Review: The Shard Fence by Keith Marsden

A shard fence is made of smashed glass bottles, jars and containers, with “the biggest, sharpest, deadliest pieces pressed into the wet concrete at the top of the wall, so that when it dried, a glass shard fence capped the wall and kept out all intruders”.  It is a sign of affluence in a country where so many people are desperately poor.

Brandon travels from affluent Oregon to a poor Brazillian favela to teach music at the Igreja da Esperança, the Church of Hope, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil – a city I have never heard of, yet with a population of 3 million people, almost much as New Zealand.  He quickly finds that it is going to be more challenging than he had anticipated.  A young man is killed as he arrives, and Brandon must decide whether he will stand with the people of the mission or 'be one who runs away'.  He is challenged to stay by Aline Reis, whose beauty has probably inspired Brandon to visit Brazil more than any divine calling.

Aline is a woman of strong faith in the face of the huge obstacles facing the church and congregation.  She must draw on her Christian faith to meet the needs of hurting people, and to stand firm in the face of evil.  Brandon, who is in Brazil for reasons of his own, must decide where he stands, too.  He quickly comes to learn that being ‘fortunate’ is not all about money, but is about things more eternal.  The Shard Fence had a clear Christian message, and a strong challenge around conquering our fear and living for God in what might seem to be impossible circumstances.  In that The Shard Fence, was excellent.

On the down side, the book had some elementary editing errors (misspelled words, misplaced punctuation, plot inconsistencies).  I also felt that there was not enough emphasis on the developing relationship between Aline and Brandon, although that could have been because I am a female reader who likes the romance side of the plot, rather than a male reader who might well find that the romance distracted from the ‘main’ plot!  I have heard it said that female readers prefer more ‘show’ than ‘tell’ in their fiction, whereas men feel the opposite.  From that point of view, this was definitely a novel targeted more towards the male reader.  It was an excellent story, but the romantic in me would have liked more development in that area.

Thanks to Keith Marsden and Club Lighthouse Publishing for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman

Saphora is a wife, mother and grandmother, married to Bender whose “life was summed up by the activity of ambitions rather than the depth of his character”.  Her plan to leave the philandering plastic surgeon is disrupted when he announces (literally as she is leaving) that he has been diagnosed with brain cancer.  They move to their holiday home in Oriental on the Outer Banks of South Carolina, where the children and grandchildren come to visit.  Their grandson, Eddie, stays with them, and through him they meet Jamie and her son, Tobias, also summer residents in the small town.  Through a series of events, large and small, Saphora begins to rediscover their relationship as she cares for Bender. 

The Pirate Queen focuses on the minutiae of detail in everyday life.  While there are a couple of ‘big drama’ moments, the beauty of the writing is in the details and the everyday interactions.  The story is not preachy (although Saphora does show a curiosity about or a desire for God that her husband does not share - she refers to him as someone whose “interest in religion was piqued only when he breathed a prayer” on the last hole of a round of golf).  Yet it is Bender that develops the relationship with Rev John Mims, and who begins to read the Bible and ask questions. 

As seems to be the trend for this genre, The Pirate Queenwas all written from Saphora’s point of view.  It would have been nice to have a little variation, as although we clearly see Saphora’s responses to different situations, by the end of the novel I felt that my view of some situations might have been clouded by her preconceptions.  As Bender was sometimes portrayed as the villain of the piece, it would have been good to have his point of view too.

The novel was not perfect.  Character’s names often annoy me, and Bender (apparently his mother’s maiden name) is a name that has unappealing connotations that took me out of the story until I learned to read over it.  At one point Saphora finds Bender’s journal and begins to read it, but this is put down, forgotten and not referred to again, which I found strange.  I also object to the analogy of Saphora’s son as being ‘as emotional as a woman’.  That phrase implies that emotions are somehow inferior to being unemotional, which is something I cannot agree with. 

Overall, The Pirate Queen is an intriguing story with nuggets of wisdom interspersed throughout, in both the quotations at the beginning of each chapter, and in the story itself.  The quotations are both pithy and relevant, and could be the subject of a whole discussion on their own.  I suspect this is one of those books that can be read on many levels, with subsequent re-readings revealing different aspects of the story and the characters.  Like many modern novels, this has a Reading Group guide at the end.  The questions, like the book, will inspire a lot of discussion (and probably yet more questions…).  I did enjoy The Pirate Queen, and will certainly look out for more titles by Patricia Hickman.

