Dirty Pop

So, technically, I read Mark Richard Zubro's Dead Egotistical Morons back in 2003 when it came out, but I wasn't running this blog back then.

Also, I remain surprised this particular book didn't get more press with its overall plot line.

Paul Turned is a Chicago detective, who, along with his partner Fenwick, gets called out to Chicago's All-Sports Arena where Roger Stendar, one of the 5 singers of Boys4U has been found shot execution style in the showers following the final show.  What follows is a very soapy murder mystery that roughly corresponds to what would happen if N*SYNC revealed a bunch of information about how they'd all been... involved... with each other, with their producer, with their choreographer...

Really, it's a lot more over the top than I remember. The main reason it stuck out in my mind was the Lance Bass character actually being gay. (In 2003, the real Lance wasn't quite the gay superstar he is in 2015.)  Zubro wrote quite a few of the Paul Turner mysteries, as well as the Tom & Scott mysteries, which were also fun and soapy. (One was a teacher, the other a baseball player.) Only real issue I ever had with them was the continuity between books was always quite a bit off, as if the timeline got thrown out the window every time someone gets killed.

Anyway, reading gay mysteries again got me thinking about how mysteries were one of the few big genres I could reliably find gay materials in when visiting a bookstore. (This is not to say that they didn't exist, but much of it was pulpy romance, or not in a genre I really wanted to start getting involved with (Sadly, Sci-Fi and fantasy are really underrepresented in books with gay protagonists. A few exist, but even then, if you manage to get a gay character, it's essentially the gay bff.)

So, with that in mind, I went digging through amazon trying to remember some of the authors and series that used to captivate me when I could afford to go book shopping.

Nathan Aldyne wrote a series that started with Vermillion, that took place in pre-HIV Boston/Provincetown. Mostly I remember the first murder involving someone getting a Prince Albert and really bot enjoying what happened after. (Loved the book, but yeah, lots of crossed legs.)

David Stukas wrote a series of books that started with Someone Killed his Boyfriend. Very silly, very CAMPY, but also fun to read.

RD Zimmerman wrote the Todd Mills Mysteries. These started with Closet, which was fairly campy, then went really serious really quickly. It was probably the first time I really started encountering the anger about how People with HIV/AIDS were being treated in regular fiction.

I can't find the gay espionage mystery series I used to love to read, so if anyone remembers, let me know.

There's also the classic Mabel Maney A Ghost in the Closet, which was 3rd in a series parodying Nancy Drew. This book introduced The Hardly Boys, and had Nurse Cherry Aimless, whom Nancy Clue was sort of in love with.

As I've mentioned previously, I'm quite ecstatic that gay lit has expanded beyond the borders I found when I came out in the 90's. Mind you, they still mostly concern gay folks who are a lot higher on the social ladder than I am, but then I doubt books concerning gay men in their late 30's working retail would sell particularly well.

As a note, I have 2 other Zubro mysteries in the TBR shelf, so you may see a few more showing up on here over time.

The circle closes

So, after a few unexpected adventures in plumbing this week, I did managed to finish Kelly McCullogh's Blade Reforged, part of the continuing adventures of Aral Kingslayer.

Wow.


We start this book with Aral trying to spring an old friend from King Thauvik's (son of King Ashvik, who died to give Aral the title Kingslayer) torture prison. After finding the task nigh impossible, Aral instead helps set up Baroness Maylien (also his part time lover, and the one who got the plot rolling back in Book 1) to take the throne.

Complicating this is a Blade legend, the Kitsune, and the return of former Blade turned servant of the bad church, Devin. The Kitsune would be a Blade long thought dead, who entered dead Namara's service long before Aral was born, supposedly killed by teacher Kelos. Surprise! Nuriko is still alive and still accompanied by her many tailed fox shade familiar! And she's also sort of in league with Son of Shan, in a less restricted manner than Kelos, who was already sort of a free agent in service to the Son. Devin, on the other hand...

Well, Devin again ends up making a deal with Aral, who, despite their complete hatred of each other, is being more tormented by Nuriko than Aral could ever attempt to accomplish. Also, if Aral is able get rid of the Kitsune, the Son's torments of Devin are likely to be lesser than if her plot manages to go forward. (As we have been learning through the series in dribs and drabs, the Son is not a nice person. That his form of discipline involves God enforced oaths, tattoos and then flaying skin to remove said tattoos to preserve in an art gallery should not exactly be a surprise.)

