Mount TBR 2020 round-up

1, I set out to conquer Mount Blanc with 24 books. When the libraries were closed I thought that I would read them easily. However, I did just manage to read to my goal.

2. Words to the Wise according to the TBR: Trying to complete familiar saying and proverbs with the titles of from my TBR readings:

A Stitch in Time (saves)… Devil’s Heart

Don’t count your chickens (before)… A Hard Rain

A penny saved is (a)… A pie to die for

All good things must come (to)… Mango Cake and Murder

When in Rome… Two Serpents Rise

All that glitters is not… Unbound

A picture is worth… A Lily of the Nile

When the going gets tough, the tough get Dead Man’s Handle

Two wrongs don’t make… Pulse Pounders: Countdown

The pen is mightier than… Sins of the Father

The squeaky wheel gets… the Element of Fire

Hope for the best, but prepare for… Here be monsters

Birds of a feather flock… A Shadow in Summer

Thanks for a great challenge! I’m certainly going to in 2021, too.

 

Kim Harrison, Melissa Marr, Jeanine Frost, Vicki Pettersson, Jocelynn Drake: Unbound

A collection of novellas and short stories set in these writers’ own worlds, except for Marr.

Publication year: 2009
Page count: 358
Publisher: EOS

Originally, I bought this collection for Drake’s story because I love her Dark Days series. The only one I haven’t read before is Marr. All of these stories assume that the reader is familiar with the world and the characters.

Ley Line Drifter by Kim Harrison: The main character in this story is the pixie Jenks who is Rachel’s main sidekick in the Hollows series. A strange pixie enters his home but the pixie is there ask for help and not try to challenge him. After thinking it over, Jenks agrees to try to help him.

I love Jenks and this a great story about him. However, it’s further along the series than I’ve read and refers to things I don’t know about. Also, Harrison doesn’t open the world or the characters at all but assumes that the reader is familiar with the violent world of the pixies in the Hollows series. Also, the story is left unresolved.

Reckoning by Jeaniene Frost: the main character in this story is the vampire Bones. New Orleans’ vampire queen summons him. Her closest minion gives Bones the task of killing a pair of ghouls who eat their victims alive. Also, another vampire is hunting Bones.

Bones is a very powerful and charming vampire and uses his powers of seduction and intimidation to the max. He’s the main love interest in the Night Huntress series but carried this story alone well. Also, I think this story stood alone better.

Dark Matters by Vicki Pettersson: This is the story of the parents of Pettersson’s Signs of the Zodiac series. A superhero has an affair with a supervillain. They know from the start that their relationship is doomed because they can’t alter their behavior or destiny. But they’d drawn together anyway.

I really don’t care for the way that the characters are born to good or evil in Pettersson’s series, so the story didn’t work for me.

The Dead, the Damned, and the Forgotten by Jocelynn Drake: Fire Starter vampire Mira is the Keeper of her town of Savannah. Most supernatural people in her town know to keep their secrets from human eyes. When a vampire is killed and left for humans to find, Mira has a big problem in her hands, especially when another vampire comes to town, intending on dragging Mira to Venice for punishment if she can’t solve the murder quickly.

This was a great Mira story, set right before the series starts. It gives her and her second in command Knox relationship a little bit more depth. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed.

Two Lines by Melissa Marr: this is apparently her first adult supernatural thriller. Eavan was born to a family of monsters, the glaistig, who feat of sex and death. Eavan doesn’t want to be a monster like them, she wants to stay a human. So she has avoided both so far. But now she’s become obsessed with a very attractive drug dealer who is drugging young women senseless and selling them. Eavan wants to stop that but doesn’t want to kill him and is very attracted to him. The matriarch of her family, Nyx, wants to turn Eavan to a full glaistig and forces a very attractive bodyguard on her. The bodyguard, Cillian Owens works for Crypto Drug Administration and knows something about the supernatural world. However, he’s less than thrilled when Nyx bribes and threatens him to become Eavan’s bodyguard. But he takes his job very seriously. Eavan is also very attracted to Cillian and doesn’t want him to get to any danger because of her.

This was an entertaining story with a lot of sexual tension.

These were entertaining stories but I’m not sure how well the first four will open to readers who aren’t familiar with the series.

 

Carmen Carter: The Devil’s Heart

A Star Trek: TNG book.

