strange and random happenstance

Victoria by Daisy Goodwin
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: November 22nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"I do not like the name Alexandrina. From now on I wish to be known only by my second name, Victoria. Melbourne nodded. Victoria.

Early one morning, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria is roused from bed with the news that her uncle William IV has died and she is now Queen of England. The men who run the country have doubts about whether this sheltered young woman, who stands less than five feet tall, can rule the greatest nation in the world. Surely she must rely on her mother and her venal advisor, Sir John Conroy, or her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, who are all too eager to relieve her of the burdens of power.

The young queen is no puppet, however. She has very definite ideas about the kind of queen she wants to be, and the first thing is to choose her name.

Everyone keeps saying she is destined to marry her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but Victoria found him dull and priggish when they met three years ago. She is quite happy being queen with the help of her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who may be old enough to be her father but is the first person to take her seriously.

Drawing on Victoria’s diaries, which she first started reading when she was a student at Cambridge University, as well as her own brilliant gifts for history and drama, Daisy Goodwin, author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter as well as creator and writer of the new PBS/Masterpiece drama Victoria, brings the young queen richly to life in this magnificent novel."

Even if I wasn't suffering from severe withdrawal since the end of the Victoria series ended this would be a must read for all the Lord M that apparently was cut for time from the series. More Rufus!

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
Published by: Blue Rider Press
Publication Date: November 22nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 272 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager.

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. And today, as she reprises her most iconic role for the latest Star Wars trilogy, Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience."

Royalty week continues with another of my favorite royals... Princess Leia! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Carrie Fisher, Daisy Goodwin, Princess Leia, Queen Victoria, Royalty, Star Wars, The American Heiress, The Fortune Hunter, The Princess Diarist, Tuesday Tomorrow, Victoria

Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs
ARC provided by the publisher
Published by: Ace
Publication Date: March 3rd, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Charles can count the people he loves and trusts on one hand. One of those people is mortal and is dying. Charles has known Joseph Sani for most of Joseph's life. He has seen him grow up, have a family, but it was too much to be around to see him decline. Though the time has come to face this hardship, to say goodbye. Charles and Anna set out for Arizona to visit Joseph and his family. The Sani's have made a name for themselves breeding Arabian horses and Charles plans to buy a horse for Anna for her birthday. But Charles encounters trouble in the Sani household. Joseph's dad is a werewolf and has been petitioning for his son the be changed, against Joseph's wishes it might be said. Hosteen views the argument still open until the day Joseph is in the ground and instantly harasses Charles on the subject. Yet this ongoing argument is put aside when Joseph's daughter-in-law is attacked by a powerful Fae and his grandchildren are almost killed. Charles and Anna look into the attack and come to the conclusion that a very powerful fairy is on the loose and children are in danger and it's up to them to stop it.

A new Patricia Briggs book is always a time to celebrate. To me she is the best writer currently of urban fantasy, the one who fills the hole in my heart left by Joss Whedon. Her books are the epitome of comfort reads, a time set aside to curl up with a good book, a cast of characters you love, and a warm blanket, with the world slipping away as you are drawn into the current mystery. And my, have I missed Anna and Charles! Having two years of Mercy back to back was lovely, but there's something about Anna and Charles that I just connect to. Not hearing from them in three years was hard to bear, like a friend who you've lost touch with. That incident in Boston, then nothing till now. Thank you for finally having the time to catch up with me.

The problem facing long running series is that you can get in a rut, you can get formulaic, and then Cousin Oliver happens. So far I continue to find Briggs's series both fresh and exciting, but there is something more compelling about the Alpha and Omega series. Yes, it could be that compared to Mercy it's newer and has less then half the books, but what I think it is is the way the series is set up to follow their story as they go to other locations then being confined to the Tri-Cities or Bon Temps or even Stars Hollow. Sometimes a change in scene is necessary to keep a story vibrant. I like how we start out and they're snug in their home then something happens and Anna and Charles are dispatched to the scene. Seattle, Boston, now Scottsdale! Plus with each location change we get a new set of characters to mingle with the old, providing a nice blend of the familiar and the strange.

But with each change in location we get a change in focus, and here, well, the focus was too much of the equine variety. I find it odd that in quick succession I have read two books that are very focused on horses. As I said in that other review, I've never been a horse person, but that doesn't mean that books featuring horses are a bad thing, they just have to be handled right. Daisy Goodwin's The Fortune Hunter handled horses right, in that she didn't become overly detailed and wrote the horses as characters so that you could connect to them. Goodwin did it right, Briggs did it wrong. I know Briggs is a horse enthusiast in the extreme, you can get that from her writing even if you didn't already know this, but she wasn't able to tamp down that enthusiasm to make horses accessible to those who aren't of her ilk. At one point in the book Anna gives up trying to figure out all the jargon spewing out of Charles and I think that if one of the characters in your book can't even keep up, well, you lost your readers a long time ago.

