Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "romance"
Book Review: Brain Child by Isobel Kelly
Brain Child
Isobel Kelly
Print Length: 242 pages
Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
ASIN: B0756CTGDJ
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brain-Child-...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
The rudder of Isobel Kelly’s Brain Child is the unfolding relationship between 25 year old accountant Kate Adair and British agent Ross McKinley. Before the couple meets on a trans-Atlantic flight from England to Boston, Kate was a normal girl forced to live with her mother’s alcoholic second husband before he beat her and gave her a fractured skull and concussion which resulted in Kate gaining a photographic memory.
Keeping her condition a secret, eleven years later Kate acquired money from the sale of her old home. Threatened by a blackmailer who, Kate thinks, wants payback for loans made to the abusive stepfather, Kate decided to start over in America and seek out a brain specialist who might help her understand what has happened to her mind.
For his part, McKinley is reluctantly traveling to the states under the orders of Desmond Crawford, head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS. While McKinley is trying to extricate himself from being a professional killer for SIS, because of convoluted reasoning, Crawford wants McKinley to assassinate a popular and innocent U.S. Senator whose aid for the poor has run afoul of billionaire villain, Thomas Carlow. Carlow wants the dead Senator, revenge against McKinley and Crawford, and to create a devastating radiation attack along the coastline of Boston before he dies himself.
At first, McKinley finds Kate useful camouflage in his investigation of the Senator before the two become a team slowly, very slowly making a romantic connection. The partnership expands to include Colin Bradley, a former colleague of McKinley who is now living in Boston. This trio decides to protect the Senator and do battle with Carlow instead.
More than once, I was reminded of Perhaps the most successful, and most critiqued woman spy writer of the 1950s and 1960s, Helen MacInnes. Described by some as the "Queen of Spy Writers" for best-sellers like The Venetian Affair (1963) and The Double Image (1966), critics said MacInnes's characters were "embarrassingly domestic" in their Manhattan middle-class apartments and Long Island summer homes. Likewise, the first half of Brain Child is mostly set in rather comfortable and cozy settings. MacInnes was also known for characters drawn either as pretty much all good or all bad, and so too Kelly. McKinley might be a government assassin, but one with a very strong moral code. Very few espionage adventures feature two protagonists who are adult virgins. In addition, MacInnes wasn’t known for intricate, topical plots. So too Kelly. Like MacInnes, Kelly’s forte is also personal relationships.
I was also reminded of the formula of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, Three Days of the Condor, and The Bourne Identity. By this I mean the pairing of an experienced male professional with an innocent female accomplice. Usually, these couples are on the run. In Brain Child, Ross and Kate are as much on a hunt as on the run. Then comes the fourth act and Kelly really turns the screw. And then turns it again. All the resolutions are surprising twists few readers are likely to have anticipated.
I can’t say Brain Child is likely to appeal to many espionage fans. Much of the book seems more like a low-key murder mystery without a murder mystery. I do think it will appeal mostly to female readers who like a large dose of romance in their adventure tales. It’s hard to imagine many readers who won’t like Kate, Ross, and Bradley.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sept. 12, 2017:
http://dpli.ir/OjIVgs
Isobel Kelly
Print Length: 242 pages
Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
ASIN: B0756CTGDJ
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brain-Child-...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
The rudder of Isobel Kelly’s Brain Child is the unfolding relationship between 25 year old accountant Kate Adair and British agent Ross McKinley. Before the couple meets on a trans-Atlantic flight from England to Boston, Kate was a normal girl forced to live with her mother’s alcoholic second husband before he beat her and gave her a fractured skull and concussion which resulted in Kate gaining a photographic memory.
Keeping her condition a secret, eleven years later Kate acquired money from the sale of her old home. Threatened by a blackmailer who, Kate thinks, wants payback for loans made to the abusive stepfather, Kate decided to start over in America and seek out a brain specialist who might help her understand what has happened to her mind.
For his part, McKinley is reluctantly traveling to the states under the orders of Desmond Crawford, head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS. While McKinley is trying to extricate himself from being a professional killer for SIS, because of convoluted reasoning, Crawford wants McKinley to assassinate a popular and innocent U.S. Senator whose aid for the poor has run afoul of billionaire villain, Thomas Carlow. Carlow wants the dead Senator, revenge against McKinley and Crawford, and to create a devastating radiation attack along the coastline of Boston before he dies himself.
