Day 322: A Feast for Crows

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for A Feast for CrowsBest Book of the Week!
It’s been awhile since I reviewed a book in A Song of Ice and Fire, and at the rate I’m going, the next book will be out before I catch up!

At the beginning of this fourth novel in the series, the War of the Five Kings is almost over, and several of the contenders for the crown are dead. Stannis Baratheon is the only king who has responded to the cries for help from The Wall, where Jon Snow is now Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Stannis’ religious beliefs are causing problems at The Wall, however, particularly because he has brought along the witch Melisandre. Jon must send his friend Sam and Maester Aemon away from the wall to save the maester’s life, as his family is an enemy of the Baratheons.

Tyrion Lannister is accused of murdering his father Tywin and has fled the city. Cersei Lannister’s son Tommen is now king, with Cersei acting as Regent. This situation in King’s Landing is a dangerous one, because Cersei is clearly a psychopath. She has complete control over the city and has many megalomaniacal plans, including trying to bring down her son’s wife. However, she soon seems to be working toward her own defeat.

Brienne, having long ago promised Catelyn Stark to save her daughters in exchange for Jaime Lannister’s freedom, is still searching for Sansa Stark, who has been removed to the Eyrie for her safety by the creepy Petyr Baelish, also known as Littlefinger. Littlefinger has been pretending that Sansa is his daughter, but he soon murders his wife and plans to put Sansa in her place.

Cersei has sent her brother Jaime to the Riverlands to establish order. He seems to be getting disillusioned with Cersei, and is appalled she has made him break his promise to Catelyn, among others. After all, “Lannisters always pay their debts.”

Arya Stark has crossed the waters to Braavos, where she has found shelter in the House of Black and White, a temple of assassins. When Arya kills a man who bragged that he deserted the Night’s Watch and then confesses the murder to the Kindly Man, her mentor, he gives her a potion to drink and she wakes up blind.

Characters have died and Daenerys is not featured in this novel, but new characters are being brought to the fore. In Dorne, Arianne Martell, princess of Dorne, tries to force her father, Doran Martell, into war by attempting to have Myrcella Baratheon, his ward, crowned as queen of Westeros. This plot results in tragedy.

Without giving away too much, it is difficult to convey how exciting this series is. One of the most intriguing features is that you never know what is going to happen with a character. Martin has populated this series with a plethora of them—so many that you need the reference at the back of the book to keep track of the minor ones—but your favorite character in one book can be dead in the next, or maybe not. He is skillful at depicting characters who are convincingly human and keeps up the suspense masterfully.

Day 321: The Dark Horse

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for The Dark HorseSheriff Walt Longmire goes undercover in this exciting entry to the series. Mary Marsad has been sent to the Absaroka County jail after confessing to shooting her husband, Wade, after he burned down the couple’s barn with Mary’s horses in it. Not only has Mary confessed, she was found with the murder weapon and has gunshot residue on her hands.

Even though the case is out of his jurisdiction, Walt feels that Mary may be innocent and has been asked to look into the case by the sheriff of the other county. Walt goes to the town of Absalom posing as an insurance agent to see if he can figure out what happened. He discovers that Absalom holds many secrets, including motives for other people to want Wade Marsad dead.

This novel takes place during two different time frames, while Walt is undercover and two weeks beforehand, showing the reasons why Walt thinks Mary is innocent and why he doesn’t take his friends with him.

As usual, the recurring characters from this series have their places in the story, and we are always pleased to encounter Walt’s best friend, Henry Standing Bear, and his foul-mouthed deputy Victoria Moretti, among others. Johnson is a capable writer who creates convincing characters and vividly evokes the rugged landscape of Wyoming.

Day 320: The Malice of Fortune

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for The Malice of FortuneThe Malice of Fortune follows a current trend of mystery fiction to use actual historical people as detectives. In this case, the novel is set in 16th century Italy, and the historical detective is Niccolò Machiavelli, assisted at times by Leonardo da Vinci.

It is 1502 in the Papal States of Italy, and the infamous Pope Alexander VI, the former Rodrigo Borgia, has received word of his beloved son Juan, who was murdered years before. A woman was found butchered in Imola, and with her body was an amulet Juan always kept with him. The Pope summons the courtesan Damiata, whom he suspects of complicity in Juan’s death, and takes her little son hostage while he dispatches her to investigate.

In Imola, Damiata finds that someone has been murdering and butchering women and then leaving quarters of their bodies around the city. When she travels out to the scene of the latest discovery, she finds that Juan’s brother, the dangerous Duke Cesare (nicknamed Valentino) Borgia, has Leonardo da Vinci on the scene as his investigator. Da Vinci thinks that the killer is playing a game by constructing puzzles for him. At the scene some masked men provide an additional clue by fleeing the investigators.

