Soul

by Tobsha Lerner

This book follows two stories, switching between the two where they run in parallel. The first is the story of Julia Huntington, a modern scientist who is researching the genetic propenstity for coldblooded violence, examining in particular the 2% of US soldiers who don't experience any form of post traumatic stress disorder after combat. Julia lives with her beloved husband of 10 years, Klaus, has a fantastic job and is very happy with her life, so she's pretty much set up for a huge fall.

Lavinia Huntington is Julia's great grandmother, in the late 1800s she marries a friend of her father, Colonel James Huntington, and moves from Ireland to live with him in London. The Colonel is a renowned explorer and scientist who has spent time with natives in South America and having experienced a spiritual epiphany, has decided he needs to father a child, so he marries Lavinia and they soon have a son together, Aidan.

Julia comes back from a field trip in Afghanistan where her party was ambushed and in the resulting struggle, she kills a man. Julia is confused by her lack of remorse over the death. Despite the fact that she is specifically researching this kinda thing, she apparently doesn't make the connection. She has a painting of Lavinia in her loungeroom, and ponders on the fact that her great grandmother was tried for the murder of her husband, although grandfather Aidan always swore she was innocent. Still doesn't make the connection.

Julia is offered a job continuing her research with the military, she also discovers she is pregnant, and looks forward to an enjoyable future with her husband and new child. Klaus is less than impressed, a failed artist and screenwriter, he apparently has issues about Julia being the breadwinner in the relationship. Julia's best friend Carla is also less than impressed about the impending pregnancy. While Julia is enjoying her life and marriage, she obliviously comes home to find her husband has left her for her best friend Carla. She goes to pieces, and miscarries the child.

Lavinia has a beautiful son, whom both she and her husband dote on. She adores her husband completely, but after the birth of the child he becomes distant from her and won't return to his duties in the bedchamber. She spots him one afternoon in a disreputable area with a lady of the evening and is disappointed and jealous. He distracts her by letting her assist him with his research and compiling his book. Lavinia tries to fit in London society but is too busy obsessing over her husband to really take it seriously. The Colonel on the other hand, is an old socialite and spends all his evenings out with the gentlemen. He soom brings home Hamish Campbell, an earnest and handsome young man to replace Lavinia as his assistant.

Julia is still going to pieces, made worse by discovering that because of complications in her miscarriage, she won't be able to conceive again. She tries to get Klaus to come back, but he won't have anything to do with her. She starts loitering outside Carla's house and being slightly stalkerish. I expect her to go in and murder them in their bed, but it doesn't happen. She throws herself into her work, and a close friend who is caring for her in her time of grief uses the opportunity to get Julia to hire her 19yo son as her assistant.

Lavinia, feeling shut out of her husbands life, goes to find the prostitute she saw her husband with, to find out what she's doing wrong and why he won't touch her. She finds the girl and invites her to talk to her, whereupon the girl reveals that she is in fact a he. Polly Kirkshaw is a transvestite man. Lavinia suddenly realises why her husband is disinterested in her, but also immediately becomes suspicious of Hamish Campbell who is apparently now happily enjoying a homosexual relationship with the Colonel.

Julia's handsome young assistant seduces her and she spends a good deal of time in bed with him, and in the office with him, so it seems she's given up on wanting to murder her husband and best friend. She makes some breakthroughs with her research, discovers the gene for remorseless killing, realises it needs an emotional trigger to be activated, like being forced to kill someone.

Lavinia tries to get her husband back, but he threatens and beats her, and curtails her freedom. So she begins an affair with the coachman, a handsome irishman who reminds her of home. She tries to run away with the coachman, but her husband tracks her down and drags her back kicking and screaming and she realises she is trapped with him in a loveless marriage forever, minus the handsome coachman who lost his job for running off with the mistress. She decides he's stolen her soul.

