Ice Man Cometh by C.T. Wente

I am going to be honest. I hate giving bad reviews. Sometimes when I find a book I don’t take to I try very hard to go through it again and again to find some redeming quality among the disappointment and despair. Sometimes I succeed and I am able to celebrate that one thing the author got right even when everything else feel so very short of my expectations. This is not the case with Wente’s story of industrial espionage and assassination which attempts far too much and ends up becoming a pale and weak story that I almost gave up on more than once. 

Ice Man Cometh follows a multi-layered story with multiple viewpoint characters based all over the world. It starts with a great deal of promise in that regard as well as Wente opens the scene to a terrible accident that revealed to be something far more sinister as the story unfolded. Here we see the titular 'Ice Man', a man only passingly referred to later in the text as Chilly, appear to fake a murder by masking it as an accident. Meanwhile on the otherside of the world in Flagstaff Arizona, a young woman called Jeri has become the recipient of a number of mysterious love letters that seem to be coming from all over the world with no rhyme nor reason to them. Jeri herself, a clever and bright young woman and a genius in economics is wasting her life working in a bar, hiding from a recent bereavement and unable to move on with her life. Parallel to this Tom Coleman, an agent for the Department of Homeland Security finds himself embroiled in the mystery as he pieces together a string of killings all over the world that are tied up with Jeri’s mysterious letters.

If you managed to get through that as a premise, then congratulations you have a cast iron mind for disparate and disjointed storylines. This is in essence the major problem I had with Ice Man Cometh, specifically that there is so much going it reads as though several smaller stories have been pressed together until they’re forced to twist into each other. While this may not have been a fatal flaw, it became one because the narratives of each part start off in such wildly different places. Jeri’s story is one of a single girl trying to find her place in the world while Tom’s is a story of ambition and investigation. Chilly’s story differs again as it follows a more tense area which leads us to death and destruction. For the first part of the book these diffuse elements don’t feel like they can be brought together which makes it all the more hard to treat this as a whole piece of fiction. While it does slowly begin to come together in a cohesive story it may well be too little too late for some as it would have meant trudging through well over a third of the book to get anywhere worth going. 

A weak overall story does not necessarily destroy a good book either. However, here Wente creates his characters with almost a sense of contempt. That is to say that I found no way to appreciate them or find good in them as they were in themselves all so selfish and hard to relate to. Jeri is a nice enough character but she is far too dull and passive, and while her agony over the death of her father is understandable, the fact that it seems to have paralysed her life seems a little less than organic. Similarly Tom is a boar of a man who doesn’t seem to understand he is the architect of his own tragedy on more than one occasion. While it might seem true to life on some occasions the rest of the time it just becomes tedious as I found myself seeing him bump from one bad move to the next with no overall awareness. These issues with characters leaves them feeling one dimensional for me and I was unable to relax and let them lead the way, leaving me lost and disconnected to an already weak and pontificating narrative. 

The one area where Ice Man Cometh truly failed in my opinion was in it’s shocking finale, or to be more exact it’s lack of shocking finale. The central mystery was one which persisted well into the climax which did at some level make me really want to know what was really going on behind the scenes of all these seemingly patterned killings and disappearances. However I ultimately found myself less than impressed with the final revelation which, while being explanatory, failed to be anything more than a huge anticlimax. It left me feeling cheated, and after sticking with the book for as long as I had I felt like my time was wasted. When a story like this fails in its big reveal it is a terrible thing, for it to fail here as well as in so many other areas it is pretty unforgivable. 

Getting right down to it Wente had an idea for a book, but rather than editing it down and streamlining his story he added too much making it come across as a bloated frankensteins monster of ideas. I have to stress that not one of these stories was totally bad on it’s own, but bound together as it was it felt too hodge podge and inconsistent to be any good, leaving me very unsure if I will ever want to pick up a Wente book again. It may be that there is an audience for this book somewhere, but if that is true then that is not a place I would like to visit. 

Rating: 0.5 out of 5

Ice Man Cometh is available from Amazon. Thanks to Netgalley for providing the review copy. 

