The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez

 

By Simon Hawke

A Wizard of 4th Street novel

So in a world where magic is real and after a world wide apocalypse, anything is possible. Including strange animal magical cross-combinations like snake with dog aka snog. But also magical animals who have humanlike attributes such as speech and intelligence. One such animal is Catseye Gomez, a very smart alley cat with the ability to talk and a magic eye.

After the events of The Wizard of Santa Fe, Catseye Gomez leaves New Mexico and lands in Denver, Colorado. Before he even really gets settled into his new location, Gomez finds himself embroiled in politics when a proponent of equal rights for intelligent animals (ERA)gets assassinated by a bomb attached to her car. 

He joins a police detective investigating the murder. Blame is first assigned to a religious group who see magic and magical animals as abominations sent to lure the world into defiance of god's law. So not only a political group but also religious fanatics! The perfect scapegoats! But doubt does exist because, as Christians, they are also opposed to murder. The plot deepens!

I was not familiar with this series. This was my first time coming to it and I landed six books in. Probably not the best way to start. Thrown into the middle and new to Hawke's style of writing, I actually found myself hating the book. Not the plot, not the story, not the minor characters, but the pontificating of the main character, the cat. I skipped the many pages of its lectures as too boring to bother with. 

I also found the animal combinations disturbing and a form of abuse, very much like the breeding of characteristics in animals that are harmful to them that humans have been doing for a very long time. Ewww!

The Crow Trap

 

By Ann Cleeves

The first novel in the Vera Stanhope mystery series.

Three women will be spending several weeks living together in a small rural cottage next to Black Law Farm. They have been hired to do some environmental studies on land that is being proposed as the site of a new quarry. If their surveys show any endangered or sensitive plants or animals, the quarry project will not be allowed to continue. 

Naturally, there are proponents on both sides: business people looking to make money and locals hoping to find work at the quarry. And those who want the charm and beauty of the local countryside protected and those who are worried about the noise, dust and traffic they worry the quarry operation will create.

The first to arrive is Rachael, a woman who used to be involved with her boss Peter Kemp but he suddenly broke it off and got married to another woman. She is hoping her time with the study will give her some distance from her former lover and still current boss.

Unfortunately, soon after arriving at the cottage, she finds that a friend of hers, Bella, who lived at Black Law Farm, has committed suicide by hanging herself in a shed on the farm. Bella actually left a note addressed to Rachael, first of all saying she regretted Rachael would be the one to find her body. But beyond a few instructions, the only thing the note said about why was that Bella couldn't take it any more, without saying what it was she couldn't take.

The other two women arrive, Anne and Grace. Anne is a married woman who lives in a nearby town but apparently is not bothered by being several weeks away from her spouse. Grace is a smart but very aloof young woman who also has connections to the local area. What her roommates don't know is Grace has a reason beyond the survey work that brings her to the cottage.

While out doing her survey work, Grace doesn't come back to the cottage one evening. The area where the survey work is being done is not particularly dangerous but a search is begun to locate Grace but they don't find her until morning. She had been murdered, strangled.

But the police can't find any reason why Grace was killed. It didn't seem like the usual circumstances associated with the death of a person in an isolated location. She wasn't well known in the community even though she has tenuous connections to a local family, the Fulwells. Her early life was unsettled as she spent most of her childhood in foster care, going from foster family to foster family. Her mother died when she was a youngster and her alcoholic father abandoned her.

Nor did Grace's death benefit either the mining interests or the anti-mining interests. The main investigator, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, is stymied. She just can't nail down a reason for Grace to have been killed. 

And then Grace's father, who had moved back to his hometown, also is found murdered. Vera, the detective, begins to wonder if these murders have nothing to do with the quarry project and everything to do with Grace and Edmund's past lives.

This was an OK murder mystery. I didn't like that the author chose such sad, lonely outsiders as Grace and Edmund as the victims. That's so mean, to turn two people who have always been losers into the targets. 

Also the book was too damn long. It was over 500 pages long. That's way too long for a murder mystery. Took me over a week to read it. Annoying!

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the story.

Cool, Calm, and Contentious

 

By Merrill Markoe

A collection of twenty-one semi-autobiographical and mildly humorous short stories ranging through a wide variety of the author's life experiences.