At first, McKinley finds Kate useful camouflage in his investigation of the Senator before the two become a team slowly, very slowly making a romantic connection. The partnership expands to include Colin Bradley, a former colleague of McKinley who is now living in Boston. This trio decides to protect the Senator and do battle with Carlow instead.
More than once, I was reminded of Perhaps the most successful, and most critiqued woman spy writer of the 1950s and 1960s, Helen MacInnes. Described by some as the "Queen of Spy Writers" for best-sellers like The Venetian Affair (1963) and The Double Image (1966), critics said MacInnes's characters were "embarrassingly domestic" in their Manhattan middle-class apartments and Long Island summer homes. Likewise, the first half of Brain Child is mostly set in rather comfortable and cozy settings. MacInnes was also known for characters drawn either as pretty much all good or all bad, and so too Kelly. McKinley might be a government assassin, but one with a very strong moral code. Very few espionage adventures feature two protagonists who are adult virgins. In addition, MacInnes wasn’t known for intricate, topical plots. So too Kelly. Like MacInnes, Kelly’s forte is also personal relationships.
I was also reminded of the formula of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, Three Days of the Condor, and The Bourne Identity. By this I mean the pairing of an experienced male professional with an innocent female accomplice. Usually, these couples are on the run. In Brain Child, Ross and Kate are as much on a hunt as on the run. Then comes the fourth act and Kelly really turns the screw. And then turns it again. All the resolutions are surprising twists few readers are likely to have anticipated.
I can’t say Brain Child is likely to appeal to many espionage fans. Much of the book seems more like a low-key murder mystery without a murder mystery. I do think it will appeal mostly to female readers who like a large dose of romance in their adventure tales. It’s hard to imagine many readers who won’t like Kate, Ross, and Bradley.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sept. 12, 2017:
http://dpli.ir/OjIVgs
Book Review: Illusional Reality by Karina Kandas
Illusional Reality
Karina Kantas
Paperback: 150 pages
Publisher: lulu.com (March 8, 2016)
ISBN-10: 1326583662
ISBN-13: 978-1326583668
https://www.amazon.com/Illusional-Rea...
Reading the opening pages of this fantasy/ romance, I had the sense I was reading a modern retelling of an ancient myth, fairy tale, or legend. Perhaps it was my overactive imagination, but some of the story’s early elements sounded familiar.
For example, the book opens when an ordinary marketing executive named Becky, who at least thinks she is an ordinary human, is rescued from an attack in a dark alley by an “alien” named Salco. Unhappily, in her opinion, she is transported to a different realm where she discovers she is really Princess Thya of Tsinia, a city of light-hearted (mostly) tree-top dwellers. She had been hidden away on earth until she is expected to fulfill her prophesized role as a wife to establish an alliance with the powerful city called Senx. Much to her distaste, she is apparently obligated to wed Kovon, the son of the proverbial dark lord, Darthorn. Darthorn is no more fond of the wedding idea than Thya, preferring the conquest option which he is certain he would win.
Learning this marriage is intended to preserve and save the magical realm on the brink of destruction, Thya spends many hours being tutored about a world she doesn’t know. Thya slowly learns about her true identity including the undesirable prophecy and the fact she has supernatural powers she doesn’t know how to use or control. Along the way, she falls in love with one of her teachers who is himself obligated to marry another.
After this set-up, readers experience a series of possible paths for Thya to explore and deal with as we meet a growing set of sometimes duplicitous mentors and advisors for the Princess. I admit, my interest kicked in when Thya began to assert her will and resist prophecy, no matter what her court advisors tell her what she must do. From this point forward, I felt I was reading a completely original story based on, well, whatever Karina Kandas cooked up for her heroine and her changed circumstances in this first volume of a coming duology. Thankfully, the magical ride keeps building up speed until we get to the final third of the book where everything intensifies from the psychic battles to the emotional hits to Thya and her chosen lover, Alkazer.
A major stroke of creativity in this novel is the lofty dialect and diction Kandas has most of her characters using. I’ve read other reviews where some readers were put off or challenged by this. I don’t see the problem. Every sentence was perfectly clear to me. How tough is it to recognize “with certainty” means “Yes”? In addition, the tone used by most of these characters seemed perfectly spot on for high officials and palace courtesans, not to mention black-hearted warlords.
