And now a return to theme

 I finished up Mercedes Lackey's finale of Darian's Tale yesterday, which more or less brought the overall themes of leaving home to find home full circle in the end. 

Owlknight opens on K'Valdemar Vale and Errold's Grove 4 years after the arrival of the Ghost Cat Clan, who are now part of the metroplex in the northwest corner of Valdemar. Word comes from Haven that a Herald Mage and his assistant (Keisha's sister Shandi) are being permanently posted in the area. As such, the local powers decided to perform several Rites when Herald Anda arrives to show that Darian is on equal footing. While much of this is amusing (including the sentient equine dyheli king stag offering to perform the rite to make Darian his "prime doe"), it really just serves to set up the second half. As such, we see Darian having visions of Ghost Cat and a Raven totem, having a feather found in the sweatlodge in from of Darian, and some other subtle hints that Darian might find his parents among the Raven Tribe. (They find part of his father's foot outside of a change circle, and a little magic suggests the original owner is still alive.) 

So, the second half mainly involves our major characters posing as dye merchants, riding through the north, with Keisha training healers in the various tribes as she goes. We meet several tribes, and run into an ocean. We find Darian's parents, among the Raven people, who are under siege from the Wolverines, who also absorbed the remains of Blood Bear, who we last saw at the end of the first book. Given this is Lackey, the outcome of that confrontation is never in doubt, however, Darian must contend with his definition of Home, versus the expectation that his parents have of him and Keisha joining the Raven tribe with them. 

That emotional resolution rings truer than almost anything Lackey has ever written, even if it is truncated. 

While I have enjoyed rereading this series, I will say that the ending seems rushed, as we close on everyone in Raven, and a 3 page epilogue set back in the Vale. 

But still, it's a really fun series.

Two in one

 Normally, I'd write separate reviews for Owlflight and Owlsight, but since they're part of the same Mercedes Lackey series, and the second book is mostly a reverse image of the first...

Keep in mind this is the last series the author has written in what could be considered "modern" in the setting. There may be a few short stories set after this, but everything else she's written after this has been set in an earlier place on the time line, bookwise. 

The series opens on the orphan Darian, apprenticed to the wizard Justyn in the remote Valdemar village of Errold's Grove on the edge of the Pelegir Forest. Darian's parents were trappers, who vanished during the Mage Storms. Barbarians from the north attack the village, and Darian winds up running in to the forest and finding a group of Hawkbrothers from K'Vala Vale who are working on establishing new leylines and Heartstones. Darian gets adopted by them, and helps free the village from the barbarians, running off with the Hawkbrothers for Magic training. 

In the second book, we meet Keisha, the adolescent Healer for a much more prosperous Errold's Grove and her sister Shandi. Keisha is a strong willed girl who can't find proper training for her Gift, since she can't leave town to go get it. As such, she's on the verge of becoming a hermit by the time Shandi gets Chosen and Darion returns, with news of another Barbarian clan moving south towards the village. 

Darian reestablishes K'Valdemar Vale not far from Errold's Grove, where Keisha comes and gets her gifts trained. The Barbarians do wind up reaching the edges of Valdemar, however, this time, as Firesong, Silverfox, Kerowyn, and Eldan are around (mainly to update everyone on how everyone who survived the Storms is doing now), things go much more easily, as we find the Barbarians got sent south by their totem to find a cure for a disease the Mage Storms brought. Much negotiation later, and a cure for Summer disease later, Ghost Cat Clan is now firmly colonized nearby. 

Now, this series was the one she was releasing when I first got hooked into the setting, so it was the first I was reading around the same time as everyone else, so it does have a special place on my shelf. (To give you an idea, I bought the paperbacks at WaldenBooks using their discount card.) Does she more or less have a formula when it comes to plotting? Yeah. Does that prevent me from enjoying long sojourns into Valdemar? Hell no. While I enjoy more adult fantasy, it's nice to have some old fashioned cozy traditional fantasy to read through. And these, while more rustic than her normal adventures, fill that role very nicely.

Like Noir, with more seeds

 One of the ladies I work with loaned me Harlan Coben's Stay Close, which, while not someone I have read previously, still managed to write an interesting yarn. 

The story centers on 3 people in particular, all of whom have a connection to an Atlantic Missing Persons case from 17 years prior. We have Megan, who 17 years ago went by Cassie, who worked as a stripper at La Créme. She's currently a suburban soccer mom of two kids, who lives 2 hours from Atlantic City. We have Ray, who was a photojournalist, but who now works for a fake paparazzi firm. (We literally meet him giving the paparazzi treatment to a 13 year old Jewish boy for his Bar Mitzvah.) And we have Detective Broome, who's seeking a missing person from 17 years ago. 