Devin, unsurprisingly, doesn't want Thauvik dead, mainly because the King is more or less under the thumb of the Son. However, with Nuriko warping the Son's goals....

Oh yeah, and Maylien starts a revolution to take the throne after Thauvik kills off half the nobility to prevent Maylien's legal adoption (and therefore legitimate claim of succession) becoming public knowledge. Which leads to a few new characters, including Prixia, who becomes Maylien's general after her father gets killed and declared a traitor in the adoption fiasco. Captain Fei again provides fascinating background information about what's going on in the figurative shadows.

Oh yes, and Aral has finally achieved some measure of sobriety, which cuts down the passages devoted to self-incrimination over drinking quite a bit. (I'm not knocking addiction recovery at all here. Aral's sobriety is long coming, and it's good to see him accomplishing it one day at a time.)

The events following the climax provide quite a preview of things to come, as well as providing a literal interpretation of both the first book's title and the current book's title.

I'll be very interested in seeing how the series progresses from here.

Feeding Pop Rocks to a fire spider

A few years ago, two series started around the same time, although subsequent volumes haven't exactly been synchronized. The first one I ran across was Jim C. Hines's Magic ex Libris and the second was Jacqueline Carey's Agent of Hel. Both first volumes were a little rocky, but lots and lots of fun. Then came volumes 2, when Agent of Hel came out ahead, mainly because Libris got a little too serious in parts, leading to a few tonal issues. And now, having finished Jim C. Hines' 3rd volume, Unbound, he's back in the lead in this not very real competition. (Seriously, I love both series. And my issues with book 3 in Hel are on here on the tag.)

Now, thanks to following Hines' blog, I came in forewarned that about the first third of Unbound would be concerned with Issac's depression following Gutenberg destroying his ability to do magic at the end of Codex Born. And it does tend to be rough reading until things pick up a bit. Jeneta, Issac's former student is evidently possessed by an alien intelligence that caused her to board a plane for parts unknown at the end of the last volume. Issac can't do magic and has been kicked from the Porters. Bi Wei, of the Oriental version of the Porters, has revealed the existence of both the Porters and Magic by making a note appear in every copy of A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin. (I have to wonder how many people ended up checking their copy to see if life imitated art there.) Issac's in danger of losing his job at the Copper River Library.

About the only stable thing in his life is his girlfriend Lena, the dryad drawn from The Nymphs of Neptune, and her girlfriend Nidhi. Bound and determined to help find Jeneta and fix everything despite losing nearly everything, Issac goes to see a siren hypnotherapist. (Here we get our first real laugh as the siren's song is described as something akin to a suicidal whale song sung by Stevie Nicks.) Here, we get the name of the commanding force behind the Devourers of the last book, Meridiana.

Meridiana, it seems, has a convoluted back story involving being brought back from death by a pope, only to try to take over the world with an army of hungry ghosts. By hooking up with a black market Ramanga, Issac winds up first in space then in Rome with a bit of vampire blood that allows him to communicate with said Pope's ghost. It's here in Rome where we find out Meridiana, through Jeneta's magic, is turning her army of ghosts into monsters. We also meet Ponce de Leon, who in turn drags Johannes Gutenberg back into the picture .

The interactions between Ponce and Johannes are some of the best parts of the book. Passages arguing security versus freedom entwine with the revelation that Gutenberg has been writing Harry Potter fan fiction. And we also get Issac trying to solve Gerbert d'Aurillac's puzzle of where he hid the celestial sphere holding Meridiana's soul.

Interspersed withing the text are passages from things contemporaneous with the main narrative, as the existence of magic becomes widely known. Things like coaches being suspended for allegedly using magic for the team, Issac's brother's nastygram about how Issac could have used magic to save his nephew's limbs....

It's a much more fun volume than the last book, more in tune with Jim Butcher's Dresden Files sense of style. (Tio be fair, Issac is a lot less hard boiled than Dresden is. Although I could totally see Issac yelling "Parkour!" while navigating the gates of Hades.)

