Reviews With Lilah: THE OTTER, THE SPOTTED FROG, AND THE GREAT FLOOD by Gerald Hausman, illustrated by Ramon Shiloh

Tags

Creek Indians, fables, flood myth, picture book

What a gorgeous book. This is a retelling of the Creek Indian tale of the Great Flood and an origin story of humans. Listener the otter is the only one to pay attention when Spotted Frog sings of a coming disaster. He heeds the warnings and builds a raft, surviving when the flood finally comes. The other animals are turned into mosquitoes, searching in vain for food. Eventually Listener and his otter-wife (now a mosquito) become First Woman and First Man.

This is a lovely fable, and it held my seven-year-old’s attention. She praised Listener for listening to his friend when no one else would, and she enjoyed the origin story. We both loved this delightful tale with its lush illustrations. Highly recommended to parents interested in sharing mythology with their children. It would open a fascinating discussion of comparative religion (the story is strikingly similar to Noah and the great flood in the bible). There is also a theme of listening to nature that is more than relevant today.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

DEATH OF A NIGHTINGALE by Lene Kaaberbol

Tags

Denmark, Mystery, nurse

DEATH OF A NIGHTINGALE is the third in the Nina Borg series (after 2012’s THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE and 2013’s INVISIBLE MURDER). Nina is a Danish Red Cross nurse whose patients in “The Network,” an underground system of assistance for illegal immigrants, seem to drag her into mysteries. Nina’s commitment to “The Network” is such that as this novel opens, she has lost custody of her children. Now she is a nurse at the Coal-House Camp and has resolved to leave “The Network” behind to get her family back. One of her patients, an asthmatic child, is kidnapped after her mother, Natasha Doroshenko, escapes prison (where she is serving a sentence for the murder of the child’s father). Interspersed among modern-day chapters are glimpses of a fairy tale of Ukrainian sisters in the Stalin era.

The Stalin-era story is absolutely fascinating, a gritty look at Soviet life and what people under duress are driven to do. I was less sympathetic to Nina this go-round, having tired a bit of her need to save the world while her life falls down around her. Honestly, she has no one to blame for her personal life but herself. Still, her desire to help those who have nowhere else to turn is compelling, and I can’t seem to let her go. The story of eight-year-old Katarina and her fugitive mother hurtles toward a conclusion that is uncertain until the last page.

An excellent Danish mystery/thriller with a complex protagonist. That this series looks at the plight of women and children and the forgotten makes it stand out from a slough of Nordic crime fiction.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

THE LAND OF DREAMS by Vidar Sundstol

Tags

Minnesota, Mystery, Nordic, Norway, Small Town

THE LAND OF DREAMS is positioned as a Norwegian mystery, and it is…sort of. Those who prefer action and tension and a drive to find out whodunit will be disappointed, as will those who like the mystery to be solved at the end of the novel. You have been warned. That said, I loved this atmospheric novel, first in a trilogy, absolutely crammed with fascinating history.

Lance Hansen is a forest cop on the shores of Lake Superior, very close to Canada, accustomed to doling out fines to tourists without fishing licenses and the like. He is unprepared when a routine report of illegal camping leads him to the naked body of a dead Norwegian. Once he reports the crime, his role should be finished as the FBI and a Norwegian cop sweep in, but he can’t let it go. Lance is a passionate genealogist and the question of whether this is the first murder in Minnesota’s Cook County nags at him. Surely there have been murders here before, and yet, wouldn’t Lance know if there had been? He begins to investigate a disappearance of a native man a century ago (when Lance’s relatives arrive in America from Norway), wondering if perhaps that case was the first murder in the area. Family connections haunt both past and present crimes, and Lance finds himself torn between family and his law enforcement role.

Sunstol evokes Northern Minnesota so well I felt I had been there (I haven’t). The history of the area, the cultural effects, the genealogical discussions, were fascinating once I adjusted my expectations of the novel. This is not a typical mystery. If I had read it expecting a typical mystery, I would have written a scathing review. Sundstol quickly lets us know that it isn’t. Lance has no real role in the current murder investigation after finding the bodies. He does find out about the investigation, but this is peripheral to his independent research into the question of “Is this Cook County’s first murder?” If that thought bores you, look elsewhere. If, however, you are intrigued by an in-depth look at how the past and present collide in a unique region with cultural ties to (and differences from) Norway, this is the novel for you. It’s a fascinating look at the tension between family and duty and a sweeping portrayal of the area’s culture and history.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

