Afterlight by Elle Jasper

Afterlight is a heterosexual paranormal romance. I've been reading gay paranormals for the last year or so, and have enjoyed many of them. I have also been reading more urban fantasy lately, and have enjoyed some of them. So it seemed a natural step to investigate straight paranormal romances. The line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance is sometimes quite indistinct, and it occurred to me that there could be some material on the romance side of the fence that I might enjoy. Unfortunately my sampling on that side of the fence has been unencouraging. Frankly, a lot of the paranormal romances that I've seen, well--they might be good romance, but they are painfully bad fantasy. Nevertheless I have not completely given up, and yesterday I stopped in Barnes & Noble and browsed the shelves and came up with Afterlight.

The main character of Afterlight is Riley Poe, a 25-year-old tattoo shop owner in Savannah, Georgia. She was a wild teen who did a lot of stupid things, but after her mother died she was left in the guardianship of an old couple who practice voodoo, who got her straightened out and who own the shop next door to hers, and are still like parents to her. She is raising her younger brother, Seth, who is ten years younger than she, and she's very protective of him. So when he goes off with his friends one night and she finds they aren't at the house where he'd said they were going to be, she goes looking for him and finds them at a cemetery breaking into a mausoleum. She chews him out and takes him home.

The next day he begins behaving oddly, sleeping all day, not eating, and not acting at all like the affectionate and friendly teen she's used to. After a few days of it he scares the hell out of her and runs away, and she asks her voodoo guardian neighbor for help. He takes her to an old mansion and introduces her to the Dupre family. After a some drama, they eventually manage to hammer it into her head that they are vampires, and that her brother and his friends released a couple of other nasty vampires who have taken control of them, but if she trusts the Dupres it should all turn out okay. She is also told that she has a special blood type that makes her unique and irresistible to vampires, which is why her neighbors have been feeding her a special tea for breakfast every morning, to mask what she is.

She is sent home with Eli Dupre to act as her bodyguard. He's the romantic interest. One of the ways it is obvious that this is paranormal romance instead of urban fantasy is that the moment they first saw each other, she was stunned, caught, her breath taken away by a glimpse of him. So there isn't exactly any uncertainty about who she's going to end up with, or for that matter whether or not they'll end up together. The only question is how soon they're going to end up in bed together, and how often. Oddly this doesn't bother me at all when it happens in gay paranormal romance, but in straight romance it makes me roll my eyes. I have no idea why.

Anyway, the Dupres say that Seth and his friends are not vampires yet, but in a month or so they will be. Also that the nasty vampires they released are currently very weak, but are getting stronger with every passing day. Their plan, oddly, is to wait until the enemy is stronger and the youngsters are about to turn before they act. Meanwhile her brother and his friends are abducting people who are killed by the vampires, which Riley finds deeply upsetting. She keeps trying to insert herself into situations where she cannot possibly win, despite constant reminders that she can't handle the situation. She is unable even to follow such practical instructions as: "I'm going to go take care of this situation. Stay here out of sight where you'll be safe." Does she stay out of sight? Of course not. Because Riley has less survival instinct than a lemming. In fact, she seems to have a death wish. So the Dupres are faced not only with trying to control the evil vampires and their minions, they have to repeatedly rescue Riley, because she's too fucking stupid to remain among the breathing.

But Riley isn't the only one who is frustrating. She's got a problem with Eli Dupre, too. Because she's getting a very mixed message from him--on the one hand she's told that she can trust the Dupres with her life and that everything will be okay, but on the other hand he keeps telling her that she should be afraid of him, and he can barely resist the impulse to kill her. And their plan doesn't seem terribly bright, either, as I mentioned earlier. I wasn't convinced that waiting until your enemies are strong is the best tactic. They also say that they need her to guide them into the night clubs and drug dens of the city, because she used to hang out there, and only she knows the way. This is somehow supposed to help them track the bad guys, though I confess it wasn't at all clear to me what good this was supposed to do.

Riley is a rather old-fashioned heroine for this sort of story. She is the prototypical angry, fearless chick who runs around in heels and short skirts trying to kill supernatural creatures that is going out of style now on the urban fantasy side of the fence. There is even a sequence straight out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie, I mean, not the TV show) where they take her in and train her to kill vampires and have her running around and doing gymnastics and learning to throw knives. Personally I much prefer characters like Mercy Thompson, from Patricia Briggs's wonderful series of novels, who is an auto mechanic, wears jeans, sneakers, and greasy T-shirts, drives old VWs, and is older and a lot smarter than Riley. She feels a lot more real to me than the young tattooed goth girl who has to describe her outfits at length every morning, which seemed very teenaged to me. But hey, I've never been a skinny young tattooed goth girl, so perhaps the mindset is just alien to me.

