Jaran

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Katy K.

I note with some shame that this was the Book Smuggler’s Old School Wednesday Readalong from February, which I did not finish it in time.

JaranJaran. Jaran Book 1. by Kate Elliott. DAW Books, 1992.
From the cover copy:

The first book of Kate Elliott’s epic Novels of the Jaran, set in an alien-controlled galaxy where a young woman seeks to find her own life and love, but is tied to her brother’s revolutionary fate

In the future, Earth is just one of the planets ruled by the vast Chapalii empire. The volatility of these alien overlords is something with which Tess Soerensen is all too familiar. Her brother, Charles, rebelled against them at one time and was rewarded by being elevated into their interstellar system—yet there is reason to believe they murdered his and Tess’s parents.

Struggling to find her place in the world and still mending a broken heart, Tess sneaks aboard a shuttle bound for Rhui, one of her brother’s planets. On the ground, she joins up with the native jaran people, becoming immersed in their nomadic society and customs while also attempting to get to the bottom of a smuggling scheme she encountered on her journey there. As she grows ever closer to the charismatic jaran ruler, Ilya—who is inflamed by an urgent mission of his own—Tess must choose between her feelings for him and her loyalty to her brother.

Jaran is the first volume of the Novels of the Jaran, which continues with An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword,and The Law of Becoming.

I’m very fond of Kate Elliott, and her Spiritwalker books are some of the most heavily borrowed in my home library. This includes some of the Elliott trademarks that I love, including a mix of politics of very different levels, strong characters, romance, and playing with ideas of gender and race. Here, race is looked at both through Tess’s relationship with the Jaran, the human-like people she meets on the planet Rhui, as well as the much more alien Chapalii. There’s even more focus on the role of gender, as Tess is dropped into a culture where women are the decided head of clan, with the sole power to initiate love affairs, while the men are left in charge of hunting, war, embroidery, and deciding whom to marry. Tess herself has an affinity for languages, picking up the utterly foreign language of the Jaran in a week, that I was able to accept only as a necessity for her exploration of the Jaran culture, where the difference in languages and what you can say in them plays a key role.

We go camping in a the Mongolian-style yurt my love made every summer, so it’s always an extra pleasure to read about similar nomadic cultures – though their physical culture and looks sounded more Russian than Mongolian. Elliott says in the introduction that she was aiming not for a matriarchy but for an equality different from that we’ve imagined. I loved how the culture felt like a traditional culture – one where people did things because that was the way they had always been done, rather than making decisions out of a sense of justice or equality. The balancing act that women have been expected to perform in Earth culture for centuries, making themselves pretty for men and showing just the right level of flirtation while staying modest enough, seems as ridiculous as it is when done by men. I just wasn’t quite sure I could buy that having men marry women by cutting their faces made for any kind of equality – it just didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of their culture. Likewise, the clan matriarchs shrugging their shoulders over men deciding to ride off to war – really? Surely the male contribution to the hard life of the steppes is important enough that they would be expected to consult with the women before risking their lives on something nonessential. However, not necessarily agreeing with her conclusions doesn’t mean failure – I still noticed the things she was bringing up and thought about them, inside the context of a good story.

On the body count level, this book fell in between the Crossroads books (of which I’ve read Spirit Gate and Shadow Gate and the Spiritwalker books, with some battles and some very significant characters killed off.The only things holding me back from reading more of this series is the need to interloan them, their heft, and my feeling that I really ought to read Traitors’ Gate (which I had been planning to read in February) first. As always, though, Kate Elliott provides a satisfying, thought-provoking adventure.

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State of the Book Basket

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Katy K.

Once again, here’s what’s going on with my reading at the moment.
I have eighteen books waiting to be reviewed, including 4 picture books, 6 middle grade, 4 teen, and 4 adult. I’m still reading much faster than I’m writing, it seems, even though I’m reading much slower than I’d like to keep up with all the books I want to read!

For myself, I am currently reading The Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson, The True Blue Scouts of Sugarman Swamp by Kathi Appelt, and A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones in print and listening to Mastiff by Tamora Pierce and Velveteen vs. the Multiverse by Seanan McGuire.