Julia finds out that Klaus and Carla are expecting a baby. Carla is 6 months pregnant, which is about what Julia would have been if she hadn't lost her child. She decides they have stolen her life. She remembers that her great grandmother was possibly a murderer, and that she herself felt no emotional trauma about killing a man, she decides to test her own DNA for the killer gene. In the meantime she invites Klaus over for dinner to discuss their divorce settlement like two sensible adults, and hides a loaded magnum in the cutlery drawer.

Lavinia's husband asks her to assist him with a scientific drug experiment. He plans to recreate the spritual experience he undertook in the Amazon using drugs he brought home with him. Lavinia recalls from the study she helped him do on his notes that the drug is harmless enough unless mixed with other drugs, in which case it's fatal, so she mixes the drugs before the Colonel comes home. The Colonel begins the experiment and as the mixed drugs take effect, dies a convulsive death on the floor while Lavinia watches on emotionlessly.

Julia makes Klaus dinner and tries to hide how difficult it is for her to be there with him. He tells her he is glad she is over her grief at their separation and that he and Carla look forward to having her in the baby's life. This is too much for Julia, who makes and excuse and goes and fetches her gun, pointing it at Klaus who is immediately terrified. Julia's sexy young assistant, who has done the DNA scan on Julia's blood and found it positive for the killer gene, clues in to what is going on and races over to stop her from murdering her husband. He arrives to hear a gunshot, and breaks in through the bathroom window to find out what happened. Julia deliberately missed, at the last moment she chose not to kill him, her freewill overrode her killer instinct. Julia sees how pathetic her husband looks, terrified out of his wits, and realises he's a loser and she is well rid of him.

Lavinia is tried for the murder of her husband, is convicted and hung. Her young son Aidan goes back with her father to Ireland, along with the handsome coachman she had an affair with who was convinced of her innocence.

Julia decides to abandon her research and her boy toy, who stole her research anyways, and get a real man. She starts a relationship with an ex-Delta Force soldier she met while working who has the same killer gene she has.

reviewed 6 August 2008 4:19pm by mel

In the Garden of Iden

by Kage Barker

This book cleverly mingles sci-fi and historical novel in an interesting twist on time travel. It begins with a brief, journal like, prologue about the background of time travel in the 24th century. Humans can travel back in time, take things back in time, change things back in time, but not bring anything to the future. In addition to this, they have also developed a means of conferring immortality on humans, a process which only works on children. So by travelling back in time and creating immortal children, training them into immortal agents, they are able to build an army of workers laboring through time to preserve the lost and extinct for the future in the 24th century.

The book then begins following the tale of a young spanish child in the Inquisition, known only as Mendoza. An Agent recruits her from the dungeons of the Inquisition and she is transported to their Terra Australis base where they begin the immortality process. By the time she is 18 years old, she is a graduated immortal Agent specialising in the field of botany, and given her first assignment in Tudor England preserving plants in Bloody Mary's reign.

Mendoza is teamed with 2 other agents, Joseph who first recruited her from a dungeon in Spain, and Nef who acts as her duenna. They assume the identity of a spanish noble family, and visit the property of an English knight who specialises in collecting rare plants. Mendoza's job is to catalogue the plants in the collection which are to become extinct and take specimen samples for preservation.

While staying at the English property, Mendoza falls in love with the mortal man, Nicholas, who keeps accounts at the manor. They begin a secret affair, which is tolerated with amusement by her fellow agents who see this is as a normal activity for new agents to indulge in. Joseph, who is masquerading as a man of medicine, undertakes to cure their English host of a number of things contributing to his ill health and decline. However using 24th century technology he is all too successful at it.

The bulk of this story then proceeds to discuss Nicholas' growing suspicion that his young lover is not all she seems, and that her father Joseph is a heretic, as well as Mendoza's struggle to come to terms with the enormity of her immortality and what it means for her mortal love.

Finally Nicholas sees the truth of Mendoza's otherness and as a good christian man in the 15th century, he concludes it's devil's work. He goes off preaching to the community in a very counter-catholic way and is picked up by the Inquisition. Mendoza follows him just in time to watch him burn to death at the stake, a lesson in mortality which she apparently won't soon forget.