Reviews With Lilah: A NO-SNEEZE PET by Diana Gallagher

I read this book aloud to my six-year-old (at the time) daughter, and she loved it. As far as read-alouds go, it didn’t hold as much interest for me as other series, but she could easily read it herself (we alternated reading chapters to each other), and she adored it. Emma desperately wants a pet she can cuddle, but her mom is allergic to fur! What to do? Emma’s best friends, Mia and Kyle, take this as a challenge and visit a pet shop, veterinarian, and other friends to find the perfect pet for Emma and her mother. There are interesting animal facts scattered throughout that my daughter really liked, and Mia and Kyle’s determination to help their friend is charming. They don’t give up easily, either. Faced with discouraging information, they soldier on, adjust their approach, and refuse to give up. The messages of friendship and determination are lovely. I also thought the focus on a pet that would work for Emma and her mother was excellent. Emma doesn’t dwell excessively on wishing her mother’s allergy away: she and her friends accept it as a given and look for a solution that takes it into account.

Lilah’s reaction: “The friends were really nice to help Emma solve her problem.” “I liked learning about the different animals they thought about as pets.”

Recommended for early chapter book readers with a love of animals.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

THE SIREN by Alison Bruce

Tags

England/UK/Ireland, Police Procedural

This is the second in the DC Gary Goodhew series, and I’m not inclined to pick up the first unless I get desperate for reading material. The story begins with the discovery of a car in the Mediterranean sea, containing the body of Nick. Kimberly and Rachel are shocked by the news, and it’s pretty obvious one of them is involved somehow. Goodhew gets involved when a house fire kills Rachel and Kimberly’s son disappears. Kimberly is desperate yet uncooperative. Goodhew and his partner, Kincaide, whom he dislikes, try to crack the mystery behind the fire and find Kimberly’s son. Meanwhile, there’s some drama with a female in the department who rather likes Goodhew but had a fling with Kincaide.

I’ve read better police procedurals. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about Kimberly or the department intrigue. Goodhew was fine, but didn’t stand out among British detectives. The personal drama was annoyingly intrusive. The mother of a missing child should be at least a bit sympathetic, but Kimberly got on my nerves.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

Reviews With Lilah: THE BIG HAIRY SECRET by Thomas Kingsley Troupe

Tags

horror, middle-grade fiction

Flo Gardner has moved several times since her father died, but nowhere as creepy as Corman Towers, the ominous apartment building at the center of this series debut. Flo adjusts to a new place again, but the real story begins when she makes friends with Furry (short for Ferdinand), the boy she had earlier seen running the halls in his underwear. And he’s the werewolf who stole her popsicles. The two unlikely friends team up to tackle the Big Hairy Problem – giant spiders coming from a strange portal in the basement. My daughter (first grade) and I breezed through this fun book. I think she’s the perfect age for it, though Flo is in fourth grade. Children who like their scary stories truly terrifying will be disappointed, but children (like mine) who prefer a bit of humor to temper their horror will eat this series up. I enjoyed reading it aloud (and the cartoon-like illustrations are darling).

Lilah really enjoyed getting to know Flo and she was delighted when she and Furry became friends. She was totally engrossed in their adventure, and she agreed that the illustrations were the perfect complement to the light story. She also noted that it wasn’t *really* scary, just the kind of scary that’s fun.

This would probably be a good choice for reluctant readers, with its high interest and fast-paced plot. Children interested in the paranormal will also enjoy.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

ARTIFACT by Gigi Pandian

Tags

adventure, amateur sleuth, archaeology, India, Scotland

I didn’t even realize I was longing for Jaya Jones, a modern, Indian-American Indiana Jones, but I’m delighted to have found her. She’s great fun in this adventure/treasure hunt/mystery. Pandian jumps in headfirst: “An old lover was dead before his thirtieth birthday. A ruby anklet rested in my lap inside his handkerchief. The package had been sent to me from Scotland, where said old lover was recently killed in a car wreck. A feeling of helpless confusion spread through me. In spite of what Hollywood movies suggest, it’s not commonplace for historians to receive mysterious packages containing jewel-encrusted artifacts previously in the possession of recently deceased archaeologists.” Naturally, she’ll have to pop over to Scotland, where ex-lover Rupert was last working, to investigate his death and the provenance of the anklet. There will be a break-in at her apartment to up the stakes. And she’ll travel with hunky Indian-artifact-expert Lane without worrying overmuch that he’s a complete stranger or questioning his motives.

