I have read all of Gabaldon’s Outlander series, so I put The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel on hold at the library. It came in a couple days ago and to be honest? Meh.

Although I love the universe that Gabaldon has created, her books are a bit uneven in their story telling skill. For instance, her last book (An Echo in the Bone) is one I own only because it is part of the series and I might want to reread the series one day–but on its own, I wouldn’t pick it up to read again. It uses the frame story device and that’s a difficult device to use well (by ‘well’ I mean in such a way that both stories are integral to the book and you can’t imagine removing one and not irreparably ruining the story).  There’s another one in the series that uses a frame story and I only read the chapters that take part in the past when I reread it. Gabaldon doesn’t really manage to integrate frame stories well (my main issue with An Echo in the Bone).

Enough about the book series and onto the graphic novel.

I don’t read a lot of graphic novels, but I don’t think that contributed to my apathy about this book. Particularly since I love the Mouse Guard books–I own two and reviewed the first one.

The artwork is lovely although not as intricate as I like. For graphic novels, I like art work where I can find things on subsequent readings that I didn’t notice the first time around and that’s not really the case with The Exile. I think part of the ‘meh’ feeling is that I don’t form images of characters in my head when I read and almost completely ignore character’s physical descriptions (unless it is relevant to plot) so having the characters visualized for me is a bit disconcerting.

The problem, for me, was more with story. As in: there isn’t enough of it.

This is supposed to be a prequel/retelling of Outlander from Jamie’s point of view, but it’s really more from Murtaugh’s point of view. Aside from an unresolved (and not particularly interesting because it is quite undeveloped) subplot about a couple other travellers (Gellie and her mysterious lover), there’s not much new or interesting here. It doesn’t really stand on its own because if you haven’t read Outlander you can’t really fill in the blanks, and it doesn’t really add much to the Outlander series if you have read the books.

Interestingly, according to the author’s note, Gabaldon started out writing scripts for comic books. Actually, that’s the most interesting thing I got from the book. I don’t dislike the book; it just fails to spark any real interest. Unless you absolutely must have everything to do with Jamie and Claire, I’d check this out of the library instead of buying it.

Lindsay takes a chance by breaking the covenant with the reader that Dexter is a “good monster”; the result doesn’t really work and leaves me wondering if I should continue reading the series.

What drew me to the book

Once I start reading a series, I continue until it no longer holds my interest. I started the Dexter series simply because I was intrigued by the fact that Jeff Lindsay (the author) had managed to write a serial killer who was the good guy, a serial killer who only kills other serial killers. It seemed an interesting way to get the reader to side with a serial killer as a protagonist and I wanted to see how the premise was executed.

My thoughts on the book

In this book, Dexter finds himself on his honeymoon in Paris watching bizarre performance art that amuses his Dark Passenger (that would be his serial killer side). He and new wife Rita then return to Miami where a serial killer with an artistic bent makes himself known to Dexter, drawing Dexter into some very un-Dexter-like situations.

I always have difficulty getting into the Dexter books. It’s been the same for each one, but I’ve kept with them because, as I said above, I’m intrigued by the premise. I have the same difficulty getting into the DVDs of the TV series so I think the problem lies in with the use of Dexter’s point of view, which is (or claims to be) detached from the rest of society. It keeps the reader at a distance and it’s not something that works well for me.

Up until now I’ve been relatively happy with the books, but Dexter by Design deviates from the premise that attracted me to the series in the first place and the plot just doesn’t hang together for me.

The performance art in Paris at the beginning of the book is very graphic, bizarre, and attention-getting so I expected it to be tied into the plot at some point, but the connection never appeared which I found annoying. Without the tie-in to the rest of the book, the beginning seems gratuitous and a throwaway scene just to get the readers attention, which seems like lazy writing to me.

The other thing that bothered me about this book is the abandonment of Dexter as a good guy who only kills bad guys. Gone is the meticulous, careful killer who chooses his targets carefully. This Dexter makes mistakes, kills the wrong people, and is saved only by the most convenient of circumstances in the end. It could be argued that having Dexter deviate from his meticulous ways is a sign of growth in the character, but it simply didn’t feel like that as I was reading the book. It felt like an attempt to keep the series interesting that failed by changing the wrong things.

I’ll read the next book, Dexter is Delicious, to see if the series gets back on track but if it doesn’t then I’m done with these books.

About the book author

Jeff Lindsay is the creator of the character Dexter Morgan and the writer of the Dexter series books. He doesn’t appear to have an official presence on the web other than his publisher (too bad, it would be interesting to read a blog of his experiences).

There are three other books in the Dexter series and a new one, Dexter Is Delicious, out in September:

Find this book online

Dexter by Design: Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

Knowing yourself and living with your choices are major themes explored in way that has broad appeal despite the story’s focus on spirituality which would normally limit the audience.