Honestly, one of the best reads I've had in a while.

Whole Lotta Shaking Going On

Returning to a series I haven't been back to in a while, I just finished Kage Baker's The Children of the Company, book 6 in her Company novels.

Although, really, this one isn't so much of a novel as much as it is short stories connected by reflections of one of the newly revealed antagonists of the series, Executive Facilitator Labienus. Much like Facilitator Joseph (narrator of Sky Coyote and The Graveyard Game), Labienus was recruited by Budu back in prehistory. Unlike Joseph, Labienus is working on his own endgame, which may or may not end well for humanity.

We start in early Sumerian culture, with Labienus set up as God and ruler of Nippur, En-Lil. (Interestingly, as someone who's studied Sumerian myths, I was facinated by the idea presented here that the reason the afterlife as presented in Sumerian mythos was a way to prevent suicide. The Gods created human to do all the work for them, and when you die, you go to a dark realm to be bored for eternity.) As Sumer evolves, Labienus winds up going to Egypt, where he encounters Joseph acting as court magician. While he doesn't think Joseph will be an ally, he does get Joseph to set up the mystery cults that will eventually evolve into Dr. Zeus Inc.

We find Labienus is involved in a private war with Aegeus, another Executive Facilitator trying to be the one in charge when the temporal concordance runs out. Aegeus has a protege in Victor, who's eventual fall under the sway of Labienus forms on of the overall stories within. It's Victor who must deal with Literature Preserver Lewis, last seen in the far future being taken captive and presumably killed by strange beings on Catalina Island. One of the big reveals in here concerns Lewis's time at a monastery dictating pagan tales of Ireland to a monk scribe. It seems "fairies" keep trying to take one of the monks to underhill, leading Lewis and his monkly scribe to investigate, discovering Homo sapiens umbratilis, a race of human like beings who allege that they evolved from a race other than Neanderthal or Cro-Magnan. They also seem to have ways on taking out the immortal cyborgs, which is indeed a rarity in this setting. Victor's job is to wipe Lewis's memory of anything involving this new race, which eventually succeeds. (This would also explain Lewis's issues when confronted with them in The Graveyard Game.)

Aegeus does manage to capture 2 members of umbratilis, including a female. The female eventually breeds with a normal human, and one of the few surviving children shows up much later in the plot threads.

About halfway through, we finally find out how Budu came to be in so many pieces during The Graveyard Game. Seems in an attempt to talk to Victor in San Francisco in the early morning of April 18th, 1906, Budu manages to push Victor too far. Mind you, Victor, in one of a few incidents of such, finds out he's being used as a cyborg Typhoid Mary, releasing a nasty virus that shuts Budu down right before the Tongs come in and dismember him.

Time advances, and we find out that one of our Russian cyborgs gets screwed over by Labienus for figuring out the Sattes virus. As his role is to preserve things in shipwrecks, the rescue team fails to save him from his sunken ship.

We end with Labienus preparing to interfere with Mendoza's life again, this time by sending the latest iteration of the Adonai project into her life.

Again, there is a hell of a lot of information in this volume, most of it designed to better flesh out what's been going on behind the scenes of previous volumes. We also see a resurgence of thematic content, with the cyborgs playing a sort of Eliza Doolittle to Humanity's Henry Higgens. This ranges from "Exterminate all the humans" to "Save all the humans" to "Pare down the humans to better manageable population size that they might serve us".

Can't wait to get some more breathing room to get the next volume.

Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togever.....

For those few of you who haven't already figured this out, I'm a hot gay nerd. Which has to be one of the reasons I wound up picking up Cary Elwes (with Joe Layden)'s memoir As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride.

For the record, while the movie itself came out in 1987, I didn't actually see it until 1995, when the guy across the hall from me in my dorm suckered a bunch of us into piling into a small double in Cedar Hall at Wright State to watch what I assumed would be a kid flick. When I found instead was a charming movie with a lot of humor directed at the adults in the audience.

If you haven't seen it, get thee to a Blockbuster, er NetFlix, er...well, it's streaming someplace, I assume... Well, anyway, it's a story told by Peter Falk to Fred Savage about a Farmboy in love with a girl. He goes off to find his fortune to marry her, dies at the hands of a pirate, and then she gets engaged to a prince who wants to kill her off.

