strange and random happenstance: Nursing Home

Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs
Published by: Ace
Publication Date: March 16th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

It started with a song. A song Leah was humming under her breath. A song she couldn't remember and yet couldn't forget. And then the pack was alerted by the FBI to the disappearance of an entire community that was living off the grid in Northern California. They named themselves "Wild Sign" and happened to be squatting on land owned by the Marrok's pack. Land that has a connection to Leah. It was in that very area when mourning Charles's mother that Bran first found Leah and made her his mate. Therefore they will be the ones to look into "Wild Sign." It is decided that Charles, Anna, and another werewolf, Tag, will go and investigate. Thanks to some supernatural locals that Tag knew they hear how that entire area was avoided by their kind. There are runes carved into the trees. Warning signs. Signs the community should have heeded once Charles and Anna make the discovery that the community was made up of witches. Which makes their complete disappearance even more disconcerting. These people weren't defenseless. These people were powerful. Any idea that they just got up one day and left is soon dismissed. The items they left behind, powerful magical objects, would not have been abandoned. This was no longer a rescue mission. The inhabitants of "Wild Sign" were dead. Now it was time to find out what exactly happened to them so their deaths could be avenged. Anna is the first to fall under the oppressive force within the forest. It starts out with a song and soon strips her of her present and traps her in the past. A past more horrible than most people have to deal with. But this evil knows what it's doing. It knows what it wants. And Charles, Anna, and Tag don't have the first clue. But Leah does.

Patricia Briggs is my ride or die. I adore her series. But I'm not blindly following her praising everything she's written, as an artist myself that's not constructive or conducive to getting better so if I wouldn't want to be treated as such and I will never treat another in that way. So there's occasionally a book by Patty that doesn't reach the heights of the others. I find this most common in her Alpha and Omega series. There's no middle ground here. Unlike the steady terrain of Mercy Thompson I either adore or dislike the Alpha and Omega books. It's the two ends of the spectrum, love or hate, and of all Patty's books, I've loved some of Anna and Charles's adventures more than any other books out there. I mean, Burn Bright!?! Damn! But this, right here, this is the price. A book I don't like. And yes, at times I did hate it, but oddly enough this time it's to do with me. In fact my dislike of Dead Heat might be down to me too... I just can't deal with those creepy little children that are dressed like western themed pageant kids, pink rhinestones and all, riding their horses. Shudder. So yes, it might all be me. I know it is this time. My problems with Wild Sign are all to do with the suffering I've had to deal with this past year. In fact I had to forewarn one of my friends who is a fellow Patty devotee before I posted my rating of Wild Sign because I thought she'd go into shock. Because I was a little shocked myself. But she got it. She understood that in the past year I'd lost my mother and I'd lost my home and because of this there's just some things I can't handle. My mother spent years in a skilled nursing home because of her Parkinson's, and seeing as I don't want to spoil anything for you, just know that my experiences because of this made me unable to handle certain plot points. Like seriously unable to. I almost felt like I needed a trigger warning and I'm usually not that kind of person. I know one day I will enjoy this book, it has so many wonderful reveals we devoted fans have waited years for, I gasped at some of them, but for the moment, this book just isn't for me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Alpha and Omega, Anna Cornick, Burn Bright, Charles Cornick, Dead Heat, DEATH, Disappearance, FBI, Loss, Mercy Thompson, Northern California, Nursing Home, Patricia Briggs, Reveals, Tag, Trigger Warning, Wild Sign

Beautiful Chaos by Gary Russell
Published by: BBC Books
Publication Date: December 26th, 2008
Format: Paperback, 242 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Donna has asked The Doctor to take her home so that she can be with her mother for the anniversary of her father's death. The Doctor doesn't really do families well so he tries to stay out of the way of the bickering that ensues once the Nobles gather together. Plus, The Doctor has always gotten on well with Donna's granddad, Wilf, so it's easier to just spend time out with him in the allotment looking up at the stars. In fact there's a few new stars in the sky. Wilf was the first to find one of them and he's getting a dinner in his honor which he hopes The Doctor will attend. The Doctor doesn't seem so fussed about the dinner, but the other new stars, the ones that seem to be coming into alignment, well, they worry him.

