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The Jevlir Caravansary

Month: August 2007

  • Book: Cat’s Eyewitness

    OK, here I am with another book with [tag]cats[/tag] in it, and another one in a series I’ve already written some about, a [tag]Mrs. Murphy Mystery[/tag]. My most recent entry was on reading The Tail of the Tip-Off, which I rated a 4. [tag]Rita Mae Brown[/tag] and [tag]Sneaky Pie Brown[/tag] are just too good not to keep on reading.

    I’m getting into more contemporary times with “Harry” Harristeen now having resigned from the post office, and wondering what to do next. The kind of touch and go romance between her and Fair continues, as do her friendly collisions with the sheriff who thinks she’s going to get herself killed. As usual, by listening to their fellow creatures, the animals get ahead of the game and let the reader in on the action just a bit ahead of time.

    In this case I suspected, but did not know who was actually responsible, and I missed a key point of evidence that would have confirmed the bad guy to me. The clues are all there if you read carefully and don’t assume anything that isn’t explicitly stated.

    The mystery centers around a monastery, which seems an unusual setting for a murder mystery, but it turns out that the brothers are people too, with all of the potential for trouble that means in their lives. The story comes complete with a weeping statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary!

    As it says on the cover, “it takes a cat to write the purr-fect mystery”–excessively cute, yes, but true and forgiven.

    Again, my rating is a 4 out of 5.

  • Book: Engaging the Enemy

    Elizabeth Moon doesn’t fall into my top tier of gotta-read-everything authors, but she’s near the top of my second tier. I’ve been following the Vatta’s War series for some time, but as you can see, I’ve been following it a long ways off. There’s another book out that I haven’t read.

    Having said all of that, I really do enjoy these books and generally get to them before too long. Kylara Vatta is a fairly convincing female lead character, and I’m a sucker for stories that involve decisive women. Kylara has plenty of doubts about herself, but when things get really tough, she does what needs to be done whether she’s sure of herself or not. Most of that uncertainty can be–and is–traced to her age and lack of experience.

    In this book we see Kylara figuring out that there is a major attack going on, and that if the worlds don’t get together to deal with it, they will be at the mercy of the pirates. Somebody ought to do something, and whether that’s lucky for her or not, Kylara Vatta appears to be the one tagged with the mission.

    There are plenty of surprises and some interesting new cultures in this one. I rate it a four on my numerical scale.

  • Book: The Cat’s Pajamas

    From a book I liked, I turn to a book that I didn’t. This was my first book by Gilbert Morris, and I had high hopes because there is a silhouette of a cat on the cover, and it says it’s “a feline mystery by Gilbert Morris. Further I quickly discovered that it’s a Christian book, and I like to find good Christian fiction.

    To start out with, there was very little feline mystery involved. I’ve encountered books in which the cats were present as characters, but weren’t consciously contributing to the solution of the mystery, though they might do so accidentally. Other books have the cats talk and actively and consciously work to solve the mystery. Suspension of disbelief is then the name of the game. This is the first time I’ve encountered felines in the story who were apparently conscious and discussing the situation, but were nonetheless largely irrelevant. It’s a story, and there are cats, but the cats are barely in the story.

    Then there’s the Christian angle. I like a book in which Christian characters live out Christian principles and confess that they’re Christians while living a Christian life. I dislike recognizing the clear “conversion target” in the first chapter. And I didn’t do that in this book, because he didn’t “get converted” in the book, but he is working on it. Not only that, there are several more that everyone is working on. There are Hollywood types who are totally amoral, or perhaps immoral, which the author informs us through a character, is worse. There are corrupt small town politicians.

    In general there’s an implausible background (and note that I live very near the scene of the action), very few clues provided for a solution of the mystery, and then suddenly the cat pulls out something that . . . solves the mystery entirely without any need for further detective work. That’s it. Basically everyone flails around until someone finds the one thing that totally solves the mystery, even without any other clues.

    To put it bluntly, I haven’t disliked a book this much in a long time. I’ll rate it 2 out of 5, because I did finish reading it, though I was tempted to quit. Gilbert Morris is a bestselling author, so I assume my dislike is my own idiosyncrasy, but there it is!

  • Book: Prince of Sunset

    I have enjoyed a number of books by Steve White written with David Weber, but this was the first individual book by him that I’ve read. My guess, after reading this, is that Weber writes all the battle scenes in their joint books. The battles here just don’t exhibit the tension and certainly not the detail that Weber presents. That’s not entirely a bad thing, either, though I tend to like those scenes myself. I do know that they annoy people. There is also much less of the “heroic people who win despite the odds” theme, and a great deal more about people who are right and yet have things that don’t go so right with their lives.

    The story covers a very long period of time, though within the lifetime of the characters, and through an epilogue covers an even much broader timespan. That part didn’t excite me that much either.

    At the same time, Steve White is a good storyteller, so having presented the things that irritated me, let me say that the characters are good, there is some mystery as to what’s going to take place along the way. In other words, I didn’t say “obviously” at every plot turn, a situation that makes me happy when I’m reading. There is some politics, though again in less detail that Weber tends to do, and there is some interesting strategic stuff from both the political and the military point of view.

    I rate this a 3 out of 5, though I generally rate the author higher.

  • Book Announcement – Paul Chafe: Genesis

    Put this one on my “must have” list. I got notice today that this one is coming November 1, 2007, and also found it available for pre-order on Amazon.com. The link should be to your right as you read this.

    No, I have not read this book, but based on my reading of Destiny’s Forge, which I called a great book, I would be ready to grab this one sight unseen. Any reader of this blog can tell that I have very eclectic tastes, and enjoy a wide variety of books. But there are only a few that are truly exciting, that I would read over and over. There are only a few authors whose work is so good that I go out hunting for it, and will buy, beg, or borrow it as necessary.

    It’s good to see Paul Chafe move from writing in the Kzin universe, as much fun as that is, to open a new series of his own. I am looking forward to November with anticipation.

  • Book: The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers

    One shouldn’t really complain about how much mystery there is in this series, since it’s pure, light fun all the way, but it does seem that we’re getting more and more personality and less and less mystery even within that formula. It’s also too soon for me to be writing notes on another book in this series, but it showed up at the library, so here goes.

    Basically these are still light bedtime reading, and as such they work for me, but earlier books had much greater suspense and mystery, while the last couple have tended to slow down. At this point, I read just because I like the characters and the setting and I can manage the light reading time to keep up with their lives, but it would be nice to see Qwill and Koko in a bit more trouble, the kind of trouble that I might have to wonder how they’d get out of.

    In any case, we have good characters, we have cats, and we have good background, so I’ll go on reading. Much of what I wrote about The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell still applies, so having done my complaining, it’s on to the next book.