J. D. Robb #atozchallenge

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Much as I have loved reading Nora Roberts’ aka J.D. Robb’s in Death series over the years, I am sorry to say that I’ll have to stop reading them. There are 41 books in the series now and up until book 36, Calculated in Death, high standards of writing, plot and characters were maintained. However, there was a gradual deterioration after that and the latest, Concealed in Death, appears to be written by someone else completely. I do not recognize the style of writing and there is a distinct lack of clarity in the plot. It is as if someone tried to copy J. D. Robb but did a bad job.

However, I am grateful for all the happy times and edgy moments I’ve had with the series. Two of my favourites being:

1. Naked in Death, this is the first book in the series, where the readers are introduced to Eve Dallas a NYPSD (New York Police and Security Department, a fictional mid 21st century police department created by the author) Lieutenant and a business tycoon Roarke, who is another major character throughout the series.

Naked in Death completely hooked me and I knew this was a series I had to follow. The in Death books have every ingredient that I love. There is crime, drama, romance, fantasy and a bit of futuristic thrown in.

To those who haven’t read the series please follow the link down below to the J.D. Robb website. The ‘story so far’ as quoted below is from the fans section of the website.

IN DEATH—THE STORY SO FAR

Spoiler Alert! Contains key plot points from the In Death series. Please see the full books list for a quick series reference.

The In Death series begins in the year 2058 (with Naked in Death, July 1995), after an outbreak of warfare a few decades earlier known as the Urban Wars wreaked havoc across the globe and led to widespread destruction and death. After the wars, cities focused on renewal and revitalization. A series of resorts and vacation spots, such as Vegas II, exist off-planet in space, which is also where the majority of prison populations exist. On-planet, streets are filled with cars on the ground and in the air, able to switch between hovering and driving. Multiple high-tech gadgets exist in this era, like the AutoChef, which cooks meals and brews coffee, and ‘links, which are types of videophones used as a means of communication, but can also transfer data and hold information, almost like a circa 2010 PDA or smart phone.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas works as a homicide detective for the NYPSD (New York Police and Security Department). In the first book of the series, Naked in Death, Eve is a loner when she first meets Roarke, an enigmatic Irish billionaire and a suspect in her most recent case. Although it jeopardizes her case and her career, she falls for him and Roarke becomes her first and only love. They get engaged at the end of Glory in Death, the second book, after Roarke replicates Eve’s former apartment in his house and she moves in. Eve continues to grapple with their relationship and her growing dependence on him during the first two books. The couple is married shortly after the end of book three, Immortal in Death.

It is Eve’s childhood that continues to torment her: she was abused and repeatedly molested by her father, a seasoned criminal, and her apathetic mother was a drug addict and prostitute. At age eight, Eve was found in an alley in Dallas, Texas, covered in blood and with no memory of who she was or what happened. She was given the name Eve and put into foster care. Eve’s foster mother was no saint in the ten years that she had Eve under her roof, and she resurfaces in Memory in Death (book twenty-three), to blackmail Roarke to keep Eve’s childhood out of the headlines. Because of her ability to solve the more difficult and high-profile cases, Eve had recently become a media darling.

Through nightmare flashbacks, Eve comes to learn what happened to her before her childhood memory loss and has the worst of these in Immortal in Death (book three) when she realizes she stabbed her father to death while he was attacking her. Eve begins to piece together the fragments of her childhood from these flashbacks, and more than once, it involves a connection to a current case, like in Judgment in Death (book eleven), where the perpetrator was a business associate of her father’s, and from whom her father stole money. Once Eve marries Roarke, the nightmares become less wracking because he is one of the few people in her life to give her unconditional love and she feels safe with him. Throughout their relationship, their previous demons become less haunting as they build a life of love and trust, the first real family either has ever known.

Though Eve has solved homicides of every conceivable nature, she doesn’t solve every case immediately, or sometimes at all. A recent case came back to haunt Eve in Creation in Death (book twenty-five), when a serial killer who she never caught, nicknamed The Groom, returned to claim Eve as his final kill. But because of her own horrific childhood, the cases Eve finds most difficult are those centered on missing and exploited children and she often becomes deeply entrenched in the lives of the victims, seeking justice with an obsessive intensity.