This book can fairly be classified as YA as there are moral lessons being taught, mainly about the importance of selflessness and putting community above yourself. So Illusional Reality is the sort of book that should be welcome under your Christmas tree, especially for those reluctant younger readers for whom this adventure should be quite inviting. Why not give them a sexy female Harry Potter with a good figure? It shouldn’t be too long before the sequel, The Quest, will belatedly debut in 2019.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Dec. 16, 2018:
https://waa.ai/oOA3
Karina Kantas
Paperback: 150 pages
Publisher: lulu.com (March 8, 2016)
ISBN-10: 1326583662
ISBN-13: 978-1326583668
https://www.amazon.com/Illusional-Rea...
Reading the opening pages of this fantasy/ romance, I had the sense I was reading a modern retelling of an ancient myth, fairy tale, or legend. Perhaps it was my overactive imagination, but some of the story’s early elements sounded familiar.
For example, the book opens when an ordinary marketing executive named Becky, who at least thinks she is an ordinary human, is rescued from an attack in a dark alley by an “alien” named Salco. Unhappily, in her opinion, she is transported to a different realm where she discovers she is really Princess Thya of Tsinia, a city of light-hearted (mostly) tree-top dwellers. She had been hidden away on earth until she is expected to fulfill her prophesized role as a wife to establish an alliance with the powerful city called Senx. Much to her distaste, she is apparently obligated to wed Kovon, the son of the proverbial dark lord, Darthorn. Darthorn is no more fond of the wedding idea than Thya, preferring the conquest option which he is certain he would win.
Learning this marriage is intended to preserve and save the magical realm on the brink of destruction, Thya spends many hours being tutored about a world she doesn’t know. Thya slowly learns about her true identity including the undesirable prophecy and the fact she has supernatural powers she doesn’t know how to use or control. Along the way, she falls in love with one of her teachers who is himself obligated to marry another.
After this set-up, readers experience a series of possible paths for Thya to explore and deal with as we meet a growing set of sometimes duplicitous mentors and advisors for the Princess. I admit, my interest kicked in when Thya began to assert her will and resist prophecy, no matter what her court advisors tell her what she must do. From this point forward, I felt I was reading a completely original story based on, well, whatever Karina Kandas cooked up for her heroine and her changed circumstances in this first volume of a coming duology. Thankfully, the magical ride keeps building up speed until we get to the final third of the book where everything intensifies from the psychic battles to the emotional hits to Thya and her chosen lover, Alkazer.
A major stroke of creativity in this novel is the lofty dialect and diction Kandas has most of her characters using. I’ve read other reviews where some readers were put off or challenged by this. I don’t see the problem. Every sentence was perfectly clear to me. How tough is it to recognize “with certainty” means “Yes”? In addition, the tone used by most of these characters seemed perfectly spot on for high officials and palace courtesans, not to mention black-hearted warlords.
This book can fairly be classified as YA as there are moral lessons being taught, mainly about the importance of selflessness and putting community above yourself. So Illusional Reality is the sort of book that should be welcome under your Christmas tree, especially for those reluctant younger readers for whom this adventure should be quite inviting. Why not give them a sexy female Harry Potter with a good figure? It shouldn’t be too long before the sequel, The Quest, will belatedly debut in 2019.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Dec. 16, 2018:
https://waa.ai/oOA3
Book Review: The Quest by Karina Kantas
THE QUEST: Book two of Illusional Reality
Karina Kantas
Series: Illusional Reality (Book 2)
Paperback: 239 pages
Publisher: Asteri Press (December 31, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1912996049
ISBN-13: 978-1912996049
https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Illusion...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
While it first appeared in 2016, it was only last fall when I read Illusional Reality, volume one of Karina Kantas’s then in progress “duology.” Now, volume two, The Quest, is here and I’m more on target in terms of timing.
First, I freely admit I liked The Quest much more than its predecessor. It carries on the story of Princess Thya of the magical land called Tsinia. Like book one, the story opens with the princess living on our earth using the name Haty. This time around, she knows prophecy says her people will reach out for her again, asking her to return to their realm as their defender and protector. This time around, Haty/ Thya is also responsible for her son Alex, the result of a union with her forbidden lover, Alkazar, on the fantasy world. At the end of illusional Reality, Thya thinks Alkazar is dead. Now, Thya thinks her main sacrifice may be leaving Alex back on earth and taking the reluctant throne of her people without him.
