Devil's Cub

 

By Georgette Heyer

Dominic Alastair, Lord Vidal, is a man of few scruples, impetuous and passionate. Although only a young man, he has a reputation for being dangerous and unpredictable. But he comes from wealth and privilege and much is forgiven the children of the nobility. 

This time, maybe, he has gone too far and shot a man who accused him of cheating at dice. So Vidal has been informed by his father, the Duke, that he needs to leave the country to escape facing trial. Vidal is willing to leave England for France but he has no intention of going alone. 

He has been wooing a beautiful young but silly girl. His intentions towards Sophia are strictly dishonorable. Sophia and her mother believe they can ensnare Vidal into marriage but Sophia's older sister Mary thinks otherwise. She is certain Sophia will be seduced and abandoned when Vidal tires of her. So when Mary receives a message from Vidal intended for Sophia directing Sophia to come away with him, she decides to intervene. Disguising herself, she meets with Vidal and climbs into his chaise and lets him carry her away to an unknown destination, letting him believe she is Sophia. Her hope is that when he discovers the deception, she will try to make him think that Sophia was in on it in order to make him look like a fool and thus cause him to wash his hands of Sophia. 

When Mary reveals herself to Vidal and laughs at him, he becomes enraged and forces her to come with him to France. Once they reach France, things become more complicated, as Vidal begins to understand that Mary was trying to save her sister from disgrace and that he has carried away a respectable maiden and is now responsible for ruining her good reputation. Upon realizing this, he steps up and offers to marry her. But Mary is a bit contrary and decides that she is not interested in a loveless marriage. Or rather a marriage where one loves and the other does not because Mary realizes she has fallen in love with her captor, Lord Vidal, the Devil's Cub.

This book is the sequel to These Old Shades, the story of the Duke and Leonie, the aristocrat and the guttersnipe, Vidal's parents to be.

This story doesn't have the depth or seriousness of the first book, and in many ways, that makes it a more enjoyable read. It is more of a romp, with lots of complications and true love thwarted, with the Duke stepping in at the end to set everything right, in his usual omniscient fashion that we are introduced to in the first book. 

It's not one of my favorite books of Heyer's, but it is still a good read. 

Review by Austenprose.

I Am Number Four

 

By Pittacus Lore

When their planet was attacked, the people loaded up the best and brightest of their children and sent them to Earth to hide among the populace until the kids grew up and gained their magical powers. But the enemy tracked them to Earth and is hunting the kids down, already killing numbers one through three.

Fearing for his safety, number Four's guardian moves himself and Four, changing their names and creating new IDs for them. Four is fifteen years old and just starting to develop his powers. Newly arrived in a small rural town in Ohio, Four is making himself at home in his new high school, making friends and enemies: he runs afoul of a jock/bully when the boy's old girl friend takes a shine to Four and the jock gets jealous.

Four's guardian warns him not to get involved with the local girls. But Four falls hard for ex-cheerleader Sarah. So when the guardian begins to fear the enemy is nearby and wants to leave the area, Four refuses. He has become tired of their rootless existence and he is falling in love with Sarah. 

But the enemy is implacable and dogged in their determination to track down the surviving alien kids and destroying them all. And once they achieve that, their next victims will be the people of Earth. 

This was a fairly good read, a bit juvenile and predictable, but still quite moving and enjoyable. It is the first entry in a series of books. The author is not Pittacus Lore as the books are written by James Frey, Jobie Hughes, and Greg Boose. Pittacus Lore is actually a character in the novels.

Mistborn

 

By Brandon Sanderson

A cursed world, plagued by volcanic ash fall and nights of mist and strangeness in the mist, so much so that people are fearful of being out in the mist, and where there are only two classes of people, the ruling class and the slave class.

Vin is a teenage thief, the daughter of a slave and of a lord. The law requires that children born of such a union must be destroyed. But Vin and her brother Reen survived and lived by their wits, until the day Reen left his sister behind to survive on her own, a betrayal that has left Vin suspicious and untrusting of everyone. 

The some in the ruling class have mystical powers, fueled by the metal and metallic compounds they consume. Vin also has these powers, although she doesn't really understand what she is doing and she doesn't know about using metals to enhance her innate abilities. That is until she became acquainted with Kelsier, a man with a plan to overthrown the ruling class and its leader, the Lord Ruler. But the Lord Ruler is more like a god than a human man, believed to be immortal. 

Kelsier sees the potential in Vin and brings her into his crew of rebels, teaching her how to use the metals to achieve amazing feats beyond ordinary human powers. He eventually places her in the house of fake lord who works for him, introduced into the nobility as the young daughter of a country lord. Her job is to spy on the noble houses and gather intelligence to be used against them. 

Vin becomes smitten by a bookish young lord, Elend Venture. Elend is the heir of House Venture, the most powerful house in the capitol city. But Vin is a thief and criminal and fake who is supposed to be helping Kelsier  bring down the ruling class, including House Venture and Elend Venture. According to Kelsier, they are all corrupt and deserve to be destroyed. But Vin sees goodness in Elend and argues with Kelsier that not all of the nobility deserve death.

