Mercy Burns.....or the night my life was saved by Keri Arthur and St. James

Any time you gather a group of humans, politics will break out. Last week was an especially bad example of that. There was an implosion of sorts at St. Rhododendron's, where my daughter goes to school. At the same time, a set of circumstances evolved at Holy Holy Holy Church, where I'm part of the music program. It was no one's fault, but my feelings got hurt. The two situations were completely unrelated, but together it was enough to make me question some fundamental things, like, do I really believe in God? Remember that last week was Holy Week, which for a church choir geek like me meant that I was scheduled to spend quite a bit of time singing my praises to Him (or Her). Problem.

I was committed to singing at St James Cathedral for the Good Friday service, but before that I had to go to St. Rhododendron's for the live-action Stations of the Cross, because my daughter was going to be one of the crowd mocking Jesus and she wanted me there to see it. I really didn't want to go sit there and pretend I wasn't pissed off at half the people in the pews. I made it, though, and the 7th graders did a nice job of the Stations. Afterwards we ran down to the QFC to get some sushi for lunch (no meat on Good Friday, right?). While we were there, I cruised the paperback shelf and found a new one by Keri Arthur. It was called Mercy Burns, and it's a one-off romance that doesn't look like it's part of any of her series.

I like Keri Arthur a lot, having read almost all of the books in her Riley Jensen series. She's from Melbourne, Australia, which makes her books feel a little different. She creates entertaining characters, her plots move right along, and the Australian background is a lot of fun. Mercy Burns is set in San Francisco, which to me was its only weakness. It felt like she'd gone to California for a vacation, knew enough to get the place names right, but didn't have an adequate feel for the place to make it real. The rest of the book was good, though. The characters were clever and the plot was well-constructed. And honestly, reading a romance on Good Friday afternoon might not work for everyone, but it helped me re-set my internal state so that when I got to St James for the evening service, I was in a much better frame of mind than I otherwise would have been. Sitting in the Cathedral, among a huge crowd of believers, with the early evening light drifting down through the oculus, it took about three minutes for me to figure out that, in fact, I do believe in God. His imperfect human followers, not so much. I walked out of there feeling healed, and that energy carried me through the rest of the weekend. It might not have been everyone's path to peace, but it worked for me.

Blessedly, the day after Easter, the family and I made a road trip to Portland. With kids in different school systems, their vacations rarely line up, so it was a short trip and meant one kid missed school while the other was on Spring Break. Our hotel was two blocks from Powell's Books - okay, that was a deliberate choice - and I thought I showed admirable restraint in only bringing home nine books. Could have been worse. While we were there I read The Witch's Daughter by Paula Brackston. It's a historical occult fantasy, and while those elements are usually a win for me, it took me a while to get into this book. In fact, I almost gave up somewhere between pages 48 and 50. She also broke my cardinal rule in killing off characters that I cared about, but the deaths were entirely necessary for the plot and done in such a way as to minimize the drama, so I could handle it. In fact, those events were what drew me deeper into the story and kept me reading.

She tells the story of Elizabeth in flashbacks. Elizabeth is a witch who has spent 400 years dodging the evil warlock who made her. The author had a good command of each period in history that the story visited and she also integrated Wiccan lore throughout the story. I was actually less sold on the Wiccan elements than the historical details; they felt learned and taught rather than an organic part of the story. Overall, though, it was a good read, and I'm glad I stuck with it.

The big win for the week was the first of my Powell's pick-ups. I started reading it in our hotel room, read it all afternoon after getting back from Portland, read it at the bar in a (very!) fancy east-side restaurant while waiting for my friend to meet me for dinner, then stayed up till 2am to finish it. The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook just plain rocked the socks off me. It's a steampunk fantasy with really interesting things to say about genetic engineering and a woman's place in society. Oh, and a really compelling romance. It was one of those books that I started re-reading as soon as I was done with the last page. I re-read the last chapter, then opened it about 3/4 of the way from the end and re-read 10 or 15 pages, then said Screw It and started again from the beginning. I could pick apart the plot a little, if you made me, but overall the world she creates is so absorbing, the characters are so fascinating, and the ideas she's playing with are so intriguing that any little quibbles fade away. There's already a line forming to borrow it....