Eve is an honest cop, though her passion for the job leads her to sometimes make emotional decisions that come back to haunt her. In fact, much of Eve’s strength comes from her flaws. She has been investigated by Internal Affairs, even having her badge taken away in Conspiracy in Death (book eight) when she is suspected of killing another cop. In Ceremony in Death (book five), Eve takes on a case behind the back of her former partner and mentor Captain Feeney, and puts strain on their relationship.

Many of Eve’s cases also have a personal impact on her and Roarke, especially given both of their fathers have extensive criminal pasts. In Divided in Death (book nineteen), Roarke confirms that his father was in Dallas doing business with Eve’s father right before she killed him in self-defense, connecting the two even then. In Judgment in Death (book eleven), a former business associate of Roarke’s is seeking retaliation by attempting to kill Eve. In many ways, this couple was destined to be together.

As Eve’s trust grows, she allows others in, and even begins to depend on them, forming a tight circle of confidantes, colleagues, and friends, who are all recurring characters in the series

Source: J.D. Robb.com

2. Conspiracy in Death is a favourite for no other reason than it complicates matters by Eve Dallas being suspended from the job while on an investigation. This story tests the strength of each character profile. What I enjoy about these books are how strong all the women characters are, somewhere women in the world now would like to be. However, strong female characters does not mean that the males are weak. They are not. It is a beautiful and ideal balance. What is not to love about a world where you can fly over the approaching traffic and escape it!

Gender equality is a reality. Man has conquered other planets and the common man can travel there. Unfortunately quality of air travel has deteriorated for the economy traveller. Both, for intercontinental as well as inter-galactic.

I’ll be sad not to read about life in the 2060’s any longer but I’ll keep an eye out for reviews. If the next book is better and more authentic than the last, then, why not?

Iridiscent by KM #atozchallenge

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Isn’t that a lovely word? As I was looking around in my mind and

memory for words/characters/titles beginning with ‘I’, this word kept

coming back to me. One dictionary defines it as “showing luminous

colours that seem to change when seen from different angles”. No

wonder it sounds so lovely. The accompanying photo (taken from

the Internet, no copyright Infringement Intended) shows an iridescent

ammonite fossil.

I also composed a poem for this post:

I SENT TEN CENTS;

SCENT, TINS, RICE, RENTS.

DICE, DINE, SIT, REST.

IT IS IRIS’ NEST.

I STIR, I TEND.

IS IT NICE? IS IT END?

Imaginative? Infantile? Impossible to understand? Surely you see why I

wrote this poem for this post after that introduction? Every word from the

poem is made with letters found in the word ‘iridescent’. What’s that? It

doesn’t make sense? Oh, come on. Be Inventive. Use your Imagination.

“I” did!

-KM

KM is my friend and reclusive writer who loves sharing her words but not her identity. Her blog Tithi Katha (translated as, ‘Tithi’s Tales’) is a treasure trove of her life experiences and vivid imagination. So, this April, the social media friendly me is going to share with you, every Thursday, KM’s writing. So stay tuned for more. Previous Thursday was spent Looking at the C-ilver Screen.

Honest Reviews #atozchallenge

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I always review honestly but unfortunately some authors do not like it. No one likes negative criticism and sometimes it is mean to trash a book that has clearly not made the mark. When I come across a book which I genuinely can’t say anything good about I don’t review it. However there are always those books which you know could have been better. You can see that the author had a lot to say but got lost in the process of writing. To those authors I like to provide a balanced review. I point out the good and the bad in the book. What I liked, disliked and what I expected.

Isn’t that why I review? Doesn’t an honest opinion matter any more? Wouldn’t it be better to take the constructive criticism during a blog tour and not be in denial. Because at some point of time genuine readers will read your books and if they don’t like it they’ll tell more people. Better still save yourself while dedicated book reviewers are still reading your ARCs.