She is left pondering the nature of her work, and whether by saving a species of plant from extinction, she was actually instrumental in its extinction from that time period.

reviewed 16 July 2008 11:43am by mel

Well of Shades

by Juliet Marillier

This is the third part of the Bridei Chronicles and continues the story of Faolan, assassin and spy for King Bridei of Fortriu. Faolan is a man without emotion, fiercely loyal but without any he calls friends. So naturally he is off on some mad quest to revisit the ghosts of his past at the behest of a woman he fell in love with in book 2.

It has been many years since I read book 2, so I was a bit vague on some of the details, but Faolan fell in love with Ana, princess of the Light Isles, in spite of himself, and she in turn hooked up with a much better looking guy, gave him the old 'We'll always be friends' line and promptly sent him off far away.

So Faolan is off to face his family, who he abandoned after he was forced to murder his own brother to spare the rest of his family. He stops by to visit the sister of Deord, who died to save the life of Ana and her new bf, and offer condolences and platitudes. He only finds Eile, Deords daughter although Deord never mentioned a daughter, who tries to stab him with a pitchfork, but being an assassin and a spy, pitchforks don't scare him so he tells her her father died and goes back to his own problems. He does notice the girl is extremely wary of strangers, underfed and living in squalor, with an unspoken terror of her uncle and keeping a 3 year old girl silently hanging around. Still, he has his own problems and decides to come back later to pay the Aunt some silver for their loss and be on his way.

While he's gone, Eile's Aunt and Uncle return home. The Uncle sends the Aunt to town to buy supplies and proceeds to rape his niece in the back room while the little girl waits outside on the steps, apparently a regular occurance. The Aunt meets up with Faolan on the way to town and returns with him. He gives them a bag of silver, notices things are still quite odd, but isn't really interested and leaves on his quest.

Eile seizes on the fact that Faolan inadvertently left his knife behind, and uses it to stab her uncle to death the next time he assults her. She takes the little girl and runs away. Faolan finds her trying to cross a dangerous river bridge and rescues the pair of them. He berates Eile for stealing her little cousin from her family, to which Eile asks him if he's stupid and points out that the little girl, Saraid, is her daughter and not her cousin. Faolan eventually catches on, surprisingly slowly for an assassin and a spy. They run away together, pretending to be husband and wife.

They are halted on the way to visit Faolan's family and are attacked and captured and taken away to a chieftain's hall where Faolan is locked in a dungeon and Eile put to work in the kitchens. The Widow of the Chieftain who forced Faolan to kill his brother is the one holding him captive. She is Faolan's sister Aine who he thought was taken and raped to death by the chieftain's men. She tells him that instead the chieftain took pity on her and married her instead, and she has become cold and ruthless like him. Eile escapes and finds the rest of Faolan's family, who are delighted to finally hear news of the prodigal son and arrive to confront Aine and have Faolan released to them. They are happy to see him and all is well and forgiven. This part of the story ends there and isn't resolved any further.

Faolan and Eile return to White Hill in Fortriu after spending a few months travelling together with christians and generally becoming quite fond of each other. Clearly they are in love, but she thinks that he loves Ana (yeah what happened to that??) and he thinks she is too damaged by her years of abuse to want any man let alone him, which is a pretty reasonable assumption really. They meet up with Ana and Drustan and Faolan discovers that he doesn't love Ana anymore and they are just friends. Ana and Drustan don't really contribute to the story any more after that.

At White Hill, Faolan nicks off on another mission and leaves Eile with fey Queen Tuala, who likes her and Saraid so much that she allows them to become companions for herself and her son Derelei. Breda, Ana's sister who has come to White Hill for the wedding, doesn't think it's right that some lowborn person like Eile be a companion for the Queen while she, a princess, is excluded. Breda has a warped view of the world and is concerned only for her own amusements and pleasures. She attempts to seduce several young men, but when they are instead more interested in Eile and in one of her maids, she swears to remove the competition. Breda stages an accident in which her maid is killed by a horse, and then attempts to throw both Eile and the young prince Derelei down a hidden underground well. Derelei instead escapes and goes off on a spirit quest to find his lost druid grandfather (the boy is 2 years old) and Eile is left stuck down the well.