As I commented on how much I liked the quotations, I thought I would share a few of my favourites:

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are… let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. ( Mary Jean Irion)

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.  In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it. (Maya Angelou)

Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it? ( Caroline Myss)

Where was it written that a woman had to silently submit to a life that did not acknowledge her for her worth? ( Saphora)

She had heard it said that it was easier to live through someone else that to become complete yourself. (Saphora)

By the way, WaterbrookMultnomah give away free books at random to those readers who rank reviews of their books.  You can rank my review using the buttons below, or read and rank more reviews on their website, http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/bloggingforbooks/book-lovers.  This will also help me - the more people rate my reviews, the bigger the selection of books I get to choose from.

Review: The Inconvenient Marriage of Charlotte Beck by Kathleen Y’Barbo

The Inconvenient Marriage of Charlotte Beck is the story (obviously) of Charlotte Beck, an only child who was English-born and American-raised, and the grand-daughter of an Earl.  At seventeen, she is keen to take her place in society, and wants to attend college to study mathematics so that she can prove to her father that she can work in the family business (very unusual for 1887).  At her unofficial debut into proper London society, she meets Martin Hambly, the stargazing heir to an earldom.  Their relationship gets off to a rocky start (she literally falls into his arms, while he is actually Viscount Alex Hambly, Martin’s twin brother), and common interests keep bringing them together until they find themselves engaged to be married.

I enjoy reading romance novels with the marriage of convenience plot device – two people forced to marry through a twist in circumstances beyond their control, who come to love each other as they work together to overcome some common obstacle.  Janette Oke’s Love Comes Softlyis probably the best known of the genre in Christian romance, but many authors have successfully used a variation on the theme to produce an enjoyable novel with likeable characters that you want to get their happily-ever-after.  The Inconvenient Marriage of Charlotte Beckis not one of these books.  Why not?

Firstly, the marriage of convenience only occurs two-thirds of the way through the book, after the couple have had a four-year engagement.  Admittedly, they are still virtual strangers at that point, having ignored each other for the entire period of their betrothal.  Secondly, no matter how much I tried, I just could not like the heroine.  She came across as intelligent, but headstrong and troublesome to the point of being irritating.  Thirdly, this is supposed to be Christian romance, but the ‘Christian’ was so minor as to be almost an afterthought.  Finally, there were a couple of minor plot points that were only raised at the very end of the novel and were then explained away very briefly, yet they seemed key to the overall resolution.  As a result, the conclusion was not altogether believable, because if these plot points were important, they should have been introduced earlier. 

This is the final book in Kathleen Y’Barbo’s Women of the West series, and really needs to be read in sequence.  As the author says in her Acknowledgements at the conclusion of the novel, Charlotte Beck first featured as “an impish child in The Confidential Life of Eugenia Cooper, and then as a young lady longing for adulthood in Anna Finch and the Hired Gun”.  Perhaps if I had read these first, I would have had an understanding of Charlotte’s background and issues, and would not have got confused at certain points in the story.  Perhaps, too, I would have found her a more likeable heroine.  As it was, I found the book confusing and the heroine annoying.

If you read and enjoyed the first two books in this series, you will probably enjoy The Inconvenient Marriage of Charlotte Beck.  Otherwise, I would advise you either start at the beginning of the series, or ignore this altogether. 

By the way, WaterbrookMultnomah give away free books at random to those readers who rank reviews of their books.  You can rank my review using the buttons below, or read and rank more reviews on their website, http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/bloggingforbooks/book-lovers.  This will also help me - the more people rate my reviews, the bigger the selection of books I get to choose from.

Review: The Spirit of Nora by Lyle Scott Lee

Nora and her best friend, Ella, leave small-town Minnesota to travel to New York City to train as nurses in 1889, where they meet a pair of young and handsome trainee doctors, and a famous artist who paints a telling portrait of the pair.  Nora is clearly the stronger personality, the leader of the two, the one who is prepared to act to attain a goal, rather than waiting for someone else to act on her behalf.  However, this impetuous independence has catastrophic consequences for both Nora and Ella.  The Spirit of Nora follows Nora over a period of thirty years, from New York to Europe and Russia, and through the upheaval of World War I, the Spanish Flu epidemic and the Russian Revolution. 

