Betrayal, and Her Last Whisper

I finished reading Legacy of the Force 1: Betrayal by Aaron Alston. It was pretty good. While I can't wait to read the next one I'm also not really looking forward to it because it's a Karen Traviss book. I am a little surprised at how old everyone is, though. Jacen and Jaina are, like, if not 30 then really close to it. I enjoyed seeing Wedge and everyone. <3 Wedge. Han seemed different, though. It was like they were trying too hard to make him a certain way. Also, it's always hard for me when comic book characters wind up in the books. There was a decent backstory attached but I only vaguely knew who they meant.

After that I started Her Last Whisper, by Karen Robards. It's basically about a woman who can see ghosts and she falls in love with one. Ok, that's fine. I can do ghost love. But this book is apparently the 3rd in a 4-part series. I got about 60-some pages in and started to become disgusted with it. So this woman is in love with a ghost, but there's also a living man she's going out with. Whom she fondly remembers kissing. Whom she said, in her mind, that she would have already slept with him several times over by now if it weren't for the ghost lurking over her shoulder. Uhm. So do you love the ghost or do you love this other guy? Make up your mind, otherwise you're just cheating on one or the other. I would understand choosing the man who's alive since, you know, dead guys can't really do much except talk with you. But keeping him attached to you would be hell for him, always seeing her with this other guy, so it would be better to let him go. Whatever, I skimmed reviews on amazon of the 4th book to see how it all wraps up. After seeing review after review of people happily saying what a wonderful ending the books got I finally found a review that gave spoilers. And the ending is pretty lame. Course I don't know, maybe if I got the other books and read them start to finish I might become invested in this couple and be happy with the ending too. Spoilers ahead, if you don't want to know how the series ends don't read on.

The author apparently has the ghost inhabit the body of another man and then he goes living life with the other man's body without any thought to whether it's morally right or not to sleep with someone using someone else's body. After which he gets pulled off into oblivion or whatever as punishment, and rightly so. But then the woman somehow travels back in time and alters events so that he never winds up being killed. She hands him her address and says to find her there, that she's from the future and he'd died and was haunting her and they were in love. As if any sane man would do anything other than toss the address and tell all his buddies about the crazy chick he ran into the other day. She gets to remember everything in the alternate world, he doesn't. I haven't actually read book 4 or this ending so I don't know if it ends there or if it ends with him showing up on her doorstep. I might see if the library has it just so I can read the ending for myself.

But as it stands now this book's going to the thrift store. I'm sure it's a good book. I'm sure it's a good series. But I don't feel like getting invested into a 4-book series with an ending I already don't really like. If it were a movie I'd watch it, cause I could throw 1 1/2 hours at it. But I don't want to put weeks into it.

Force Awakens SPOILERS

There are MAJOR spoilers in this post. Do NOT read if you want to remain unspoiled.

Silent Knight

The latest book I finished is Silent Knight, by Tori Phillips. I got it because I had read another of her books and apparently she wrote a series. Curious about the series, and because the first one I read was good, I got this one. The other book of hers I'd read is Midsummer's Knight. Silent Knight follows the brother of the guy from Midsummer's Knight and takes place before it.

I am glad I read it. It was predictable, and kinda cliche. Very typical romance novel. I'd rate it R for language and suggestions. It was enjoyable and I'm glad I bought it. I will continue to keep an eye out for more books by this author!

Oh, I suppose I should write what it's about. An unwanted and mistreated French girl is being married off to an English man in the far north. Through many trials and wrong turns she stumbles upon a monastery where the monks take pity on her and send one of their own to guide her the rest of the way north. This monk, Guy, is new to the order and has not yet taken his vows. The Father in charge doesn't think he is right for a monk life and sent him on this quest to help him realize that. Before sending Guy off he makes him take a vow of silence. And Guy keeps his word, haha, I made a pun. Anyway, Guy keeps his word and is silent for a good part of the book. Celeste, the French girl, doesn't know that the man she is set to marry is a classic bad guy. Guy does and wants to find a way to help her. As they travel they fall in love. Guy is torn because he'd decided on a monk's life, Celeste is torn because she doesn't know he hasn't completed his vows yet and because she's promised to another.

The only thing I think I have to complain about is that we never see Aunt Marguerite after the beginning. She breaks a leg in the beginning of the book, which is why they wind up at the monastery. Aunt Marguerite was traveling with Celeste until then, but was left behind to heal. And then we never see her again.

Pompeii

I finished one book and started another. I might give up the new one though. It's written very poorly. It changes perspective almost mid-sentence. There's also a lot of people's thoughts, without italics or anything to separate it. Just suddenly "This this and I that and oh this, well maybe you know, she thought". No quotes, nothing. It's very disconcerting. Also I'm 67 pages in and nothing is happening. It's Shelters of Stone, part of the Earth's Children series. I've never read any of them and picked up what I've found out is book 5 kind of by random chance. Apparently, after looking it up, nothing happens in this book, it's a general recap of the first 4, and the writing style is not really the same nor are the characters really quite the same anymore either. So I suppose I picked up the worst by accident. Not really encouraged to try harder to read this.