The boy and I just finished reading The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, and made the unhappy discovery that my library doesn’t own the next one, so I need to borrow it from my parents instead, I think. We’re halfway through The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis in the car. He’s almost done with Sam Silver: Undercover Pirate: The Deadly Plot, having taken breaks for a new Big Nate book, Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon Hale and Zeus: King of the Gods by George O’Connor. He’s now distracted by the large pile of comic books we brought home from Free Comic Book Day this year. Last year, he felt too old to dress up, but this year, he happily put on a too-small Star Wars costume to get an extra free comic.

The girl and I have been slowly working our way through Rapunzel’s Revenge as well, which she likes, but she’s still having trouble staying focused on the longer format. She’s still only wanting books in the car over music every few days, but we’ve worked our way up to Night of the Ninjas, book 5 in the Magic Tree House Series (and had A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond sadly rejected.) We bought her I am a Frog by Mo Willems, which she’s loving, and a Frozen spin-off picture book, which was more exciting initially but, not surprisingly, doesn’t have the re-read value of the Willems. As far as library picture books, we have Louise: the Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo (so far rejected), The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward, Red Knit Cap Girl and Red Knit Cap Girl to the Rescue by Naoko Stoop, Cinderella retold by Max Eisenberg and Cendrillon illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, and Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback. She’d asked for more Cinderella books, so we’ll see if she wants to go through as many versions of that as she did Rapunzel – there are certainly a lot more Cinderella retellings out there.

I still have The Shadow Garden and Nightfall Gardens by Allen Houston and The Thickety: a Path Begins by J.A. White waiting to be read from last month, and made it just partway through one of the Spellbound magazines before getting distracted, though I was very much enjoying it. I also have Please Don’t Tell My Parent’s I’m a Super Villain by Richard Roberts newly sent from the author. I had to return The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison unread to the library, as I just couldn’t get to it, and put my name back on the hold list for it. Also home from the library waiting for me to read are Starling by Sage Stossel and The Cracks in the Kingdom by Jaclyn Moriarty, and I’d like to read Rapunzel’s Revenge and Zeus: King of the Gods myself before taking them back.

Also, I checked out a couple of books for my love at his request: Brick Shakespeare: the Tragedies by Jack Hollan, The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel, and (on CD) All Joy and No Fun by Jennifer Senior, which I am also hoping to listen to when he’s done. Brick Shakespeare: the Tragedies

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Billy the Kid Is Not Crazy

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Katy K.

I was planning on doing a whole post about why we need diverse books, because there’s this whole campaign going on right now that you might have heard about.
Then I actually looked at the We Need Diverse Books tumblr and I don’t know that I have a lot to add in words, though we set up a couple of displays at the library. Everyone needs windows into themselves and into other people. Nobody is served if everyone thinks that stories of white, straight people are the only ones that matter – neither the people at the center of those stories, nor those who stories are silenced. As one person aptly put it, no kid ever asked for a box of 64 white crayons. You can also check out the Lee and Low Buzzfeed list of highlights from the Tumbler.

I’m coming in halfway through a three-day event – May 1 devoted to posting pictures, May 2 to a twitter chat on the topic, and May 3 to encouraging people to buy diverse books and/or request them from their library, because book publishing is a business.

I think about diversity in books a lot, though I know my reading isn’t as diverse as I’d like it to be. Most often, I’ve focused on racial differences, but this campaign has clearly been looking representation of diversity in sexual orientation and mental health as well. And by good chance, today I have book for you featuring mental diversity.

billy the kid is not crazyBilly the Kid Is Not Crazy by S.F. Guerra. Illustrations by James Davies. Amazon Children’s Publishing, 2013.
Billy is a nice, well-meaning kid, but his overactive imagination is always getting him into trouble. He means well, he promises to be better – but by the time he realizes he’s getting carried away again, he’s already done something like writing in pen in a school text book that turns out not to be a secret coded message. When playing Clone Wars with shopping carts – aka droids – in a parking lot ends up with a car getting damaged, his parents decide to take him to a shrink. He is horrified! His active imagination amplifies the worries: Will the doctor put him on “drugs”? Will his father get tired enough of him to send him away and look for a better son? And will Billy ever get his dream – a cell phone of his very own? The story is told in the popular text-comic strip hybrid format, with Billy’s imaginary adventures, worries, and the occasional video message to his parents shown in comic form, an excellent choice.