After this setup, the story is very different from the plot of Illusional Reality. Thya remains a stubborn, willful, strong-minded—often to the extreme—heroine who sets out with a small company of companions to take on the dark forces of evil. Sound a bit like Tolkein’s Ring series? Part of their journey takes the party through a harsh desert populated by sandworms. Sound a bit like Frank Herbert’s Arrakis? Well, only for a few passages.
Happily for Thya, Alkazar wasn’t killed and joins her once again as the two head the quest encountering a series of vividly described obstacles, monsters, alien species, and Thya’s strange, double-edged powers that seem to wax and wane as she tries to control a dark side to them. In short, there’s a lot going on in the journey to save Thya’s people, a populace currently living in caves after being chased from their homes while their Princess lived peacefully in England.
Fortunately, readers don’t need to have read Illusional Reality to jump into and fully understand what’s going on in The Quest. In the first chapters of the fast-paced yarn, Kantas fully lays out what happened in her first book for new readers. More fantasy than sci-fi—by miles—The Quest should appeal to readers who like their settings and characters vividly described with well-developed flaws and motivations.
Readers who like strong female protagonist should especially like meeting the complex and often conflicted Princess Thya. In addition, The Quest seems a perfect YA novel as I often found myself thinking back to the L. Sprague De Camp and Andre Norton adventures I enjoyed when I was YA myself. Nothing profound here, nothing preachy. Lots of the fantasy tropes young readers enjoy these days with a nice layer of romance to boot.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 12, 2019:
https://waa.ai/ox0X
Karina Kantas
Series: Illusional Reality (Book 2)
Paperback: 239 pages
Publisher: Asteri Press (December 31, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1912996049
ISBN-13: 978-1912996049
https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Illusion...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
While it first appeared in 2016, it was only last fall when I read Illusional Reality, volume one of Karina Kantas’s then in progress “duology.” Now, volume two, The Quest, is here and I’m more on target in terms of timing.
First, I freely admit I liked The Quest much more than its predecessor. It carries on the story of Princess Thya of the magical land called Tsinia. Like book one, the story opens with the princess living on our earth using the name Haty. This time around, she knows prophecy says her people will reach out for her again, asking her to return to their realm as their defender and protector. This time around, Haty/ Thya is also responsible for her son Alex, the result of a union with her forbidden lover, Alkazar, on the fantasy world. At the end of illusional Reality, Thya thinks Alkazar is dead. Now, Thya thinks her main sacrifice may be leaving Alex back on earth and taking the reluctant throne of her people without him.
After this setup, the story is very different from the plot of Illusional Reality. Thya remains a stubborn, willful, strong-minded—often to the extreme—heroine who sets out with a small company of companions to take on the dark forces of evil. Sound a bit like Tolkein’s Ring series? Part of their journey takes the party through a harsh desert populated by sandworms. Sound a bit like Frank Herbert’s Arrakis? Well, only for a few passages.
Happily for Thya, Alkazar wasn’t killed and joins her once again as the two head the quest encountering a series of vividly described obstacles, monsters, alien species, and Thya’s strange, double-edged powers that seem to wax and wane as she tries to control a dark side to them. In short, there’s a lot going on in the journey to save Thya’s people, a populace currently living in caves after being chased from their homes while their Princess lived peacefully in England.
Fortunately, readers don’t need to have read Illusional Reality to jump into and fully understand what’s going on in The Quest. In the first chapters of the fast-paced yarn, Kantas fully lays out what happened in her first book for new readers. More fantasy than sci-fi—by miles—The Quest should appeal to readers who like their settings and characters vividly described with well-developed flaws and motivations.
Readers who like strong female protagonist should especially like meeting the complex and often conflicted Princess Thya. In addition, The Quest seems a perfect YA novel as I often found myself thinking back to the L. Sprague De Camp and Andre Norton adventures I enjoyed when I was YA myself. Nothing profound here, nothing preachy. Lots of the fantasy tropes young readers enjoy these days with a nice layer of romance to boot.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 12, 2019:
https://waa.ai/ox0X
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