Saving Drake: a Romance - JD Mader

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

Romance isn't in Mader's typical wheelhouse -- he usually writes gritty noir stuff. So as you might expect, Saving Drake isn't your typical romance.

Rachel meets Drake at a party. They hit it off immediately, but Drake is gun-shy about relationships -- the love of his life died in a car wreck with him behind the wheel. But Rachel is patient, and slowly, Drake comes around. Only then does she realize what she's gotten herself into with him. Then she must decide whether she loves him enough to help him conquer his demons.

Mader calls Saving Drake a "real love story," and in many ways, it is. Both characters are awash in imperfections -- as is Rachel's best friend, a randy woman who decides to conduct her own investigation into Rachel's new guy. Drake's problems with alcohol seem realistically portrayed, and the love story between the diner owner and his wife is poignant and perfect.

Two things, though. Well, three. First, I wish Clyde had made at least one more appearance later in the book -- it would have driven home Drake's anguish about his dead love that much more. Second, while the romance genre pretty much requires a "happily ever after," I wanted at least a hint that it might not be all smooth sailing for Drake and Rachel from here on out. And finally, there's a lot of alcohol in this book. A lot of alcohol. If it's a problem for you, you've been warned.

For me, though, those are all minor quibbles. The prose is stunning, as always in Mader's work; the relationships are realistic and believable; and on the whole, I very much liked Saving Drake.

The Devil You Say (Realy Paranormal) - Fred Musante

The elevator pitch for The Devil You Say might be this: Rush Limbaugh meets The Exorcist. And if you're a dittohead, you'll probably hate this book.

This is Musante's second outing for Mike and Ethan Realy, fraternal twins roped into becoming paranormal investigators due to an odd clause in their father's will, and Mike's girlfriend Noelle, who's a karate expert. They're hired by conservative talk-show host Mike Baxter to investigate a ghost haunting Baxter's bunker-like mansion. Our heroes discover pretty quickly that the "ghost" is actually a demon that's been set loose on Baxter by one of his enemies. Not like a guy like Baxter would have enemies. The brothers enlist an Italian priest to conduct an exorcism -- and that's when the fun really starts.

I liked Mike, the first-person narrator, who cracks wise at the drop of a hat. I liked the team's politics, and how they're working for Baxter while holding their noses at the stream of hateful comments he spews on the radio from his in-home studio. As a Pagan, I was a little uncomfortable with the emphasis on Good vs. Evil and how easily the author reached for the usual suspects (voodoo is evil, demons exist, etc.). But hey, it's a comic novel -- it's not meant to require either deep thought or an examination of theological tropes.

As a reader, I thought the plot was well-paced and the situations believable. But I thought the priest's accent was overdone; wading through his dialogue slowed me down and even required re-reading in a few instances.

The author is calling this urban fantasy. I'd be more inclined to categorize it as contemporary fantasy with a paranormal twist. But no matter. The Devil You Say was a quick, fun read.

The Sea Inside (Cerulean Songs #1) - Vickie Johnstone

If you could escape your troubles by going to an alternate reality, would you? And would the problems you find there be worse than the ones you left behind?

As The Sea Inside opens, Jayne is in a hospital, recovering from an accident that robbed her of the ability to walk. She is approached there by a mysterious woman, who offers her an escape -- a crystal that, it turns out, transports Jayne to a magical land where everything is blue, people live under the sea, and she can walk again. There, she meets the love of her life.

Returned to her home world against her will, Jayne wants to go back. Only (of course!) time moves differently there; even if she succeeds, things may be very different from when she left.

Still, she has to try.

I found The Sea Inside to be an appealing fantasy novel -- and not just because blue is my favorite color. I'm looking forward to seeing where Johnstone takes her story in future installments.

Kitty in the Underworld - Carrie Vaughn

I'm always interested to see how an author of a long-running series keeps her stories fresh. This is the 12th outing for Vaughn's Kitty Norville, a late-night radio talk show host in Denver who also happens to be a werewolf. I absolutely loved the first book (she had me at Denver and radio -- the shapeshifter thing was a bonus) and I have mostly enjoyed the others (the book set in Las Vegas didn't really grab me). But when you get to dozen outings with the same, uh, pack, you might begin to have some trouble delivering.

Vaughn stayed close to home with this book, and went minimalist in a way. While husband Ben (who, for the uninitiated, is also a werewolf, as well as a lawyer -- oh stop, they are not the same thing) is away on a business trip, Kitty is lured up into the mountains by the scent of a couple of werebeasts encroaching on her pack's territory. She's tranquilized and captured, and sucked against her will into a cockamamie scheme to try to defeat Roman, the vampire who's playing to win the Long Game (vampires vs. werewolves, with world domination as the prize). Her captors believe Kitty is an avatar of Regina Luporum, the legendary wolf who suckled the eventual founders of Rome; Kitty has already been drawn to her, and believes she too may have been a werewolf. (I bring this up because I expect it will come up again in future books.)

