Shadow Hunter

 

By BR Kingsolver

When Erin was a preteen, she began to come into her magical powers and was adopted by the Illuminati and trained to be a Hunter, an assassin who uses both magic and martial arts to eliminate evildoers who are upsetting the balance. Or so she was told.

Turned out all that was a lie. She was actually eliminating road blocks to the Illuminati's plans for world domination. She found this out when she was sent to murder William Strickland. According to her master, Strickland was a sorcerer and practitioner of the Dark Arts and that he had created a superweapon that the Illuminati wanted. 

As Strickland lay dying from her attack, he told her the nature of the weapon, a small crystal ball: "It shows truth. Look through it when a man speaks, and it shows his lies. Look at a spell or a book or a work of art to see how true it is. Watch an Illuminati ritual and see the blood and the Darkness hidden beneath the surface."

He also warns Erin that of the crystal's other power: "Take that to your masters, and they will destroy it. But in the process, it will destroy them."

Erin takes the crystal and views Strickland through it. It shows her that he was dying. But she also saw: "...he was a wizard of the Light, and felt, though I couldn't tell how, that everything he had told me was the truth."

Leaving the dying man, Erin is confronted by his daughter:

'"He said you would come, and you would kill him."

"He may yet live," I said, "but he is dying."

"And you have the crystal?"

"Yes."

"Then you need this as well," she said holding out a book.

. . . The book was black leather trimmed in gold. The title, in the secret language of the Illuminati, said, "The History of the Illuminati."

"Read it," she said. "He said—my father said—that you must read it." She gave me a grin that was so malevolent I took a step back. "They will kill you when you take it to them, whether you read it or not. I hope you're stupid enough to believe their lies."'

Erin does read the book and discovers Strickland hadn't lied about the true nature of the Illuminati and what she had been doing for them: "Rather than being a force for the Light, I had advanced the reach of the Dark."

She takes the crystal to her master and leaves it in his hands, without the warning that Strickland gave her. True to what he said, crystal detonates and leaves the hidden city of the Illuminati vaporized with no trace left to show it had ever existed. The location where it had stood was now pristine wilderness.

Even though that was the end of the Illuminati stronghold, Erin knows the members are scattered all through the world in the places of influence and power and wealth. Her split from the group has put her life in danger and she goes into hiding, ending up in Westport, a city on the western coast of the USA. She quickly finds a job as a bartender and just as quickly discovers that Westport is a hive of magical activity and conflict between supernaturals like werewolves and vampires. Even the bar where she works is part of it, a haven for magically gifted people like herself, mages, wizards, shapeshifters, even vampires occasionally.

But that's not all she discovers. An Illuminati assassin, a Hunter, is in town and is behind a number of mysterious deaths among the supernatural communities. It appears the Illuminati are up to their usual tricks, fomenting disorder in order to gain some kind of advantage in Westport and increase their influence. Erin finds herself entangled in this conflict and trying to help her newfound friends and community survive the Illuminati machinations and still keep her presence hidden from the Hunter and his Illuminati cohorts.

This was an OK read. It goes from Erin learning how to pretend to be an ordinary person to battles with supernaturals that show she certainly is not a ordinary person. Which quickly becomes apparent to those around her and raises many questions about her past that she, for her own safety, will not share.

There are so many supernatural battle scenes, which are just like all battle scenes, just with magic thrown in. To me, no more interesting than all fictional battle scenes, boring. So, bartend for a bit, meet some folks for a bit, battle. Repeat over and over again. 

Normally, I would classify this as a book that would appeal mostly to female readers. But the battle after battle scenes reads more like a book for male readers, who are more inclined to enjoy that than most female readers. Yes, I know there are exceptions, whatever.

The Sunday Philosophy Club

 

By Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel and a companion are at a concert when they see a young man fall to his death from the upper deck of the hall. 

Witnessing a tragedy like that leads Isabel into a an investigation of the man and what may have led to his death and whether it was an accident or something else.

Being a woman of wealth and means, Isabel has the time to undertake such an investigation. Her friends don't think it is a good idea, but she ignores their advice. Her inquiries lead her to conclude that the dead did not fall, that there were reasons he might have been pushed, mainly insider trading. His position at the firm where he worked may have led him to suspect that people in the business were using inside information to take advantage of the markets.

Was this why he died? Or was it a romantic entanglement? Or perhaps it truly was just that he lost his balance and fell? Isabel stirs things up and finds more than one villain. And her own life may be in danger as a consequence.

This was an OK mystery story. The evildoers are unmasked but oddly no one is brought to justice, which made for a rather weak ending, I think.

Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

 

By Christopher Moore

Tuck is a jet pilot who kills his career when he gets loaded and crashes the company jet while having sex with a prostitute. Desperate for work, Tuck takes a job as a pilot for a Pacific island-based medical charity.

