Spellbreaker

Charlie Holmberg's fantasy novel Spellbreaker (#1,355) proved to be a much more entertaining traveling companion.  

Spending her days as a general factotum for an artist who has taken her in from the workhouse, Elsie Camden has powers of her own - to break magic spells cast on objects.  She feels she is doing good, but there is a problem; Elsie is not licensed to break the spells, so if she is caught, there can be severe consequences, including a death sentence.

She is content to work in the shadows until she comes up against Bacchus Kelsey, a handsome Jamaican about to complete his own magical mastership in Victorian London.  Elsie is afraid of the power he holds over her, yet she senses that he is bound up by a spell cast unbeknownst to him.  Can they work together to defeat the cabal busy murdering magicians and stealing their priceless spell books?

We won't know until we read the sequel Spellmaker!

The Tale of Genji

I thought I would read Japan's first recognized novel The Tale of Genji (#1,354) by Lady Murasaki Shikibu.  Funnily enough, it popped up in Kate Quinn's recent best seller The Astral Library as the literature of choice for a reader to permanently escape to.  Sorry to say, but it would never be mine.  My Kindle version (I was traveling to Japan while reading it.) stretched to more than 1500 pages.  I made it through almost 300 pages before I lost interest in The Shining One and moved onto something much more interesting.

Genji turns out to be the illegitimate son of the emperor by the concubine he could never forget.  In consequence, Genji was supernaturally beautiful, and each and every trial and tribulation in his relatively calm life rendered him even more so, and irresistible to men, women and children.  Genji was happy to seduce one and all.  It was all just a game to him.  He took his poetry more seriously than his sex life.  For me the endless seductions grew exceedingly tedious.  Although The Tale of Genji is stored on my Kindle, I doubt I will ever finish it.  Maybe you will have better luck.

The Book of Fallen Leaves

The cover blurb calls The Book of Fallen Leaves (#1,353) by debut author A.S. Tamaki "Shogun meets Game of Thrones".  Although I've never read any of the Game of Thrones books, I'm guessing from the clips I've seen of TV series that the fantasy element is a match.  The author in his notes claims that the germ of the idea of three families rebelling against the Japanese emperor and seizing control for themselves is based on an actual event in Japanese history, grounding the action.

It takes as its central characters two three-year-old survivors of a Gensei family massacre by its political opponents.  Sen Hoshiakari and Rui Misosazai are found hiding in a barrel holding hands by Sen's uncle Yora, a court official, and spirited away to the East to be raised by a foster family.  The toddlers are bound together by the matching Gensei family jade beads they both wear, though Rui is a peasant.  Their obscurity keeps them safe until Rui runs afoul of a rogue monk seeking the missing Gensei heir on behalf of the powerful Chancellor Seikiyo.  When the information that the rumored surviving heir is true is received in the capital, it sets in motion vast jockeying for power amongst the nobles and the kijin warrior class and the gods and demons themselves.

This is only the first volume in this new fantasy series, but I will be looking forward to the continuing stories of Sen and Rui.  They have gone their separate ways after an epic battle at the end of this book, but the whys and wherefores of how Rui came to be in possession of a Gensei jade bead have yet to be explained.  She has been instrumental in saving Sen's life more than once, but Sen is compelled to follow Lady Kai, the sister he never knew he had and the Gensei clan leader as she struggles to avenge their family's fate.

I especially enjoyed the lyrical descriptions and poetry in this first book.  Mr. Tamaki's appreciation of the landscape and history of Japan shine through.  As in Shogun, it was this aspect of Japanese thought and culture that most appealed to me.  The Book of Fallen Leaves is more than just a samurai adventure story.  Read it for the action, but fall under the spell of its language. 

The Baby Dragon Bookshop

I read and really enjoyed the first book in this series The Baby Dragon Cafe, so I looked forward to reading the second one, The Baby Dragon Bookshop (#1,352) by A. T. Qureshi.  I must admit I was disappointed.  Too much steam and not enough baby dragons for my taste.

It's a classic frenemies set up with two coffee-roasting company entrepreneurs asked to bid on creating a coffee shop within an existing and beloved book store, just down the street from the Baby Dragon Cafe.  At first Emmeline and Luke refuse to work together, but of course you know the rest.  Emmeline uses dragons to roast her coffee, Luke uses chimeras.  There was a perfect opportunity to explore a whole new interesting set of mythic creatures, but it never really happened.  Neither did any details really emerge about how each of the competitors envisioned the coffee shop fitting in and adding to the bookshop's appeal.  Plenty of inappropriate business wear, though!

Steamy romances really aren't my thing; I was really after the fantasy element.  Won't be checking out any further books in this series.

The Waiting Game - The Untold Story of the Women who Served the Tudor Queens

I've read many books on Tudor history - it's a favorite period of mine - but Nicola Clark's The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens (#1,351) breaks new and fascinating ground.  However, a clarification is necessary.  The Tudor queens of the title are solely the wives of Henry VIII, not his two daughters who ruled after him although they, too, are Tudor queens.

If you read much Tudor history a few of the ladies-in-waiting's names will be familiar to you, but they tend to be generally lumped together in history as an amorphous mass, only filling in background spaces.  In truth, these spots were coveted by the gentry and nobility as steppingstones for their own and their families' ambitions.  Along with the spot came duties as well as allowances for bed, board and dress.  Not too shabby, especially as the position put the women in a prominent position in the most serious marriage market in the country.

Ms. Clark chronicles the court service of as many of these unseen women as she can pull from official records and correspondence to put together how exciting, and yet increasingly dangerous being a maid of honor became over the course of Henry's reign.  These women had to play the court games more skillfully than anyone else in order to keep their positions, not to mention their heads! 

A splendid addition to your history shelf!

The House of Mirth

Our book club decided to read Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth (#1,350) after two of us had recently visited her home in the Berkshires, The Mount.  Although many had a hard time getting into the novel with its expanded vocabulary (thank goodness for Kindle imbedded dictionaries!) and unfamiliar social mores, by the end of the book Lily Bart had our sympathy, and a few were upset by the ending.

If you've never read it, Lily Bart lives in New York society, spending the social seasons moving from house to house and activity to activity.  Although Lily has the breeding and the perfect looks to succeed in this hothouse atmosphere, she has never been able to settle down to marrying for money alone.  Dependent on her old-fashioned aunt for a home and meager allowance, she is left on her own after her aunt disowns her over a financial flutter orchestrated by one of her "friend's" husband.  Lily is left penniless and with a tattered reputation.  The reader is left to watch her slide into "dinginess" beyond her control.

There's much to talk about in this classic novel, and our book club enjoyed it immensely.  Now it's on to reading The Age of Innocence, the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a female author.  

The Librarians

Just another ordinary day at the Austin Public Library branch where four librarians all harbor their own secrets.  The Librarians (#1,349) by Sherry Thomas is a delightfully twisted work by the author of the Lady Sherlock series.

Nothing seems different the day new parttime page Hazel starts at the busy suburban branch of the Austin Public Library.  Things are gearing up for Halloween and there are the usual problems of not enough money to do everything Director Sophie wants to include in her programming.  Astrid has recently had her heart broken by a patron and it has cast a pall over her normally bouncy personality.  Jonathan tries gamely to help her along but when a body is discovered in a parked car, it sets off a series of events which will put all of the librarians in peril as they try to protect their own secrets.

Who knew the chain of events would bounce all over the globe as the intrepid four try to get to the heart of the matter and save what matters most to them?

Highly recommended!