Kitty spends a good chunk of this book locked away in the dark. That could be a problem in terms of driving the plot, but Vaughn throws her readers enough bones that I was willing to stick it out. Still, I enjoy the interplay between Kitty, Ben, and Ben's cousin Cormac (and his ride-along witch, Amanda), and that was mostly missing here.

I found Kitty in the Underworld to be an enjoyable read. But Kitty and Roman are going to have to meet in epic battle sooner or later, and I wonder how much longer Vaughn will draw her own Long Game out.

Uncertainty Principles - Krista Tibbs

What if you could predict the future? What responsibility would you have to try to stop bad things from happening? And what effect would your intervention have on the course of future events? Those are the issues Tibbs's characters struggle with in this engaging novel.

An eclectic group of college seniors is assigned, seemingly at random, to work together on a project that must be completed before they can graduate. Aiyana is the driven one; Brian is the baseball player/science nerd; Becky is the religious, most-likely-to-marry-and-stay-home one; Kai is the slacker; and Dmitri is the quirky genius. The project must be their own design, and they flounder around, trying to find something that will suit. In the process, they stumble upon a method of predicting world-changing events by measuring energy fluctuations in the atmosphere. Becky believes it proves the existence of God; Aiyana, the atheist, thinks the whole thing is crazy; and Brian is obsessed with getting scientific proof. Things go wrong in spectacular fashion -- so much so that you would think the five would run screaming in opposite directions after graduation and never see one another again.

But somehow, they all end up living near one another, and Becky and Aiyana even become friends. When Brian predicts an event of mass murder in the town where they live now, the group comes together again to set things right. Or not. The plot resolves, but uncertainty plays a big part in everything that happens -- right through the epilogue, which features two separate interpretations of the final scene.

Tibbs' writing is solid and the science seems plausible. If you like your stories tied up in a neat bow at the end, Uncertainty Principles probably won't be your cup of tea. But if you enjoy weighing what-ifs and varying points of view, you may very well enjoy this book. I did.

When Rosa Came Home - Karen Wyld

I loved this book. Let me just say that right upfront.

Little Angelita Ambrosio knows it's going to be a special day as soon as she wakes up and looks out her bedroom window: "Breathing in, I was greeted by a heady mix of lavender, sandalwood, rose attar, buttery-popcorn and sawdust and, despite the ocean being many miles away, salted air." And then Rosa -- the sister Angelita never knew she had -- is brought home.

Rosa had been estranged from her family for many years, and she arrives now in a coma-like state. So it's left for her many visitors to fill in the details of her extraordinary life. Circus performers, a sea captain, a sort of voodoo doctor, a snake, a horse, and twin nurses who crochet magic blankets all tell their tales, after their own fashion, and all within Angelita's earshot. Eventually, we learn why Angelita's eldest sister is so sullen, and why Angelita never knew Rosa existed until the day she came home.

This is very much a work of magic realism. Wyld deftly weaves magic into the world of her charming story and makes it seem as natural as the grass or sky. Think of Marquez without the heavy symbolism, or Like Water for Chocolate without the heavy breathing. I guessed the family secret long before Angelita cottons on to it, but never mind that. In this book, the journey to the little girl's discovery is half the fun.

Properties of Light: A Hypernovel - Linton Robinson

Here's a new kind of ebook for your New Year.

Imagine that you're wandering the streets of Seattle, when you come across a display of photographs -- racks and racks of them tacked up on wooden easels. You learn that an award-winning photographer has set up shop here to sell off his stock. As you peruse the photos, the man himself -- who is somewhat of a local legend -- tells you a little story about each of them. You can wander at will amongst the display, seeing a color or form or image here that draws you to a similar color or form or image a row down. Or you can start at one end and simply go up and down the racks, looking at everything in order. And always, the photographer is at your elbow, spinning his stories about his work.

Now take that scenario, but remove the photos and just leave the stories, complete with their tenuous thematic links. Then put them in an ebook. That, in a nutshell, is the concept behind Properties of Light.

Linton Robinson -- who did, in fact, work as a photographer in Seattle for a while -- wrote this book in 1990, well before the technology existed to make the novel's concept work. Each of these 100 flash fiction pieces is hyperlinked in multiple ways to other pieces in the book. Sometimes, following the links will build a narrative, but depending on how you click the links, the experience of reading the book will be different every time.

Some of the stories made me wish they had been illustrated; others, particularly the more gruesome ones, made me glad they weren't. But I appreciated the author's effort, as well as the fascinating tour. Properties of Light highlights the possibilities inherent in the ebook medium. It's definitely worth a look.

Happy 2014, everybody.