Faolan returns and finds Saraid lost outside the walls, where she'd run away and hidden when her mother was thrown down the well, and begins a search for Eile while the rest search for Derelei. Eile is found down the well a day later, but doesn't remember the accident. Breda realises that Saraid is the only one who knows and decides to throw her off the side of the castle wall. She is caught in the act by the entire Court, Faolan tries to stop her, but she drops Saraid anyways. At that moment Queen Tuala, who had just returned from her magical quest to find her lost son and druid father, turns Saraid into a bird who flies to her palm, saving her from the fall. Once human again, Saraid declares that it was Breda who hurt her mother and evidence is produced linking her to the death of the maid as well.

Breda is confined and confronted by Bridei and her cousin about her crimes, and it is decided that she will be returned to the light isles and kept confined. Breda is angry at the idea and threatens another maid with a broken off glass. In the ensuing struggle, Breda accidentally falls on the glass herself and cuts her own throat.

Faolan and Eile get married and Bridei gives them a cottage on the hill to live in happily ever after.

reviewed 4 July 2008 9:28am by mel

The Outstretched Shadow

by Mercedes and James Mallory Lackey

This is such a poorly written, amateurish book which unnecessarily filled over 700 pages with needless descriptions. Once you get past that however, the story itself is engaging enough, if you like generic fantasy with textbook characters and predictable plotlines. Elves, unicorns, demons, and every other cliche imaginable, it's all here.

It begins with young Kellen Tavadon, 17 year old son of the Arch Mage Lycaelon of the Golden City Armethalieh. It is a city ruled by Mages and their High Magic, consisting of spells enacted through ridiculously convoluted calculations, symbols and so on. We get it, it's boring. Kellen is studying to be a Mage, but despite his father's pressure, he's just not that into it. Magic can only be performed by men since women are too emotional to handle the complexity of the spells, they belabour this point to death. Patriarchal and boring magic, apparently we aren't meant to like them. About this point you'd be forgiven for thinking that the point of this story is for Kellen to discover a less boring magic that women are allowed to use, overthrow the High Council of Mages and set himself up as benevolent and interesting ruler. And possibly turn out to be a girl as well.

So before we get too set on that idea, we cut to a ridiculous scene of a hell inhabited by demons, ruled over by their Demon Queen, and lengthy pointless descriptions of their love for torture and drinking blood and pain that would make Anne Rice warm in places. This chapter pretty much came out of nowhere, I had to stop and check to make sure my eBook wasn't corrupted or I'd opened the wrong one by mistake. There was no mention of demons, or Endarkened as they are called, prior to this.

Kellen then indeed discovers an exciting new Wild Magic which lets him do pretty much what he wants as long as he barters a price for it. His father discovers this and banishes him from the City at dusk, effectively a death sentance since they send out an Outlaw pack of animated stone hounds at dawn to hunt down and kill anyone who was banished and is still within the border. Kellen uses his Wild Magic to call aid to himself to escape the border by dawn. His aid appears in the form of a unicorn. A unicorn who asks him to be chaste and celibate for a year and a day. Kellen apparently had not gotten out much in the City, and agrees to this, not knowing what he is missing.

The unicorn takes him to the border, but is apparently not as awesome as originally thought cause they don't actually make it before they are trapped by stone hounds trying to tear them to pieces. Kellen destroys 2 whole packs of them, about 50 hounds apparently, with a wooden club he picked up off the ground, and with the unicorn's help. The descriptions of stone dogs was ridiculously repetitive and I was glad when it was over. They are injured however and the unicorn, Shalkan, takes him to a healer.