There’s a key plot twist that I saw coming from several miles away, but I didn’t mind. Pandian isn’t taking her genre overly seriously; in fact, she pokes a bit of fun at it along the way (obviously, since her professor hero is Dr. Jones). Jaya is endearing despite her questionable choices, and she has layers. She’s a professor of history trying to get tenure, a tabla musician at the Tandoori Palace, and a woman caught between two heritages: “‘It’s the perfect balance,’ I said. ‘When I’m overseas in an English-speaking country, it’s similar yet different enough at the same time. It’s liberating…I’m not supposed to fit in here…I’m a foreigner in India, where I was born, and to some extent I’m even a foreigner at home. But here, it feels much more natural being asked where I’m from since I’m not in one of the two countries I’m actually from. There aren’t the same expectations about who I’m supposed to be.'”

Jaya was born to an American man and an Indian woman in India, but her mother died when she was very young, so she grew up in America with an American father. Her older brother has recently decided to speak to her only in Hindi, of which she knows little. Her best friend (and music partner), Sanjay (The Hindi Houdini), teases her about being “a bad Indian” with the gaps in her knowledge. Interestingly, he speaks Punjabi, while Jaya’s mother was Tamil, which gives Pandian an opportunity to educate her readers a bit about India without condescending or being pedantic. I enjoyed both the historical education and the modern cultural one very much.

What does an Indian artifact that shouldn’t exist have to do with a Pictish dig in Scotland? Finding out is great fun. An unexpected highlight: Fergus and Angus, two Scottish locals who frequent the pub where Rupert had been staying, who think Jaya is “a dark fayrie.” Scottish fairy lore is sprinkled in as the locals resist the digging. Jaya and Lane infiltrate Rupert’s archaeology crew to gather clues, which is entertaining enough to make up for its implausibility. Suspects are everywhere, and the action veers from one place to the next.

Source disclosure: I received this e-book courtesy of the publisher.

Top Ten Tuesday: Resolutions

Tags

2014, resolutions, Top Ten Tuesday

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature at <a href=”http://www.brokeandbookish.com/p/top-ten-tuesday-other-features.html”>The Broke and the Bookish</a>. 

My Bookish Resolutions:

1. Minimize physical book-buying and purge physical books. I’m realistic enough not to think I could buy zero books in 2014, but the shelves are out of control. I’m trying to be mindful of books I bring into the house, make better use of the library, and wade through the horrifying number of NetGalley titles I still need to read.

2. Write 500 words a day. Any 500 words will do. It would be great if I wrote more than that, or if I wrote on the same novel every day so I made actual progress, but this year, I’m just going for WORDS ON A PAGE.

3. Get through the backlog of Netgalley titles I have for review and stop requesting mildly interesting ones. I always think, “Oh, that sounds good,” and then realizing it’s self-published (and not one of the rare gems), a genre I don’t read (hmmm, that description didn’t say it was Christian Lit), a blah mystery (there are plenty of good mysteries out there), or something else that makes it unappealing. Again, mindfulness is key here.

4. Post here at least three times per week, including Top Ten Tuesday, which I always enjoy but don’t always take the time to participate in.

5. Get a good book blog profile photo to use. I read all the time. It’s sort of shocking I don’t have a photo of me reading a book.

6. Pay attention to publication dates. I already have a few blog posts scheduled with reviews on the book’s publication date. Publishing a review months before release is really not helpful.

7. Visit more book blogs.

THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES by Alan Bradley

Tags

1950s, England, Mystery, YA, Young Sleuth

 

Ah, Flavia! (I think this is how I probably began my review of the previous Alan Bradley mystery; I so adore her.) Her sixth mystery is the darkest yet, overpainted with a veneer of grief. Though more subdued that her previous exploits, she is no less delightful. Don’t start here. Start with THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, her first adventure. While Bradley fills the new reader in on Flavia’s family and past adventures in THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES, this can’t compare to reading the first five books and growing attached to and invested in Flavia.

Flavia is an unusual amateur sleuth: a precocious eleven-year-old in 1950s England, she has the run of her family’s crumbling estate, including a chemistry lab in which she happily experiments with poisons. She has a contentious relationship with her two older sisters, Daffy and Feely (Daphne and Ophelia), who remember their mother before her disappearance in Flavia’s infancy. Flavia’s delight in the lethal makes her a bit of a Wednesday Addams; she’s strangely likable despite (or perhaps because of) it. In this installment, which smacks of the closure of a final novel in a series, Flavia investigates the death of a man falling on the railroad tracks as distant relations flood her home.