Publication year: 1993
Format: print
Page count: 309
Publisher: Pocket Books

This book tells the tale of a powerful artifact which has influenced people and through them entire cultures, before Federation was formed. Throughout history the Devil’s Heart has journeyed from Iconia to Kronos to Vulcan and other planets, as well. Now, a Vulcan archeologist thinks that she’s found it but her obsession has made most other Vulcans shun her.

Enterprise-D receives a distress call from the archeology site. But when they get there, all the members are dead. Messages left behind blame the archeologist herself. Apparently Bendii’s syndrome affected her and made her kill all her companions. But Beverly Crusher finds out that someone else has killed the Vulcans. Picard pursues the murderers but only finds the husks of two starships. From one of them he finds an ancient stone, the artifact itself.

Meanwhile, people all around the galaxy want the stone for themselves. These people range from the last of the Iconians to renegade Klingons and scheming Ferengi. They’re willing to kill everyone on their path to get the Devil’s Heart for themselves.

This was a very interesting idea. However, the result is quite a scattered book. It has many point-of-view characters all over the galaxy. Most of the TNG crew got at least a brief POV section or two but Picard is the clear main character. In fact, completely new characters got more page time than most of the crew.

Picard develops a strong bond with the artifact and when he sleeps, the stone sends him flashes of history from various cultures. Most of the glimpses to the other, early histories of various species were fascinating. However, I didn’t really realize just how similar these early histories were, violent and oppressive.

Overall, this was an interesting read but quite scattered

 

Russ Linton: Crimson Son

The first book in the Crimson Son series but can be read as a stand-alone.

Publication year: 2014
Format: ebook
Page count on GoodReads: 418

Spencer’s dad, the Crimson Mask, is the most powerful Augment in the world. He’s invulnerable, can fly, and is amazingly strong. Spencer’s mom was kidnapped by his dad’s arch nemesis, the Black Beetle, two years ago. Spencer is convinced that for some reason his dad isn’t even looking or he would have found her a long time ago.

The same day when Spencer’ mom was snatched, his dad brought Spencer to a bunker in Antarctica. It’s the only place safe for him, or that’s what his dad says. Spencer is all alone, except for his dad’s rare visits and doesn’t have internet connection and only rarely TV. But Spencer has hatched a plan. He needs to get inside his dad’s encrypted files to find proof that the Crimson Mask is working with the Beetle. And to find out where his mom is.

When the Beetle’s huge mechanical bug invades the bunker, Spencer doesn’t immediately just launch out in the escape pod. Instead, he manages to incapacitate the bug and hack the files. Then he launches and to a different place than his dad planned. Once Spencer lands, a beautiful woman finds him. Turns out that the woman, Emily, knows Spencer’s dad and she is supposed to babysit Spence. But Spence finally has a lead to his mom and he must follow it. And the Beetle keeps finding him.

This is a world where the wealthiest governments around the world have engineered super powered people, the Augments. Most of them are or are supposed to be soldiers. But in the recent two years, many of the known Augments have disappeared. The Crimson Mask is the last.

This isn’t a comic-book world. People are regularly hurt or killed in superhuman battles. While the Crimson Mask has some of Superman’s obvious powers, he’s almost the opposite of Clark because CM first neutralizes the threat and only then helps the victims.

CM has a secret identity and because of that he, Spencer, and his mom had to move often. Spencer hated that because he must always leave his friends behind. Now, he only has one friend and he hasn’t even met him in two years. Spencer and his dad’s relationship is very strained. In addition to being bitter about the frequent moves and that his dad hasn’t found his mom, CM is a very distant father who barks orders rather than has conversations. When Spence was younger, his dad would talk about how they would work together as a team. But, once CM realized that Spencer doesn’t have powers, Spence seemed to become only a potential hostage to him. And CM treats Spencer accordingly.

Spencer is the main first person POV character, present tense. There are a couple of other POV characters, too, and they’re in third person, imperfect. This didn’t bother me.

Spence is a snarky character who makes a lot of pop culture references. He’s 19 but this is his coming-of-age story. Of course, it’s hard to have coming-of-age moments all alone in an arctic bunker. At the start of the story, he’s been a couple of years alone and it shows. He ogles Emily in a way I didn’t care for but is understandable. He’s also small for his age and resents it when people treat him like a kid. While he doesn’t have powers, he knows a lot about computers and other mechanical gadgets.