Stories about dealing with a mother who was demanding and hyper-critical of her daughter, Merrill. Ones about the dogs Merrill has had in her life. Stories about her school days, stretching into her years in college. Stories about the men in her life, including the most famous one, David Letterman, who is very thinly disguised as Bobby. Stories about her early sexual experiences, including rape. A rafting trip, attending a Fetish Ball, drinking sixteen ounces of vodka like it was a refreshing glass of water. Advice on life, for instance, drawing on years of experience with her mother, how to spot and avoid narcissists and assholes. 

For the most part, I enjoyed all the stories. Some were real slices of life and some were actually quite funny. Really, the only one I kept nodding off to was "Celebrity Criminals and Criminal Celebrities: Celebrity 2.0." Probably because I am not much interested in celebrities.

I characterized the stories as semi-autobiographical because she includes stories where she and her dogs have involved conversations. I'm guessing that is just fantasy or she is bonkers. I personally think if dogs could talk, they would only talk about walks, food, critters, food, intruders, food, naps, food, going outside, food, coming back in, food and bedtime.

For another review, see Publishers Weekly.

"My Teenage Son's Goal in Life Is to Make Me Feel 3,500 Year Old"

 

By Dave Barry

A small collection of short, humorous observations from Barry on parenting based on personal experience. A fun, light, read for those times when you are in the mood for something amusing and easy.

A few excerpts:

"My son is going to parties where the boys dance with actual girls. This was unheard of when I was eleven, during the Eisenhower administration. Oh, sure, our parents sent us to ballroom-dancing class, but it would have been equally cost-effective for them to simply set fire to their money."

"The computer is a great teaching tool for young people. For example, my home computer has an educational program that enables you to control an entire simulated planet—its ecology, its technology, its weather, etc. My ten-year-old son and his friends use this program a lot, and we've all learned some important ecological lessons, the main one being never, ever put ten-year-old boys in charge of a planet ("Let's see what happens when you have volcanoes and nuclear war!")

"Parents: School is almost out, which means it's time to make those summer vacation plans, load up the family car, and take off, quickly, before the kids get home.

I am of course joshing. You should take the kids; there's nothing quite like putting the whole family into the car and hitting the open road, leaving your worries behind, driving mile after carefree mile, sometimes as many as three carefree miles before everybody hates everybody else and gunfire breaks out in the back seat."

Personal Demons

 

By Stacia Kane

Dr Megan Chase is a psychologist who has just started a new job as a radio personality of a call-in show who promises to slay her listeners personal demons. 

What she doesn't know is that her promise has upset the personal demons and she is on their hit list. Now she is seeing these little demons everywhere she goes and it is clear they are serious about making her pay for her promise to slay them. The thing is, these demons don't seem to be the smartest monsters, unable to understand that her threat is not an actual promise to kill anything.

But little personal demons is not the only demon suddenly appearing in her life. For she comes home one evening to find a handsome stranger waiting on her doorstep, anxious to speak to her. Grayson Dante has something he needs to tell her. That her life is in danger from the personal demons and that he, also a demon, is there to protect her.

Naturally she has her doubts. But he soon makes it clear that he is what he says he is. And events soon transpire that convince Megan that everything he has been saying is the truth and that the personal demons are coming for her.

This was an OK read. Although the idea that a demon is good-hearted didn't sit well with me. This modern tendency to remake the old monsters into the opposite of what they traditionally are is not one I agree with. Anyways, like I said, it was an OK read. 

The Last Thing He Said

 

By Laura Dave

Hannah had only been married to Owen for a year when he vanished, leaving behind a cryptic note that only said, "Protect her." Namely his teenage daughter, Bailey.

Bailey and her dad had been just the two of them for years. So it's not surprising that Bailey regarded Hannah as an unnecessary intruder in their life. But despite Bailey's gentle displeasure, Hannah keeps trying to build rapport with her husband's daughter.

But now he has disappeared. And Bailey has come home with a bag of money her father left in her school locker along with a note asking Bailey to help Hannah and do what she asks her to do. Not only that, but there is some kind of trouble at Owen's place of work. His boss was claiming advancement in new software that did not actually exist. A fraud that that will cost investors millions in losses and now the police are at Hannah's door, wanting to know where Owen is and suspecting her of being in the thick of it.

