Friday, March 27, 2015

Heart of Brass (Kate Cross) Chapters 17-End

Last time, I came very close to making the prediction that the climax of this book would involve a dirigible.  At this stage in the mainstream development of the genre, including a dirigible in the mix is almost a given, so the predictability of it wasn’t all that trite. The description of the craft is nice, if a little terse:  “The Albion was a beauty of an airship, with a full, pristine balloon hovering above a ship constructed of rich, glossy oak that was the size of any private seafaring vessel.”  The description of the scene fares a little better:  “The area was lit with bright lanterns that illuminated the ship in the dark spring night.  Specially designed magnets placed on the sides of the ship locked with those on the docking mechanism, keeping the ship in place as the balloon was filled with buoyant gas.”  For the inside we get:  “They climbed a portable set of wooden stairs to the door of the ship and crossed into an interior as grand as most Mayfair homes.”  This is followed by a lengthier description of the clothing and hair arrangements of our heroes.  Okay, it’s a romance, written for women – fair enough.

There were dozens of different ways the ending could have come down, each terminating in the same end result.  The climax as presented by the author was as dramatic as it needed to be.  All five pages of it.  Things happened so fast that the characters barely had time to react, which is certainly realistic, but it was over almost faster than the reader could keep up with as well.  So many authors these days seem to stretch the middle 100 pages of their books into 300 only to hurry through the climax in a hand full of pages, and this is a classic example of that.  I’m reminded of a 4th of July fireworks show, in which the grand finale is a disappointing 10 seconds of dazzle instead of a much more satisfying 40-60 seconds.

The purely accidental way in which Arden discovered the identity of the murderer of the aristocratic daughters could have been replaced with a more clever set of circumstances.  It almost feels as if the author just wrote down the first scenario that popped into her head and said, “Oh, well, good enough.” Did she take the time to imagine several different ways it might have come about and pick the one that resonated best with her?  Maybe so.  The reader deserves better.

After discovering the killer’s identity, she strikes up a conversation with him in which he says, “’I offered both of them [his previous girlfriends] my heart and had it tossed back in my face.’  ‘Is that why you took theirs?’ Arden asked, the words tumbling out of her mouth as though she had no control over her mind or tongue.  Where was calm?  Where the hell was smart?”  Indeed.  What is the author telling us about this amazing woman we’ve invested an entire book in?  She seems determined to destroy our good opinion of the heroine, and this, perhaps, is the final cut.  To cap it off, as the bad guy starts to attack Arden, he accidentally takes the bullet intended for her, right in the forehead.  Right.

Did Kate Cross feel that the climax had to be totally unbelievable to be interesting?  Were there really no better ways to conclude the story that didn’t involve these outlandishly unlikely circumstances?  Again, the reader deserves better.  This book has a lot going for it, especially if one can overlook the trailer trash language and far too predictable scenes of “intimacy.”  Other books by her have been quite admirable, so I really hate to pan this one too much.  It just has too many fatal flaws in my opinion, so I won’t be reading any more of her romance works any time soon.  But a guy gets credit for trying, doesn’t he?  For being open-minded enough to read a Romance in the first place?  Yes?  Thanks.



April's books of the month...

That’s right – BOOKSSSS! 

The format for the club has changed – until now, one book each month was divided into four roughly equal sections with one section commented on each week. 

Starting in April, each week will feature a different book, and you pick which one(s) you would like to read with us!  This will include a rating system for various aspects of each book with an optional section for comments. 

April is still “Dean Koontz” month, so one of his will be included in the four.  Each weekend (usually starting on Friday) is posting time.  Here’s the April line-up: 

“The City,” by Dean Koontz

“Midnight Crossroad,” by Charlaine Harris

“Vineland,” by Thomas Pynchon

“Specters,” by J. M. Dillard
 
(As always, if there are any books you’d like to recommend for the next month, please do so!)

Friday, March 20, 2015

Heart of Brass (Kate Cross) Chapters 12-16

Imagine going to a movie theater to see the latest James Bond movie, seeing it start out great like any other James Bond movie, but about 15 or 30 minutes into it you find that it has gradually morphed into a movie-length version of The Young and the Restless.  That’s the bizarre situation we find ourselves in with this book.  It still contains elements of a spy story, along with some Edward Cullen-esque super powers in the mix (complete with the stopping a moving vehicle by sticking out his hands), but the focus of the author’s interest is squarely on the problematic relationships between the “beautiful-people” cast of characters.  My guess – my hope – is that the last quarter will resume the spy action and give us a rousing ending, complete with explosions and cliff-hanger (dirigible-hanger?) chapter endings.