Anyway, the time comes for the final showdown and they have a plan, but of course Riley decides at the last minute not to follow the plan, which allows one of the bad guys to get away and Riley is nearly killed. This allows there to be a sequel, so it can be a series instead of a stand-alone novel.

Despite my complaints (and the main characters are certainly annoying, and the plot kind of stupid), Afterlight is nevertheless not a bad read. It is miles ahead of most of the other straight paranormal romances I've looked at. I'd still rather read about gay werewolves than human girls who fall into the beds of brooding vampires, but that's just personal taste.

Gilded Latten Bones by Glen Cook

This is the thirteenth in Cook's series about Garrett, a somewhat lazy investigator in the fantasy city of Tunfaire. The novels have evolved over time, and the city is changing. Overall, Garrett lives in a house with a dead Loghyr, an ancient and powerful creature who hasn't let the death of his body be the end of his existence. Garrett calls him The Dead Man, and he is both much more intelligent than Garrett and has the advantage of being psychic. Nevertheless his body is dead, and so he must rely on Garrett to do the leg work and on witnesses being brought to him. Some of the early novels read a lot like Nero Wolfe stories, with The Dead Man as Nero, Garrett as Archie Goodwin, and their cook, Dean, as Fritz. Garrett runs around the city and frequently gets beat up, and everyone important is brought back to their house for The Dead Man to interrogate.

However The Dead Man spends much of his time asleep, and sometimes is asleep at an inconvenient time, forcing Garrett to try to figure things out on his own. He has a circle of friends, and an ever-increasing circle of recurring antagonists, plus various attractive women flowing through his life. A theme in recent books is that Garrett may be maturing. At the end of the last book, Cruel Zinc Melodies (which I thought was quite a good one), Garrett finally settles down with one woman, Tinnie Tate, an attractive and pushy lady he's had an on-again, off-again relationship with for years.

The beginning of Gilded Latten Bones finds that Garrett and Tinnie have set up housekeeping away from his house or her family. Someone breaks in during the night and is apparently trying to kidnap Tinnie. Garrett is outraged and wants to investigate, but the next day he's summoned away by Belinda Contague, a crazy crime boss lady and former romantic entanglement, because his oldest friend Morley Dotes has been attacked and is near death, and Belinda wants someone to guard him and keep him safe while he recovers. So Garrett goes to the brothel where Morley is recovering, and makes friends with the pretty ladies of the night who are caring for Morley.

There are a couple of attempts to get into the room, and some people end up dead, so they decide to move Morley to Garrett's old house, still occupied by The Dead Man, Dean, and a genius ratgirl named Pular Singe who has become Garrett's business associate. They hole up there, and the place becomes Grand Central Station as everyone they know, plus a few people they don't, come by for one reason or another. One of the people who stops by is the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light, a powerful sorceress he met in a previous book. She has apparently decided that he's ideal husband material and, despite Tinnie, he's quite attracted to her.

And this is where things got a little odd. Though Garrett apparently loves Tinnie and was pretty happy with her, now that he's gotten away from her for a few days he's reconsidering their relationship, his acquaintances including The Dead Man are saying that they think he'd be better off with the Windwalker, and various other people are saying that it would be okay if he dumped Tinnie, and she probably deserves it. There was even a scene in which The Dead Man proclaimed her love for him to be a form of mental illness. And all the while I'm wondering where this came from. Were there hints that I missed? Perhaps. It's been a while since I read the last book, and I started out with this book as bedtime reading, until I found that reading a book every night when you're drowsy is detrimental to reading comprehension. I've never actually liked Tinnie and feel no particular loyalty to her, but it seemed an odd about-face.

The actual mystery plot of this one is pretty weak, frankly, but I'm so far into the series that I don't particularly care. They're often a bit stupid--and Garrett is frequently stupid--but I like them anyway. Actually I kind of like the fact that Garrett is unrepentantly a dude, with all the strengths and weaknesses that entails. He will never be smooth, he will probably always be lazy. For some reason women are attracted to him despite this. He's no romance hero, he's a lot more believable than that. These books fluff, and I always snatch them up as soon as they come out, and I enjoy the series enough to keep reading.