Hannah can't help but wonder if Owen is part of the funny business at his job. And she thinks she might be able to figure out where he has gone into hiding if she gets in touch with his family and friends. But as she and Bailey dig deeper into Owen's  past, she eventually figures out that Owen Michaels is not a real person. But why did he change his name and walk away from his past with only his daughter to tie him to it? Since Bailey only knows her dad as Owen Michaels, she can't shed any light on it. Except maybe somewhere is her childhood memories is the key to uncovering whatever happened in the past that led Owen Michaels to run away from his former life.

I really enjoyed this mystery story. Of course, as the reader, you have to expect that Owen is a bad dude and that he is involved in something really bad. At first it seemed like it has to do with his boss's shady business practices but as Hannah digs deeper it begins to look like Owen was hiding from something terrible in his past. The question is, was it something Owen did? Or was it something he witnessed? And will Hannah ever be reunited with her vanished husband?

Check out the review of the book by Kirkus.

The Collapsing Empire

 

By John Scalzi

First novel of the Interdependency trilogy. 

In the distant future, and cut off from our home planet of Earth, humans have scattered throughout space, mostly living in manmade habitats, but a few on actual planets. Why in habitats instead of on worlds? Because of the Flow. Because faster-than-light travel does not exist:

"The speed of light is not only a good idea, it's the law. You can't get to it; the closer you accelerate toward it, the more energy you need to keep going forward, and it's a horrible idea to go that fast anyway, since space is only mostly empty, and anything you collide with at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light is going to turn you fragile spaceship into explody chunks of metal. And it would still takes years, or decades, or centuries, for the wreckage of your spaceship to zoom past wherever it was you originally planned to go."

So instead there is the Flow, which is:

"...generally described to laypeople as the river of alternate space-time that makes faster-than-light travel across the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds . . . The Flow, accessible by 'shoals' created when the gravity of stars and planets interacts just right with the Flow, to allow ships to slip in and ride the current to another star.

[However] The Flow is not anything close to a river—it is a multi- dimensional brane-like metacosmological structure that intersects with local time-space in a topographically complex manner, influenced partially and chaotically but not primarily by gravity, in which the ships accessing it don't move in any traditional sense but merely take advantage of its vectoral nature, relative to local space-time, which, unbounded by our universe's laws regarding speed, velocity, and energy, give the appearance of faster-than-light travel to local observers.

 And even that  is a crap way of describing it..."

So that's the author's way of having reasonable travel times so he can tell a story about an empire of city states run by the great houses based on trade which makes for interdependency without which they cannot survive on their own. 

So it's a system that has worked for a very long time. But all good things must come to an end, I guess. And that time has come for the Interdependency. 

Some smart people have figured it out. As have some not quite so smart people. Unfortunately, the not quite so smart ones based their conclusions on faulty math. They think they have figured out where the new center of government is going to be and they are doing everything they can to make sure they are the one running things. 

Meanwhile, the actual governmental hub, a bit slower to get it than the other group, figure out that the other group is working under wrong conclusions. But the governmental group, being in a phase of transition and being a bit slow to act, is being attacked by the other guys, who are using chaos and terrorism to gain the upper hand.

So that's the story. It pretty much ends with the government people telling the ambitious people that they are operating under mistaken conclusions. And that humankind still has to cooperate in order to survive the coming catastrophe of changing of the Flow.

This was a pretty good story, not as boring as a lot of these, what I would call political novels, as many of them are (to me). I found I wasn't skipping a lot of pages, I only did that a couple of times. Which says a lot as I have a habit of just glancing through text that is too descriptive, too gross, too talky or has depictions of battles. Battles, I only care about the outcome, not the action. So a pretty good story. Not good enough for me to follow up with the rest of the trilogy though. The second book is The Consuming Fire followed by The Last Emperox.

Here a review by Kirkus Reviews.

 

Charmed : Shadow of the Sphinx

 

By Carla Jablonski

Based on the TV series Charmed created by Constance M. Burge.