This is a fast-paced story with several exciting fight scenes but it also focuses on Spencer’s emotions. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

 

Dean Wesley Smith: A Hard Rain

A Star Trek: TNG book.

Publication year: 2002
Format: print
Page count: 233
Publisher: Pocket Books

A crisis for Captain Picard… or a case for Dixon Hill, private detective?

The above line says it all: the story is set in a holodeck in 1940s San Francisco. Each chapter ends with a list of clues from Dixon Hill’s case book. Captain’s Log entries tell us that Enterprise-D is going toward a place called the Blackness. As they get closer, the ship’s systems go offline until the whole ship is in danger.

On the holodeck, Captain Picard as Dixon Hill, his friends Luscious Bev, and Mr. Data along with a handful of other officers are looking for the Heart of the Adjuster. Dix is convinced that one of the local crime bosses has it and he needs a way to talk with them. However, the holodeck is also malfunctioning: all the safety systems are off-line and the killed holo characters come back to life.

This was an interesting idea. The world of Dixon Hill seems to be made for adventures. The story has some fun points, such as Data “taking his gangster stand” and quoting various fictional detectives. However, it has quite a lot of repetition and I didn’t care for the ending of the mystery. But I do enjoy holodeck episodes so overall I enjoyed it.

 

Nikki Haverstock: There’s no Business Like Mage Business

The third book in the Casino Witch humorous fantasy cozy mysteries.

Publication year: 2018
Format: ebook
Page count at Goodreads: 189

About a year ago, Ella’s dad was murdered and she found out that she’s a mage. Her father’s death is still a mystery but she doesn’t have any clues about who did it. She doesn’t have any memories of her mom. She also doesn’t know why her dad kept her a secret from everyone in the magical community or why he didn’t tell her that she’s a mage. Her dad’s old friends Badger and Bear agreed to train her. About six months ago, Ella declared herself a Monza, a follower of “old way” who must stay celibate. She did it to get out of the clutches of mage law. She had, and still has, feelings for handsome, if aloof and unfriendly, security consultant Vin.

For six months, Ella has been training or rather burying all her feelings in training. She’s also pushed her best friend Vanessa to train with her. But now Vanessa is putting her foot down. Her mother who is Ella’s teacher, is away for a week. Ella has pushed them to go through all the exercises in just couple of days and Vanessa wants to stop doing them.

Their friend Natasha comes to Ella’s loft. Natasha has her own comedy show in on the casinos. Two of the women working in her show have left and she needs help. Vanessa jumps at the chance but Ella hesitates. She wants to keep practicing.

After Vanessa and Natasha leave, Ella’s tutor Bear stops by. Apparently, the girls from Natasha’s show haven’t left: they’re dead from drug overdose. Bear wants Ella to investigate. Ella agrees and a job at the comedy show is a great way to go undercover. However, she decides to keep the investigation secret even from Vanessa.

This is a more serious entry in the series. While we still get wild antics from Patagonia, Ella’s huge black familiar cat, there aren’t many other jokes or humor, especially compared to the previous book which was set in a hilarious cheese convention. Ella investigates the overdose with a drug which seems to affect only mages. Also, a handsome new love interest appears. The mystery around Ella’s dad and childhood deepens, though.

While I didn’t enjoy the plot as much as in the previous book, I did enjoy the characters and quite a lot of other things, like the descriptions of Ella performing on the comedy show. She thought it would be just a small thing but it’s really not and panicked at first. Vin doesn’t appear much which is good because I can barely stand him. Natasha is a great character and I’d like to see more of her.

 

Christy Murphy: Apple Pies and Alibis

The second short story in the cozy mystery series Mom and Christy’s Mysteries.

Publication year: 2016
Format: ebook
Page count at Goodreads: 95

After her husband left her, Christy decided to move back to her mother’s house and help her in the catering business. Also, they solve crimes together!

Barbara Turing runs a computer firm and she knows that someone in her company is selling their secrets to competitors. To find out who, Barbara wants to hire Christy and her mom, Jo. But they’re not licensed private eyes, so they’ll just cater a lunch and ask a lot of questions.

Before long, Jo and Christy narrow down the suspects to three and one of them is the most obvious choice. Jo tells Barbara who they suspect and Barbara confronts the man in his office. Christy heads back to their catering van. While she’s on the yard, the office building’s fire alarm goes off… and a body falls out the window. He’s the man suspected of selling secrets and he was in the office alone with Barbara just moments before. So, now Jo and Christy’s client is a suspected murderer.

