Kate Dane's Blog: Let's Talk Books

Two books offer very different events for women who feel trapped where they live.
Now Is Not the Time to Panic is the story of a teen who wants her life to be bigger, more exciting, and finds a companion who creates a piece of art that inspires a nationwide panic in the time before things could go viral. The heroine feels things deeply, her world is thoroughly sketched, and the mix of current and past makes for a suspenseful read. Much of this book lies in the close perspective of the narrator and her struggle to come to terms with life.

The Cloisters offers a more adult heroine who wants a summer internship that will set her up for graduate school and an escape from her home. Her beloved father died in an accident, she's from a small school without the background or credentials to get a prestigious position, and when she appears in New York, the person she's supposed to work with has gone overseas. Fortunately, she is rescued with an offer of a position at The Cloisters, a New York museum. This book is a slower, denser read. Much of the book's charm is from the vivid sketch of New York's places and the people the heroine becomes involved with--as well as the sense of Fate and tarot influencing lives. The book went places I didn't expect it to go, and I was pulled deeply into the heroine's life.

Both books were explorations of pasts influencing presents and how we struggle to come to terms with the loss of glorious moments. Which memories do we choose to keep and which do we flee?

In Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, the author gives words a magical power - depending on the different meanings they have developed in languages over time.

I was enchanted by the concept of language having those magical powers.

The characters in the novel are drawn from different backgrounds, and the life of college students is well sketched.

The book raises questions about how peoople can be shaped by their families and lives, how bias can affect the way we see others, and, ultimately, to whom we owe loyalty.

A complicated, slow read that offers much to ponder.

I Am Not Who You Think I Am is a dark, ominous tale from the beginning, when an eight-year-old sees his father shoot himself. The boy keeps secret a note which says "I am not who you think I am." The story is framed as a series of events that happened years ago, by a police note - and then we step into the story. Mysteries and suspicion fill the pages as the the boy, grown older, tries to unravel why his father killed himself. The language was sometimes overly poetic for me (scoliotic trees) but did a great job of conveying atmosphere.

The Appeal is told through an interesting device, mostly texts and emails. Two young lawyers are assigned to read through a legal file and draw conclusions on who was involved in crimes. The interactive nature of more questions being fed in would make this a good play-along for readers who want to solve a mystery before the author reveals the solution. This novel is set in the world of community theater with jealousy and performances intertwined with personal feuds.

Both stories played with grand characters and dramatic action. The suicide story had, for me, the feel of someone who didn't fit in and tried desperately to solve the event that changed his life. The legal puzzle had the same element of an outsider trying desperately to fit in - this one an adult who wants to be needed and wants friendship.

In a lot of ways, both are meditations on what friendship is, how it's created and destroyed, and what makes the bonds of friendship last.

In these books, an ordinary setting is turned upside down when people take over the world. Matthew Betley wrote a book called The Neighborhood - which I can't find to link through Goodreads. A suburban community is under the control of mercenaries hired to retrieve an object. There are super-competent people with military backgrounds, ordinary heroics, and a lot of threat. The book was very clear, with sketches of people and their backgrounds being given in a more objective way than many books.

In The Last Invitation by Darby Kane, an ambitious lawyer is invited to join a group that can cause problems or make them disappear. When powerful people can turn police evidence upside down, you're in trouble in you get on their bad side.

Both of these books were creepily compelling for me because they took ordindary situations (suburbs, business-friends who help each other out) and turned those situations deadly. What made them particularly appealing was the competence of the adversaries and the real danger faced by a range of people, some good, some bad, but all ordinary.

Catherine Ryan Howard brings the uncertainty of lockdown in Ireland vividly to life in a book that starts with finding a decomposing body. In 56 Days, the story is told of two people who move in together - to be a household - when lockdown is announced. 56 days after they meet someone is dead.

The book shifts between the perspectives of the two people involved in a relationship and the police investigating what could be an accidental death, but has some suspicious elements.

There are secrets and layers and new perspectives with timelines that let you keep track of what happened when--and what you as a reader know. The psychological element is key to what made a supenseful read that kept me up late.

I wonder sometimes how much a book is built on what the reader versus the character knows. This is a book where that question is critical.

The claustrophobia and uncertainty of lockdown and the question of how the past can shape our present makes for a dark, compelling read.

I don't often think of genre fiction as a hotbed of philosophy. The characters hve problems to solve, agendas of their own, and a story question they have to solve. I love plot and seeing how things work out.