New to the Halliwell family of witches, young Paige finds herself alone while her two sisters are busy elsewhere. She heads upstairs to spend her alone time with the Book of Shadows, a collection of information and spells created by the witch ancestors of the current three Halliwell sisters.

Paige is browsing through the book when she finds a spell for shapeshifting. She decides to try out the spell because the power to shapeshift is one her two sisters don't have and that is appealing to Paige. As she rushes to gather all the items needed for casting the spell, she fails to read to spell instructions all the way through. 

The spell works and Paige finds herself turned into a kitty cat. But when her sisters return home, Paige realizes she doesn't know how to stop being a cat. And her sisters are surprised to find a strange cat in their house and she is captured and hauled off to an animal shelter.

At the shelter, Paige is quickly adopted by a man and taken away by him to a meeting of a small cult calling themselves the Disciples of Thoth. Paige becomes the focus of a ceremony being performed by the cult members, lead by the man who adopted her from the animal shelter, Tyler Carlson. 

The center of attention, Tyler and Paige abide while the acolytes chant and the two vanish from modern times and find themselves back in ancient Egypt, in a temple dedicated to the cat god Bastet. And find themselves surrounded by hostile guards and hysterical priests, accused of being foreign spies. Locked away in prison cell with no way out, even Paige's witch powers don't work because the walls of the prison are covered with anti-magic spells that nullify her powers.

Meanwhile, back in current times, the sisters have figured out what Paige did and are on her trail. They soon understand that Paige and Tyler are in ancient Egypt and they use their magic powers to travel into the past after her. Ending up in the same temple in which Paige and Tyler had appeared, they see a cat in the temple and assume it is Paige and grab it and take it back to their present time. They perform a spell to return Paige to her human form and the spell works but the woman who appears is not Paige. She is Hoptith and she was condemned to be confined a cat form because she was an evil and dangerous witch. And now she is thrilled to be herself again and she has all sorts of plans that don't bode well for either the past or the present.

This was an OK read, if a bit juvenile. I was not familiar with the TV series when I got the book  but it sounded like a fun read. It was a bit chaotic and the action often happens with little explanation and lots of improbable coincidences. Like what are the odds that when the two sisters change the temple cat into a person, it turns out to be a powerful and dangerous witch bent on world domination? Or that when Paige, in her cat form, is dropped off at the animal shelter, she is immediately adopted by a man who wants to use the cat in a magical ritual that very night? Too juvenile in tone for me.

Stardoc

 

By S. L, Viehl

First book in the Stardoc series.

Cherijo Grey Veil worked hard at her studies and became a very skilled surgeon. Then she found out something about her father, Dr. Joseph Grey Veil, that turned her world upside down. And she fled her home and found a job at a medical clinic on another planet, trying to start a new life on a new world.

As a woman with a strong personality, Cherijo stepped on a few toes, mainly Drs. Mayer and Rogan. Really, though, she never had a chance with Dr. Mayer, who seemed to hate the very sight of her. But when a patient nearly died because of Dr. Rogan's failure to diagnose the patient correctly, Cherijo read him the riot act and earned herself an implacable enemy. 

Cherijo's father found out where she was and sent her threatening messages demanding that she come back home. He even sent people to kidnap her. But Cherijo laughed at his threats and continued on with her work at the clinic, treating whatever beings showed up in need of medical care. 

Most of her patients were not humans but that did not slow Cherijo down. She seemed to have an instinct for what all her patients who came to the clinic needed. That is until Alun Karas, a furry being who accidentally became covered with some kind of plant sap and had a reaction to it. No matter what she tried and for reasons she didn't understand, Alun Karas steadily went downhill, eventually dying. The medical tests showed no source of infection. But even worse, it soon became apparent that whatever had infected Karas was now spreading throughout the city. And none of the doctors have a clue as to what organism or toxin is responsible for the epidemic. Together, they are working to try to understand this sudden illness, but soon most of the doctors and nurses are infected too. Cherijo is unaffected and is bearing the weight of trying to crack this puzzle before the whole city is wiped out.