This is clearly an “issue book”, and I was worried about it feeling preachy. But Billy came to life so believably, so full of fun and good intentions gone awry, that I couldn’t help being sucked in. As a mother, I was really distressed at his parents’ failure to reassure him along the way, but even though that aspect felt somewhat overdone, the ending still made me teary. I found myself arguing with his diagnoses and treatment plan – it looked like he had a serious impulse control issue that wasn’t labeled as such. Would labeling it help? If that was the problem, is just finding a really good reward the right solution? But these are technical quibbles that I don’t think would affect the book being enjoyed by the target audience. I also sighed just a little bit because Billy, while on the one hand illustrating mental/behavior issues much more commonly found in real life than in books, on the other hand sticks very closely to the limits of deviations from neutral that Shannon Hale discusses so well : he is white and male (though I know the author is female and am guessing by her name that she’s Latina) and mainstream Christian, and 10 – a good average age for a middle grade book. Though I don’t know that I’m going to argue with the author on her decisions with that, while we’re talking about diversity, I do notice that the issues that the book is about are the only deviations from neutral that our lead is allowed. On the whole, this is a very fun book that’s great for normalizing the idea of people needing mental help from time to time without being over-the-edge crazy, and that will appeal to fans of books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries.

This book was kindly sent to me by the author, and has been passed on to the library where I work.

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Dawn

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Katy K.

It’s the Old School Wednesday Readalong at the Book Smugglers today.
OldSchool8_Final-450x349
dawnDawn by Octavia Butler. Warner: Aspect Science Fiction, 1987.
Octavia Butler has been on my want-to-read list for about a decade now. When this book was selected as the Old School Wednesday Readalong, I decided to take it as a Sign and finally get around to reading this award-winning African-American science fiction author, whom I’d been recommending to patrons for years.

Here’s the cover blurb on this book:

Lilith lyapo awoke from a centuries-long sleep to find herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. Creatures covered in writhing tentacles, the Oankali had saved every surviving human from a dying, ruined Earth. They healed the planet, cured cancer, increased strength, and were now ready to help Lilith lead her people back to Earth–but for a price.

Wow. I had such a love-hate relationship with this book. On the one hand, it’s amazing. The characters, the world-building, the many issues Butler is able to look at within the framework of the story – just astounding. On the other hand, this is a book for grown-ups that reminds me why I usually prefer to read books for younger readers. There is so much darkness shown, both in the humans that Lilith awakens to repopulate the Earth, and in the casual force the Oankali use, “trading” genetic material with the humans even against their explicit rejection. Maybe I am just too exhausted to deal with reading a book that makes me think this hard about so many issues – though that makes me sound lazy, and it’s not like the book I was alternating reading this with (Merrie Haskell’s The Castle Behind Thorns) has what you would call a cheerful premise. I will try to be kind to myself and remind myself that I preferred more optimistic books even before I had children and became chronically sleep-deprived. My librarian brain is telling me that this is a classic case of just a bad fit for me at this time, and that’s OK. Continue reading →

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The Interrupted Tale

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Katy K.

The boy and I came a little bit late listening to this one, as we were in the middle of other series when it came out – but worth the wait. I’m linking this to the April Sound Bytes Link-Up over at Devourer of Books.

The Interrupted TaleThe Interrupted Tale. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place Book 4. by Maryrose Wood. Read by Katherine Kellgren. HarperCollins Audio, 2013.
It’s Miss Penelope Lumley’s sixteenth birthday, and she is blue about the complete lack of birthday attention now that she’s a governess. Instead, she’s flooded with written requests from the headmistress and lots of the girls at the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females to give the keynote speech at their upcoming Celebrate Alumnae Knowledge Exposition, or CAKE Day. It seems that the shifty Judge Quinzy, whom Penelope suspects of being the supposedly deceased elder Lord Ashton, is attempting a nefarious takeover of the Swanburne Academy Board. Much of the book is taken up with Penelope’s preparations for going to the event with the children, including trying to find new clothes and the difficulty of writing her speech. Meanwhile, the children are obsessed with the Fall of Rome, while Penelope works to uncover the secrets of the “Cannibal Book.”