She reflects on the mourning that pervades this novel: “Daffy once told me that there are approximately half a million words in the English language. With so many to choose from, you’d think that just one person, at least, could find something more original than that stupid word ‘sorry.'”

She ponders death: “He was a dear man, the vicar, but dreadfully naive, and I sometimes thought that there were certain aspects of life and death which eluded him completely. Chemistry teaches us all that can be known about corruption, and I realized with a shock that I had learned more at the altar of the Bunsen burner than at all the altars of the competition combined. Except about the soul, of course. THe only vessel in which the soul could be studied was the living human body, which made it as difficult as trying to study the soul of a Mexican jumping bean. We could learn nothing about the soul from a corpse, I had decided, after several firsthand encounters with cadavers.”

She ponders the limitations of chemistry: “Perhaps in time I shall learn the antidote to grief.”

Through all this, she pokes her nose where it isn’t wanted, ferreting out strange truths and a series-wide twist that Bradley certainly earned over the course of six books. The mystery is absorbing and well-plotted as usual, and Flavia grows up a bit more.

The Flavia de Luce novels are not classified as YA, but they would certainly be appropriate for precocious middle- or high-school children.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.

CHILLED TO THE BONE by Quentin Bates

Tags

Female Detective, Mystery, Nordic, Police Procedural

 

 

This is the third outing for Sergeant Gunnhildur Gisladottir, a delightful protagonist for a police procedural series set in Iceland. Quentin Bates is English, but he lived in Iceland, and his experiences lend an authentic air to his novels. While the plot of this third novel had my attention wandering a bit more than in the previous two, Gunna keeps me reading. She’s a delightful sleuth: competent, funny, and self-aware. She’s a refreshing change from the tortured, flawed detective genre. She has her own issues (she’s about to become a grandmother before her fortieth birthday), but she handles her challenges with aplomb and her personal life, while an interesting component, does not distract from her sleuthing. 

These novels take place in post-recession Iceland, and the financial state of the country infuses them. The names take a bit of getting used to, and there are Icelandic references that have me googling to get the punchline: “‘Isn’t it a terrible name?’ Skuli said with a smile. ‘It doesn’t get much more nineteenth centruty than Hrobjartur Bjarnthorsson. It’s like something out of Laxness.'”

Still, if you (like me) know nothing about Icelandic politics, culture, or history, Bates helps you along: “Gunna and Helgi had retired to a corner of the hotel’s bar to confer while the forensic team and the police pathologist examined the room where they had left the late Johannes Karlsson still strapped to the bed he had died on. ‘Independence or Progressive?’ ‘Independence Party, I think. I wouldn’t want to think that he was one of us,’ Helgi said in a severe tone. ‘One of you, you mean. I’d prefer it if you didn’t take me for a Progressive Party supporter, thank you very much.’ ‘Sorry. I never saw you as anything but a bleeding heart liberal, Gunna.'”

“‘Helgi and I are on an early shift, Eirikur. If you’re starting at twelve, I suggest we meet at the bus station for lunch, compare notes and move on from there. Show of hands?’ Helgi and Gunna put their hands up. Eirikur sat on his. ‘Why do you two always want to meet up at places full of old people?’ ‘Because they serve sheep heads and mashed swede at the bus station,’ Helgi said, salivating at the thought. ‘Proper old-fashioned food. The kind I don’t get at home any more.’ ‘Plus you can park at the bus station. It’s not far from here and it’s not full of yuppies and terrible music. So, motion carried two to one. The bus station it is.'” Later, the Eirikur/Gunna relationship is teased out: “‘What do we have, young man?’ Gunna asked, knowing that Eirikur intensely disliked being addressed as ‘young man.'”

In this installment, a shipowner is found dead, tied to a bed in a fancy hotel. At the same time, Gunna is asked to investigate a stolen government laptop, but Joel Inge Bragason, the official who lost the laptop, isn’t forthcoming about how he lost it, and the ministry declines to provide any details as to what sensitive information it might contain. Gunna sees this as a waste of time until the theft intersects with her murder investigation. Someone is luring wealthy men to hotels, tying them up, and robbing them. And who would report this kind of crime? These are married, prominent men who have to swallow their loss. We also see the point of view of Hekla, the thief and Baddo, a criminal chasing Hekla. These are the parts where my attention sometimes wandered, but it didn’t go far as we came back around to Gunna tracking down leads and teasing out connections to bring the case to its conclusion.

The first two books in the series are FROZEN ASSETS and COLD COMFORT.

Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this title courtesy of the publisher.