A common theme in every blog tour is that if you rate a book less than 4 we have to tell the author because they might not want such a review. What are we all so scared of? I read a lot of 3.5 books and like it. I might just like books that are less popular.

I understand that a blog tour is often just publicity, then why have reviews at all?

I also know that after my stance on honest reviews a lot of authors might decline to let me read their books! Sorry, but I’d hate it if someone recommended a book to me and it wasn’t good enough. I am sure you would hate it too.

Gino’s Italian Escape #atozchallenge

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I’ve not reviewed a recipe book on The Book Drifter yet. It is more like something I would do on the Drifting Traveller my other blog. However, this is a blog about all things related to books and stories so, I’ll tell you how I came to own a copy of Gino’s Italian Escape.

Gino’s Italian Escape by Gino D’Acampo is not a typical recipe book although it does have close to 200 recipes in it! It is a book about Gino’s life in Italy, the different regions in Italy and how Italian cuisine has evolved in different regions.

I quite enjoyed perusing through double page spreads of scenic Italy along with the mouthwatering food photography. It gave me a sense of perspective and the theory of where-my-food-comes-from is always appealing to a connoisseur of good food. However, I’ve also found enough reviews to the contrary. These reviewers are of the opinion recipe books should only have recipes. How boring would that be? I would rather have the stories that come with it too. Bear in mind Gino’s Italian Escape the book was an accompaniment to the TV series of the same name. No wonder it is so dramatic and visually appealing. Would you rather be feverishly writing down recipes from the TV like in the days of yore? I prefer the book. Really.

So how did I get the book? I won it in a Twitter contest held by Square Meal on World Book Day. Nothing is more enjoyable than winning a book to remember World Book Day 2014 by.

Fantasy Review: The Bonds of Blood by Travis Simmons (The Revenant Wyrd Saga #1)

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Epics usually have long-winded and convoluted plots with stories within stories. They are also not supposed to be read at one go. So, attempting to write one is quite a feat!

The Bonds of Blood is rather like a quest where Jovian, Angelica, and Joya go in search of their kidnapped sister Amber. They are provided with invaluable weapons and gifts, that once belonged to their mother, to help them succeed on their quest. But quests are never as straightforward as that so, they also have a mysterious guardian in the form of Grace, an elderly scholar, powerful and ancient spirits who test them at every step. The Neferis children also discover hidden gifts within themselves which they were quite unaware of. Rather a nefarious plot don’t you think? (pun intended).

As an epic fantasy the Bonds of Blood is a commendable attempt and Simmons’ imagination and creation of this vivid alternate world is remarkable. His detailed descriptions have created an alternate reality with different beings, races and creatures, which further removes the Wyrd saga from being a simple adventure in a fantastic world.

However, just as Simmons’ descriptions are brilliant he has sometimes gone overboard with it. Too many adjectives and adverbs clutter a page and distract the reader from clean lines of prose and plot. Every character in the story has a point of view. Which is quite natural. Different people do have various perspectives! But when all these versions are thrown at the reader, the reader gets confused. I confess, that I did have a hard time continuing with the book at certain points of time. I even skipped a few pages to find out what happened and then went back again to follow the plot. So, I think too many perspectives is not a good thing. A good story should be read and the job of the storyteller is to make it as appealing and as smooth as possible.

As much as I like Dickens I do not like the speed at which his stories move, similarly Travis Simmons needs to find away to speed up his stories. If the people on a quest are slow they might not reach their holy grail in time. Simmons has a lot of potential, he has a good story to tell and he has already created a captivating world. All he needs now is a fast paced fantasy and that is what I would like to see in The Mirror of the Moon.

The Bonds of Blood (The Revenant Wyrd Saga #1)

In the world of Saracin, the Goddess damns the earth that killed her two beloved angels and tears it into six realms. As a reminder of their transgression, each person is branded with a stigmata on their palms as testament of their home realm and their separation from the Goddess.

Thirty years later, in the Holy Realm, Jovian, Angelica, Amber, and Joya, quadruplets whose mother died in childbirth, have just reached their 21st spring and are now adults. When terrible visions depicting the downfall of their family stir within Jovian and Angelica, they struggle to make sense of what they have seen while trying to live a normal life.