This was another humorous, fast-paced short mystery story. It’s similar to the first one in tone, a quick and fun read. The office party has an apple theme.

Jo and Christy are just as much fun as in the first book. Christy has, again, trouble driving the large van and Jo is just as personable and chatty as ever. They have a warm relationship but Christy realizes (briefly) that her mom has other sides to her. Sometimes Jo can still embarrass her daughter, especially when a certain handsome detective is concerned.

 

Christy Murphy: Mango Cake and Murder

The first short story in the cozy mystery series Mom and Christy’s Mysteries.

Publication year: 2016
Format: ebook
Page count at GoodReads: 86

Christy is 35 and on the brink of a divorce. Her job was as the manager of her soon-to-be ex-husband, so she’s in a lousy waitressing job. However, Christy’s mom, Jo, has recently started a catering business. So, Jo invites Christy to return home and help her mom with the job. Christy agrees and moves back to Fletcher Canyon, and together with her mom. Their first catering job together is a birthday party for an 85-year old man. Christy’s cousin is his nurse. The party isn’t a success and ends with a whimper when Christy finds the man of the hour dead.

The local detective is very handsome but unfortunately his suspicions all turn to Christy’s cousin. Clearly, Christy and her mom must solve the case themselves.

This is a delightful, short mystery. Christy’s mom Jo is Filipino and Christy’s father was white. Christy is a fun character: she’s a bit overweight, she can’t cook but she can drive the catering van, just barely. There’s also a cat. Christy and her mom are on good terms and I loved their relationship. They both have a past and Jo’s best friend Weiling helps them a lot.

Christy is the first person narrator and she’s a lot of fun.

The mystery was just the right length for the story. I have the next story in the series already.

 

Cherie Priest: Jacaranda

A stand-alone novella in the world of Clockwork Century. But it’s not steampunk.

I bought it as part of the Subterranean bundle back in 2015.

Publication year: 2015
Format: ebook
Page count at GoodReads: 181
Publisher: Subterranean Press

I thoroughly enjoyed Priest’s other Clockwork Century books and was expecting more action/adventure steampunk. But this novella is quite different. It’s horror and builds up slowly. If you like that, this story will most likely work for you.

It has a few references to the rest of the series, but not much.

Sister Eileen Callahan, a nun, has written to padre Juan Miguel Quintero Rios about the Jacaranda Hotel in Galveston. Many people have died there, horribly, and the nun believes that only the padre’s special skills will stop the hotel from killing again. When Rios arrives, he notices that the hotel seems to be alive and threatening. The nun tells him the legends about its terrible past. Yet, the local authorities simply ignore the horrible deaths. Sister Eileen has also asked for the Texas Rangers for help and one of them arrives. However, everyone at the hotel seem to have their own dark pasts, including the padre himself.

The nun, the father, and the Texas Ranger investigate but time runs short when a hurricane approaches.

The story has a great atmosphere and vivid characters. Rios is the third person POV character and he has a distinctive voice.

 

Stacey Alabaster: A Pie to Die For

The first book in the Bakery Detectives cozy mystery series.

Publication year: 2016
Format: ebook
Page count: 161 at GoodReads
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing

Rachael Robinson has a a bakery in Belldale. But business has been slow recently because across the street Bakermatic is selling their cakes and cupcakes a lot cheaper. They can afford to do that because it’s a big firm and they sell prepackaged cakes. Rachael takes part in the Belldale Street Fair but there, too, Bakermatic wins over pretty much all customers with their free samples. A food critic blogger, who doesn’t seem to like anyone’s food, tastes Rachael’s pie but later the critic is found dead, poisoned. Someone spreads a rumor that Rachael is responsible and her customers desert her. It’s up to Rachael and her best friend Pippa to find out the murderer.

This was a quick, fun read. The characters aren’t very deep but their fun to read about. Rachael hates Bakermatic and is convinced that they must have poisoned the critic. She’s the first person POV character. Pippa is almost the opposite of Rachael: Rachael needs to be a responsible bakery owner while Pippa has a hard time holding down a job even for a week. But they’re quite loyal to each other and both are fun to read about. They watch crime TV-shows. When the local police, meaning the handsome detective, says that Rachael is a prime suspect, Pippa and Rachael decide to investigate.

While this was a short book, it has lots of twists and turns and humor. A good introduction to the series.