Then an important battle goes against the troops Kelsier has gathered and they are defeated. Which drives Kelsier into a face to face confrontation with the Lord Ruler, who is revealed to be as indestructible as claimed and Kelsier dies. Which causes Vin to attempt to get into the Lord Ruler's citadel to discover the secret of his immortality.

This was an OK story, although way too long. It is the first book in a trilogy, and, looking ahead I found out that the author has a habit of killing off the heroes of his stories. We already know Kelsier dies, Elend dies later on as does Vin. After finding that out, I lost interest in reading the other two books in the trilogy. Life is sad enough in reality without it being miserable in fiction too. Also, like I mentioned, the book is too long. I frankly skipped through a lot of its over 600 pages.

Review by Erik Kain in Forbes.

Sprig Muslim

By Georgette Heyer

A Regency Romance

Sir Gareth has given up on romantic love. His first love died tragically several years ago and Gary has never recovered from that loss. But he knows his duty to his family and has decided to ask Lady Hester to be his wife. Lady Hester is an old friend and Gary thinks she will make him a good wife who won't expect passion in their marriage. Little does he know.

On his way to propose, he comes across a maiden in distress. Amanda "Smith" is obviously a runaway who is in trouble. Gary befriends her and she tells him her story. Just sixteen, Amanda, only grandchild of a doting grandparent, is determined to wed Captain Neil, whom she has known all her life. He is home from the war to recover from a wound. And before he has to return to duty, Amanda wants to be married to him and accompany him overseas. Of course, the grandfather is opposed to this plan, believing she is much too young for such a serious step. Also, he wants his beautiful granddaughter to make a "better" match than a military man. 

So Amanda ran away, planning to get some sort of work to support herself. Her first attempt fell through when she showed up to be a governess. The mom immediately knew Amanda was a phony and sent her packing. When Gary found her, she was trying to get a job at an inn and was being told off by the landlord who thought she was a not a nice girl. 

Gary, seeing that Amanda is an innocent with no experience of the real world, offers her a ride, letting her think he will take to the next town where she hopes to get a job at another inn. But what he really does is take her to the woman he intends to propose marriage to, Lady Hester. Which makes Amanda enraged and determined to get away and carry on with her plan of forcing her grandpa into agreeing to her wedding her Neil.

Hester's family doesn't take too well to Amanda, even though Hester welcomes her and even loans Amanda a gown to wear to dinner. Too bad for Gary, though, for when Hester sees how he can't seem to take his eyes off of Amanda, she rejects his offer of marriage. Then Hester's Uncle Fabian, who is also visiting Hester's family's home, thinks Amanda is Gary's mistress and when she confides in him that Gary is holding her against her will, he offers her a ride and they sneak away early in the morning. Fabian is not planning to help her, he thinks she is an easy woman and he wants to seduce her.

When Gary discovers the two are gone, he sets off after them, to rescue Amanda from the licentious Fabian and bring her home safely to her grandpa. But Amanda is, to quote Gary, "the naughtiest little wretch I ever encountered." Gary doesn't really understand the lengths Amanda will go to get her way and will embroil Gary, a chance-met schoolboy named Hildebrand and Hester in her schemes.

This is one of my favorite Heyer novels. I think I first read this story when I was in junior high school. I have reread several times over the years.  I enjoyed it nearly as much as this time as I did the first time I read it. It's sweet and amusing and so satisfying. I just like everything about it. It's perfect!

Review by Laura A. Wallace at Austenprose.

Native Tongue

 

By Carl Hiaasen

The Amazing Kingdom of Thrills has made Francis X. Kingsbury of South Florida a wealthy man. But Francis, or Frankie the Ferret as he is known to some folks up north who would really like to track him down, has dreams of rivaling the big Florida amusement parks. So he is building a golf course next to his park. Never mind that he is tearing down critical habitat and uprooting native trees and plants. Never mind that his golf course plans to dump waste water near one of the few coral reefs in the area.

Still there are a few people who would like to keep a least a bit of Florida environmentally healthy. One of them is Skink, the ex-governor and current wild man who lives in the back country and eats road kill. The other is Joe Winder who likes fishing off that reef that Frankie's development is threatening and who happens to work for Frankie in the park's public relations department. 

When a park employee turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Winder senses a cover-up that centers around the park's star exhibit: the last two living Blue-Tongued Mango Voles, who are in a captive breeding program intended to bring the voles back from the brink of extinction, similar to the Dusky Seaside Sparrow program at Disney World: Washington Post article.. (Frankie has a bug in his ear about Disney World and fancies himself a rival to the giant park in Orlando.) Unfortunately the two voles get kidnapped by an environmental group who wants to use them to blackmail Frankie into halting the golf course development. 

Another entry in Hiaasen's Florida saga, this one seemed more cohesive to me than some of his other novels. The plot is less convoluted and doesn't seem to have so many sidetracks that can make the reader feel a bit lost at times. Skink, of course, makes his usual appearance, acting in this story as a kind of deus ex machina, enacting justice on baddies and moving behind the scenes. 

I liked this story a lot. It was not so complex as some of his stories can be and everything wraps up very nicely. He even includes a fun afterword where we get to see how the various characters (who are not killed off) end up. Very enjoyable story.

Review by Publishers Weekly.