The healer is a young woman who turns out to be Kellen's older sister, Idalia, who was similarly banished 12 years beforehand for the same reasons and managed to escape by turning herself into a Silver Eagle for 3 years or so. Kellen doesn't remember this because his memories of Idalia were erased by his Arch Mage father. When the unicorn Shalkan won't go near Idalia at all, Kellen naturally assumes this is because the Wild Magic, of which he is still suspicious, turned her into a Demon. Of course.

Idalia heals Kellen and begins to teach him about wildmagery (is that even a word??) and country life, until word reaches the City that Outlaw Kellen escaped the stone hounds and was hiding out with his Outlaw sister in their Outlaw woodhut. They react by extending the borders of their claimed lands and sending out more stone hounds to attack them, the hounds being limited by the border. Kellen and Idalia flee to the Elven Lands where the extremely cliched Elves give them refuge. I really don't understand why so many fantasy books capitalize the word Elves, they don't similarly call humans Humans.

The Elves have had their fancy forest stricken by an unnatural drought which they can't fix because they apparently gave up the ability to use Wild Magic in exchange for longevity. So when the two young Wildmages appear, they enlist their help. Idalia, who is the most experienced Wildmage, discovers the cause of the drought is a demon Barrier. She enacts a spell to counter it in the form of a Keystone which Kellen then has to take to the source of the demon Barrier to release the counterspell. Idalia remains behind to ease the weather back into regular patterns instead of having it rush all over them in a tremendous storm once the barrier is removed. I am pretty sure that weather doesn't work like that.

Kellen is accompanied on his quest by Idalia's estranged boyfriend, the Elven Knight Jermayan. By now Kellen has realised that Idalia isn't a Demon, she's just not 'chaste and celibate'. Jermayan begins to teach Kellen to use his sword on the journey and discovers Kellen's unnatural skill at swordsmanship make him a Knight-Mage, and not just a really terrible Wildmage. Knight-Mage Kellen spectacularly slays a few bandits and has an emotional breakdown over it. We are constantly reminded that Kellen is a 17 year old boy going through puberty. Jermayan is injured in the 'battle' and the price of Kellen healing him is that Kellen must then rescue a Demon girl from her attacker. The Demon girl isn't really a Demon, she is half human and inherited the body of a Demon and the soul of a human. Apparently not the same thing. She is sensitive to Demon magic and leads them to the source of the barrier. Kellen manages to reach the evil cairn after being attacked by wind and rocks and doubts and so on, finally he is confronted by a pretty and popular version of himself. Being a 17 year old boy he is sorely tempted by good looks and popularity, but eventually realises that it's a lie because he could never be good looking or popular and activates the Keystone counterspell. The Pretty Kellen turns out to be the Demon Queen herself, who then flees in rage. I am left wondering what sort of Demon Queen can only turn herself into a boy, and then run away when that doesn't work out how she wanted it to.

They go home again and the Elves are getting regular rain managed by Idalia, who decides to take Jermayan back again.

reviewed 28 March 2008 4:13pm by mel

Warbreaker v3.5

by Brandon Sanderson

We are first introduced to Vasher, who is in a prison and seems quite familiar with the experience. We know he's important to the story because he's in the first chapter, although we don't really hear much else from him for a while. Vasher has a sword that he never draws himself, but which apparently tempts others to draw it and then possesses them to kill everyone around them and commit suicide. He uses this to get out of prison, and also a form of magic that involves collecting people's souls, or Breath. Breath must be given willingly, although it can be placed in objects that contain organic material. Breath magic requires the use of colour and will drain the colour it needs from something the wielder is touching. This is starting to sound like a role playing game.

Anyways, we cut to Siri, who is the rebellious youngest child of the king of Idris. Her rebellion appears limited to changing the colour of her hair without thinking about it, in a place where colour and lack of control are both frowned upon. Her elder sister Vivenna is a perfect example of how an Idrian princess should behave. Vivenna is betrothed to the God King of Hallandren. The Gods of Hallandren are Returned, people who died heroically and were immediately returned to life somehow, but altered and so strong in Breath, which they can't use, that they appear Godlike. They must consume one Breath a week to live, and are able to give their life to one other person to restore them completely. The King of Idris can't bring himself to send his perfect daughter Vivenna to the bed of a heathen god, particularly since he believes that war between their countries is inevitable and she would die. So he sends Siri in her place. Nice.

