easier said than done.

Hambly has wonderful powers of description. The world is described in detail, although there isn’t much beauty here – I would have liked a few more moments of grace for the characters to enjoy.  But there are some lovely phrases your eye will go back to. The characters are well-drawn, you know who’s talking without being told.  Clea is tough and determined, Ithrazel tired but even after decades of torture, he’s slowly finding it within himself to care what happens.  Hamo turns out to be a lot more interesting than I thought; would have been good to see more flashes of that. However, the reader will notice stereotypes.

It was slow to get moving. I wasn’t sure at first exactly why Clea went in search of Ithrazel – what did she expect him to do?  Then I waited expectantly for Hambly to explain why he’d destroyed the city (that seemed a rather large character flaw) and I wasn’t disappointed.  In the second half the action really gets going and it all comes to rather an explosive ending.  I really liked the explanation behind the Crystal Mages’ need for young mages, I definitely wasn’t expecting that.

I don’t know if Hambly intends to make this a series or not. It works as a standalone, but there are still plenty of problems for Clea or Ithrazel to solve if the author decides to go back to it.  So – excellent world-building, good characters, and good pacing after the first part.

Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie

Review by Pat D. (pat0814)

Cousins Selasi and Akorfa are born in Ghana on the same day, and become integral to each other’s lives through their childhood.  Despite their different personalities and different family situations, they are inseparable until Selasi’s mother dies in childbirth, and she is sent to live with her grandmother and extended family.  Akorfa studies diligently with the hope of becoming a neurosurgeon after graduating from an American university.  She is admitted to Pitt, and very upset with having to deal with insidious forms of racism.  Selasi eventually flourishes as a restaurant owner until she has a dispute with a high-ranking political figure.

Akorfa and Selasi’s stories are told in two different parts of the novel, leading to a better understanding of the rift that developed between them.  As adult women, they are forced to deal together with the common atrocity that both endured separately.  There is a common theme in this book of families worried about what others think of them, and achieving perceived prestige at any cost.
Algonquin continues its tradition of publishing noteworthy books.  I will read whatever they publish.

4 stars

The Case of the Negligent Nymph by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1959 mystery starts with the usual working girl – pretty, naturally; full of moxie, certainly – needing super-lawyer Perry Mason when she finds herself in a jam. Perry is in a canoe scoping out a millionaire’s island on behalf of a client in a real estate case. The naked nymph, pursued by a savage dobie, swims up to the canoe so Perry saves her and takes her to her own battered yacht.

The next day Perry finds out that the game and canny beauty he rescued is wanted by the cops on suspicion of stealing $50K worth of gems from the millionaire’s island mansion. She is apprehended and bound over for trial for grand theft. In an exciting courtroom scene, Perry fires off legal fireworks during a cross-examination and gets her bail whittled down to a manageable $2,500.

Things start looking up for the accused, but, self-reliant to a fault, she makes errors in judgment, the worst of which are not following Perry’s legal advice and then lying to him. Perry ends up defending her on the inevitable murder charge.

He finds his back up against the proverbial wall yet again since he faces as many legal woes as his client does if he doesn’t find out the truth. Perry kicks himself for letting impulse rule him and helping the fibbing brat in the first place, but he defends her with all he’s got. Perry acknowledges his own fallibility and is thus compassionate about the short-comings of others.

Usual. Of course. Inevitable. Why return again and again to the Perry Mason stories that invariably feature damsels in distress, the powerful exploiting the vulnerable, and the cunning and resourceful hero who combines wise tactics and swift action to exonerate the innocent? Because these irresistible elements, the essentials of heroic myth and folktales, possess magical appeal to our sense of fairness and courage that is hard-wired in us because we are human beings wired with the same nature.

Sure, everybody wants an honest, loyal and efficient lawyer that will fight when the going gets rough. But even more, everybody wants a supporter, an advocate who knows their weaknesses and understands messed-up choices but pleads their case eloquently and shrewdly anyway.

I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro

Review by Melissa B. (dragoneyes)

I honestly didn’t know who Tig Notaro was, yet, somehow, everywhere I looked, this book kept popping up. I finally decided to see what it was about. The synopsis showed a person who went through a horrific period and used comedy to help get them through it. As I was going through a string of bad luck, I decided that this might be just what I needed.