After Amber is kidnapped in the night, her three siblings are drawn into a dangerous pursuit across the Great Realms to find her. With every step they uncover more mystery surrounding their families past, and something far worse–an ancient enemy that could threaten their hope of ever seeing Amber alive again.

Will this enemy grant the answers they seek, or will she fray the tenuous threads binding them to their old lives? Buy The Bonds of Blood today and enter a dangerous world of magic!

Buy the book from….

Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com

About the Author

Travis has been writing since he was 14. He began writing a book called “The Calling of the Two” and while writing that on and off he started uncovering another idea.

“Yes, this is all well and good, but what about before? What happened in the world before these characters came into it?” He always knew there was a “before” and as he started wondering about it he got ideas. At first they were little ideas but as he discovered the names for his characters a whole story about them emerged.

Travis started working on The Revenant Wyrd Saga several years back and he is very happy he did because hearing and documenting Jovian and Angelica’s story has been one wild ride for him. He has also written the Infernal Design series.

He lives in a small town at the base of the Adirondack Mountains and hoofing around my neck of the woods gives him a ton of inspiration for his novels. He loves research, and speculating on different ideas and theories.

Follow the Author

Website, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Goodreads

Also available in The Revenant Wyrd Saga

(Books #3 due April 2014, #4 due May 2014)

(coming soon)

Follow The Tour

I received this book to review through Beck Valley Books Book Tours, all the opinions above are 100% my own.

NOW FOR THE AUTHOR’S GIVEAWAY !!

One lucky winner will receive a $10 Amazon Giftcard

Open Worldwide

Ending on Sunday 4th May at 11.59pm EST

Enter Below & Good Luck !!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

#atozchallenge

Dragons in my air space #atozchallenge

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Marshall, Henrietta Elizabeth (1908) Stories of Beowulf

If there was one creature I would want to bring to life from the realms of fantasy. It would be the dragons. Although, I still have to figure out which version of dragons. The mute and savage beasts from the Harry Potter series (Author: J. K. Rowling), or, the beautiful and intelligent dragons from Eragon (Author: Christopher Paolini). There are others like the Dragons of Dragon Rider (Author Cornelia Funke) and How To Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell).

I think I’d choose the intelligent dragons from Eragon. We as human beings don’t value our humanity enough, or, give it too much importance. Another intelligent species on earth would give us some competition and stop us from becoming monsters.

Mind reading Dragons will be so much better and prettier than Aliens don’t you think?

Dragons on my shelves

1. Eragon series (The Inheritance cycle)

2. Harry Potter series

3. Dragon Rider

4. How to Train your Dragon

Looking at the C-lver Screen by KM #atozchallenge

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Cinema. Anybody interested in anagrams will have noticed that rather modestly, the word itself says ‘am nice’. In fact, it is magical. But I don’t want to turn pseudo-critic and deliver an essay on the art of cinema. I want to share three (because that’s the date) anecdotes related to cinema and cinema halls, in no particular order.

1. I was rather disappointed with Hollywood movie The Fighter. Christian Bale, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, plays a drug addict in the film, and hence, his look in specific and the film in general were very different from what I had hoped for – something more in the lines of The Dark Knight. But that is not why I remember this film. Turns out people book cheap tickets for a morning show of an Oscar-winning film for different reasons. Making out, for example. The hall was hardly filled to 30% of its capacity. There was probably no one else in my row. Halfway through the film, feeling as if someone was pushing my seat with her/his feet, I turned back irritated. A couple was sitting behind me; the guy on the seat and the girl on his lap. While he seemed to be dividing his attention between the screen and his partner, her entire attention was given to such gestures of interest as would have won any film at least a U/A certificate. No doubt the show behind me could have given competition to the show going on in front, but I felt no interest in watching it. In fact, I lost no time in moving to a different seat. I doubt if they noticed, but I was certainly relieved. In a short time, I realised that those two were not the only couple who had felt horny, been told to get a room, and had the bright idea of using one which also happened to be a cinema hall. After a much milder version of this experience was repeated the same year while watching Bollywood flick My Name is Khan, I added a private cinema hall to my list of things to get if and when I am rich.