Bloodsucking Fiends

I read for entertainment. Just wanted to make that clear, in case you were still uncertain about my motivation. If I want spiritual enlightenment, I'll go to church. If I want heartrending drama, I'll go to work. Books are the place I go to have fun, to laugh, to get turned on, you know, to go on little mini-vacations that are cheap and don't require packing.

All of that is to justify why I read about vampires. Nothing makes me happier than finding a good vampire book by an author that's new to me. This week I came across one of those finds. The book is Bloodsucking Fiends, and the author is Christopher Moore. Mr. Moore has written a number of books about vampires and other demons. He has a sort of wry, 'in on the joke' voice that reminded me of A. Lee Martinez. I don't remember much about the story; a San Francisco office worker and "serial monogamist" runs across an ancient vamp who deals with boredom by randomly turning people into vampires then watching his fledglings flounder until he kills them. The action centers on her survival and her love life. It also involves turkey bowling. How can you not love a book that has turkey bowling? I liked this book a lot and would definitely look for other books by this author.

Then, for some twisted vampire action, I re-read Narcissus in Chains, an Anita Blake novel by Laurell K. Hamilton. Oh Anita, you have so far to go. 'Nuff said.

I ventured into cozy-ville with Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart. I was in junior high when I first read Ms. Stewart. I loved The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills and in my mind they're still the definitive versions of the Arthurian myth. I haven't really kept up with her since then, however. Rose Cottage reads like it was written a long time ago, though in fact the publication date was 1997. It's set in England in the year immediately following WWII. I could more-or-less figure out the plot early on, but the period detail made the book a fascinating read. It was worth the night I spent on it.

Death Most Definite

I always have a huge TBR pile, books I pick up that look interesting that live in a stack by my bed or in the living room until I get around to reading them. And I turn 49 in a few days. Don't have all the time in the world anymore, so if a book doesn't reel me in quickly me, I throw it back.

This week I've had two false starts, books I started to read but couldn't feel the groove. Both, fortunately, are library books, so I'm not out any money. I try to buy used books, since I read so fast, so it wouldn't be a big deal even if I'd paid for them. It's the principle of the thing. The first of the false starts was The Necromancer by Michael Scott. This is the 5th book in a young adult series. I've read the first four, admittedly with dwindling interest. The only reason I reserved this book was because, well, I'd read the first four. I made it to page 75, then went and checked the last couple pages and yes, there'll be a book six. I threw in the towel. I think there's not enough sense of resolution to make any of the books really satisfying, and at this point I just don't care. The author seems to think that it's enough to have the characters survive each book. I like them to be happy about it, too.

The second false start was a bigger disappointment. I put An Object Of Beauty, the new book by Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin) on hold a while ago. The blurb made the premise sound interesting - a young girl rockets across the New York art scene and then the world - but when I finally got ahold of it, I just couldn't feel it. The narrator, Daniel, is a self-described hip-nerd who writes about the art world and has known Lacey Yeager since college. He tells the story of her early years working for Sotheby's in New York and, well, that's when I quit reading. Both of them annoyed me so thoroughly I couldn't keep going. I found Lacey tiresome rather than fascinating, a completely self-absorbed and unlikeable character. Maybe that marks me as a totally backwater, uncouth bumpkin. So be it.

I had better luck with a couple of genre books. I read Nalini Singh's Bonds of Justice and liked it. I also read The Surrender Of A Lady by Tiffany Clare. Both are romances. Apparently I have no shame, though I thought about putting book covers on both of them. I enjoyed both of them. Sigh. I've read that romances are gaining in popularity because with Kindle, anyone can read one without the whole world seeing the tattooed torso or ripping bodice they always have on the cover. You can get away with reading something that is a very short number of steps from what used to be in Penthouse's Forum and no one will know. It also has something to do with how grim things are in the real world right now. People want a good escapist read that has a happy ending.