Elwes' narrative here is more or less a book format of the 25th anniversary reunion in New York a few years back. We hear tales of him (mostly unknown) being cast in the role of the farm boy Westley, his first meeting with Buttercup (Robin Wright), meeting Andre the Giant and Mandy Patinkin for the first time...

Interspersed throughout are sidebars with cast and crew adding in their thoughts on the passages, allowing for a much broader view of the filming.

Many of the stories (like Christopher Guest actually knocking Elwes out at the end of the Fire Swamp sequence) make me want to stick the DVD in again. Others, like all of the wonderful tales of Andre the Giant, make me want to find old highlights of his time in what was then the WWF. (One story involves Andre getting too drunk to get a cab home, so he passed out on the floor of the hotel lobby. Since no one could rouse him, they roped him off until he woke up. Almost all stories though speak of his gentle nature and how much he endured in every day life.) Others, like Wallace Shawn's (Vizzini) being convinced he was going to get fired after flubbing a few lines are kind of sad.

And sometimes, Elwes (who's married) gets a little too flowery in professing his love for Robin Wright. I notice her asides are a little less worshipful than his stories of her tend to be. On the other hand, "listening" to Carol Kane and Billy Crystal "argue" in print brings a joy found in their shared cameo returning to life in what's fairly obviously a good friendship between them.

If you enjoyed the movie, the book is worth checking out.

That was a sharp retort

I've talked before about how much I'm enjoying Kelly McCullough's Fallen Blade series, and having just finished book 3, Crossed Blades, I'm happy to report it's just gaining steam.

As a quick recap, in the last book, one of the apprentices from the Temple of Namara (that Aral, our narrator worked out of before Shen and his devotees declared the goddess dead and destroyed the temple) was found and apprenticed herself to Aral. Faran has been a quick study in using the shadow arts, having worked as a spy and assassin prior to reconnecting with Aral.

We start this chapter with the reappearance of Jax, Aral's one time fiancee, who wound up in bed with Aral's best friend and later traitor to the order, Devin. Jax managed to escape from the Son of Heaven's torture chambers along with a few other Blades, starting a sanctuary and school in the high mountains of her home country. However, rumor of Aral's reappearance in the eleven Kingdoms coupled with the capture of her current lover and the apprentices at her school leads her to the city of Tien to find her lost lover in hopes of freeing them.

What we find out early on is that Jax is being blackmailed by a high ranking priestess in the Temple in order to capture Aral. We also find out that Aral's mentor, Kelos, is now in league with the Temple, acting as the Sun's shadow. Not that Kelos doesn't have his own agenda, but....

Again, much of the book focuses on Aral's climb out of the depths of his depression and recovering from his alcoholism. We also delve quite a bit into Aral's psyche as he deals with his doubts over his previous vocation and whether or not he was doing right by bringing justice in Namara's service. Ultimately, give the preview of the next book tucked into the end of this one, I rather doubt that question is easily answered, as Aral's mindset evolves on the matter.

Another high point is the interactions between Jax and Faran, who hate each other at first sight, and have to work around their differences in order to achieve their goal.

Kelos is by far the most interesting addition to this book, as his motivations remain clear as mud until the very end. One hopes he reappears down the line, as he provides a very interesting perspective on the cause of justice.


Really, while the entire premise sounds like the stuff of an RPG, the verve and flair of the author and his characters makes it worth the investment of time to read.

Cats and Books....

When I picked up Blaize and John Clement's new Dixie Hemingway, The Cat sitter's Nine Lives, I was amused to see the cover had a tabby reading feline themed literature on the cover. It put me in mind of Edward Gorey's famous illustration:

Sadly, what lay between the covers was less enthralling. Mind you, this series is still leaps and bounds above the quality in the The Cat Who.... series, but then, I'm not a cat person.

The main plot centers around Dixie again being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In this case, Dixie gets in a fender bender caused by a serious head on collision further up the main drag of Siesta Key. She ends up saving one of the drivers before his car explodes. She then goes into a bookstore she frequented as a child, where she buys a book on animal friendly gardening. As it turns out, other than the murderer, she's the last one to see the proprietor alive.

What follows  is a pretty run of the mill mystery, with a bit of silliness in the climax.