Penelope is busily trying to solve bunches of intertwined mysteries over the course of the series, including why she’s so firmly instructed to keep her hair dyed a dull black; why the Incorrigible children were left to be raised by wolves; what has happened to her own parents; and of course, why Lord Ashton has howling fits. If you were to go into this book looking for lots more answers to these questions, you would be gravely disappointed – there were only a couple of smallish revelations in this entry. Read instead for the pure enjoyment of the character interactions, the ridiculous situations that arise, and the terribly funny language use. We have listened to this series the whole way, and Katherine Kellgren does a fantastic job with the range of accents and voices that this calls for. This time, the children would come in from the car marching and chanting, “Cake Day, Cake Day, the Best Day of the Year!” (This led naturally to trying the cake-in-a-mug recipe from the One Bowl Baking book I got for Christmas, as the fastest cake recipe I had to hand.) In any case, while I’ll hope for more Revelations in future books, this is a series we all enjoy and will keep on reading.

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Rick Riordan Read Alikes

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Katy K.

Back in February, I celebrated my tenth blogiversary with a giveaway of a custom reading list. My long-time reader Kim won, and what she wanted was a list of books similar to Percy Jackson for her nine-year-old son, who was just about finished with the series. She’d specifically asked for books with a contemporary boy lead involving mythology.

Finding read alikes (to use the librarian term) for Rick Riordan’s books is a perennial problem – that blend of a modern hero with mythology and lots of action is unique. Instead of looking for that nonexistant series that matches exactly, I’ve split this into parts – great retellings of Greek mythology, good series involving other mythologies (most with a historical setting), and other really popular action-adventure fantasy series. I included some with girl leads despite Kim’s request, especially if my son enjoyed them, because they are good stories and I think it’s important for boys to know that there are good stories about girls and that they don’t have to limit themselves to reading only books about boys. Most of these are linked to my own reviews, though there are a couple linked to reviews on other blogs, and some I have yet to read. These might not be exactly the same as Rick Riordan’s books, but they are still very good, adventure-filled books! Continue reading →

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The Golden City

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Katy K.

This is historical fantasy set in Portugal, a rare enough setting that I couldn’t resist it.

The Golden CityThe Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney. ROC Penguin Group, 2013.
Oriana Paredes is a sereia, a sea person, undercover in the Golden City, where all magical beings are illegal. She’s there as a spy, and her cover is working as a companion to the high-born Isabel Amaral. But Isabel’s romantic plans of elopement turn to tragedy when she and Oriana, dressed in servants’ clothes, are kidnapped. Both are chained under water and left to drown, but Oriana is unable to break free in time to get Isabel to the surface. Desperate for vengeance, she turns to police consultant Duilio Ferrera, who has his own secrets to keep and his own mystery to solve: finding his selkie mother’s stolen pelt. Duilio has been looking into pairs of missing servants from the great houses; Oriana knows first-hand that there are corpses inside the much-admired City under the Sea art installation with replicas of famous houses floating in the water. Together, they must try to uncover the necromancy behind the art, a dark corruption reaching to the highest levels of government. They do so fighting their growing attraction to each other, with class differences, magical race conflicts, and the duty at hand all keeping the action to a lot of smolder and very little action.

I’d really put my name on the list once I saw mermaids and Portugal (late 19th to early 20th century by feel), but now this put together with my reading of Beka Cooper is starting to look like a fantasy mystery trend. My mother got to it before me, and also enjoyed it, but was a little concerned about the content until I told her that it is an adult novel. I don’t think most teens would have an issue with the content, though: some nudity, discussions of sexuality and several violent incidents. My only real issue is a scene where Duilio deliberately breaks in on Oriana in the bathtub, unacceptable by both modern standards and the much stricter standards of modesty in the time period in the book. Though Oriana does call him out on it, and sereia aren’t as modest as humans, this reinforces uncomfortable gender patterns, and he got off with it much too easily. Epic Quests for Vengeance rarely work well for me, but while Oriana says she’s looking for vengeance, her efforts are important to prevent future deaths as well. Here, the lovingly described setting, magical elements, mystery, and buried passion all work together to make a captivating story. I’ll definitely be looking for the sequel coming out in July.