Damiata also meets Niccolò Machiavelli, who is in town representing the city of Florence, which is afraid that Duke Valentino and his condottieri, or mercenaries, are planning to attack the city. Damiata suspects one of the three condottieri generals of being the murderer, but she does not know which one.

Machiavelli provides a different insight into the murderer. He has made a study of what he calls “the necessity” for each man–what drives him–and he begins trying to discover the murderer’s necessity. Machiavelli and Damiata team up to find the murderer.

This novel has interesting characters and situations, but at some point I felt as if the characters are chasing around too much with little result. Instead of building suspense, the plot seems unplanned and disorganized.

Michael Ennis is a historian, and the historical background is convincing and seems accurate. Compared to his previous novel about medieval Italy, The Duchess of Milan, a straight historical fiction novel about the powerful d’Este family, The Malice of Fortune is a little disappointing.

Day 319: Murder on the Orient Express

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Murder on the Orient ExpressMurder on the Orient Express is Agatha Christie’s classic mystery featuring Hercule Poirot. Everyone has of course seen the lush 1974 movie featuring a flock of movie stars and Albert Finney as Poirot.

Hercule Poirot is visiting Istanbul when he unexpectedly receives a telegram prompting him to cancel his plans and book a seat on the Orient Express leaving that night. He is able to book a compartment in first class, but only after some difficulty.

Poirot’s fellow passengers include a Russian princess, a Hungarian count and countess, a Swedish missionary, a British colonel, an annoying American widow, and other unusual characters. As always with Christie, her characters are expertly and colorfully drawn.

On board the train, Poirot is approached by the repellent Mr. Ratchett, an American businessman who believes his life is being threatened, asking for protection. Poirot dislikes Ratchett and declines his offer.

After a disturbed night, during which Poirot is awakened by a cry and spies a woman in a lurid silk kimono walking down the hall, Ratchett’s body is found dead in his compartment. He has been stabbed 12 times. The railroad executive traveling on the train begs Poirot to attempt to solve the crime before the train reaches Yugoslavia.

It begins to look as if an intruder disguised in a railway uniform broke into Ratchett’s compartment and murdered him then escaped out into the snow. Poirot’s investigation turns up a suggestion that Ratchett was the leader of a gang who kidnapped and killed the child Daisy Armstrong (a crime based upon that of the Lindbergh kidnapping), resulting in much tragedy for the family. He also begins finding links between some of the passengers and the Armstrongs.

This particular mystery is famous not only for its exotic locales but also for the unusual solution to the murder. Despite my familiarity with the plot, it made enjoyable reading.

Day 318: Cathedral of the Sea

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Cathedral of the SeaCathedral of the Sea was written to relate some of the history of Barcelona and of the Church of Santa Maria de la Mar. Unfortunately for Ildefonso Falcones’ readers, even though there is some fascinating material here, this purpose is all too obvious.

The novel begins with Bernat Estanyol’s wedding. Because of his father’s foresight in making a will, Bernat is allowed to keep his father’s property on his death. Otherwise, it would be forfeit to his lord, as Bernat is a serf. Left relatively prosperous, Bernat decides to marry a shy girl named Francesca. However, on the night of the wedding, his lord chooses to exercise his droit de seigneur, his right to deflower the bride. He follows this act up by forcing Bernat to rape her, too.

This horrible start to their marriage shows no sign of improving after Bernat’s son Arnau is born, and more atrocities follow. Eventually, to save his son’s life, Bernat flees the land, making for Barcelona, where, if he can live for a year and a day without being recaptured, he can become a free man of the city.

The growing Arnau soon becomes the novel’s main character, and he has many hardships to overcome. Missing a mother, he becomes fascinated with the image of Mary at the Santa Maria de la Mar, which is just being built as a cathedral for the common people. The novel follows Arnau’s life and the building of the cathedral together.

Well, sort of. The book’s jacket compares this novel to Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, but there is really very little comparison. The cathedral is only brought into the plot periodically when needed or when Falcones wants to tell us something about it.

And that’s the problem with the entire book. Although the novel deals with the themes of the medieval caste system and the problem of justice for common men, and also treats of the special rights of the area, everything is driven by the plot. Even with a third-person omniscient narration, we seldom learn what anyone is thinking unless it is important to the plot. Characters are not so much developed as given things to say and do.

The plot itself has no focus. When I read at the end of the novel that Falcones followed the Crónica written by King Pedro the Third, that explained a lot. To show this history, Falcones must put his main character through some contortions. Beginning as a bastaixo, one of the men who unload ships and carry their cargo into town on their backs, Arnau runs off to war and later becomes a money lender, an extremely unlikely sequence of careers.