Siri marries the God King Susebron and is expected to follow a bizarre ritual of kneeling silent and naked in his Conception Chamber every night until he sees fit to impregnate her, the need for an heir being all consuming and the only reason for her being allowed near the God King in the first place. The God King watches her every night but neither speaks nor approaches her. This goes on for a while. In the meantime, Vivenna is pissed that the glorious and important sacrafice that was meant to be hers somehow went to her useless sister, daddy not taking the time to explain his favouritism apparently, so she heads of the T'Telir, the capital of Hallandren, to switch places with her sister and get back the attention she deserves.

Vivenna seeks out the head of the Idrian spy network in T'Telir and catches him in the act of dying, so he passes on his Breath to her. Seems the guy had a collection of it, over 500 Breaths. This is completely scandalous for an Idrian and Vivenna can't reconcile her morality and religion with the fact that she's cavorting around with 500 souls torn from innocent people. She teams up with some mercenaries, Denth and Tonk Fah, who were in the hire of the Idrian spymaster and now transfer their services to the princess, and with their help goes about sewing discord amongst the immigrant Idrians in the city to start a revolt.

In between this, we meet Lightsong, a Returned God, who is disillusioned with the religion he is the focus of, and with his fellow gods. All he does really is serve to explain more about the Gods and the nature of the local religion while he carries on with his existential angst. He also befriends Siri.

Siri gets sick of sleeping naked on the floor every night, tells the God King off, and goes to sleep in his bed instead. After he's had time to think about that for a bit, he approaches her one night and shoves a children's story book at her, shows her he doesn't have a tongue, it's been removed to stop him from using his Breath, and indicates that he wants her to teach him to read the book. So she does, and reveals to him the plot that his priests have to kill him, which she heard from some foreign servant, Bluefingers. He's skeptical, but he's smitten with her so he smiles and nods to whatever she says.

Vivenna is kidnapped by Vasher, but manages to escape back to her mercenary friends, who have become enraged at her absence and killed her friend. Turns out they were in fact her kidnappers, and their whole purpose was to begin a war between Idris and Hallandren. Vivenna escapes from them and ends up living on the street for a week, a soul-crushing and life changing experience for a spoilt perfect princess. Vasher catches her again at the end of the week and she realises he's the good guy and follows him to undo all the disturbances she's caused. They also try to rescue Siri, for non-selfish reasons this time.

Siri and Susebron are planning to escape the evil priests on their own, but the priests lock them up 'for their own safety' when a disturbance occurs. They are rescued by Bluefingers who takes them away and locks them up, turns out he was the real bad guy all along, the priests were just authoritarian and not evil. Bluefingers and his people let loose an army of zombies, they are called Lifeless and are dead bodies reanimated by Breath and were under the control of Lightsong, which they send to destroy Idris and cause a war which will wipe out Idris and Hallandren both. They lock Susebron in the dungeon with Lightsong and plan to sacrafice Siri to help cement the war, she being an Idrian Princess and all. They are stopped and destroyed by Susebron wielding his God power. Lightsong had recognised the God King in the dungeon, seen his mutilated tongue and given his Breath to make Susebron whole again.

While this is going on, Vasher and Vivenna have run into Denth again. Denth and Vasher go way back, apparently Vasher killed Denth's sister who was the person who made the black sword that kills people. They fight and Vasher kills Denth. They then go see Siri, who makes it clear she doesn't need rescuing, but they don't know how to stop the zombie army destroying their homeland. Vasher steps in and reveals he is the ancient God King Peacegiver who didn't die, but went into hiding. He shows them how to activate a hidden army of statues he had left in the city centuries beforehand and leaves then to it. Vivenna leaves with him, cause she obviously is keen on him and not on being a princess and heir to the throne.