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Cress

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Katy K.

CressCress. Lunar Chronicles Book 3. by Marissa Meyer. Feiwel and Friends, 2014.
In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, we finally meet Cress, short for Crescent Moon, the girl who risked so much to warn Cinder about the Lunar Queen’s threat against Kai in the first book. Now we see her true, dire situation – she’s trapped in a satellite orbiting Earth, her only contact the previously introduced Head Evil Thaumaturge, passing her time singing old Earth operas and dreaming about bad boy Thorne. In a thrilling action sequence, Cinder and company attempt to rescue her – but things go pretty badly. Now Cress and a blinded Thorne are trekking across the African desert, while Cinder tries to… well, never mind. You get the idea. Things aren’t going well, our gang is split into pieces, and Scarlet is missing in action (literally.) The promise of romance between Cress and Thorne is never quite fulfilled, as Thorne seems to have his bad boy spark removed by being blinded, and is uncharacteristically conscious of the impropriety of a relationship with a girl who’s been isolated for so many years. He’s right, of course, but where’s the fun in caution?

I found myself really conflicted about this book. This series as a whole has always given me a little bit of a trashy feeling, though it’s taking me a while to articulate why. Now (helped by reading Angie of Angieville’s review at Dear Author and the comments), I think I’ve figured out the problem with the series as a whole: the world-building doesn’t really make sense – not the new larger countries that have formed, not the Lunar powers, nor the prejudice against cyborgs. Cinder and Kai, while believable teens, don’t really work well as the leaders they’re supposed to be. I really liked Cinder anyway (even if the slowness of the romance was exacerbated by listening to it rather than reading it in print) and Scarlet was even better, with a phenomenal romance between Scarlet and Wolf. I really enjoy the characters and their relationships, and the action is fast enough to keep me turning the pages at a very fast rate, looking for the ways Meyer chooses to reinterpret the original fairy tale in her world rather than the flaws in the world.

In this book, Cress and Thorne are not as compelling characters, so there’s less character interest. The plot is fragmented across a bunch of different story lines, and the most compelling ones are those we spend the least time with. Scaling back two of my three favorite aspects of the book leaves a lot more room to focus on the inadequacies that have always been there. Even though I still read it quickly, even begging my kids for ten minutes of peace to finish the last chapter instead of waiting for them to be in bed, the last couple of chapters were the best part of the book. Scarlet meets Levana’s mad stepdaughter, Winter; and Cinder and Kai finally meet in person again, for the first time since midway through book 1. In retrospect, that’s not much payoff for a very long book, and it’s left a sour taste behind. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that fans of the book skip this entry – but I very much hope that book 4 is more on par with Scarlet than Cress. Your thoughts on this are very welcome!

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The Carpet People

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Katy K.

The Carpet PeopleThe Carpet People by Terry Pratchett. Clarion Books, 2013. Originally published in the UK by Colin Smythe, 1971.

Terry Pratchett charmingly says in the introduction that his first book was finally reissued because the publisher got tired of telling people that it was out of print because there was no interest in it. The story involves warring tribes of microscopic people for whom the carpet is the entire universe. Individual fibers are the size of trees (and often bear fruit); there is a whole industry built around the mining of varnish from a nearby chair leg to be made into all sorts of products.

As the story opens, the Munrung Tribe has just learned that the dreaded Fray is making inroads into the Carpet. Our guy Snibril, younger brother to the clan leader, Glurk, and their shaman Pismire, lead the tribe off to the great empire city of Ware to see what can be done about this. Along the way they find villages and cities under attack from fearsome creatures, the mouls, who seem to want to take over the entire Carpet. There are also meetings with the mysterious and elusive tribe who always know what’s going to happen before it does. Pratchett’s original line drawings are both very funny, and helpful for illustrating the bizarre creatures and things that make up the Carpet.