But this brings to mind the quirks of the online format of a “book-club” of this nature: the fact that we “meet”, so to speak, weekly to discuss each quarter of the book instead of once a month to discuss the entire book in one session.  It wouldn’t be practical to do this in a face-to-face meeting in someone’s living room;  you would have to host four times as often and bring the refreshments four times as often, and much more of the content of the book would simply get skipped.  By the time you finish a book, you no longer care much what happened back on page 97.  That said, if the second or third quarter (or, in this case, both) of the book is a yawner, then the “meeting” that week can’t be salvaged by Betty’s Toffee Cinnamon Brownies.

Also, it opens things up for a lot more negative commentary.  Speaking of which… Last time I groused about the use – and especially the overuse – of the word “arse.”  Now the cutesy gutter slang of choice has become “shite.”  “Luke felt like a sack of shite.”   The author doesn’t wish to sound like trailer trash, so she substitutes these endearing words for their earthier counterparts.  Somebody – her editor, maybe? – should tell her it’s not working; in fact it’s only making things worse, making her look silly.  The teen slang doesn’t add much either:  “She felt for the poor woman.”  Felt what?  Sorry? Remorse? Disgust?  If it’s worth bringing up, it’s worth telling us what she felt.  My impression could be wrong, but this seems to indicate a writer who’s not well-read.

The secondary characters, on the other hand, are all complex and interesting.  Alistair’s carrying the torch for his best friend’s wife is actually depicted with sensitivity, and he doesn’t come across as ridiculous.  Mrs. Bird manages to be something more than the stereotypical housemaid in charge.  Evelyn Stone, the W.O.R. doctor that patches up everyone else has an interesting personality.  And the mysterious Rani Ogitani is intriguing despite the fact that we only actually meet her very briefly at a social event.  There are certainly some nicely developed story-telling skills on display here; all the more reason that the unfortunate prose idiosyncrasies detract.
The setting – our Steampunk society – hasn’t been forgotten, but has been pushed perhaps a little too deeply into the background.  The occasional reference to modes of travel, the mechanical, as opposed to electrical, contraptions such as the I.D. checker at the sanitorium, and, above all, the consistent references to the anachronistic clothing styles, all help to keep the setting fresh, but they’re little at odds with the soap opera play-by-play of the story-line.  Here’s hoping the climax (an unfortunate choice of word for such a blatant romance?) incorporates more thematically Steampunk aspects.



April's books of the month...

That’s right – BOOKS! 

The format for the club has changed – in the past, one book each month was divided into four roughly equal sections with one section commented on each week. 

Starting in April, each week will feature a different book, and you pick which one(s) you would like to read with us!  This will include a rating system for various aspects of each book with an optional section for comments. 

April is still “Dean Koontz” month, so one of his will be included in the four.  Each weekend (usually starting on Friday) is posting time.  Here’s the April line-up: 

“The City,” by Dean Koontz

“Midnight Crossroad,” by Charlaine Harris

“Vineland,” by Thomas Pynchon

“Specters,” by J. M. Dillard
 
(As always, if there are any books you’d like to recommend for the next month, please do so!)

 

Friday, March 13, 2015

Heart of Brass (Kate Cross) Chapters 7-11

The story-line continues to be very original and intriguing.  But there is a somewhat jarring dissonance in the seemingly dual character of the genre – the spy novel vs. the romance novel.  The author sometimes seems to have difficulty making up her mind which kind of book she’s writing and who her audience is.  Sometimes she seems to be writing for reasonably sophisticated adults who don’t mind a little sexual content mixed in; other times she seems to be writing for the stereotypically sex-starved romance reader; and occasionally she seems to be writing for a trashier, less mature reader.

“Arden arched from the waist, reaching for the lever that would free him to do whatever he wanted to her.  She was so eager for him that she didn’t even mind if he killed her, as long as he made her come first.”  Okay.  So, this is possibly common fare for a romance novel, but in a book that otherwise shows a lot of integrity, this seems to signal either that the author has suddenly lost respect for the reader, or that the reader should abandon respect for the character.  “Every inch of her wanted him desperately – to the point that she was ready to throw caution and caring to the wind.  But after seven years without her husband’s touch, it would not be making love if she took advantage of his immobility without trusting him completely; it would be what was so crudely referred to as ‘f***ing,’ and that was not how she wanted it to be between them…”  So now we’re phasing in and out of crudeness and respectability at random, it seems.