Half Lies by Sally Green

Another day comes and goes and now it is time to find a little diversion with a short story from Sally Green’s amazing world of Black and White Witches in her short prequel story, Half Lies. Picking up this book I did feel a bit of apprehension, after all I had left less than impressed with the last short story I reviewed. However I was very happy with Half Lies which contained almost everything I loved about Sally Green’s unique take on a hidden magical world as well as look into one of Half Bad’s most interesting and exotic character’s Gabriel. 

Half Lies does not follow the story of series protagonist Nathan who made up such a powerful presence in Green’s first story. Instead the author took us away from Europe entirely to spend time with Gabriel, a mysterious character who came to be an important influence on Nathan near the first book’s conclusion. Gabriel himself is a black witch, living with his father and sister in America shortly before the main series began. The book, primarily told in the form of diary entries by Gabriel’s sister Michele, tells how the family moved to the coast to make a new life for themselves after roaming from town to town in a gypsy like lifestyle. Michele for her part is like many young women on the cusp of adulthood, bursting with hormones and longing to break free from her family while also trying to find harmony with her own latent magical gifts alongside her older brother, both of whom are gifted with the ability to transform into other people. What follows is a special insight into the world of Black Witches which had been somewhat lacking in Half Bad, and helped us to fill in some of the blanks to understand where Gabriel would come from and what challenges his character faced before Nathan came into the picture. 

I was still writing for SoSoGay when I picked up and reviewed Green’s first novel in this series, the innocuously named Half Bad. At the time I was not expecting all that much from the story which, from it’s premise, seemed a little too similar to Harry Potter for my taste (a young abused half blooded witch coming into his powers in a magical society which places a great deal of importance on the concept of blood purity). However, I was deeply surprised and impressed with the way that Green constructed her world of Black and White Witches who were in fact very different from what I had seen JK Rowling’s famous book saga. Now in Half Lies, which fills the role of a prequel novella, we were given a more in depth look at Green’s world using both new and familiar characters to add a whole new layer to the animosity that was ever present in Half Bad. It is this additional level of story which made this short all the more endearing and a little more balanced than Half Bad, which in retrospect was rather heavily weighted in the world of the Whites.

Characterwise there is a lot to like here, with the light being shone on Gabriel making me warm to him more. Likewise the character of Michele is something of a firecracker, an adolescent girl at a difficult age straddling childhood and adulthood and bearing traits from both sides. That said the additional characters of Skylar and her son Aidan were featured, but were sadly not given as much of a hook to really grab my attention as a reader. This left them feeling more like extras when I wanted to get in their face a little more and understand what they were about in this unusual world. It could be that Green is saving them for a future story, and I would welcome that, but I think it would have been better to spend a little less time on the romance side of the story to help really show them off. 

While I really enjoyed reading the book I couldn’t help but stumble a bit when I came across the rather cliche concept of love across the metaphorical battlefield. The concept is once that has been celebrated since Romeo and Juliet and while the facts may occasionally change the general premise is the same, featuring star-crossed lovers who you want to root for but you know will meet a sticky end. This is my one complaint since it felt a little too obvious, even in the face of the original treatment that Green gave her debut and showing herself as a force to be reckoned with. I suppose I was hoping for something more gratifying and spectacular, especially from an author who is more than equal to the task of doing that. While it doesn’t take away from what is a very good novella, it does somewhat feel undernourished and weak when compared to the previous instalment which I personally could not get enough of. 

I have said before that I find short stories to occasionally be a bit difficult. While in this context Half Lies is meant to complement the main series which started with Half Bad it didnt feel like a real part of the story so much as an offshoot which relied a little on cliche. However, aside from this stumbling block I found Green’s voice helped make up for this and she once again wraps herself in glory with a very good story which certainly got me itching to get a hold of her next book Half Wild. Lovers of the series so far will love Half Lies for what it is, and while it may not win fans, it will certainly help fill the gap between Half Bad and Half Wild as we prepare to once more enter Nathan’s world. 