The book starts out with giving us a glimpse into Tig’s childhood. Raised by a mother who loved to party and a stepfather with a military background that was strict, Tig recalled the joys of childhood. I loved that she could call out her parents issues but still show their love for her and have that same love for them. Then the book goes from school to her setting out on her own. She finds a job in the music industry that pays little but one that she really enjoys. Later on, she finds herself up on stage as a comedian and it is all up hill until it isn’t.

In a span of months, Tig’s life starts to fall apart. First she get pneumonia then from there she gets C-diff. With that sickness, she loses an extreme amount of weight and almost doesn’t make it. Once she is out of the hospital, she is still very sick and in pain when she finds out her mother is dying. Reeling from the loss of her mom, she then goes through a break-up with her girlfriend and soon after is diagnosed with breast cancer. She goes through a period of feeling sorry for herself (who wouldn’t??).

Then decides that if she is going to die, she is going to do what she loves and get up on stage to laugh and make others laugh. She goes to her next comedy set and starts of with, “Hello. How are you? I have cancer.” That is the moment she becomes a star.

From there she talks about healing, not only physically but mentally. She goes on to talk about relationships and how they are so important, even more so now. It was a soul crushing journey but so uplifting in the end. Felt very grateful that she shared her story.

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

Review by Pat D. (pat0814)

Chloe Davis, a psychologist, is the daughter of a serial killer, a man who killed six teen-aged girls and kept a piece of their jewelry as a memento before being apprehended and convicted. Chloe at 12 was the person who found, recognized and turned the information into the police. As the 20-year anniversary of his conviction approaches, two more teenage girls go missing.

Chloe is now engaged to Daniel Briggs, a man who seems to good to be true. Her brother, Cooper, expresses his reservations about Daniel to her as the reports of the current missing girls emerge. There are many rabbit holes to enter as the mystery of the disappearances continues – lots of surprising twists and turns.

Brewing Up a Storm by Emma Lathen

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1996 mystery is the second to the last of 23 novels starring Wall Street banker John Putnam Thatcher. In a tribute to common sense, the amateur sleuth thinks through the facts to identify who murdered an activist. Readers who enjoy clues presented in the classic “fair play” whodunnit will like this one.

After her divorce and with nothing to do, empty nester Madelaine Underwood founded NOBBY, No Beer Buying Youngsters. Its mission is to combat alcohol use by teenagers. It’s campaigning against Quax, a nonalcoholic beer sold on the Coke and Pepsi shelves. NOBBY claims drinking Quax will lead kids to drinking Kix, the real beer made by the same brewer.

Mrs. Underwood is a narcissist who feels entitled to center stage and has never worked in the ranks of an organization in her life. Messes she creates are for the little people to clean up. Lathen spends about a third of the book leading up to the crime, which may put out mystery fans like me who prefer the corpus delicti in chapter one. But I found the context entertaining and instructive. For instance, Lathen is plausible contrasting the true believers who volunteer in the advocacy group and the clear-eyed professionals that make it run smoothly.

Lathen was the pen name of a female writing team of an attorney and an economist. She had a bead on how people think and act, not just titans of Wall Street but also middle managers, technocrats, clerical staff and volunteers in grassroots organizations who are sincerely concerned about things like gateway beverages affecting themselves or their kids. The overall tone is taken from her series hero banker sleuth John Putnam Thatcher – that is, curious, discerning, bemused, and tolerant.

Written in the late 1990s, are these books dated? Sure, she knew the business world of her era and with three recessions since the early 2000s our landscape now is very different. But we can still enjoy the white-collar detective Thatcher and Lathen’s insights into organizational behavior, managerial style, and the psychology of anxiety, ambition, and conceit. Intelligent, literate, fun, highly recommended.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Review by Pat D. (pat0814)

Do not miss reading this book.  I was completely immersed in the plot and characters of this book from the beginning.  I rarely think that a book merits a five-star rating, but this is a true treasure.  I learned a lot about India and its politics as an adjunct to the lives of the characters.  There was no sermonizing, moralizing or self-pity; however, our limited understanding of the conditions under which they lived made their actions and reactions very real.  I found the writing to be tight and exactly right for the tone of the book – no spare sentiments that weren’t necessary to achieve the required insights.  The ending is superlative – it is the way the book had to end in order to complete our knowledge of the lives that were lived.  The utter despair is beyond comprehension for those of us who live with a sense of security.  It will be difficult to find a worthy successor now that I have finished this remarkable book.

5 Stars