So much horse talk had a detrimental effect on the pacing of the book. At the beginning it was OK, the horses added atmosphere, but about three quarters of the way through the book when the bad guy is "caught" and everyone just pushes the horrors they've faced behind them and they all trot off to the horse show the book hits a deadly lull it can't recover from. There's still a quarter of the book left, so you know that something is going to happen, there's going to be a twist, but after a few hours with Anna and Charles in the bleachers at the horse show I couldn't care less what that twist was. This is right about the time Anna gave up too I might add. Yet it kept going. And going. And more horses. And yeah. I've been to state fairs, I've been to Dairy expos, I've been to events like this and never in my life did I think they could be written in a way that bored me almost literally to tears. All forward momentum left the book and I thought I'd be trapped with those creepy horse slash pageant kid combinations for all eternity. I never want to read about horses ever again.

But I really don't ever want to read about those creepy little kids that are dressed like western themed pageant kids, pink rhinestones and all, riding their horses. Shudder. Yet this version of children is just one of many, seeing as children are a big theme in this book. I was OK with Anna pressuring Charles about them having a child, this didn't seem out of place. The evil fairy that was the book's Big Bad and was kidnapping children for nefarious reasons, really really creepy and spooky and kept the plot ticking right along until the horses came and trampled all over it. And then the book shifted. Yes, there was a creepy kid vibe from the evil fairy but to couple that with this weird objectification of the children at the horse show? It went too far into the creepy. Add to that that Anna and Charles thought this was cute? Um, no. This kind of objectification leads to evil people preying on children. So in a book about bringing this kind of evil, though in immortal form, to justice while at the same time condoning cultural practices that can result in drawing the attention of evil... no. Just no. Yes, life is all about compromise, but let's compromise about having children or recovering from abuse, finding a middle ground where we can live with life's horrors, not finding a middle ground where the horrors are allowed to flourish.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alpha and Omega, Anna, ARCs, Arizona, Charles Cornick, Children, Daisy Goodwin, Dead Heat, Fae, Horses, Joss Whedon, Mercy Thompson, Patricia Briggs, The Fortune Hunter, Tri-Cities

The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin
ARC Provided by the Publisher
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: July 29th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Charlotte Baird is a bit of an odd duck, even for an heiress. She would rather spend her time taking photographs and manipulating them then hunting for a suitable husband. That all changes when she meets Bay Middleton. This suave horseman sweeps her off her feet and steals her heart. But her brother and prospective sister-in-law are adamant to show her that Bay is an entirely unsuitable match. Charlotte could marry a Duke and to settle for the best seat in the county? It seems such a waste. Though Fred and Augusta's disapproval might not be so altruistic as to save Charlotte from a fortune hunter as it is to keep the wealth at their own disposal. For Bay's part he genuinely loves Charlotte but he is torn. He has been asked to pilot Sisi, the Empress of Austria, for the hunting season, and there's a connection between him and this royal that can not be denied. Yet, in order to win Charlotte, he must indeed deny Sisi.

I was never the girl who wanted a pony. Girls of a certain age split distinctly along the equine obsession line. Me, I wasn't a horse girl. Oh, I had plenty of friends in grade school who were obsessed and spent every day at school talking about the weekend when they'd get to ride their ponies. Not me. I can literally count the number of times I have been on a horse on one hand. One delicate fragile hand that I was convinced a horse would love to bite the fingers off of. See, while I wasn't a horse girl, my grandparents did live in the country so I got to visit their neighbor's horse Dr. Pepper all the time and feed him grass and tremble with fear as his teeth chomped down on the stalks in that death clamp. I know he would never have hurt me, but that experience combined with my inane classmates practically guaranteed that I would never want a pony; a state I'm sure my mom was happy with having grown up in the country with seriously horse obsessed girls.

The reason for me mentioning this predilection of mine is that The Fortune Hunter, while ostensibly about romance and intrigue, comes down to horses in the end. Bay and his horse Tipsy, the Grand National, the hunting, Sisi and her riding ability, all of this adds up to a fair amount of horse for one book. Yet, despite not being a horse person, I did not lose interest. Daisy makes the subject of horses approachable and not alienating. They weren't just there to be another facet of our characters, they were a driving force of these characters.

Unlike my insipid classmates going on about their pretty ponies, Daisy has crafted this story so that when Tipsy is mentioned you don't tune out. She doesn't dwell on irrelevant details and what a pretty mane Tipsy has, instead Tipsy is elevated to a character just as important as Queen Victoria or Charlotte herself. I became invested in the horsier aspects of the story because the horses were integral to the story in a way that made sense. Daisy's writing made you feel that she knows what she's talking about but writes in such a way as to keep you interested, and for a subject I'm not invested in usually, I was drawn into this book.