Rating: 4 out of 5

Half Lies is available from Amazon and the iBooks Store

Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne by David Gaider

The next stop on my cavalcade of book reviews is a little indulgent and appeals to the gamer in me as well as the lover of high fantasy. Being a big fan of the Dragon Age series of games I have never really felt tempted to look too far into the impressive back story as a great deal of it is information I gleaned from the games themselves. In the end though I decided to give The Stolen Throne a go which proved itself to be an interesting if occasionally inconsistent piece of fiction. 

The story is one that lovers of the original Dragon Age: Origins will know all about. Maric is the heir to the throne of Ferelden a mystical nation that has been subverted by the neighbouring Orlesian Empire. The rebels under the command of Maric’s mother had resisted but now the rebel queen has been betrayed and Maric is alone, hunted by his enemies and forced to take on the mantle of command far sooner than he wanted. Thankfully Maric, with the assistance of his new friend Loghain and his old comrade Rowan, is readying the rebels of Ferelden to retake their ancestral home and banish the Orlesian ususpers once and for all. 

When you get right down to it The Stolen Throne has a great lead in and an interesting enough premise, albeit one which could hardly be called original. Maric’s role is very much one of the reluctant hero making good, usually with the help of his often more talented friends and advisors. That is not to say that Maric is a wholly unoriginal character, indeed there are times where he exudes an easy charm which is very much palpable both to the other characters in the story as well as to the reader themselves. Indeed it might even be fair to say that there were times where I was beginning to struggle with the overarching narrative where I found myself pulled through by wanting to see what happens to Maric next. There are other characters that do make for interesting reading, however many of them seemed to be cut from similar moulds which made them largely interchangeable. Almost everyone else exuded a sense of dour almost miserable melancholy which, while keeping with the events of the story, made it feel as though we were trudging through a lot of rather grim storyline in order to find someone of interest. 

The pacing to The Stolen Throne is definitely an area that Gaider should have worked on a bit more cleverly. The passage of time from one setting to the next is inconsistent to say the least with some chapters taking place over the same space of time only to suddenly jump years and months ahead in the course of a few sentences. This is especially glaring near the story’s conclusion which felt overly rushed and lacking in punch as a result. This also applies to some of the interactions between the characters, with some of them acting as though they have known each other for years when in the story it had only been days and vice versa. This left it very difficult for me to immerse myself in the narrative and it was a shame to see since I wanted to enjoy the book a lot more than I did. 

That is not to say that Gaider’s book is a total disappointment as it did have it’s moments which really stood out, particularly when characters I knew from the game series such as the mysterious witch of the wilds Flemeth. This is where we come to the fundamental issue of The Stolen Throne, in that it relies too heavily on the source material from which it is derived. While Dragon Age possesses a vast codex of information and lore about it’s history and supporting characters we are only focusing on a relatively short period of time in a specific setting which means the challenge was on Gaider to make something special using the information at his disposal. The general effect though is weak at times and if you were to take away the links to the game then you would be left with a fantasy adventure by the numbers which is so dry it occasionally left a bad taste in my mouth. 

Looking at the story as a whole I have to concede that there are a few good points that stand out, but it is not enough to really save The Stolen Throne from being a very ordinary jaunt through a fantasy kingdom. While I am a big fan of Dragon Age I would certainly think twice before I drop my hard earned cash on another book when the games are mostly superior in every way. I would love to say this is one for the fans, I am not entirely sure that the fans would find this book all that diverting. 

Rating: 2 out of 5

The Stolen Throne by David Gaider is available for purchase from Amazon and the iBooks Store

Manifest by Alden Lila Reedy

                                 

The next story I am reviewing is a comparatively short one compared to Die Again, but then in my experience how long your story is doesn’t matter, what does matter is how it makes you feel… while that does sound like an innuendo in the making it has to be said that Manifest is a well written, albeit flawed story that works and doesn’t work in almost equal measure. 