This was an OK story. Long, though, nearly 400 pages, way longer than it needed to be, I think. The epidemic section was way too long, it just goes on and on about how big of a puzzle the infection is. I found the story slow paced. And I never really liked the main character, Cherijo. I guess a lot of readers do like her story because it became a long series consisting of ten novels.

Gateways

 

By F. Paul Wilson

A Repairman Jack novel

Jack hasn't been as close to his dad as he probably should be. He knows his dad was disappointed that Jack didn't come home for his sister's funeral. Even so, when he gets word that his dad was in a vehicle crash, he wants his brother Tom Jr to be the one to go down to Florida to check on their father. But Tom Jr says he's tied up with business and it's up to Jack to step in.

Tom Sr has been in a coma since the crash, which happened on an unfrequented rural road. The circumstances of the crash are mysterious and will remain so until Tom Sr comes out of his coma.

Jack flies down to Florida and visits his dad in the hospital. The dad is not conscious but still has a visitor, his next door neighbor, an elderly lady named Anya. She and Tom Sr live in a community for retirees called Gateways.

After stopping by the hospital, Jack goes to his dad's house to stay while his dad is in the hospital. He notices that his dad's neighbor Anya's house is surrounded by lush green vegetation even though everyone's lawn in the community is brown and dead because of an extended drought. When he asks Anya about it, she has no explanation but assures him she is not watering her plants on the sly, against the water conservation orders.

Anya is not the only odd duck in this story. A group of strange, deformed people live in the swamp, led by a young woman with a mob of pure white hair who goes by the name of Semelee. She and her gang of thugs are somehow involved with the dad's accident. She also has weird, uncanny powers that enable her to control animals and insects. She is aware of Jack's arrival to Gateways and she has decided he is the man she fated to be with. Which is going to come as a surprise to Jack, who doesn't even know of her existence. And he already has a wife and child waiting for him back home.

I really enjoyed this story up to almost the end. It's part of a series but this was my first read of a book from the series. I found that, even though I hadn't read the previous novels, knowledge of the previous books was not needed to enjoy this story.

However, the ending was disappointing as it ends in a big battle with the bad guys. Bullets are flying, people are getting hurt. I just skimmed through the battle stuff to get to the results. 

I guess we're supposed to hate little Semelee but I just felt sorry for her. I wish the author had come up with a better fate for her than what he did. The same for Devil, the alligator, who was given a cruel and painful fate simply because he was a big, dangerous gator. His crimes weren't even of his own creation, he was simply a tool used by a pathetic, confused child. 

You Shouldn't Have Come Here

 

 By Jeneva Rose

Grace Evans has come to Dubois, Wyoming for some rest and relaxation and to enjoy the country scenery and breathe some fresh country air. She has a reservation at a ranch where she will be staying in a bedroom of the ranch house.

Her host is Calvin Wells who also lives in the ranch house. He is a handsome and strapping young man and is thrilled to have someone as beautiful as Grace staying with him for a few weeks.

But there's problems. His friends and family are a bit less welcoming as one could hope for. And one of his friends is frankly hostile to Grace's presence in Calvin's home. Charlotte is clearly giving off ex-girlfriend-hoping-to-get-back-together vibes. Calvin, however, is just as clearly indifferent to whatever Charlotte's hopes might be, calling her a just part-time ranch hand.

Another problematic person is Calvin's brother, Joe, who comes off as a bit nutty. His relationship with his brother seems a little mysterious to Grace and he also seems a little too interested in his brother's houseguest. 

Grace doesn't feel quite comfortable with Calvin and his brother. But that doesn't stop her from having an intimate moment with Calvin. Which Calvin misconstrues as more than just a one night stand. He thinks it is the beginning of a whole new relationship and is already making plans for Grace to stay on the ranch permanently. But Grace is not enamored with Calvin and refuses his further advances, something that Calvin is unwilling to accept. 

Trouble is brewing on this Wyoming ranch.

This book is not a winner. I found myself skipping about half of the book, just wanting to finish it. I bought it new and didn't want to feel like I wasted my money by not finishing it. But it was boring and predictable and the two main characters are completely unlikeable. The book, almost from the beginning, gives hints that Grace is a phony. The only thing that actually surprised me a little was that she was not motivated by any honorable reason.

Also check out this review by Kirkus Reviews.