Time for my book report. Read two books last week. One I consider something of a discovery. The other, while it was fun, ended up being too much of a tease.
The first book, A Nameless Witch by A. Lee Martinez, is notable for many things. To start with, the 5th sentence on page 56 is "The troll walked away." I know this because my sister's Facebook profile said it was National Book Week and that we should all post the 5th sentence on page 56 of whatever book was nearest to us. (In case you're confused, my sister lives in Australia. National book week in the US isn't till April.) Anyway, it's just a great sentence. It's a short story in and of itself. The whole book is filled with moments like that. It's warm and lighthearted and doesn't take itself too seriously.
It's also pretty romantic, without being sweet about it. I had to wonder whether A. Lee is a man or a woman. The book jacket refers to "him" and "he", but the touch is female. I had a similar feeling reading the first Cal & Niko book, Nightlife by Rob Thurman. I assumed "Rob" was male, but as I read the book I thought that, for a guy, he had a pretty feminine approach to relationships. Then I checked out Rob's blog and learned she picked a masculine-sounding pen name because her books are so dark and she didn't think she'd be taken seriously if she used her own name. I don't mean to be gender-centric; clearly men can write romance and women can be dark. The feel of Nameless Witch just made me wonder what the author's gender really was. I went to A. Lee's blog, but other than the fact that it had so much going on it overwhelmed the capabilities of the computer system at the University of Washington Medical Center (in the middle of the night when very few other people were on it) I didn't learn much. He blogs a lot. Some day I'll try again from a different computer.
I have a second book by A. Lee, Monster, and can't wait to read it. He reminds me a little of Neil Gaimon, who I'm still in love with. Or at least I'm in love with his language. Will probably post on Monster when I get it read.
The second book I read was India Black: A Madam of Espionage Mystery by Carol K. Carr. The basic premise of this book is that India is a Madame, running a whorehouse in late 19th century London. A client dies during a assignation, and India gets pulled into this spy vs spy game between England and Russia. I thought the mystery itself was clever, though it felt like it ended, then ended again, then dragged on a bit and ended again. The thing that bugged me about this book was that, while they talk a lot about whores and bints and the men who love them, there is virtually NO sex in this book. It made me think of the girl in highschool who told me, "Those who talk about it don't do it."
It also bothered me that, since the book is written from the perspective of the madame, she spends a lot of time complaining about the girls she has working for her. They eat too much and don't charge their favorites enough, they steal from the johns and they disappear without warning. The author creates a realistic view of the underclass, but doesn't treat the girls in India's house the same way. They come off as kind of an underdressed sorority, similar to the Bunny Ranch on the HBO series. In both cases the girls are just happy happy happy to be there spreading their legs for whoever will pay them. Both cases feel exploitive. I've never been a prostitute, but I'm guessing that the process of becoming one is fairly complex. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing one does on a lark. I see the truth in the way the character India treated the girls who worked for her, but I guess I'm enough a child of the '70's women's movement to be bothered by the exploitation of characters who were created just to tease.
This book is clearly set up to be the start of a series. India's romantic interest warmed up all the way from frozen turd to barely-scoopable icecream, which suggests that it's going to take at least three more books to get past the teasing stage. If they fall into my lap I might read them, but it's unlikely I'll go out looking for them.
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