If that's what you're looking for, I would recommend either of those two books. Nalini Singh writes paranormal romance. I've heard good things about her and have wanted to check her out. Bonds Of Justice was a pretty fun read. The author lived up to her billing and I will keep an eye out for her at Half Price Books. The Tiffany Clare book was also fun. An English lady of the Victorian era gets sold into a Middle-Eastern slave market to pay her husband's gambling debts. He ends up dead and she ends up in a harem. Hello harem! Okay, as long as I don't think too hard about the underlying political implications of the story, I can say I enjoyed the read.

My discovery of the week has to be Death Most Definite by Trent Jamieson. Again with the genre fiction, but so so good. It's the first in a series set in Brisbane, Australia. I loved the novel place names and the petrol and the kilometers and all the colorful language. It was well plotted, got a little excessive towards the climax, but ended well. The main character comes off as a young Harry Dresden with more of the kinks to work out. I think I have a crush on him. Powells is sending me a copy of this one and the sequel so I can lend it to friends. Get in line!

All these books, and I barely made a dent in the stack.....

Mink River

It's not all about vampires, folks. Or witches, although you might not guess that from what I've been reading recently. This week I picked something completely different, Mink River by Brian Doyle. It's a book that I saw on a list of top reads for 2010 that the fine people at Powells Books sent out around Christmas time. My family thinks going to Portland without stopping at Powells is a wasted trip, so you can imagine I gave their list careful consideration. I picked half a dozen books off it and reserved them at the library. Not all of them worked for me (think C by Tom McCarthy, which I still haven't been able to finish....more on that later), but Mink River was so good that it made the whole project worthwhile.

Mink River reads like a 300 page poem. It's a mosaic that manages a coherent narrative structure. Each piece, whether it's a 300 word paragraph last lists every kind of bird that ever flew through the skies of Neawanaka or a page of dialogue where 4 word phrases get snapped back and forth, works together to tell the story of a small town on the Oregon coast. I felt submerged in the world that the author created, a world of The People and loggers and fishermen and Gaelic-speaking Irishmen, a world of appalling material poverty and incredible spiritual richness. A world of storytellers whose voices joined to create a final chorus of hope.

It's the underlying optimism that made this book work for me. I struggle with literary books, especially if I'm not familiar with the author, because I'm afraid they're going to hurt me. I can't stand it when an author kills off a character that I've grown attached to, regardless of the reason (see T. McCarthy). If I want to have to cope with the arbitrary cruelty that life can dish out, I'll go to work, thanks very much. That's why I stick with genre fiction, because there's a level of predictability that makes it safe.

Mink River teased me with disaster, but never crossed the line. Early on one of the characters suffers a horrific bicycle accident. "OMG," I thought, "the kid's going to be dead. I'm going to HATE this book." In fact, the kid doesn't die, although he is badly injured, and the story of his recovery is one of the threads that the author weaves through the rest of the book. A couple of the characters die, but the author frames their deaths in the context of the life of the town, not as independent engines of drama. It's not death and pain and loss that drive the story, but resilience and recovery and life.

Once I realized I could trust him, I was able to relax even further into the flow of his words. I could tell that the author loves words, but even more, he loves details. I could feel his love as he made minute observations of every single thing in the story. Then he put it all on the page. This style might make a reader impatient, especially someone who was accustomed to reading more graphic, streamlined work, but I thought it was luxurious. It wasn't the rococo excess of, say, Ann Rice, where the details spill all over themselves, each one grander than the last. This was an effort to really see, to know and to tell, everything. It was awesome in its scope and precise in its execution.

Part of the challenge with the "Powells Project" was to push myself beyond my comfort zone, to actually read something outside the urban occult/fantasy genre. Okay, so Hold Me Closer, Necromancer made my Powells list, but let's just say I'm reviewing it for the kids. Mink River made me glad I'd pushed myself. It made me glad I live in this world where such beautiful things are created.