Lightning Reviews are back! We’ve got some earlier Mary Balogh, a scifi novel that was on sale last week (hopefully it still is!), and a historical romance with a tattooed, Viking-esque hero.
A Certain Magic
author: Mary Balogh
Mary Balogh’s re-release of her former Signet Regency titles are a gift. I’ve read several while traveling over the past 2 weeks, and each is like sinking into a warm and soft comforter made of words. Really, really good words.
This one (so far – there are more I haven’t read yet) (which, THANK GOODNESS because I have more plane travel ahead) is my favorite. Piers Westhaven and Alice Penhallow were childhood friends who grew up together along with Alice’s late husband, Webster, who was Piers’ best friend. Now in her almost-thirties, Alice is figuring out life as a widow as Piers finds himself in the odd position of being heir to a title and requiring a wife for the purpose of those all-important heirs. Their friendship has lasted through Alice’s deep and hidden love for Piers, the sudden death of her infant son, her husband’s death a few years later, and Piers’ loss of his wife in childbirth.
But they aren’t maudlin friends who remind each other of misery and grief. I could read four or five more books of them talking to each other. Somewhere there is Piers and Alice (Palice? Aliers? Pierlice?) fanfic of them having tea and cracking each other up. The depth and warmth of their friendship is glorious fun to read, even as their self-imposed boundaries get in the way of their discovering romantic happiness in addition to their already-wonderful and vivid relationship. The tension is sustained a bit too long with increasingly dramatic recriminations and secret joys that undermine how obvious their affection is to everyone, including each other, but just as I reached the part of COME ON ALREADY, Things Happened and I read my Kindle while walking through the airport so I could keep reading as I changed planes. (I can walk and read at the same time – it’s a gift.)
If you like friends-to-lovers stories, and you like Regency romances (this one has some steamy scenes! I was shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, so shocked I bookmarked those pages so I could make sure I wasn’t misreading what was going down), you will very likely love this book. I’m so pleased this novel has been re-released.
– SB Sarah
Historical: European, Regency, Romance
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The King’s Executioner
author: Donna Fletcher
I would recommend The King’s Executioner for rabid fans of Vikings currently waiting for the next season, for readers super into tattooed bad boy Iron-Age heroes, or for folks who are tired of reading historicals set in the same time periods over and over and over. It’s a good book, but it wasn’t outstanding and more than anything it made me wish for more books set in this era.
Anin is a young woman who has been chosen to marry the Pict king, except she doesn’t want to. When she–and her family–don’t immediately acquiesce to that request, the king sends his executioner/torturer/all around scary dude Paine to retrieve her. Paine is a heavily tattooed, muscled, sexy dude with a trained black wolf named Bog. Of course he rescued a baby wolf and raised it Jon Snow style. Of course he did.
Paine retrieves Anin and most of the book is their journey to the king. Paine is the quiet broody type–he claims to be a bad person because he tortures and kills people, which…yeah, that’s not great…and he also says he’s surrounded and basically poisoned by death. Anin is an empath, a secret she’s kept from everyone, and when she touches Paine she can feel his emptiness. Conveniently, she can also feel when he starts falling in love with her. Conveniently we only ever see Paine torture (off screen) and kill bad people. There is an attempted rape in this book so trigger warning–and Paine kills that guy too.
I enjoyed the book but found it lacking in the historical detail I usually crave. To be fair, not a whole lot is known about the Picts (my Google searches to validate the authenticity of the name Paine were fruitless or at least interrupted by cat videos), but I love when books include details about how every day life was carried out—how food was collected and stored, how homes were built, etc. Last night I was pestering Redheadedgirl for more detail about eating boiled sheep’s head (as info, autocorrect changes that to “Sherpa head,” which is a whole new level of horrifying). For the most part Paine and Anin eat berries and fish and just spend a lot of time walking though nondescript woods. The book also felt too long–like the middle dragged on longer than necessary.
If you need some tattooed, axe-wielding, warrior heroes in your life, then pick up The King’s Executioner, but if you’re a stickler for historical detail, maybe steer clear.
– Elyse
Historical: Other, Romance
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Sleeping Giants
author: Sylvain Neuvel
Normally Sleeping Giants isn’t the type of book I’d review for Smart Bitches, but it contains some awesome female characters AND a giant female (well, we think–it’s got boobs) Amazonian warrior robot. There’s also a teensy bit of romance.
I loved this book. My husband and I read it at the same time and it lead to many Bad Decisions Book Club moments, like “just one more chapter” at 2:30 a.m. I kept thinking about the book when I wasn’t reading it, and I would stare at the clock at work because I just wanted to read my giant robot warrior book, goddamnit.
I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot because it’s revealed layer by mysterious layer. Here’s the gist though: a large metal hand is uncovered buried in South Dakota (large enough for a person to sit in) along with tablets containing some kind of writing. The metal is carbon dated and is revealed to be 3000 years older than the oldest human civilization. The writing is completely different from anything ever seen before. Then more robot parts are found…an arm, a leg…a torso containing a hatch as if for a pilot…
The book isn’t written in a traditional narrative style, but instead is a series of interviews with the personnel (scientific and military) assigned to figure out what the robot is, where it came from, and what it does. Both the lead scientist and head military operator are women which FUCK YEAH LADIES IN SCI FI!
The interviewer is a mysterious and untrustworthy narrator who I pictured as being played by James Spader. He doesn’t have a name, but he is powerful and his single ambition is getting this robot understood even if it costs human lives.