Bad Blood by John Sandford

Bad Blood is the fourth in Sandford's series of mystery novels featuring investigator Virgil Flowers, who works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. In this case, a young man in a southern Minnesota town killed a farmer, and then was himself killed by a deputy while in custody. They go to interview the deputy, only to find that he has been killed, as well. This sets them to investigating, and in particular to looking at the religious group that both the dead farmer and the dead deputy belonged to. Nasty, nasty stuff is turned up. I will not say more, because you should read it yourself and I don't want to spoil it.

I really enjoy the Virgil Flowers stories. He's smart but a lot more laid back than his boss, Lucas Davenport. I was a bit startled in the first one when he went around blabbing everything he knew to the public in the hope of turning up more information, but it usually seems to work for him. The only thing I'm not so wild about is the scenes in which Virgil isn't present, where Sandford lets us know what the other characters are up to. Then we know things Virgil doesn't, and we're waiting for him to catch up. It adds length and suspense to the narrative, but I'd rather find things out at the same time Virgil does. Other than that, I really, really enjoy these mysteries.

Death of a Dissident by Stuart Kaminsky

This was the November selection for my book group. The book came out in 1981, and is set in Moscow, in the winter. A couple of the members of the group felt that the whole thing was too cold and bleak and depressing, but I thought it fairly accurately set the mood in the USSR in winter in the early 1980s. Winter there, like here, is dark and cold.

The dissident referred to in the title is Aleksander Granovsky. He is on the eve of his trial for being an enemy of the state, and he is quite content with that. It is his intention to make a speech at the trial, the text of which will be smuggled to the west by his allies and hopefully make him an internationally known figure and a rallying-point for political protest. He is at home before the trial, working on his speech, when he answers a knock at the door and someone stabs him with a sickle. Later that evening, a cab driver is murdered by his passenger with a broken vodka bottle.

Because the murder is political, the KGB prefers not to be the ones investigating the case. It will look better if someone else solves it, or if someone else is the one who fails to solve it. So the case is given to a police inspector named Porfiry Rostnikov. Rostnikov is an older fellow with a wife and grown son. He isn't very ambitious politically, and realizes that he is unlikely to rise any further. Rostnikov was wounded in World War 2, and has a limp and constant pain as a reminder of the war. He selects two other policemen to work with him on the investigation. Karpo is an austere man who lives for the job and prides himself on having no friends. Tkach is a young officer who looks even younger, and is still relatively inexperienced.

They interview the dead man's peers and find that no one liked him, including his wife and daughter. They immediately decide that the crime must have been committed by a madman, and in the end it turns out that they are correct--the killer was a madman. I found that a bit odd. I mean, in old mysteries they're always proclaiming that the killer must have been a vagrant or a madman, but nearly always it turns out not to be true. However, in this case, he was crazy. Even so, I found the killer the least interesting character in the book.

They figure out who the killer must be but are unable to immediately apprehend him. Karpo is injured, and there is some drama over whether or not he will be all right. They eventually track down the killer outside the city, barely preventing him from killing again.

I loved the novel. I've studied a lot of Russian history over the years, and I often enjoy reading novels set in Russia. I think that Kaminsky did a good job of capturing what life in the Soviet Union was like at the time, and I enjoyed the slightly humorous characters they encountered. Other members of the group thought it was too cold and grim, and didn't particularly like the culture and environment described in the novel. But I was enchanted, by the setting and the characters and the story, and I plan to read more in the series.

An experiment

OK, I am going to put off writing a book review for a moment in order to discuss something nonliterary: tuna noodle casserole.

I was paging through The Joy of Cooking over the weekend and realized something that might seem hard to believe -- I have never eaten tuna noodle casserole. Never, ever in my life. I guess it's supposed to be a universal food experience for Americans, particularly those from the Midwest, sort of like tater tot hot dish, something else I never had until someone brought it to a potluck luncheon when I was about 30.

Nope, my mom never made tater tot hot dish. And she never made tuna noodle casserole. She did have a tuna casserole she served fairly frequently, but it had tuna, Minute Rice, peas, and a can of cream of celery soup, as I recall. I liked it as a kid, but the couple of times I've tried it as an adult I thought it was fairly revolting. No tuna noodle casserole, though. And I have never had anyone else serve it to me, either.

So I looked at the recipe in The Joy of Cooking, and it seemed fairly straightforward and didn't involve a can of cream soup. My upbringing scarred me in that respect -- I will never make a recipe if it contains canned cream soup. But this recipe had a sauce made from scratch, and had some vegetables, and looked pretty doable. So today I made it for lunch.