I’m no prude - it’s not the crudeness that bothers me.  It’s the inconsistency from one chapter to the next, from one page to the next, even from one paragraph to the next.  Again, maybe to a reader that is more familiar with the Romance genre, this doesn’t seem unusual; I don’t know.  “He remembered the noises she had made in the bath, and how he had wanted to climb into the tub with her and give her something to really moan about.”  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.  Who’s the audience here?  Teenage boys?  Beer-swilling construction workers?  I’m putting WAY too much emphasis on this point.  It really takes up relatively little space in the narrative.  But it just seems so out of character with the rest of the book that it’s like finding a pubic hair in your ice cream!
So we have a top agent who was captured and brainwashed by the enemy to work for them, and has now been re-captured and “de-brainwashed” while extracting valuable information from him about the enemy.  He’s still not completely trusted, but the head of the Good Guys decides to let him go anyway, because he is now the best line of defense for his wife, also a top agent.  And the husband’s best friend, who is in love with the wife and apparently lives in the same mansion as the husband/wife spy team, is also an agent and is charged with helping to keep them both safer from the retaliation that is sure to come from the Bad Guys when they discover that the husband has been released.  All this is fine – good situational spy stuff – and presented in a fairly believable, suspense-building manner.
And yet …  “Will it take too much effort for you to pull your head out of your own arse long enough to protect the man who has been your longtime friend, and the woman for whom you have long carried a torch?”  This, coming from the head of the W.O.R.  This word “arse” as a substitute for “ass” has always grated on me, and it usually gets overused, most definitely in this book.  Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that it is commonly used in Great Britain, but I still get the impression that it is used with a childish giggle at its triteness.  Aren’t we cute.  Still, I would let the first one go by with no comment, and even the second one with a grimace.  But after that, any triteness overused is a flaw in an otherwise well-written story.  God, I’m turning into a grumpy, curmudgeonly old literature-snob!





Next Week:  Chapters 12-16
Week 4:  Chapters 17-End

Friday, March 6, 2015

Heart of Brass (Kate Cross) Chapters 1-6

Kate Cross is a pseudonym used by the author who also goes by Kate Locke and Kady Cross.  All three authors write Steampunk novels.  “Victorian Futurism” is a more descriptive term for Steampunk (as “Speculative Fiction” is for Science Fiction) being an Alternative History genre in which the Victorian Age never ended and electricity never replaced steam as mankind’s main source of energy.  In the Kate Locke book “God Save the Queen,” the reason that the Victorian Age never ended is that the ruling aristocracy of the Steam Age, including Queen Victoria herself, all became vampires and still rules today.  If this sounds too far-fetched or corny, it isn’t – it’s extremely well presented in the book and I highly recommend it!  The other pseudonym, Kady Cross, writes Steampunk for the teenage crowd, and while it doesn’t really compare with the other great teen hits of today (“The Hunger Games,” The “Twilight” Series), it definitely has an appeal of its own, combining elements of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” with those of “The X-men.”

“Heart of Brass” is Steampunk Romance.  That’s right, it’s a Romance novel.  And while I normally don’t find romance novels particularly appealing, I picked this one up on the strength of the author’s other books and, so far, I am definitely not disappointed.  Is it written for women?  Well, yes, but for intelligent women.  And the author’s heroines all seem to have some special strengths or abilities that make them at least equal to the men, physically.  In this book, our heroine, Arden, is a highly trained and experienced agent for the W.O.R., the Wardens of the Realm.  Think Double-O-Seven in corset and Victorian skirts.
The author develops Arden’s personality with skill and subtlety as the action progresses with hints like, “She gave him what she hoped was a grateful smile and not a grim twisting of her lips.  She’d often been told her smile could sometimes look a little … demented.”  Later it is revealed that her mother is in a sanitorium, apparently getting loonier by the day.  And she berates herself because “She worked for the government because her husband and father had, not because she particularly enjoyed the work.”
The Steampunk aspect of the story is more deftly fleshed out here than any other such work I’ve read.  Aside from a few novels and a couple of short story collections, I haven’t really read that much, but it’s a concept that’s easy to grasp, especially if you have a strong science fiction background.  The genre is largely visual, so movies tend to communicate the concepts better.  Even so, some nice imagery is contained here:  “Moisture hung in the air, the by-product of so many steam engines – as though London wasn’t damp enough.  It permeated his skin and clothes, causing the long leather coat to cling to him uncomfortably.”
The Spy vs. Spy aspect of the story is given equal weight, with colorful secondary characters and the “sinister doctor” character that uses designer drugs to condition Luke’s mind to forget his past and assassinate, among others, his wife, Arden.  Lest we forget this is a romance, the Power of Love prevails over this conditioning due to the fact that he keeps getting flashbacks of his life with her.  The cognitive dissonance between these two urges is tearing him apart and his handlers are very unhappy indeed with his lack of results.  Nicely plotted conflict on so many levels keeps this story moving forward briskly and keeps the suspense fresh throughout.  Bravo!





Next Week:  Chapters 7-11

Week 3:  Chapters 12-16
Week 4:  Chapters 17-End