Then we have several oddball supporting characters, like a police chief on the take, the father of another missing person, and two psychotic Christian Camp Counselors who like to plot campfire song orders before torturing people for information. 

By the end, we know exactly what happened to the missing person, why it happened, and everyone more or less returns to their old lives a little bit wiser. 

That's skipping a hell of a lot of detail, but it is a mystery of a sort.

Anyway, while I enjoyed this, the logic really requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Not to mention, much like Atlantic City, there's a seedy nature to the narrative that makes you want to wash grease off your hands every scene, like a white trash Lady MacBeth. 

Would I read this author again? Probably. But he's not something I'd particularly seek out all that often.

Not quite grimdark, but getting there

 Found out recently that Benedict Jacka had released two more of his Alex Verus novels since I last looked, and Forged came into my possession. 

So. 

We're again dealing with the consequences of Alex being hunted by the Council, whatever plans his former master Richard has, Rachel/Deleo's pursuit of him, and Anne being possessed by a rather powerful djinn. The latter involving Anne's vendetta against her tormentors,  including crucifying a rakasha who had once been using her in his club. 

Several things happen in this, almost none of which particularly involve the Dark Mage plot line. Really, we're mainly concerned with Anne's djinn fueled plots, particularly since she wants to play Oprah and give Alex, Luna, and Variam jinni of their own. (She's nothing if not generous.)

We do see what will likely be closure on the Rachel/Deleo storyline, as old girl has some major Freudian consequences when she enters Elsewhere. 

And one of Alex's biggest threats from the light council gets dealt with, as Alex first gets his hand on Levistus's  AI that provides blackmail material, but then manipulates Anne to help deal with Levistus himself. 

While I enjoyed this,and he hasn't quite hit Butcher levels of "How Morally Grey can I make my narrator before people stop reading?", it is getting dark in here, and while the author is British and I assume most of the political shots are aimed at Parliament, more than a few of those shots go wide enough to hit just about any government. On the other hand, he seems to be quite content to explore the "Y" axis between kivertine and authoritarian vs concentrating on on the rather middling "X" axis of Good/Evil.

With the next book on reserve at the library, I'll be interested to see what happens next.

Electric Boogaloo

 Many years ago (like 2002), I found David Bergantino's Hamlet II: Ophelia's Revenge on the sale rack at the library I used frequently. I remember reading it then, but it's been a while since I last slogged through this. 

I'm sure most folks have a general idea of the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and this is essentially the same story with the addition of another vengeful ghost running around Elsinore Castle, the ghost of one particularly angry spirit who's been in a bog for several centuries. 

But first, we open on a football game between Globe University and Fortinbras University, as QB Cameron Dean pulls a trick play to win the game by pretty much climbing over geeky freshmen Rosenberg and Gyllenhal. A late hit in the end zone reveals a vision of Cameron's father, who tells him that he was murdered by his Aunt Claudia, and Cameron is to be the agent of his vengeance.  Cameron is summoned by mother Gerti (who's currently shacked up with Claudia), to be informed that in a few weeks, on his 21st birthday, he is to inherit a family estate in Denmark. 

Anyway, the book past that hits several of the same beats as the play, with changed names and circumstances. (Cameron hires a band in to sing of how Claudia killed his father, pretty much everyone dies....) The difference being that Cameron and his entourage's (He invites the entire team and a guest to go along) happens to wake up a certain vengeful spirit who somehow wound up in a bog after Cameron's twinned soul forsook her. Ophelia wastes no time possessing most of the minor characters, usually women, causing them to drown while strangling their men, in her wrath against love.

Amusingly, two characters who are pronounced dead, don't end up dead, really. Indeed, it's revealed that the terror of the events have lead them to realize their love for one another, which is a bit better than getting shipped to England to get executed on arrival. 

Honestly, the problems with this novel it shares with Shakespeare. The first act drags, and drags badly. Once Ophelia wakes up, things improve, and one gets the sense that the author, like several goth girls of my acquaintance think Ophelia should have had a beer and a one night stand when Hamlet went off on her rather than swimming in peat. 

I mean, Hamlet is not my favorite. Bergantino does well updating it for a modern audience, but it's still the same old story with some new window dressing.