At the dinner the other astronomers are grating and Donna is actually a little relieved when Wilf's lady friend, Netty, has an episode. Netty is dealing with Alzheimer's, which means that Wilf and Donna's mom are also dealing with it. Yet when The Doctor fully realizes the impact of the alignment, he has an even better excuse to leave the dinner, Donna in tow. With a cunning use of computers, astrology, genealogy, and astronomy, an old evil that The Doctor has faced before is going to use the human race to launch it's empire across the stars. Something The Doctor seriously wants to avoid happening.

I don't like to read about illness and despair, I have enough of that in my own life, thank you. This isn't the place to talk about it really, but I must touch on the issue so that you'll understand why this book made me want to get up in the author's face and explain a few facts to him, possibly with my fists. When I was in grade school my mom had two bouts of Cancer, which she survived. Though surviving took a toll. The chemo and other therapies sped things up so that while she is only thirty years older than me, her body thinks it's really fifty years older than me, which makes her the same "age" as when her mother got Parkinson's. My mom has Parkinson's. This is a daily struggle. Therefore, I think you can see why I use reading as an escape. I want to be anywhere and anywhen then here, and a book that dwells on these issues, no thank you.

While Russell's use of an incurable illness, in this case Alzheimer's, as the real evil is apt, he goes too far into the braveness of the battle. Netty dealing with her chronic illness bravely and nobly (sorry, I HAD to use that pun) just felt like some sort of propaganda for dealing with this kind of crisis in a stiff upper lip, keeping up appearances way. The message was heavy handed. People who talk about fighting this kind of battle as "brave" or "courageous" just make me want to scream. These are platitudes designed to make you, yeah, you, the one who doesn't have to deal with this shit better. To people in my position, well, it makes me want to punch you. Do you all not understand that there's your public face and your private face? That there's what you should to the world, what you show to the patient, and what you show to yourself? Yes, sure, I guess we could say that at least Donna's mom deals more with the reality of all this, but in the end, no, she doesn't because Netty joyously declares that she wants to go into a nursing home. Please (insert me rolling my eyes)! Show me one person out there who's like, "Nursing Home, SIGN ME UP!" No one will even want this, even if they know they can't handle their life in their current environment. My great aunt, she's 89, and she's steadfastly vetoing any kind of help or assisted living. And she's just the most recent of my family members to do this.

I had such hopes for this book because Donna Noble is my favorite companion in the new series, hands down, perhaps even in all the series. When The Doctor lost Donna, that was really the end of this Doctor. His life after that was filled with sadness and loneliness. The heartbreaking scene when Donna has to have her memory removed has taken on a fuller life her and made into a staggeringly heartbreaking novel. By bookending a story about Altzheimer's with Donna's own memory lose, it's a punch to the gut, that's what it is. But more then that, by showing the struggles that Donna's mother and grandfather are going through, it makes Donna's decision to travel in the TARDIS seem callous. Russell has taken my favorite character and put a spin on her that I don't like one bit. If I where just to say, fuck it and up and leave, well, I don't know what would happen, and that's a fear that I live with all the time. I admired Donna before, now... now I see someone in my position being heartless and unfeeling. Ug, just someone, remove this book from my mind, I want my Donna back.

As for the "plot," well, take out the struggle with family and illness and do we really even have much of a plot? No we don't. The author has made a flimsy story about Mandragora returning, which, for those of you not inculcated into every medium The Doctor appears in, television, written, and audio, well, you might be more then a little lost, but Russell doesn't seem to care or even want to explain for those new to this evil. Not every reader knows everything Doctor Who! A book like these needs to be written for all levels of readers. Also the evil computer/world domination bid with some little kids helping out, well, it made it more like a saccharine episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures if it had be touched up by Michael Crichton. Also, the Doctor is more then a bit bitchy and down on humans, oh, and, seriously, authors, don't have the title of your book used like fifty times throughout the story, it's annoying. Ok... I think my rant is over... can't be sure, these episodes are unexpected, much like Netty's... gaw, Netty...