Dang Near Dead, by Nancy G. West**

Posted on February 27, 2016 by seattlebookmama

Note to the reader: A small drought sometimes occurs between publication times; the spring galleys are out now, and I am happily reading them. The review below was written during the brief time (less than 4 months during 2013) during which I was reading and reviewing DRCs, but had not yet begun my blog. Below is an unfavorable review for a badly written book, but here’s the stand-up thing about the publisher: because my review was so specific in areas I saw needing remediation, Henery Publishers auto-approved me to read their galleys after I wrote it. You’ve got to admit, that’s great. In a few days, I will have current reviews ready for you to read, but in the meantime…

dangneardead Dear god. What was I thinking?

I had a case of the blues, and I noted my reading material was all on the dark side: Nixon, Goebbels, the Battle of Antietam…maybe I needed something to lighten things up a bit, something fun, something a little bit fluffy. I spotted this title on Net Galley, and I knew it was a risk that it would be too cutesy-pie for my taste. But upon reflection, I had enjoyed cozy mysteries by Sophie Littlefield (A Bad Day for Sorry) and Sarah Shankman (Digging Up Momma; The King is Dead), and I noted that West had won a Lefty award for humorous writing. Why not give it a try?

Why not indeed.

How can one writer manage to stuff every stereotype–many of them sexist–into one really dumb book? I don’t say these things lightly. I write here and there myself, and I try to remember that writers have feelings too. But honestly…references to needing time (on a trip to a Texas ranch) “to primp before the barbecue” and another character noting that since the clown keeps his makeup in the cooler to keep it from separating, that maybe they should keep theirs in there too…really? Maybe it was intended to be humorous, but it fell wide of the mark. Actually, the clown was the only redeeming character in the book.

The protagonist, Aggie, has a thing for the sheriff; has this been done to death already or has it not? When spotted in a compromising situation, she distracts him by kissing him, then pushing him away. Does yes mean no, or does no mean yes?

Every overused plot device will at some point be used successfully by someone else. The previously mentioned Littlefield has done the leading-the-sheriff-on routine and done it well at times. But to use a device that is essentially old and tired, a writer needs to be so exemplary–and now I am thinking of James Lee Burke–that we completely forget that the schtick has been used before, because we are so deeply engaged by the characters and the situation in which they find themselves.

I have never thrown an e-reader. It is a good way to break an expensive device. I didn’t do it this time either…but I came close.

Recommended exclusively for the brain dead, just in time for Halloween.

The God’s Eye View, by Barry Eisler**

Posted on February 24, 2016 by seattlebookmama

thegodseyeview Coming out of the gates, this novel seemed really strong. The premise is that Evelyn Gallagher, a CIA employee, sees an abuse of power, and it’s a chase to the end to see whether the NSA director, a man who knows no moral limits, will have her terminated before she can notify someone that can stop him. I received this DRC free from Net Galley and Thomas and Mercer in exchange for an honest review. It is now available for purchase.

At about the thirty percent mark, the tension that the story needs to hold the reader’s attention is derailed by trite plot elements. We’ve seen all of this before. Take an old school spy story, throw Edward Snowden’s name around a lot, add some high tech elements that show how the US government compromises everyone’s privacy, and it’s a story out of a can. It is old material dressed up to look new, and if you haven’t read many spy novels, it might work for you.

The most obviously overworked device is the pairing of Manus and Delgado. Think of them as good cop and bad cop, or since they aren’t actually police, we can call them the good-bad-guy and the bad-bad-guy. For the first, there is a sympathetic back story and elements that suggest he might be redeemable. For the latter, over the top, nasty personal habits partner with sociopathic behaviors and thoughts to make him utter scum. Though a trifle deflated when I spotted it, I still wanted to enjoy the story, and was hoping to see some things that would permit me to call this a 3.5 star story, maybe round it up to 4 stars.

Not so much.

Evelyn, also called Evie, tricks men into doing stupid things by showing her cleavage and by acting helpless.

And the prose. “She knows too much.”

Seriously?

And try this one: “I’m your best friend right now…or your worst nightmare.”

At this point, I could not finish the book quickly enough. Get it over with so I can review it and move on.

We move on through vivid rape scenes and gratuitous violence, and the hackneyed prose factory rages on. I moaned when I came to the mention of a “disgruntled former employee” and of course, what kind of war hero isn’t described as “decorated”? Isn’t that sort of the definition of a….?

Never mind.

I never, never, never review a book without reading every word of the last ten percent, even if I have done some skimming first. Sometimes the ending is strong enough that what looked like bad writing turns out to be a clever device that is included for a hidden purpose. Sometimes several disparate threads get pulled together so cleanly and deftly that in justice, I am required to add stars back onto the rating. And so I finished this novel, but none of those things happened.

Author Barry Eisler is a former CIA employee (disgruntled?) who is on a mission to demonstrate how long the reach of government has become. He provides a lot of internet sources to back the technology in his fiction. But when all is said and done, I would probably be happier reading nonfiction by Eisler…or maybe fiction by someone else.

The Windchime Legacy, by A.W. Mykel*

Posted on October 5, 2015 by seattlebookmama

I was invited to read and review this title by my friends at Brash Books and Net Galley; it was one of half a dozen that I could check out. I appreciate the invitation, and the other books in that batch have been read by me already and happily reviewed. This one is different; it has not stood the test of time.

So in other words: no, no, no, and no.

Usually I say it is essential to stick with a book till at least the 20 percent mark in order to get a sense of where it’s going and whether it might redeem itself, but I can’t do that here. By chapter three I am ready to throw things.

When this book was originally published, there was a significant portion of the book-buying USA who would have laughed at the notion that it’s not okay to refer to a woman (in our case, a waitress) as having “a nice set of tits”, or calling her “a piece of ass”. Those same people would have told me not to be so touchy about the “N” word (applied for no special reason to the African-American cook in the restaurant.) Probably I would have heard people say that we should just face the fact that some people talk that way, and that the text therefore reflects reality.

I stuck with it long enough to determine that the demeaning nature of the dialogue was not merely placed to determine the nasty nature of a single protagonist, but both the computer scientist and his adversary and potential recruiter say and think these things.

And for me, that was enough.

Stick a fork in me; I’m done!