2. A film where Brad Pitt gets younger with every passing year – well, you got me at Brad. When I sat down to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I found myself beside a group of excited young girls – of the age where going to watch a film with friends is still deliciously novel. I remember two of their reactions very well, and rather fondly. One was at a scene where Brad Pitt is driving a motor boat, white foam swelling up all around the boat as he cruises through the blue water, his hair flying in the wind. The character was getting older, and so Brad was looking younger. Sigh. As his boat curved into the screen, the group of girls beside me gave a collective gasp. I had outgrown the age of gasps. I merely widened my eyes. But in my mind, I uttered a sympathetic ‘I know!”

The second reaction was at a love-making scene. It wasn’t intense or explicit at all; on the other hand, rather playful. When the couple on screen kissed, the girls beside me seemed to hold their breaths. But when it appeared to be in undress (white sheets, bare shoulders), they seemed to be divided between fascination and shock. I believe there were a couple of ‘tut-tut’s. It seemed as if my young fellow-viewers still enjoyed a platonic notion of love. Probably they were already on the verge of outgrowing it, but that reaction at that moment felt rather sweet.

Years later, while watching Hindi candy floss Student of the Year, I found myself near a similar group, and this time, the collective gasps went out whenever newcomers Varun Dhawan or Siddharth Malhotra ran in slo-mo or emerged from the water topless. I had grown older, and they are no Brad Pitt. This time, I merely thought, “Oh please!”

3. Shall I write about the first movie I watched alone? Or the first movie for which I purchased tickets in ‘black’ (from illegal sellers outside the hall)? The movie that was withdrawn from halls four days after its release? Or the one I watched from the first row, sitting on my father’s lap, getting bitten by mosquitoes, as a four-year-old? Maybe someday I should try and write down all those stories. This time, I want to finish with something common to every time I have watched a film on big screen. No matter how mediocre it turned out to be, no matter how little I expected of it, every time the curtains have gone up inside a cinema hall, the lights have gone out and silence has descended, I have felt a thrill of anticipation. As if something wonderful is about to begin. It’s been 20 years since Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (one of the first ‘Bollywood blockbusters’) released, but I still love its title song; I still remember Madhuri Dixit blushing and Salman Khan smiling in the deceptively innocent manner he reserves for Suraj Barjatya’s family entertainers. Probably because it was the first time that I had the feeling – as the titles began rolling and the music started playing – of being ushered into a new, magical and fascinating world.

To cinema.Cheers.

Enid Blyton once upon a time #AtoZChallenge

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A to Z Challenge B for Blyton

Enid Blyton was my favourite author as a child. It was in a time when Golliwogs were not taboo in books and over zealous editors weren’t trying to change Blyton’s words into something that the modern generation would understand. ‘Peculiar’ is apparently very old school, ‘Weird’ is cool! I was probably one of the last generation of readers who read the books with their original text.

I really feel strongly about updating books to reflect a generation because books are our window into the past. Blyton wrote of her times when caning was legal and children played in the sun. They went camping, and parents and teachers were allowed to discipline children. I think it is as important for children to know about the past, as it is the present and there are enough children’s fiction writers these days.

However what really shocked me was the film Enid, where Blyton was portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter. If the story is really true to her life, then it is amazing how a troubled person like her could produce best-selling, sensitive and well written children’s books! Her relationship with her own children were appalling but you would think she was an ideal mother from her books. The mother who was so in tune with her children’s needs, desires and fantasies, that she could write books about them. In reality she was just like one of the troubled girls in her books trapped in a woman’s life. Whatever she wrote and generations of children have enjoyed were idyllic fantasies she wished she had lived in.

Helena Bonham Carter was superb as always and won a BAFTA for her performance. Going by her portrayal I pity the author and cherish my unadulterated copies of Enid Blyton books even more. They are not just a window into a bygone era any more but a person’s unfulfilled dreams and desires.