I mean, yes, I realize, again, that I'm not the target audience, but half of what makes series mysteries like this work is character development. and honestly, about the only real development in here is that Ethan and Dixie are happily dating. And the scenes are kind of chunky, less tied together than normal.

Anyway, still a quick read, and fun to get from the library if you need something fun to get you through.

How many bullets, Gino?

Well, evidently, Mercedes Lackey has decided against ending her writings in Valdemar. Which isn't a bad thing, although the first book in the follow up to her Collegium Chronicles, Closer to Home, does borrow a few tricks from her Elemental Masters series.

Again, we're following Mags and Amily, since Bear and Lena are off Barding and Healing someplace besides the capital. As we start, Amily's father, Nikolas (current King's Own), has an accident, dies for a few minutes in icy water, then gets Chosen by another companion. The grove born Rolan, King's Own companion chooses Amily to be the new King's Own. (It's kind of like Buffy. One dies, another gets activated.)

As such, Nikolas is more or less out of commission, meaning Amily has to learn to be Kyril's adviser and Mags has to take over much of Nikolas's spy ring.

In the meantime, as Midwinter approaches, two feuding Houses come to Haven for Winter Court, mostly to get daughters and sons betrothed. As such, King Kyril gets Amily involved with Lord Leverance and his 3 girls, while Mags gets involved with Lord Kaltar and his son Brand. Leverance's youngest daughter, Violetta, is flighty and hooked on novels of great romance. Kaltar's son Brand likes to go with Mags (posing as Magnus) to brothels. At one of the parties, Violetta spies Brand and grows infatuated. She sends him an impulsive note. After getting a rather stern lecture about fallout from such an act, Violetta starts pining away with unrequited love.

Now, Brand, supposedly having been convinced that a lesser noble wrote the note as a prank, runs into Violetta at a party her House is hosting. Brand and his friends arrive masked, of course, but Violetta's cousin Talbot recognizes Brand right off the bat. Brand shows up outside Violetta's balcony, makes promises of love, Talbot and Brand get in a sword fight, well... you get the idea.

Quite thankfully, even if Lackey borrowed heavily from Romeo and Juliette, she makes enough changes to the course of events that I wasn't busy complaining about teen angst and stupid reasons to commit suicide.  (Seriously. R&J annoyed me as a teen.)

I'm kind of curious why Lackey is staying in this time period, following the same characters now through a 6th book, when most of Valdemar has been in trilogies and focused on different characters with previous foci becoming recurring characters. Not complaining, since it remains interesting enough to read, but I'm kind of missing the "Modern" setting.

As a side note, according to Goodreads, I managed to log 38 books read last year. Now, given there were a few here and there I didn't list (mainly graphic novels and a few YA novels), and I probably did list a few which were series I was trying to find new volumes in, 38 is probably a good estimate. As such, I set a goal to read 40 in 2015. Which may be easier, since my lunch hour is mostly my own again, although I no longer have a job where I can read during downtime.

Hags to riches

So, I finished Jaqueline Carey's Poison Fruit on the way into work this morning. Sadly, according to the library newsletter, this is the last of a trilogy. Sadder still is that it probably should have been at least two books, since the first half is a much different narrative from the second half.

This is not to say it's not a good book, but it is a bit of a disjointed transition from the quest to banish the night hag to a lawsuit designed to bring war to Little Niflheim.

We start with our protagonist, Daisy, learning that her sort of love interest, the Outcast Stefan, is headed back to Poland to take care of old business in his old domain. Which leaves room for her probably-not-gonna-happen flirtation with Cody Fairfax, the werewolf.

Unfortunately, this mainly comes up during a search for a Night Hag, which may or may not be real. (Since this is Pemkowet, Michigan, she is real; however, it is mentioned that there is a syndrome of people having realistic nightmares about hags sitting on their chest and suffocating them.) The Hag starts by attacking an unbalanced man recently returned from a war zone,  moves on to a seven year old, and winds up killing an old woman in a nursing home. The search on how to find her leads to an abandoned campground, where they meet the bogle Skrrzzzt who tells them the way to get rid of the Unseelie Hag (And therefor not particularly under the rule of the Oak King is to tie a piece of her hair around her neck. However, this requires Daisy to have a nightmare bad enough to draw the Hag to her.

