Short Book Reviews: A Murder Magnet Takes on a Sentient Spaceship

 Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty (Ace)

Poor Mallory! Ever since she can remember, she’s been a magnet for murders. To make matters worse, only she has the intuition and insight to solve them. This hasn’t put her in favor with law enforcement, once they figure out she isn’t the killer, she’s just bad luck. As a social pariah, she’s tried to fly under the radar. Then aliens contact Earth and agree to accept a human ambassador to their space station (Eternity). For some reason, the sentient station allows Mallory to come onboard, too. For Mallory, getting as far away from other humans as possible seems like the solution to murders always happening near her.

Until word comes that a shuttle filled with humans is on its way to Eternity, perfect fodder for the next round of killings. What a great set-up!

There’s more, of course. It turns out that Mallory and the quintessentially nasty ambassador are not the only humans onboard Eternity. There’s a third, Xan, AWOL from the military after all evidence points to him as the perpetrator of the last murder Mallory found herself involved in. Actually, he was the target, but it takes the two of them overcoming their extreme reluctance to interact to figure it out.

In the midst of all this, Eternity’s hostile-to-the-point-of-rudeness symbiote who is her link to organic beings is killed and the station goes berserk.

Lafferty shifts from the focus on two people, Mallory and Lan, to a widening cast of characters in a manner that reminds me strongly of her brilliant science fiction murder-mystery-on-a-spaceship, Six Wakes. The characters all have ties to one another, and such a pattern of interactions and relationships precipitates a murder, or so Mallory believes. If she doesn’t figure out what’s happening, the list of victims is sure to skyrocket. What seems at first to be a series of side-tracks is really a spiral network of connections that all come together in a most satisfying manner.

 

Book Review: A Time Traveling Romance With Pirates and a Ghost

 A Turn of the Tide (A Stitch in Time - Book 3) by Kelley Armstrong (KLA Fricke)

A Turn of the Tide is the third book of Kelley Armstrong’s “A Stitch in Time” series, the “stitch” being a time portal between modern and Victorian times, a room in Thorne Manor, England (now kept locked!). The first two were fun adventure-romances, linked by the women of Thorne Manor. These women also have “second sight,” the ability to see and communicate with ghosts, and to lay to rest the spirits of those who have been murdered by naming aloud their killers. (There’s a catch, which plays a part in the plot, which is that if the person calling aloud the name the murderer gets it wrong, dire consequences ensue for the ghost.)

This third “Stitch” novel features Miranda, a Victorian woman writer of “risqué pirate adventures who, having learned about the wonders and liberation of the 20^th Century, decides to embark upon her own time-travel adventure. Miranda’s plans go astray when the “stitch” lands her not in modern times but a century earlier, in the late 1700s. She encounters the love interest, a French expat named Nicolas, on the run from the French Revolution and repaying the locals who have given him shelter by acting as a Robin Hood, stealing from a corrupt lord and fencing smuggled goods on the village’s behalf. Almost immediately, before the couple can even begin to get to know one another, chemistry ignites.

This is where my interest bobbled. I feared I was in for the rest of the book being the typical Romance attraction/pulling back two-step. I enjoy a love story as the frosting on a compelling plot with strong ideas, but not the entire central driving force of the book. However, I’d enjoyed Armstrong’s other books and found her writing to be both pleasant and engaging, so I kept going.

Praise for The Seven-Petaled Shield

The Seven-Petaled Shield is the first volume of my epic fantasy trilogy. Here's what reviewer Reggie Lutz had to say about it:

It has been a while since I've read a fantasy that, at first glance, appears to be categorized in the genre as clearly as The Seven-Petaled Shield. It is almost deceptive in this way. What the author does with the form, and the narrative is engaging, unique and managed to keep me up past my bed time a couple of nights. There are swords, there is sorcery and as the cover suggests, yes. A sea god does appear. Though to many, such themes are familiar territory, what she does with them, how they serve the narrative, and how all of this is viewed through her protagonist's unusually compassionate gaze is unique and engaging. I'm still digesting a lot of this as I've finished reading this book only recently, but one of the things that I noticed as I read it was having the thought, "Oh, this is another Chosen One story," and then of course having that perception proven wrong, which is an absolutely delicious experience as a reader. There are moments like this throughout the book, accomplished with deft prose and subtlety. I agree with another reviewer about how the mutli-cultured worldbuilding is handled well. For me, as a reader, I love a strong character, and in that regard this book does not disappoint. It was a joy getting to know her main character, Tsorreh. I will definitely read the rest of this series.

"A critical, inventive spin brings an exciting uniqueness to the good and evil quest theme." —Midwest Book Review

Buy it at Amazon or your favorite vendor.

If you enjoyed the book, please post a review! 

Book Review: A Disabled Detective in Space

 The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)

A murder mystery set on a space station, what could be finer? When the detectives are Tesla Crane, a brilliant and extremely wealthy inventor with an array of PTSD and physical injuries, her service dog, and her real-life (although retired) detective husband, Shal. No sooner do they embark incognito upon their honeymoon voyage than a fellow passenger is murdered and all clues point to Shal. The ship’s security cuts off their communications (to their Earthside attorney, for one thing, and to one another, for another). Only then do things start to go seriously pear-shaped.

For me, what makes The Spare Man stand out from similar tales is its depiction of a disabled protagonist. Tesla faces the limitations of crippling spinal damage, an implanted pain-suppression device, and the risks of having her trauma re-triggered. She has an array of coping strategies, the most outstanding of which is her service dog, a Westland terrier named Gimlet. As the former owner of a retired seeing eye dog and friend to a number of folks who rely on service dogs (as opposed to the badly behaved pets that sometimes pass as such), I appreciated how Kowal portrayed a service dog at work. These included how Gimlet was “on work” or “released” to be just a dog, and when working, how she was focused on Tesla and her specifically trained behaviors to alert her owner of impending trouble. Sometimes, the dog would physically prevent Tesla from engaging in emotionally perilous behavior. I cheered when another character would ask to pet this absolutely charming dog and Tesla would say, “No, she’s working. If you pet her, you will interrupt her focus.” I wish more people understood this before they walk up to a vested service dog and start interacting without asking first (or, worse yet, allow their toddlers to rush up to a service dog!)

Unfortunately, the mystery unfolded too slowly for me, with many interruptions that dissipated the tension and forward momentum. Halfway through the novel, I began to be increasingly irritated with Tesla. Her propensity for interfering with the investigation by the ship’s security, ignoring her service dog (including leaving her dog behind and going into dangerous situations), dialing up her pain-suppression device at the very real risk of injury through numbness, and especially lying to her husband about being fine when it was obvious she was not fine, all these eroded my sympathies. I thought her lawyer was overhyped and ineffective, although possessed of an extremely colorful and imaginative vocabulary. I had a hard time moving past a point fairly early in the book where Shal has been drugged, probably by the security force who are holding him against his will under the pretext he is a suicide risk. I would have been terrified this was all a set-up to do away with him as the only competent investigator around, but Tesla blithely goes about her way, following clues in a desultory fashion only when it suits her.

In the end, the resolution of the mystery was quite satisfying and put together a wide array of clues. Some of these had gotten buried under inconsequential chit-chat about how cute Gimlet is, not to mention the excessive repetitions of Tesla’s coping strategies (if she’s that successful in using them, why does she end up on the verge of an incapacitating meltdown so often?) This would have been a much better, tighter, more dramatically sound book at half the length.

I loved Kowal’s other work and will continue to read her books as they come out, but The Spare Man was, alas, not up to her best.