I have to say, what's the point? It's sort of bland and mushy and, while I didn't really mind it, I also didn't really enjoy it. I would guess it has hung on as a staple not because it's good, but because it's a fairly inexpensive way to feed a family, and it's bland enough the kids probably won't refuse to eat it. Nevertheless, I was expecting it to be better. I certainly wasn't missing out on anything.

The Family That Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max

I listened to this as an audiobook.

I've been wanting to read The Family that Couldn't Sleep for several years. The title references an Italian family who have a genetically inherited disease which causes them, usually in middle age, to lost the ability to sleep, which eventually leads to their death. I often find nonfiction about medical issues to be interesting, and the description sounded interesting to me.

The book turned out not to be quite what I was expecting. The material about the Italian family is very thin, indeed, and much of what the author writes of them is speculation. As he describes the final months of people's lives, he notes that they probably did something, or may have thought about something, because there isn't a detailed record, so the author guesses. Doctors who have examined the problem have concluded that the family has a prion disease, but there is no cure and members of the family currently don't really have any hope of one.

The story of the family is really just window dressing for an exploration of prion diseases, including kuru, scrapie, mad cow disease, and chronic wasting disease. It particularly focuses on mad cow disease and whether, and how, it may be transmitted to humans. I found all this mildly interesting, but also feel as if I picked up the book under false advertising. Really, if it had been entitled: A History of the Research on Prion Diseases and Especially Mad Cow, I wouldn't have bothered to read it. Which, I suspect, is why it was advertised as being about the Italian family.

Brooklyn Knight by C.J. Henderson

I am going to do something unusual for me and make an entry on a book I didn't finish.

Brooklyn Knight is an urban fantasy featuring Piers Knight, a curator for the Brooklyn Museum. He is apparently a specialist in ancient cultures, but I get that from the back of the book since I didn't get far enough in to get much of a sense of what he does on an ordinary day when he's not magically foiling people trying to rob the museum. The novel begins with him picking up his new assistant at the airport and then going on at some length about how awesome New York City is. His assistant's role is apparently to be beautiful and ask him leading questions so he can lecture the readers. I didn't particularly like either character.

The worst part of the book is the writing, though, and that's what prompted me to write this entry. It's just...stilted and awkward and wrong. It feels a bit like things I've read online that were written by people for whom English is not their first language. Either that, or it's an unsuccessful attempt to capture the flavor of a period piece, even though it's set in the present day. Either way, it just set my teeth on edge.

I will give examples. In this scene, he is being questioned at the police station after magically foiling the would-be robbers at the museum. First we have his new assistant's reaction to being asked not to interrupt:

The young woman steamed, not taking kindly to being dismissed so brusquely. Having the good sense to realize that she had no cards to play in that situation, however, she accepted the detective's rebuke and sat back in silence. At the same time, noting that the well-oiled pair knew their parts well, that while his partner had addressed Knight's assistant, LaRaja's eyes had never left him, the professor also held his tongue from letting slip any of the somewhat frosty comments he really wanted to say."

That was a bit awkward, but then it gets worse. In response to a question from a detective, Knight says:

"Why, whatever do you mean, Denny? I like both you fellows considerably. You've always been very good to the museum, not to mention they way you've always--"

"Oh, cut it--Knight." Dollins' voice roared up out of him like a geyser rushing to the surface. Spewing it at the professor, he shouted, "Do not think you can get away playin' us! I'm warning you--do not do it. Do not try. We're talkin' four goddamned dead bodies. Blown to mother-humpin' little gooey bits! They're jelly, for Christ's sake. Your cleaning staff's gonna be Four-oh-nining that lobby for the rest of the week."

"It was quite a mess," admitted the professor.

"A mess?" Dollins rubbed a beefy hand over his face. "There's man-meat blown up, down, and around in every direction possible. You've got intestives festoonin' the front stairs and eyeballs embedded in your ceiling. That's more than just a goddamned mess, Knight!"

"Well, yes," answered the professor softly. "I do agree with you, of course. But I don't understand your meaning."

It's a bad sign when I'm reading a passage of text and making notes so that I can later quote it as an example of bad writing. People don't talk like that. And the awkward descriptions of the characters' actions and mannerisms are perhaps even worse.

As evidenced by some positive reviews at Amazon, obviously not all readers are bothered by the writing. But me? I was bothered, and found the text so distracting that the book is, for me, unreadable. I have no idea how this got accepted by Tor. Not recommended.