So anyway, the one I finished was Pompeii, by Robert Harris. That was a good book. It's about an engineer who works on the aqueducts. He's recently transferred in and has to repair a line by the volcano. There's plots and schemes. Mostly, though, it feels as though the point was to show the event from every angle, the characters came second. For example, our engineer starts off across the bay, goes across to Pompeii, travels up to the top of the volcano, goes back down to Herculaneum, heads back to Pompeii, turns and heads back to Herculaneum, goes by horseback all the way around to Misenum, back across on a boat, swept down to whatsit I can't remember the town, walks back to Pompeii, and then "manages to survive somehow". I can overlook the character going all over experiencing every aspect of it, but the method he uses to survive is... disappointing. I guessed at what it was going to be but even as I read it I was like "noo, that would not actually work".

Anyway, I enjoyed learning so much about how aqueducts work. It was not boring or tedious or overwhelming. I think the book was good enough that the lame ending was not enough to ruin it as a whole.

spoiler

He gets into the aqueduct and goes along the tunnel and gets out further down the line.

The Dangerous Duke

Since Tommy is now in preschool I have been able to read more! I finished The Dangerous Duke, by Christine Wells in just under a week and a half!

Set in 1817, a Duke, Max, has only recently inherited the dukedom and had previously worked for the Home Office doing dirty work. Anything they want to keep unofficial. Whatever, he'd do it. He inherited the title of Duke only because of arson at the old Duke's... castle? Manor? House? Estate? I'm not sure of the right name. Either way, fire and people dying and now Max needs to find out who did it. The vicar knows where the suspected arsonists are and won't tell, so Max puts him in jail and seeks out the vicar's sister, Kate. She threatens to expose government secrets and claims she wrote them in her diary, she says she'll do it if her brother isn't released. Max steals the diary and kidnaps Kate.

Kate has been widowed for some years and has some pretty big self esteem issues stemming from her late husband's lack of interest and apparent disgust at her wanton passion. Kate has spent these years turning inwards, writing an imaginary lover in her diary.

Guess which diary Max stole? The government one never existed, which isn't a spoiler since you learn that in the first chapter, I believe.

Anyway, Max reads the diary and thinks Kate wants all that's in it so he tries to give it to her.

This book is very full of passion and it starts right off with it, no long slow romance here! Some books take you straight to the end with barely a kiss, not this one. I've read other books that were more or less the same way that weren't nearly as good. This one was done very well.

I also enjoyed the sub-plot between Jardine and Louise. Louise is Max's sister and Jardine is a co-worker of Max's. Jardine is even more ruthless than Max, Jardine will do things Max won't consider, or so the book tells us, we don't see Jardine doing a whole lot. Apparently they had tried to be together when Louise was younger, but Max said no, and Louise did anyway and got hurt helping Jardine with a mission. Or something. And now she tries to keep away from him but still loves him. I looked it up and there is a prequel to this book about them that I'm thinking has the backstory in full. But as yet no sequel. I would very much enjoy a sequel about them. Have Max and Kate as a subplot this time, maybe they have a baby or something. That would be a nice touch. The book is still new enough (2008) that it's still possible for there to be a sequel some day. I am going to see if the library has the prequel for sure, and maybe someday in the future if I remember I'll check if a sequel has been written.

This author has two other books that, as far as I can tell they don't have anything to do with this one. I'm willing to put them on my read list and will be keeping a look out for her books at future book sales.

A Child's War

This time I decided to go with a non-fiction book, A Child's War: World War II Through the Eyes of Children, by Kati David.

Basically the author, who herself was a child at that time, interviewed a lot of people who were also about her age and compiled their stories as a collection of shorts, each followed by a "how the war affected me" and "what I'm up to now" page.

A lot of the details were sparse, but that's understandable as these are the memories of children who were 4-10 during the war. Not 5-10 as the beginning of the book claims, as at least one of the children was 4 and I think another was about to turn 4 or had just turned 4. And these memories had been blurred by lack of knowledge at the time, age, and trauma.

It is not written as sadly as I had imagined it would be. I think, to really feel each one, you should stop after each story and contemplate it.

My edition has a hand written note in the beginning, this book had at one point been given by a grandmother to her granddaughter, and she writes that she is giving it to her granddaughter to help her understand those times, and in the hopes that she'll try to help make sure no child has to suffer in her own lifetime.

The Drifter

I chose to read The Drifter, by Susan Wiggs because Tommy starts preschool soon so I'll be able to become really engrossed in books again soon and so far Susan Wigg's books haven't been so engrossing that I would want to wait until Tommy was in school to read it. But this one was really good. In fact I would say it's my favorite so far. I could easily see this as a movie. It was predictable, but there was always a chance that what I predicted wouldn't be so. But I was right, everything I thought would happen did.

Basically, a man is accused of murder, he and the woman he's with take off. She becomes sick and needs a doctor, so he finds one. She just happens to be everything he's ever truly wanted, even if he didn't know what it was he wanted to begin with. But don't go thinking this book has cheating in it because it doesn't. The man and woman pretend they're married but all along you get the sense that he loves her like a sister, except for a few occasional moments. So stuff happens and he sticks around town longer than intended, but with a US Marshal on his tail he has no choice but to flee, but as he falls in love with the doctor he finds it increasingly hard to go.

And that's as much as I can say without revealing too much.