what I've been reading

I’m surprised I have 10 books on my review list since I last published what I’ve been reading. I thought surely some of these I had already published but according to my archives, it’s been three months. Here’s the first five. 

Order Of Swans by Jude Deverauz - sci fi fantasy. Unknown to Kaley her mother was from another planet, Bellis where people have extraordinary abilities. When Kaley was three years old Jobi, family friend who had sensed that Kaley would be important to the survival of his people and planet, effected Graceen’s ‘death’ and put her on the ship back to Bellis leaving Kaley behind to be raised by her Earth father and grandparents. Jobi had a plan and returned when Kaley was 26 to train her and bring her back to Bellis although without telling her she would be traveling to another planet. When Kaley’s dissertation on fairy tales was rejected by her advisor Jobi used that to trick her into visiting his home for the summer, a trip that actually takes three years, putting her into a deep sleep for the journey. Once on Bellis she meets Tanek, a Swansman who is tasked with being her guide on a different island so Kaley can collect the tales from Bellis. Accompanying them is Sojee, her bodyguard since the island they are going to is men only (the women live on a different island). In actuality, the mission is to find the kings errant son and bring him back for an alliance marriage. From the beginning Kaley exhibits powers of her own and encounters real life fairy tales while her and Tanek’s relationship evolves from antagonism to love. There’s so much more to the story. It ends on a cliffhanger and dammit, nowhere on the cover or the inside flap did it say that this was part one of two. So now I have to wait and see how everything resolves.

The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins - Famous artist Vanessa Chapman died of cancer and left her estate to the Fairburn Foundation created by her estranged galleriest Douglas Lennox, naming her companion Grace as executor of her estate. While most of Vanessa’s paintings and ceramics and sculptures and diaries have been turned over, Grace has held back some resulting in years of acrimonious charges involving lawyers. When Douglas is killed in a hunting accident and one of Vanessa’s sculptures on display at a museum is found to contain a human bone his son Sebastian sends James Becker, their art expert and specifically an expert on Vanessa Chapman, an artist he has been enamored of since he was a child and his mother bought one of her small paintings, to Eris Island, Vanessa’s home and studio that is only accessible at low tide, and now the home of Grace, to deal with Grace, to determine more about the bone before the assemblage is dismantled and the bone tested, and to get the remaining bits of Vanessa’s estate. Becker’s approach is to make friends with Grace since the threats of the previous years did not resolve the standoff but the more Becker digs, questions arise concerning the disappearance of Vanessa’s husband and her cancellation of a show days before the opening, and Grace’s secrets start to emerge. Hawkins is an engaging storyteller, this is the third book of hers I’ve read, and I enjoyed this one even though it didn’t end the way I would have wanted.

Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi - set in 15th century West Africa. Ododo, a young woman, is a member of the blacksmith guild in Timbuktu where she has lived all her life, daughter of the head of the guild. Being a blacksmith, or a witch as the rest of the population calls them, is the last refuge of unwanted women, turned away by the men in their lives or their family. In Ododo’s mother’s case, raped and pregnant as a teen. Ododo makes flowers that she sells in the market and on this particular day, a new warrior king has conquered the city and incorporated it into his vast kingdom. Also on this particular day she is making a flower and singing in the back court when a raggedy man stops to talk to her and she gifts him the flower. The next day she is kidnapped and taken to the capitol city of Sangote where she learns that she is to be the bride of the Alaafin, the king of Yorubaland and that raggedy man was none other than him. She is smothered with luxuries and raised to high status but not everyone is happy with the king’s choice. Ododo has no intention of being sent back to her previous miserable existence and must learn to navigate the currents in the royal city, making allies, determined to be more than just a wife, which she considers another form of subjugation, and finds the power of influence and advisor to the king too much to resist. I’ll leave it at that. I really liked this book and the last few pages surprised me.

Pitch Dark by Paul Doiron - One of the wardens calls Mike Bowditch, a game warden investigator in Maine, about a possible missing person and whether or not to institute a search. The possible missing person, a man named Ammond who is asking around about a man and his 11 year old daughter who might be hiding out in the wilds of Maine has rented an ATV and hasn’t been heard from in two days during some really bad weather. Mike makes some calls and learns there is a man with a daughter, Mike and Cady Redmon, who is building a cabin in a remote part of the woods and makes plans to visit him and find out if he knows the man that is looking for him. When Mike and his father in law Charles are flown to the site by Josie, for whom the cabin is being built, all seems fine and well at first. But Mike feels something is wrong and as his questions get more pointed, the room gets fussier, and he wakes up to find the three of them bound to trees, stripped of their weapons, while the Redmons make their escape into the wilds of the Maine woods. When Josie dies from the drug, Mike takes off after the Redmons determined to catch them armed only with a flare gun and a pocket knife before they can cross into Canada. Mark and Cady both are deadly adversaries and are not who they claimed to be.

The Witches Of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo - Nena, the youngest of three sisters, suffers from visions and premonitions. At 18, she spends her days in El Paso TX taking care of her sisters’ two children and wishes for more from life. One night Nena is drawn outside where she is somehow transported back in time to El Paso del Norte in colonial Mexico where Sister Benedicta has come to fetch her. Nena is taken to the convent where she learns that some of the nuns also experience La Vista, the force or magic that underlies the power of existence. She joins their aquelarre where she learns to control La Vista instead of it controlling her and the enchantos or songs that call La Vista to them. Mostly what Nena wants is to return home back to her time but when smallpox runs through the convent and El Paso del Norte, she is expelled from the convent, sent to heal Sister Benedicta’s brother with the brebaje, a sort of magical food, that Nena caused to be made at the meeting of the aquelarre because the other nuns feared Nena’s power would draw unwelcome attention to the convent. The story shifts back and forth in time, from Nena’s childhood to her days in El Paso del Norte to her return to her time, and the present when now an old woman, Nena enlists the aid of her great niece to open the door to El Paso del Norte one last time.