This book is tremendously fun and a really fast read. It’s sometimes silly but in an awesome, pulp sci-fi way. My only complaint is that I have to wait for April 2017 for the second book in the series.
– Elyse
Science Fiction/Fantasy
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The Picts are tangentally related to my research; based on my experience I would guess that Paine is not an authentic Pictish name (the aesthetic behind it rather reminds me of Colin, Viscount Payne, of A WEEK TO BE WICKED fame). The Picts are fascinating, and if anyone wants some reading I’d be more than happy to suggest people or book titles. (I hope you’ll pardon my enthusiasm; I was just so excited to see the Picts here that I couldn’t help myself. Hashtag academic compulsions? Maybe?)
I knew I should have bought all those Mary Balogh books when they were on sale recently. I was trying to be good and bought just one – but not this one.
Mary Balogh is sustaining my existence at this point. Having been mainlining her books for months now, I can assure you, the delightful way the romantic leads converse? Totally the same in all her books. It’s the same but never repetitive, magically.
@Harper Gray yes please book recommendations!
ZOMG get on my Kindle, Balogh Regencies!!!! I loved those things when i was in high school
Well over 25 years ago (yikes!), I had finished all the Georgette Heyer books and was looking for some more Regencies and I stumbled across books by Mary Balogh and the late, great Edith Layton. Layton may have been more accurate in her depiction of the early 19th century male-female dynamic and, don’t get me wrong, I loved her books, but it was Mary Balogh who captured me with her optimistic books about wounded (emotionally and/or physically) characters finding each other. Sure there are some repeat plots and people are very understanding about such things as illegitimate children and men marrying their mistresses, but I return to her books again and again. Comfort reading at its best!
My wallet is getting thinner and thinner. The Balogh’s all $5.39 and all seem to have 4 star ratings. Any recommendation on must-have Balogh regencies?
“Anin is an empath, a secret she’s kept from everyone, and when she touches Paine she can feel his emptiness. Conveniently, she can also feel when he starts falling in love with her.”
!!!! I am probably not interested in reading this particular book (give me all of the historical details!) but this dynamic is of powerful interest to me, can anyone recommend other books that contain it but are also better? Thank you kindly.
Re: Balogh – I really like many of her books, but when I read too many of the them in a row the “he lifts her gown and works in her/she daringly slides her feet up the mattress” sex scenes and the fact that the women are often sort of pretending to be cheerful as a life philosophy gets on my nerves. If you like angst, you could do much worse than THE SECRET PEARL. If you like comedy, I have a soft spot for THE FAMOUS HEROINE, which is essentially a farce- but it’s one of the Balogh books where I really believe that the hero and heroine find each other really funny and charming. Fun!
The Balogh and Neuvel books were already in my TBR pile. I’m thinking I should ditch my current book, which has become an unbearable slog, for one of them. (BTW, I was totally expecting the Neuvel review to be one of CarrieS’s, so was surprised when I got to the bottom and saw Elyse’s name.)
@Harper I will totally take those book recs!
@Susan sometimes I steal books from Carrie and run away screaming “naner naner boo boo”
I just checked my running list of books bought, and apparently I bought a copy of “A Certain Magic” almost five years ago, when I lucked into a bunch of old Signet Regencies at my favorite secondhand bookstore. Hooray! Off I go to the basement to excavate it (almost a year after my most recent move, many of my books are still, sadly, in boxes due to lack of room for shelves.)
@Harper: Yes please!!!! I’m fascinated by the Picts.
I just finished Sleeping Giants and I thought it was incredible, I couldn’t put it down. It was so far removed from everything else I’ve read lately, so fresh and unique and kind of terrifying. I really liked it. I didn’t find that complaints of “info dumping” or “series set up syndrome” were valid, it was fascinating on its own and it had a great ending. Even if there was not another book forth coming that spine tingling ending would have thrilled me.
@Elyse: Don´t bash the boiled sheep heads until you try them (although I will confess that I won´t eat the skin or eyes like my grandparents did). Traditional Icelandic food is not for squeamish people…
Picked up Sleeping Giants after the review, and was glad I only paid $1.99 for it. (If it had been more, I would have returned it!) I don’t mind the “interview” format for the storytelling, but the story itself is nothing new. It’s light on characterization, political ramifications, and scientific detective work. The strongest character might be Kara, but she’s a reverse-stereotype Army action figure. I did find it interesting that the interview format greatly reduced the impact of death and destruction. Whoops — punched a wrong button and vaporized a chunk of land and people? Hopefully we can avoid that in the future . . . but maybe not. (I won’t be reading the next book. Back to the LMBujold for a refreshing change.)
I *love* Mary Balogh books – they are always such pageturners! I have to say Alice’s actions near the end of the book were verging on TSTL (as Pier’s were a bit). It was one of those PLEASE TALK TO EACH OTHER WITH THE TRUTH moments. To assume makes an ass out of u and me! Grrrr!!!!
The movie “The Eagle” is based on a YA novel by Rosemary Sutcliffe. It has Channing Tatum as a Roman soldier in Britain and Jamie Bell as the native Brit who works as his translator, but the most compelling character is Tahar Rahim as the Pictish (or whatever they are supposed to be) leader. I’ve no idea how accurate that part of the film was but it was pretty fascinating. I’ve loved Sutcliffe ever since I discovered her books when my sons read them. Movies usually don’t match up to the books they are based on, and this one is no exception, but the visuals and the suspense were well worth it. Rahim is scary but you can’t take your eyes off him.