It’s a cute concept made into a fairly standard quest narrative, with thoughts on free will and empire that show the beginnings of that depth-behind-humor that we know and love Pratchett for. Maybe it was just me, but the cast was large enough that I had trouble keeping track of everyone. I still prefer The Wee Free Men as a kid’s first introduction to Pratchett, but Pratchett not quite grown into his full writing strength is still worth reading.

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Beka Cooper

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Katy K.

It’s Kid Lit Blog Hop Day (with a spiffy new logo) – take a look around and see what everyone has found this Wednesday!

Kid Lit Blog Hop

It’s funny how I can have piles and piles of print books to read and then suddenly find myself with a glaring hold in my listening needs, in this case for a book on CD for the car. Thus it was that I found myself wandering the teen audiobook section and decided, somewhat at random, that I should listen to more Tamora Pierce, and picked the unfamiliar series with the first book checked in. Please share your favorite Tamora Pierce or fantasy mystery series in the comments!

[Edited to add:] I’m also sharing this post with the April Sound Bytes linky over at Devourer of Books

TerrierTerrier. Beka Cooper Book 1. by Tamora Pierce. Read by Susan Denaker. Listening Library, 2006. Print Random House Children’s, 2006.
The Beka Cooper books are set in the kingdom of Tortall, like her Alanna books, which I read in German when I was studying abroad and have largely forgotten. Please feel free to fill me in on any nifty connections between the books – I’m sure I missed some! They are fantasy mysteries, where Beka uses a combination of police/detective skills and communicating with ghosts and other magical voices to solve the mystery.

Beka started life in the very rough Lower City, but was, with her family, taken in by the Provost when she was around eight and was able to lead him to the secret hideout of a gang, one of whose members had robbed her seriously ill mother. Beka has gone through training to be an official Dog, as the city’s police officers are called, and now she needs to beat the high odds and survive her puppy year, during which she will shadow a pair of experience Dogs. In her case, she’s shadowing the best – Tunstall and Goodwin, a mixed-gender partnership that’s lasted for years, so good they’ve never been bothered with a puppy before. Soon Beka uncovers two separate strings of murders – missing diggers, and kidnapped and murdered children, all of whose parents are left notes from the Shadow Snake.

Murdered children is a lot darker than I’m usually willing to go in my reading these days, though I remember being much tougher in this regard before I had children of my own. None of the murders are graphically described, though – only Beka’s hand-to-hand fighting gets a graphic treatment – so that I think that the teens the book is written for will do much better with this than I did. In any case, there’s plenty to balance out the murders: humor (especially involving Beka’s magical talking cat), as well as friendship, a would-be suitor (the hopeful new city Rogue), and lots of adventure.

There’s lots of local slang, which comes out nicely in Susan Denaker’s reading. I liked her accents for most of the other characters, though I thought that Beka herself sounded too innocent and proper American in her accent for a streetwise Lower City Girl. I still went right on to the next book, and plan to go on to the last as soon as I finish the books my love was so anxious for me to hear.

bloodhoundBloodhound. Beka Cooper Book 2 by Tamora Pierce. Read by Susan Denaker. Random House/Listening Library 2009.
In this second book of the series, Beka is a new, full guard, now looking for a partner. Unfortunately, she can’t find one to keep up with her. After both of Tunstall’s legs are broken during a riot, Beka and Clary Goodwin are sent to a nearby port city to investigate the dangerous problem of counterfeit coins, or coals, that have been showing up with alarmingly increasing frequency. Her magical cat is busy with his own things, but Beka has recently come into caring for Achoo, a talented scent hound recovering from an abusive handler. Beka and Goodwin meet a whole new cast of colorful characters as they infiltrate the city’s underlife to find the source of the coals. As they’re pretending to be corrupt dogs, there’s even an excuse for Beka to start a romance with a handsome young man, Dale, whom she’d first met during the riots. (The reader is not permitted into the bedchamber, but we do come along with Beka on the somewhat embarrassing mission to buy a good child-preventing charm.)

On the whole, I enjoyed this second outing with Beka even more than the first, though that’s probably me personally liking less violent crimes and more romance in my reading. Even more than the first one, this focuses more on how to prove guilt and catch the guilty party – it’s pretty clear from early on who the villain is. I’m finding this another solidly enjoyable series from the reliable Pierce.

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