I realise that there are several aspects of The Spirit of Nora that will annoy some readers.  It is written in the first person, present tense, which many readers find difficult and therefore avoid.  It starts with a prologue and immediately goes back in time thirty years, which some readers find to be almost a ‘spoiler’.  Some of the subject matter borders on ‘edgy’, and the heroine, Nora, is not a perfect Christian, and at least some of her actions show her in a negative light that most Christian novels avoid.

Yet the book is beautifully written, even more of an achievement considering the difficulty of writing in the present tense.  The prologue (in my opinion at least) is a teaser not a spoiler, the potentially ‘edgy’ content was dealt with in a sparse and sensitive manner, and I found Nora to be quite a realistic character.  Her main problems were a spirit of independence that was ahead of her time, and kind of thoughtless selfishness that I found quite realistic. 

The Spirit of Nora has obviously been well researched, which impressed me, as did the beautiful use of language and the seamless way the author has managed to integrate major world events into his story (one phrase that I particularly liked was the description of New York as a city of ‘petty bureaucrats, faux aristocrats, and sleepless tomcats’).  The one thing that perhaps I would have liked to have more of was a greater focus on Nora’s spiritual journey, not just her physical and emotional journey.  There is a lot the author doesn’t say, which left me as a reader wondering exactly how far Nora fell from her early faith, which had been established early on (“I am committed to the path chosen… by God himself… I’ll allow nothing to derail it”), while later she felt ‘abandoned’ by her own religious beliefs even though she wants to “find a cause to believe in.  I want to be swept up in something worthy of God’s blessings”.  In that, I think we can all relate to Nora.

This is Lyle Scott Lee’s first book, and I enjoyed it.  I would certainly be interested in seeing how he develops and improves in his craft.  His writing is touching without being unnecessarily emotional, and I feel he has great potential. 

Thanks to Lyle Scott Lee and Tate Publishing for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: Nick of Time by Tim Downs

My husband doesn't like me reading Bug Man novels, because I have a tendency to laugh at the outlandish things Nick Polchak says, in much the same way as I laugh at Sheldon or Raj off The Big Bang Theory on TV.  Nick is a combination of the two characters in that he is extremely intelligent, has a rare and complex professional specialty, and doesn't relate to people well, especially not to women (how else do you explain the ending of the last book, Ends of the Earth, where Nick managed to propose to two women at once?).

Nick is a forensic entomologist, which means he studies the insects that are attracted to human remains, and uses this to determine when (and sometimes where) the victim died.  It is best not to read the BugMan novels while eating.  They feature a lot of dead bodies and even more bugs.  Anyway, Nick is now happily engaged to Alene Savard, a reclusive a dog trainer he met when he needed a cadaver dog to find a dead body, and they are getting married in a week.  Alene is a brilliant dog trainer but is as socially incompetent as Nick, in her own special way.

The Vidocq Society is a dream team of forensic specialists dedicated to solving murders no one else can, and Nick is proud to have been invited to join. He attends a Society meeting a few days before the wedding at the express request of trusted friend and colleague, Pete Boudreau (and against Alene's wishes), but Pete is strangely absent, which sends Nick off on his trail.  His single-mindedness means he forgets to call Alene when he promises, so she gets worried and follows him to the Pocono’s, where there is a mystery waiting to be solved – but as circumstances keep them apart, can they solve the mystery before one of them becomes the next victim?

I don’t always enjoy books by male authors, as they can focus too much on story to the detriment of the relationships.  But Tim Downs and the BugMan novels are an exception.  Nick has deep-seated issues regarding human relationships, to the point where he often speaks of humans as being a distinct species that he is not a member of.  Alene has issues as well, and Tim Downs does an excellent job of showing the development in these two flawed characters, while maintaining enough humour to overshadow some of the gore in the content.  This is another well-crafted mystery from an author that I always look forward to reading.  An excellent novel.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and BloggingforBooks for providing a free ebook for review.