The premise of the short is a simple one which follows our protagonist Chris as he enters into the world of cosplay. Having an interest in sowing served as his entry and he began to make costumes reflecting his favourite anime characters. From here he makes new friends and enters a whole new world of freedom which is in stark contrast to his conservative christian upbringing which allows him to explore himself in ways he never has before. Then one day Chris begins to go deep into himself and realises that he is beginning to like wearing women’s clothes at conventions, and then also at home. Chris realises he is trans, a girl in a man’s body and finds herself starting a new journey that she didnt expect.

There is an inherent difficulty in reviewing a short story compared to a full novel. A short story only has a short time to get it’s point across and flesh out its characters and in this regard I have to congratulate Reedy who has done well to do all this in a very small number of pages. That said the issue of self identity and coming out as trans is a complicated and very difficult process for some with a large number of problems and pitfalls which can make life very difficult for the individual doing it. This is where the short length doesn’t go in the story’s favour as it leaves us with a very short amount of time to get to know Chris as a boy exploring his love of cosplay before realising she is trans. The revelation where Chris actually comes to realise she is trans is also done almost insultingly quickly as a result of a night of internet searches around the subject. While I do not doubt that there are people who always knew they weren’t in the right skin, for Chris’ character it doesn’t quite ring true and feels like we were rushing to a conclusion too quickly.

Another issue I took with ‘Manifest’ was the very vague nature of the details. The characters have names and ages but that is about it, leaving Chris as the narrator describing anime princess or men in suits but leaving out their names and relying on those titles to be almost their whole description. As a lover of anime I could have done with more detail to help set the scene and give the story as a whole a more solid ground on which to build from. As it is the story is too amorphous dealing mostly in vague set ups with few features making the resultant narrative have an almost dream-like narrative. This is not necessarily a bad thing but this lack of physicality makes it hard for the story to leave a lasting impression, I myself read it and almost forgot about it within a week. 

There are some saving graces to Reedy’s story, however, as the author has managed to find the voice of a young trans person who is just opening up to who she really is and exploring it without shame. This was done well and while it was rushed I have to commend the author for being brave enough to even dare to write about a young trans girl when so many wouldn’t be able to enter that character’s mind and understand them. 

Looking at the whole of this short story I liked that Reedy wanted to write this kind of story, but I thought that it needed a little more weight to it in order to really devote time and do justice to the themes on offer. Really this could have been so much better had Reedy tried to make it more of a novella or a full blown book since there is so much that couldn’t be done in these few words that really could have been explored. Altogether it was a good attempt but fell short of my expectations.

Rating: 2.5/5

Manifest is available now on Amazon and the iBooks Store. Thanks to NetGalley for providing the book to review. 

Die Again by Tess Gerritsen

The first book I decided to review was something of a new one for me for a variety of reasons. On the one hand it is part of an existing series of books which I had not yet read, and secondly it is also one of the first murder mystery books I have ever read that did not have a paranormal or supernatural bent to it. This is part of the reason why I chose it, since it represents a choice that I had never gone for before to see how this book measures up on its own merits rather than relying on all the entrants that had gone before it. I am pleased to report then that by and large Die Again is a well written and cohesive mystery which gives the reader a lot to digest in its deceptively short read time.

The popular series of books works on the friendship between policewoman Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Doctor Maura Isles as they work together to solve murders in their native home city of Boston, MA. In this adventure however, we have seen some strain between the pair as their friendship has hit some tough times due to elements in each of their personal lives. Meanwhile a new kind of murderer has come to Boston killing their victims in a way which points the duo to a series of deaths which occurred in Botswana over six years beforehand. Now this dynamic duo must look into the past and seek the aid of a reluctant and terrified witness to help solve their murder and resolve the mystery of what happened in Africa all those years ago.

As a synopsis to a mystery I have to admit I was impressed with how Gerritsen presented the central mystery and slowly constructed the facts around it. The manner in which the police and the medical examiner come up with different theories behind the killer's motivation was executed very well and felt organic. Similarly her use of the Leopard Men as an inspiration was a powerful and chilling move since it gave us an idea of a murderer who was simultaneously ritualistic and yet ruthless. This idea was compounded as the novel slowly wound its way to its conclusion and we were confronted with the final revelation of the perpetrator's identity which really demonstrated just how clever Gerritsen was. The additional trivia - pertaining to leopards, big cats and indeed hunter culture also served to construct the world and made for a very absorbing read.