The reason I liked Daisy's previous book, The American Heiress, is that not everything was wrapped up tidily with a bow in the end. Life isn't simple or easy, but complicated and messy, and sometimes I crave that reality in a book. Sometimes books can be a little too far fetched and focusing on the HEA, but how often does that happen to us? Yet in the case of The Fortune Hunter I found this looser ending not as satisfying. The main reason for this is the timeline brought about by the historical note at the end of the book. In The Fortune Hunter, Bay and Sisi's relationship is shown to flame and burn out over the course of one hunting season.

While I knowing conflating events is common to help the narrative, the fact that their relationship, whatever it actually was in real life, actually lasted for five years makes the season of passion ring false. Yes, Charlotte and Bay didn't marry until he had severed ties from Sisi, but this was a long five years later. I'm sorry, I just can't get beyond this five years. Five years means a lot more then what we saw and changes so much that the interpretation of events that Daisy has written would be drastically altered by the true timeline. While I enjoyed the story I would have liked it to maybe reflect reality a little closer, or at least left me ignorant of the truth unless I had searched it out... which, in fairness to my own predilections, I would have and we'd be having this same discussion. So, I guess we're stuck in a loop.

The photography interest Daisy "gave" to Charlotte is an aspect of the story I greatly enjoyed. Not only was this able to advance the plot and also show Charlotte the "truth" that she was blinding herself from, but it's logical historically, unlike those five years, grumble. During the Victorian era there were so few hobbies that were viewed as permissible to ladies of quality. Photography was one of these, though a little on the outer edges, mainly because of the damage it could do to your skin with the developing of the prints. But what I found most interesting wasn't so much Charlotte's photography, but her manipulation of the images, viewing people as animals.

While to some this might seem macabre, the truth is the most common and acceptable hobby for Victorian women was photocollage. I few years back I went to an exhibit at The Art Institute of Chicago called "Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage." This show was of Victorian women's photo albums wherein they painted ducks and had photographs of their family member's heads on the bodies. Butterflies with cameos on the wings. The weirder the more likely they'd do it. Work that is so reminiscent of what Charlotte did that it struck a cord so true that Charlotte and I understood each other, which is the greatest thing a character in a book can do; connect with you.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bay Middleton, Daisy Goodwin, Empress of Austria, Happily Ever After, Historical Fiction, Horses, Photocollage, Photography, Sisi, The American Heiress, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Fortune Hunter, Victorian

The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: July 29th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Empress Elizabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, is the Princess Diana of nineteenth-century Europe. Famously beautiful, as captured in a portrait with diamond stars in her hair, she is unfulfilled in her marriage to the older Emperor Franz Joseph. Sisi has spent years evading the stifling formality of royal life on her private train or yacht or, whenever she can, on the back of a horse.

Captain Bay Middleton is dashing, young, and the finest horseman in England. He is also impoverished, with no hope of buying the horse needed to win the Grand National—until he meets Charlotte Baird. A clever, plainspoken heiress whose money gives her a choice among suitors, Charlotte falls in love with Bay, the first man to really notice her, for his vulnerability as well as his glamour. When Sisi joins the legendary hunt organized by Earl Spencer in England, Bay is asked to guide her on the treacherous course. Their shared passion for riding leads to an infatuation that jeopardizes the growing bond between Bay and Charlotte, and threatens all of their futures.

This brilliant new novel by Daisy Goodwin is a lush, irresistible story of the public lives and private longings of grand historical figures."

Ever since reading Goodwin's The American Heiress, I have been waiting impatiently for this new book of hers!

Secrets of Sloane House by Shelley Gray
Published by: Zondervan
Publication Date: July 29th, 2014
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"One woman’s search for the truth of her sister’s disappearance leads her to deceit and danger in 1893 Chicago.

Rosalind Perry has left her family’s rural farm in Wisconsin to work as a housemaid at Sloane House, one of the most elegant mansions in Gilded Age Chicago. However, Rosalind is not there just to earn a living and support her family—she’s at Sloane House determined to discover the truth about her sister’s mysterious disappearance.

Reid Armstrong is the handsome heir to a silver fortune. However, his family is on the periphery of Chicago’s elite because their wealth comes from “new money” obtained from successful mining. Marriage to Veronica Sloane would secure his family’s position in society—the lifelong dream of his ailing father.

When Reid begins to realize that Rosalind’s life may be in danger, he stops thinking of marriage prospects and concentrates on helping Rosalind. Dark things are afoot in Chicago and, he fears, in Sloane House. If he’s not vigilant, Rosalind could pay the price."

Set against the backdrop of Chicago’s Gilded Age and the 1893 World’s Fair, Secrets of Sloane House takes us on a whirlwind journey of romance and mystery."

Everything about this description makes me want to read it! Plus, Chicago and Wisconsin? My homeland!

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: July 29th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.

So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck.

Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species."

I think it's the 1940s road trip aspect that calls to be.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1940s, Amy Bloom, Chicago, Daisy Goodwin, Lucky Us, Secrets of Sloane House, Shelley Gary, The American Heiress, The Fortune Hunter, Wisconsin