So, being a good demon spawn, Daisy hits up her ex,. Sinclair, to curse her. This has the desired effect, and it also reveals Daisy's darkest fear: accepting her birthright and ending the world. More to the point, doing that and enjoying it.

After the Night Hag is resolved, we get a small interlude as Stefen returns and asks a favor of her as Hel's Liaison. Which is to kill a friend of his. This interlude is probably the best written section of the book, bringing up discussions on euthanasia, the downsides of immortality when one has a degenerative disease, and a bit of Talmudic thought to boot.

Then, we get into the second half, which really should have been a book of its own.

Our dear friend from the last book, the lawyer Dufreyne, is back, and buying up properties encroaching on Hel's domain. He's also quite busy suing Pemkowet over the Halloween adventures the past year. Turns out he's also Hellspawn, only he long ago accepted his birthright. (Then again, his was a planned pregnancy.) As he's working under the auspices of Elysian Fields, inc., it becomes fairly obvious a figure from the Greek Underworld is trying to muscle in on Hel's territory.And given his birthright includes powers of persuasion, it gets mighty ridiculous what happens as this part of the story progresses.

As I stated at the outset, this section would probably be better as a standalone book, instead of being layered in at the end of the Night Hag adventure. As the lawsuit storyline starts around Thanksgiving and ends in early February, there would have been much more room to explore what all was going on here, from Lurine the lamia's kiss, to the burgeoning relationship with Stefen, and it would have given much more room to fully flesh out the Greek underworld figure trying to muscle in on Hel's territory.  (Since I'm not in the mood for spoilers, let's just say the presentation of said figure is kind of flat until the end of the war. There's a heck of a lot that could have and should have been done with this presentation.)

There's also the end of the war, which I kind of had figured out the basics of long before the armies meet. It seems really rushed, and the epilogue discussing the aftermath again reiterates there are still stories to tell here. I'm kind of hoping that Ms. Carey writes more in this setting, since the writing is fresh and funny in several places, while being poignant and touching in other places. As it is, it reminded me a bit of Spider-Man 3, where two very different plots got shoehorned together due to a fight between the studio and the director. Thankfully, there's no My chemical Spider-Man moment in here, but the thought remains.

Why we wish young Anakin was part of this...

As part of a push to get back into series I've reviewed on here previously, but missed that installments have come out since I last read them, I managed to get Taken in by Benedict Jacka's third book in the Alex Verus novels. (The first two are here and here.)

Now, I'll admit, I'm noticing that much of the British urban fantasy I read falls into a cheeky hardboiled mode, and Alex Verus is much in a similar vein. We have a Femme Fatale introduced early on in Crystal, who wants Alex to work security at the White Stone tournament at Fountain Reach. The former being a mage tournament wherein they can all magic the poop out of each other with no real harm coming to either participant in the duel, and the latter being a strongly warded house with a permanent shroud effect.

We have Alex's apprentice Luna (who's technically an adept, sort of), who's classmates Anne (Life magick) and Variam (fire magick) are apprenticed to an ancient rakasha (Indian tiger demon). We also have Morden and Onyx making an appearance, as once again, Onyx gets assigned to help Alex solve the mystery of the vanishing apprentices. Because apprentices of both the Light Mages and the Dark mages are vanishing, and non of the more grey magicks (time, divination, space) seem to be able to break the shrouds that surround each vanishing.

A visit to Anne and Variam's patron as well as a mysterious text message winds up propelling Alex to Fountain Reach as well as entering Luna in the White Stone tournament.

Yeah, there's a mystery here, although I had much of the actual mystery figured out not long into the investigation. There are a few twists that I missed that come up towards the end that make it more satisfying.

Yes, I rather like this series. It fills a middle place between Simon R. Green's really overpowered protagonists and Paul Cornell's fairly human protagonists. While Alex has powers, they don't particularly lend themselves well to combat. This allows the action to focus more on cleverness in getting around obstacles. The only real issue here is that the use of divination to find the correct path gets a bit silly, as looking at multiple futures to eavesdrop on conversations probably would not really work as well as it does in the series. But honestly, with disbelief suspended this far, that's a minor quibble.