In terms of character sadly I found the main characters slightly wanting. Isles and Rizzoli are clearly well written but due to my having never read the previous books I found myself struggling to connect to them in any real way as it felt like most of their story had been told in previous instalments. Some readers may say I would feel differently had I read the earlier books, however, I cannot help but feel the book needs to draw me into that relationship no matter where we are in the series. This is remedied a little bit as we near the end and Rizzoli opens up about her tragic history and Isles wrestles with her conflicting feelings with her mother. Sadly though it was too little too late as I was more drawn into the mystery than their own personal narrative.

One thing which surprised me was how drawn into the Botswana murders I was since it was mostly a side story peppered throughout the book. It was here that I was acquainted with the point-of-view character of Millie and I found her story to be so much more enthralling than I did when I was following along with the two main characters. Without wanting to spoil anything Millie's story provides elements which would serve to make the resolution possible and it was this lead up which had me hooked in. Indeed the description of the bush in her sections was wonderfully detailed and presented a world that is simultaneously familiar while also being more alien. It also gave us something of a nameless threat as the leopards and hyenas are described as perfect killers hovering just out of sight and preparing to scavenge for a fresh kill. It was an interesting parallel to the main storyline and helped to keep me interested and hooked when the main characters missed the mark in doing so.

Altogether Die Again is a mixed bag but it is definitely better than average. Gerritsen is a wonderful writer and her ability to weave a story peppered with information for a reader to absorb is amazing. That said the main characters didn't quite feel like they were at their best and left me feeling cold, but was saved by the unexpected character of Millie whose story felt leagues more interesting. The central mystery was also very well executed and definitely left me feeling rewarded for sticking with Die Again and maybe even convinced me to keep an eye for future books in the series.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Die Again is available now on Amazon and the iBooks Store. Thanks to NetGalley for providing the book to review. 

The Library is Open

As I find myself of reflecting on another year I came to think of the many interests and hobbies I have had in my 27 years on this planet. Indeed I thought of how much they have changed and fluctuated as time has passed. That is except for two which still continue to be the most important things I have in my life, namely my love of good books and my fervent desire to write. 

I have been blessed to work as a writer for a number of online publications as well as a short stint as an intern at the great British institution that is GT. In that time I have been awarded the responsibility of being a literature editor and an editor-in-chief, and the pleasure of reviewing great books which I have loved and treasured long after I moved on to the next story. So then as I decided what I would do to mark a new year the idea to start my own book review blog seemed so amazingly obvious I was surprised I did not think to do it before.

So it was that a week ago I sat down and I penned the title of my new blog and named it The Empty Library. 

Some people might find the name a little odd or nihilistic, after all what is more depressing than a library that is devoid of books? But I say that this is the definition of pessimism against optimism. After all while an empty bookshelf might seem strange to some, I see it as an opportunity to fill it with new stories and books that can entertain, thrill and maybe even change your life. So what would that mean if I could fill a library with such stories and then be able to tell people about the amazing books I have had the chance to read? Well I tell you now, I think it would be pretty awesome, don't you?

Thanks to my time as an editor I have been able to work with the amazing site Netgalley and a number of publishers and authors who have shown me their work with excitement. It seems only right then to continue that relationship forward to my new blog and start a new chapter in my journey to become a writer. It is also a great opportunity to try out genres I have never read before, and authors I have never even heard of before now. So if you, like me, are a great book lover then please come back and visit some time as I read and review books and tell you what you need to have on your bookshelf.

As a writer myself I may also pepper the library with some short stories of my own, and a few personal entries to let you get to know the man behind the blog and what I do when I'm not reading or writing. 

So now the time has come to open up the empty library and let it fill up with stories galore. Check back often for book reviews and news and a little personal flavour to go with it... and by flavour I really mean wine...

Catch you soon book lovers!