Characters appear as needed, disappear, and then pop up again when they’re needed. This might make sense for some characters but not for all of them. Women are uniformly raped, die from the plague, become prostitutes, or are otherwise mistreated, as if Falcones doesn’t know what to do with them except have something terrible happen to them.

One of the worst instances of this treatment is of Maria, Arnau’s cardboard wife. (The rest of this paragraph is a spoiler.) During all the first years of their marriage, Arnau is involved in a torrid affair with another woman. Arnau wants to leave this woman, but she threatens to tell his guild, which will expel him for immoral conduct, so that he has no work. Arnau goes to war to get rid of her, and when he finally sheds his mistress, do we have scenes of everyday married life? No. We immediately jump five years, and within two pages Maria dies of the plague.

Finally, we come to Joan, Arnau’s adopted brother. Treated with nothing but kindness and love by Bernat and Arnau despite a rocky start in life, he becomes a priest, after which he disappears for years. When he returns, he has suddenly become a hard, self-righteous right hand of the Inquisition.

My conclusion? Falcones is clearly not an able enough storyteller to skillfully handle a complex plot and many characters.

Day 317: Medusa

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for MedusaMedusa is the first Aurelio Zen mystery I read after seeing the series on Masterpiece Mystery!, and I found it to be well written and entertaining.

Aurelio Zen is sent north to the Italian Alps, an area on the far reaches of the known universe as far as he is concerned, because a decomposed body of a man was found in a disused military tunnel. The body has a mysterious tattoo, which could be important, but the corpse disappears from the morgue overnight.

Once the body is identified, it turns out to belong to a soldier who supposedly died in a plane crash 30 years ago. It gradually becomes clear that this mystery has to do with events during or just after World War II. To his dismay, the dapper Zen finds himself clambering around in the cave with the Austrian spelunker who discovered the body.

The narrative alternates between Zen’s attempts to unravel a tangle of clues and the thoughts of some older men who know more about what is going on. It appears that someone is trying to protect a secret, and the secret may have to do with a clandestine group that exists within the army.

As always, Zen’s cynicism about the powers that be in the government and the police force (and in this case, the army) is amusing, and Dibdin seems to get a special pleasure from subjecting the finely dressed detective to scenes where he has to climb around in wet, dirty places.

Day 316: The Keep

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for The KeepI only recently discovered the pleasures of reading Jennifer Egan when I read Look At Me last year. The Keep is another of her very interesting novels. Her most well-known novel, which I have on my list to read, is A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Danny is an aging hipster who has long occupied the edges of power looking for a way to get some for himself. He is on his way to Europe to take up an invitation extended by his cousin Howard to help develop an ancient castle into a hotel.

Danny is anxious about accepting this position because of his guilt and paranoia over a horrible childhood event, when his older cousin talked Danny into abandoning Howard in a deep cave. However, Howard’s invitation comes at a time when Danny urgently needs to get out of New York, so he goes.

After an unsettling arrival at the half-renovated castle, which contains opulence and filth within rooms of each other, Danny meets an almost unrecognizable Howard, his wife Ann and their two young children, his second-in-command and best friend Mick, and other assorted workers. Living in the keep of the castle is a mysterious old baroness who thinks she still owns the castle. A creepy feature of the property is a dark, reeking pool that may be haunted by two twins who drowned in it.

Back in the states, Ray, a prison inmate, is taking a writing class and begins reading aloud his story about a guy named Danny who journeys to Europe to help his cousin develop a castle into a hotel. Discovering the connection between the two stories, and a third one involving the writing class teacher, is part of the pleasure of reading this deeply involving novel. Egan moves the narrative back and forth in time to tell these two parallel stories, keeping the reader’s interest with consummate skill.

Day 315: Beyond Black

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Beyond BlackI have liked almost everything I have read by Hilary Mantel but could not finish Beyond Black. It is supposed to be extremely black humor, which I usually enjoy, and the idea is certainly an entertaining one, but somehow I felt it went too far, at least for me.

Alison is a medium who travels the rounds of the psychic “fayres.” She actually does see and hear the dead. Alison meets Colette, an event planner, who she hires as her personal assistant. Soon, the two women are sharing a house in a suburban wasteland, where apparently all hell breaks loose. (I did not get this far in the novel.)

Mantel’s skewering of the “fayres” is amusing. Another clever idea in the novel is that the dead are a bunch of seedy characters obsessed with trivial things, just as are many people in life. However, after awhile the sheer bulk of the trivialities becomes overwhelming.

Alison’s spirit guide, Morris, instead of being the traditional Indian chief or swami, is the ghost of an actual hoodlum Alison knew when she was young. I could deal with the spirits constantly talking about minutia, but Morris was incredibly repulsive and disgusting. With the mundanity going over the top combined with my disgust at Morris, I stopped reading.