What drew me to the book

Quite simply, this description is what drew me to the book, “An American housewife is transformed by an intriguing manuscript about the Sufi mystic poet Rumi.” Hey, this is a book blog, so of course I like the idea of being transformed by a book (I’m still looking for the one that will transform me into a happy skinny millionaire ).

If you’re not familiar with this book, the short plot synopsis is that a housewife gets a job evaluating unsolicited manuscripts send to a literary agency. In an extreme bit of good luck (seriously, if you’ve ever read from a slush pile you’ll know how unlikely this part of the book is), she is handed a manuscript submitted by a writer half way across the world that is not only good but also life changing. As she starts reading the manuscript, she realizes that the manuscript story mirrors her own and is inspired to start a correspondence with the author. She starts to believe that the author is playing the role of the mystic in her life (as Rumi does to a character in the manuscript she reads) come to set her free from a life she is realizing she really does not like.

My thoughts on the book

I really like The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi. It is very well written and will appeal to many people, especially those who feel stuck in their lives or are looking to transform themselves like the main character.

The 40 rules of the title are actually the rules of religious love. It’s a good thing that was left out of the title or I would not have considered reading it. As presented, these 40 rules are really the rules for loving yourself which is what makes the appeal of this book broad rather than narrow.

The book has two stories, one that takes place in the past and is presented as the novel that the main character in the present is evaluating for a literary agent. Normally when I read books that have two stories like this, I find that one or the other is not engaging and, in fact, one story could be removed entirely without affecting the book too much. In The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi both stories interested me and came across as two indispensable halves of a whole.

The main character is a woman who is waking up to the fact that she has been living for other people, just making do, and not really questioning what she is doing with/getting out of her life. I was surprised by the way her story turned out (in a good way, but I won’t spoil it for you). I simply could not figure out where the author was going to take this woman’s story and I’m glad that there is no cop-out happily-ever-after in this book.

About the book author

Elif Shafak has written several other books, including The Flea Palace, Bastard Of Istanbul, and The Saint of Incipient Insanities. Elif Shafak can be found online at her official site.

Find this book online

The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi: Amazon US * Amazon Canada * Amazon UK

One-line review

The core premise, once revealed, seems contrived and I found some elements of the story distracting, but The Last Surgeon still managed to hook me for a day’s reading.

What drew me to the book

I’ve been reading medical thrillers for a long, long time. Michael Palmer is one of the three that I started out reading (the others were Michael Crichton and Robin Cook) and the only one that I continued to read into the ’90s. He is still on my auto-read list of writers, along with Tess Gerritsen, Diana Gabaldon, and Karen Marie Moning (er, most of those writers write in different genres than Michael Palmer so don’t take that as a list of if-you-like-these-authors-you’ll-like-this-one).

My thoughts on the book

There are some books that I pick up and then have to read all the way through, putting off all other things that I had planned for my day. I expect certain authors to deliver that kind of book, so I wasn’t surprised that an entire day of to-dos didn’t get done when I picked up The Last Surgeon.

If you read the prologue to The Last Surgeon you can see how I got sucked into the book. It did keep me turning the pages despite a few distracting elements that will probably keep me from re-reading this one.

As I was reading this book, I had a vague sense of deja vu because the medical victims reminded me somewhat of the victims in Extreme Measures (both books’ victims are drawn from the homeless population and are experimented upon). I found the similarity a bit distracting because I kept comparing the two books.

The protagonist has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a tour in Afghanistan, which is timely, but I often got the feeling I was being deliberately “educated.” Palmer is fund raising for PTSD as part of his book launch so it may be that the intent was to educate the public through the book (laudable), but it felt a bit forced in the novel.

There were aspects of this book that I enjoyed, like the killer making all the murders appear to be accidents rather than murders (as you can read in the excerpt), and others that left me feeling a bit ‘meh.’ As I closed the book I was left thinking, why didn’t they just do B instead of A and avoid all this in the first place?

The Last Surgeon was a good read, but isn’t a book I’ll re-read like some of his other books. Flashback is still my favourite for that.

You can still enter to win a copy of this book until tomorrow. [This giveaway is now closed.]

About the book author

Michael Palmer can be found at his online home where you can read the prologue to The Last Surgeon. He is the author of fourteen other medical thrillers:

Find this book online

The Last Surgeon: Amazon US * Amazon Canada * Amazon UK

In A Little Light Magic, Tory Morgan wants the family she’s never had while Nick Santagelo wants his large, chaotic family to stop driving him nuts. When Nick shows up to do renovations on Tory’s New Age tourist shop by the beach, they each know the other is the last thing they are looking for. And yet, there’s an undeniable spark. All it takes to light the fire is a little magic.