The charity is run by a doctor and his nurse/wife. But it doesn't take Tuck long to figure out that these two are up to something unsavory. Like how can a small, local charity afford a Learjet? What is in the coolers that they transport via the jet to Japan? Something that is so special that the wife guards it with a gun.

Eventually Tuck figures out that the two Westerners are taking advantage of the natives' cargo cult and are using it to bamboozle the islanders into becoming organ donors and that the people don't really understand how they are being used. It all comes to a head for Tuck when he realizes the doctor removed the corneas of a little boy for transport to Japan and they justified it to him by claiming the boy was already blind and didn't need his corneas. He also realizes it is up to him to put a stop to their organ-harvesting operation.

This was a very amusing story and it has lots of funny moments. For example, two native men are talking about a People Magazine and what the one who could read is sharing from it:

"'But look!" Malink pointed to a picture of a man with unnaturally large ears, "This man is a king and he wishes to be a tampon. It is quoted."

Sarapul scrunched up his face . . . while he tried to figure out what, exactly, a tampon was. Finally he said, "I was a tampon once, back in the old days, before you were born. All warriors became tampons. It was better then."

"You have never been a tampon," Malink stated, although he couldn't be sure. "Only a king may be a tampon."'

This too, when Tuck gets grabbed by the locals and tied up:

'The native said something in his own language, which Tuck took to be "Cut him down," because a second later he found himself falling into the arms of four strong islanders who lowered him to the ground.

Tucker's arms and legs burned as the blood rushed back into them. Above him he saw a circle of moonlit brown faces. He managed to grab enough breath to squeak, "Soon as I'm on my feet, your asses are mine. You all might as well just go practice falling down for a while so you'll be used to it. Just order the body bags now 'cause when I'm done, you're going to look like piles of chocolate pudding. They'll be cleaning you up with shovels—you . . . " Tuck's breath caught in his throat and he passed out.

"Malink looked at his old friend Favo and smiled. "Excellent threat," he said.

"Most excellent threat," Favo said.

Sarapul pushed his way through the kneeling men. "He's dead. Let's eat him."

"He no like that," Kimi said. "Not even for free."'

And here, a reporter is musing on his job:

'The notes read: "They caught the pig thief. Now what?"

You could run down leads, pound the pavement, check all your facts with two sources, then structure your meticulously gathered information into the inverted pyramid form and what you got was: The pig's owner had gotten drunk and beat up his wife, so she sold his pig to someone on the outer islands and bought a used stun gun . . .  The next time her husband got rough, a group of Japanese tourists found him by the side of the road, sizzling in the dirt like a strip of frying bacon. Mistaking him for a street performer, the tourists clapped joyously, took pictures of each other standing beside the electrocuted man, and gave his wife five dollars. The whole intrigue had been exposed when police found the pig-stealing wife in front of the Continental Hotel charging tourists a dollar apiece to watch her zap her husband's twitching supine body. The stun gun was confiscated, no charges were pressed, and the wife beater was pronounced unharmed by a Peace Corps volunteer, although he did need to be reminded several times of his name, where he lived, and how many children he had.'

 It's a funny story, even if the subject matter is rather horrible and very sad.

Here is a review of the story by Kirkus Reviews. 

Take a Bow, B.C.

 

By Johnny Hart

Copyright for this book is 1966 and 1967. In this collection we meet Grog, the prehistoric man, who is basically a head on legs. And also the apteryx (aka a kiwi bird) both of which are fun additions to the comic strip.

Swine Not?

 

By Jimmy Buffett

Rumpy is a pot-bellied pig that is originally from the New York City area. But she moved away when her humans moved away too. Now she is back in NYC, living on the roof of a posh hotel with Ellie, the mom and Ellie's two kids, Barley and Maple. Ellie is a pastry chef at the hotel and their accomdation was supplied by the hotel, the apartment on the hotel's roof.

The problem is that the hotel does not permit exotic pets, like pot-bellied pigs. So Rumpy has to be smuggled in to the rooftop apartment and out for walks and exercise. This chore is left mainly to the two kids, Barley and Maple. They figured out a way to sneak the pig in and out by hiding her in a room service trolley.

What no one in Rumpy's human family knows is that Rumpy is a pig on a mission. She wants to find her twin brother, Lukie, with whom she lost contact when she moved with her family away from NYC. Fortunately, she has made contact with a squadron of pigeons, the Pigilantes, who patrol the skies above the local environs and who know everything worth knowing about the area.

I don't know how I ended up with this book. It became quite obvious that this is meant for kids. I expect they would find it funny and exciting and interesting. I found it boring. Oddly, Google's AI says the book was intended for general audiences. I don't really understand how that could be. It's not even slightly funny.