But several books I've recently read had me thinking about the world and society on deeper levels. No Gods, No Monsters is an adult novel that rambles through lives, alternate worlds, and many characters to question how we would react if monsters popped up. The answer is, for many, let's not believe. This book weaves in people with many different powers and goals, made me care about all of them, and showed how different motives and secrets can se us at cross purposes with those we care about. A complicated read, it made me argue the choices characters were making and set me thinking.

The House in the Cerulean Sea is a YA novel dealing with the problems of being different. Our hero is a by-the-book bureaucrat whose job is to visit orphanages for magical children and make reports. When, against the rules, our bureaucrat becomes involved with the powerful children at one facility, he changes, and the world may just change. The plot implicitly raises questions about how we force people into molds and how we throw them away or suppress those who are different. An uplifting story that kept me smiling.

All of Our Demise is another YA book, the second book concluding the story of a magical tournament to the death. The victor's family will claim high magick until the next tournament. One group of competitors thinks the tournament may be ended and let them survive. People made hard choices, magic battles to keep the status quo, and outsiders interfere for their own ends. The centerpiece of this book is what the battling teens learn of their families' secrets and the choices they make for good or ill. The book poses to various characters the questions of what they really want and what they will sacrifice to achieve a goal they see as necessary. The author pushes the characters to their limits and beyond in a book that was compelling, surprising, and darkly satisfying.

These two books both thoroughly transported me into magical worlds set in the past. Much of special charm of these books is the fully realized worlds, with clear class structures, characters with wildly different agendas, and questions of who can be trusted and who may be deadly.

In A Magic Steeped in Poison, the world is Asian, and the magic is based on tea. I'm not a tea drinker, but this book almost convinced me to indulge and brought the scents and ceremonies of tea to vivid life. I've rarely seen food and drink and their meanings so integrated into a story. This young adult novel gives our character a desperate mission: saving her sick sister's life by winning a royal tournament, and adds layers of court intrigue and empire versus rebels on that very human story. I bled with the heroine as she battled.

In Blood and Moonlight, a more adult novel, architecture plays a key role, but the centerpieces of the book are a serial killer murdering prostitutes, a possibly deadly criminal profiler on the hunt, a woman who seems to be sinking further into mental illness, and the orphaned heroine of mysterous parentage who blames the convent where she was raised for keeping her parentage a secret. Magic is put on the page with loving detail which makes it feel as real as the old-time streets and class consideratoins. There is a sense of innocence and innocence lost with betrayals. Throughout the killer and his agenda are unclear.

What made both these books work so well was the layering of personal and bigger world and the intereaction of politics and class with very human struggles.

Both offer enjoyable reads - just decide on tea or serial killer and sit down to savor.

In these two adult novels involving crimes and killings, the protagonists come from very different places. In A Deadly Influence by Mike Omer, a hostage negotiator who survived a cult as a child winds up dealing with another cult survivor whose son was kidnapped. The lieutenant's personal life and her ex pose problems she's too involved with to use her negotiator skills--and the suspects are many.

In Black Maps by Peter Spiegelman, a former merchant banker turned rural deputy sheriff turned private detective after his life has turned into a mess takes a job to track down someone who sent a blackmail note to an investment banker up for a big promotion. Another protagonist whose personal life is a big part of the story. Pasts keep messing up the presents and futures of a large cast of characters.

Both these novels remind me that books are more than just the main plot. When you truly build characters, they have lives and relationships giving them good days and bad, arguments and happiness. The books feel more like real life, if sometimes over the top in plot senses.

Both kept me reading, though Black Maps drew me closer into the character's head.

A gifted book set me reading about the Templars and mysterious killings. The Alehouse Murders was a cozy-flavored mystery set in Templar times where the setting and the medieval interactions were absolutely charming.

There was a real sense of place and work and the details of life in a foreign time. The atmosphere drew me into the daily lives of the characters with small details about shoemaking for an injured leg, the plight of a mute orphan, the difficulties women faced with their spouses and the current laws... There were also nods to the politics of the time.

The book was a departure from my usual reading, but did set me thinking about how much a layered, unusual setting can add to my reading pleasure.

I've read a number of books where there are tournaments for some prize, often tournaments to the death. And there are books where people compete to marry royalty. The Selection comes to mind with gorgeous dresses and a bachelor-style tournament.

Of Cages and Crowns combines the prize of marrying a prince with a tournament where magically gifted women will battle to the death. The survivor gets the prince's hand and the title of queen.

This is a strange combination that works and pulled me into a world where the goddess-gifted women are sentenced to battle.

I enjoyed the world, the confliccts, and the palace broght to life.

An action-packed, magical read.

It makes m think about the power of combining various story aspects to create something new.