Joy Nash kindly offered me a galley of her latest book, A Little Light Magic, a while ago.  I started A Little Light Magic at bedtime and ended up reading until the wee hours of the morning and finishing it up the next day. Nash’s book delivers exactly what it promises: a light, fun read.

This was the perfect escape book for me and captures the feel of a small town. I liked the contrast between Tory’s and Nick’s pasts and views on life as well as the complications Nash threw in their way. I’d tell you more, but that would ruin the surprise.

I was a little leery of how magic was going to be addressed in this book. I prefer to have magic as a major plot element or to forgo it completely so I wasn’t sure how a book with only a little magic would work for me. As it turns out, Nash has written the story so that it is entirely up to the reader to choose whether they believe magic or serendipity is at work. When you think about it, that’s how most of us experience magic, miracles, and curses.

Joy Nash is having a little summer party on her blog this month to celebrate the coming of summer and her book release. This week she’s doing a draw for five books by various authors. Enter the draw by commenting on her blog posts this week (also there’s a recipe for corn fritters that you can have for free ).

A Little Light Magic is due out May 26th. You can find Joy Nash’s books at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk as well other online and bricks & mortar sellers.

On Christmas Eve in Santa Fe, an undercover agent defies his controllers by interfering with a Russian mafia kidnapping of a newborn child. Wounded and on the run with a child that has the power to change global events, Paul Kagan needs a safe haven. He finds that haven at the home of a battered wife and disillusioned son. Now they are all defending their haven against enemies determined to get in.

I’ve read almost all of David Morrell‘s books and there are some that I absolutely love and there are others that are okay but not on my reread list. The Spy Who Came For Christmas falls into the latter category. There are two stories being told in The Spy Who Came for Christmas. One is the story of the undercover agent Paul Kagan. The other story is Kagan’s retelling of the nativity story as a tale of espionage. I’ll deal with each one in turn.

The story of Paul Kagan and the baby suffers from a pacing problem. The story takes place mostly with the characters under siege in the Santa Fe house. In fact, the characters remain under siege for 187 out of 233 pages before the bad guys storm the house. That is a particularly long period for the characters to be confined to a couple of rooms. There are flashbacks to liven things up and add background information, but I still found myself losing interest in the characters and situation. As for the kidnapped baby, a strong case is never made for why this is child is so important to the Russian mafia (or the rest of the world for that matter). There are hints that this child is supposed to mirror the birth of Jesus but as a reader I need something more concrete than that to buy into the story.

I don’t have much to say about the retelling of the nativity story. I get the nagging feeling that in order to get the full effect that Morrell intends a knowledge of Christianity is necessary as well as assumed. That’s a departure for Morrell who has had religious themes in his books before, but has never depended so much on the reader’s knowledge to impart the story.

Although David Morrell is one of my favourite authors, I’m not a fan of this particular book. If you’re new to Morrell, I recommend The Brotherhood of the Rose or Creepers instead. You can find David Morrell’s books at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk as well as other online and bricks and mortar booksellers.

The Brotherhood of the Rose is a thriller that follows the story of two orphans, brothers by choice, trained as assassins by a man who paid them regular visits at the Philadelphia boys’ school where they grew up. Eliot is the father neither of them ever had, the person who brought them candy and took them on cherished day trips. He trained them to be assassins. And then one day, Eliot decides that they are expendable. He sets one brother up and then puts out a contract on him. The other operative is soon enmeshed in his brother’s troubles. Now the two operatives must saves themselves and find the answer to the one question that plagues them: Why?

I first read The Brotherhood of the Rose about 20 years ago after picking it up in a used bookstore in the sleepy little tourist town my grandparents lived in. I’d never heard of this David Morrell guy, but the book looked interesting enough to take a chance on. I was completely absorbed in the book that first time I read it and I still find it a captivating read every few years since then. The only other thriller that I’ve read that long ago that I still reread every few years is The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (the movies have deviated significantly from the original Bourne trilogy, but that’s a topic for a whole other post).

Morrell creates a fascinating world of assassins, spies, and international intrigue with fast-paced writing and an intricate plot. Of course, since the book was published 25 years ago the reader does have to make allowances for the book’s age, but not too many. There is little reliance on technology as a device in the book and the worldwide political climate does not feature prominently since the focus is on the betrayal of agents by their controller; this makes it easier to ignore that the book takes place 25 years ago.

I have often recommended this book and occasionally I get an upturned nose when someone realizes that David Morrell wrote First Blood (“Oh, that guy,” they say as the make a note not to pick up any of Morrell’s books). I have read First Blood. Once. I’ve read all of David Morrell’s books at least once; some I reread and some I never pick up again. Morrell is too good of an author to dismiss based on any single title.

If you like The Brotherhood of the Rose, there is a sequel called The League of Night and Fog. In order to get the most out the sequel though, it’s best to first read The Fraternity of the Stone since characters from that book also appear in The League of Night and Fog.

You can find David Morrell’s many books at amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk.

Note: I’ll be posting a giveaway for this book later today or early tomorrow.

Vexing the Viscount by Emily Bryan is all about treasure hunting (in and out of the bedroom). Lucian Beaumont (the viscount of the title) is looking for money to fund his hunt for a Roman treasure. Conveniently, Daisy Drake has the money and the desire for both the treasure hunt and the treasure hunter. Inconveniently, Lucian Beaumont wants nothing to do with Daisy Drake–on any level. Enter infamous French courtesan Mademoiselle La Tour who is offering more than money to Beaumont. There’s just one slight complication to this love triangle: Daisy Drake and Mademoiselle La Tour are one and the same. And everything Daisy’s alter ego knows about what goes on in the bedroom she learned from a diary she found in her aunt’s library. What could possibly go wrong?

If you're curious as to what a galley looks like, here it is in all its glory (Yup, it's a stack'o'photocopied pages).

When I got the galley of Vexing the Viscount I was more than ready for a little escape and some adventure after all the non-fiction I’d been reading. I wasn’t disappointed.

Vexing the Viscount has double lives, treasure hunts, treason, betrayal, love/hate (always a fine line and the characters dance on both sides), and those pesky familial and social obligations that make life so unbearably complicated.

One thing that kept me reading past my bedtime was Bryan’s knack for snappy dialogue between her two main characters. It was fun to watch them bait each other. If you want to see what I mean, you can check out the first chapter on the author’s site (no download required). The first chapter hooked me.

Of course, there’s more to the story than the relationship between Daisy/La Tour and Lucien. The treasure hunt and its associated intrigues are well done and add to the tension between characters. One interesting touch is that the artifacts dug up during the treasure hunt are, well, depictions of erotic acts. Apparently, Roman knick knacks were a little more explicit than what we’re used to displaying in our living rooms these days (at least in the circles I travel in). It’s a small detail in the grand scheme of the book, but it makes for some interesting interactions and lets Bryan express her humour.

I started reading Vexing the Viscount late at night intending to only read the first chapter or so. I did finally get some sleep (or more accurately I fell asleep with my face in a stack of paper), but I finished reading the next day. That’s my definition of a good book. Period.

You can find Emily Bryan’s books at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk. Or you can enter to win a copy here just as soon as I get the giveaway post up (tomorrow, for sure because the drawing is on the 15th).

*drum roll*

And the winners are:

Belinda

RubyD

For those of you who have already entered, you’re still eligible for the next drawing IF I get another 12 entries (total of 100) by the 30th. If I don’t get 100 entries, there won’t be a fifth pack of books to give away, so if you know anyone who might be interested, now is the time to send them over. If you’re just hearing about this now, you can enter here.

If you’ve won, I’ve sent you an e-mail. I need to hear back from you within 72 hours with your mailing address so that I can pass it on to Hachette or I’ll have to pick new winners (you don’t want that, right?).

Note: Some of you may have seen this review before and for that I apologize. I had some issues when I upgraded my blog software and unintentionally posted this back in December (twice, as I recall–this is the last time, promise).

No Such Creature by Giles Blunt was an enjoyable read. It is the story of Owen and his uncle Max on their last summer together as they travel across the United States perpetuating heists on the elite who can afford to lose a few baubles and get an interesting story about an evening gone awry in return. At least that’s how Max sees it. Owen, on the other hand, doesn’t feel their activities are quite as benign. At the ripe old age of eighteen, Owen wants to act for bigger audiences than their crime victims. He wants to go to Julliard and become a legitimate actor. The trouble is how to break the news to Max, especially when Max seems more and more forgetful lately and needs Owen even more. And then there’s the threat of the Subcontractors: a criminal gang that rips off the loot that other criminals have worked hard for. Something tells Owen that they’ll be targeted next.

I was interested in No Such Creature because the idea of The Subcontractors pursuing two small time criminals seemed interesting. The book, however, is more about Owen’s coming-of-age as he tries to disentangle himself from his uncle Max who has raised him (and indoctrinated him into a life of summertime crime). Orphaned at the age of nine, Owen was adopted by his uncle Max–his only family in the world. Like The Retreat by David Bergen, which I reviewed, the story is about the characters rather than the events. Unlike my experience with Bergen’s book, I found that Blunt struck a perfect balance between character development and plot so that I enjoyed the book for the interesting characters while the plot carried them along with some unexpected twists and turns of its own.

I was never really afraid for Owen and Max in their travels, but I was always interested in finding out what would happen to them next and how they would react. No Such Creature is well-written and interesting in both plot and character.

You can find Giles Blunt’s books at bookcloseouts.com, amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk.