Book Review: The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato

The Clockwork Dagger
Author: Beth Cato
Series: Clockwork Dagger Novel (Book 1)
Publication: Harper Voyager (September 16, 2014)

Description: Full of magic, mystery, and romance, an enchanting steampunk fantasy debut in the bestselling vein of Trudi Canavan and Gail Carriger.

Orphaned as a child, Octavia Leander was doomed to grow up on the streets until Miss Percival saved her and taught her to become a medician. Gifted with incredible powers, the young healer is about to embark on her first mission, visiting suffering cities in the far reaches of the war-scarred realm. But the airship on which she is traveling is plagued by a series of strange and disturbing occurrences, including murder, and Octavia herself is threatened.

Suddenly, she is caught up in a flurry of intrigue: the dashingly attractive steward may be one of the infamous Clockwork Daggers—the Queen’s spies and assassins—and her cabin-mate harbors disturbing secrets. But the danger is only beginning, for Octavia discovers that the deadly conspiracy aboard the airship may reach the crown itself.

My Thoughts: This steampunk fantasy combines romance and mystery. Octavia Leander is a medician = combining medicine and magic. She's on her way to a new post aboard an airship where there are a couple of attempts on her life. 

Enter Alonzo Garrett, one of the Queen's Clockwork Daggers - spies and assassins, who is working as a steward and assigned to bring her back to Mercia or, maybe, to kill her. Octavia's roommate is also hiding things from her past which Octavia discovers when she heals her from an attack that was aimed at Octavia. 

I enjoyed all of the steampunk goodies including Garrett's prosthetic leg. I also thought the worldbuilding was excellent. Octavia attributes her healing powers, which are beyond those of any other healer, to her belief in the Lady and the Tree. I liked the political rivalry between the Wastes and Octavia's homeland of Caskentia. 

This was an entertaining beginning to a steampunk series. 

I bought this one May 2, 2024, as a Kindle Daily Deal. You can buy your copy here.

ARC Review: Second Term by J. M. Adams

Second Term
Author: J. M. Adams
Publication: Oceanview Publishing (October 17, 2023)

Description: A lame duck president's desperate power grab threatens democracy in the United States— can former intelligence operative and single mother Cora Walker prevent catastrophe?

September 2012. Cora Walker, a DIA defense operative, learns of a terrorist plot in Benghazi and rushes to a secret installation to stop it. When her superiors ignore her dire warnings, she’ s forced to mount an unsanctioned attempt to thwart the attack. Her team barely repels the large force of invaders determined to kill Americans.

Sixteen years after her heroic actions in Benghazi, Cora is the press secretary for the Speaker of the House. As a single mom, she’ s struggling to balance her demanding job and her home life. Soon, things get more complicated at work as the lame duck president suspends habeas corpus and begins arresting members of Congress in a desperate attempt to retain power.

Cora springs into action to save the Speaker and prevent catastrophe. She'll have to work strategically to keep everyone safe— alliances turn sour, and her trust in others begins to falter. It’ s an uphill battle for Cora until an explosive finale exposes what can really happen to democracy when political extremism reaches new heights.

My Thoughts: This near future political thriller was filled with exiting action and a great main character. Cora Walker is a former DIA operative who made her name in an action in Benghazi but switched her career to becoming a reporter and then working for the Speaker of the House of Representatives. She hasn't lost her extraordinary military skills or strategic ability which is lucky because the lame duck president has decided he doesn't want to leave the White House and has designed a coup that just might work to keep him in power.

Cora needs to evacuate the Speaker from the House when armed assailants and extremists egged on by the President storm the Capitol in an attempt to keep the election from being certified. Cora finds herself in the middle of a plot by a congressman whom she met in Benghazi which "saves" democracy by assassinating the president. But he might not be the only one pulling strings and Cora has to sort things out while running out of time and into danger. 

Cora is an intrepid warrior, but she has more to lose than in her Benghazi days. This time she is fighting to keep her young daughter safe too. 

I enjoyed this fast-paced thriller and this patriotic character who is determined not to let anyone destroy the democracy she has spent her life fighting for. 

Favorite Quote:

Letting me off the leash is probably an unforced error on the Speaker's part, but I live by the edict, "let the bridges I burn light my way!"

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

ARC Review: The Truth Against the World by David Corbett

The Truth Against the World
Author: David Corbett
Publication: Square Tire Books; 1st edition (June 1, 2023)

Description: A country descending into civil war...

A young artist forced to cross a nation in chaos to retrieve her stolen masterpiece...

Her guide and guardian-whose past remains strangely obscure...

Georgie O'Halloran created an artistic and literary wonder-only to have it stolen from her and published under the thief's name. Worse, it's the inspiration for a wildly popular video game that's become a favorite among the militants seeking to transform America through bloodshed.

To confront the plagiarist, Georgie must cross an entire continent erupting in violence. Her only companion: Shane Riordan, "Irish as wet grass," a fiercely loyal friend with a beautiful singing voice, an oddly encyclopedic memory-and impressive fighting skills.

It turns out, however, that Georgie isn't the only one on a cross-country quest. Shane is on a journey all his own, far beyond even Georgie's imagining.

My Thoughts: This was a genre-defying novel. Part dystopia, part fantasy, part quest story. It was an engaging title narrated by Shane Riordan who has lived again and again. He's under a curse to do so until he learns what he is supposed to learn. 

Currently, he is best friends with Georgie O'Halloran who suffers from depression. They met when she was in college and his was a janitor at the college. They became friends. She was intrigued by Celtic myths, and he told her lots of stories never revealing that they were about his past. She wrote them up and illustrated them and gave them to her lover as a gift. The lover - Reginald Feely - took her gift, claimed it was his own work, and sold it for publication. It, and the video game it inspired, became a cult hit which incited some of the factionalism that is plaguing the United States.

Shane breaks Georgie out of the hospital where she is being treated and the two take off to find Feely and gain his apology for stealing her book and intellectual property. They need to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast through a disintegrating United States filled with gangs each touting their own version of what should be. And they are being pursued by people who don't want them to interfere with the book or the video game.

I enjoyed the story once I got over the writing style which at first seemed to be filled with sentence fragments. I enjoyed learning more about Shane and what his quest was. He is definitely the main character of this one despite what the blurb seems to imply. 

Favorite Quote:

There's history for you -- so much of it happens when the vast majority of humanity is otherwise engaged. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

Friday Memes: The Truth Against the World by David Corbett

 Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

With tens of thousands engage online - Hong Kong to Tel Aviv, Berlin to Atlanta - Georgie recites the litany of names, linking them to their atrocities:

• The corporate sociopaths who bankrolled the Capital bombing.
• The assassins targeting congressmen, governors, mayors.
• The freelancers murdering journalists, lawyers, academics.
• The infiltrators turning marches into riots, the arsonists torching courthouses --

Friday 56:

"As you can imagine," Agnes says quietly, switching the radio off, "I'm no fan of the federal government. Lazy loudmouths, lying thieves - and that's being kind. Like a lot of folks, I had hopes for this President -- self-made man, outsider, owes nobody nothin."

This week I am spotlighting a new addition to my review stack. The Truth Against the World by David Corbett came to me from a publicist's email and sounded intriguing enough to shoehorn its way onto my reading calendar. It was released June 1. Here is the description from Amazon:

A country descending into civil war...

A young artist forced to cross a nation in chaos to retrieve her stolen masterpiece...

Her guide and guardian-whose past remains strangely obscure...

Georgie O'Halloran created an artistic and literary wonder-only to have it stolen from her and published under the thief's name. Worse, it's the inspiration for a wildly popular video game that's become a favorite among the militants seeking to transform America through bloodshed.

To confront the plagiarist, Georgie must cross an entire continent erupting in violence. Her only companion: Shane Riordan, "Irish as wet grass," a fiercely loyal friend with a beautiful singing voice, an oddly encyclopedic memory-and impressive fighting skills.

It turns out, however, that Georgie isn't the only one on a cross-country quest. Shane is on a journey all his own, far beyond even Georgie's imagining.

ARC Review: The Last Resort by Michael Kaufman

The Last Resort
Author: Michael Kaufman
Series: A Jen Lu Mystery (Book 2)
Publication: Crooked Lane Books (January 10, 2023)

Description: Margaret Atwood meets Raymond Chandler meets Greta Thunberg: Jen Lu is back on the case when the death of a lawyer sparks an even more intriguing mystery in Michael Kaufman’s second book in the thrilling series.

It’s March 2034, six months after D.C. police detective Jen Lu and Chandler, her sentient bio-computer and wannabe tough guy implanted in her brain, cracked the mystery of Eden. The climate crisis is hitting harder than ever: a mega-hurricane has devastated the eco-system and waves of refugees pour into Washington, D.C.

Environmental lawyer and media darling Patty Garcia dies in a bizarre accident on a golf course. Of the seven billion people on the planet, only Jen thinks she was murdered. After all, Garcia just won a court case for massive climate change reparations to be paid out by oil, gas, and coal companies. Jen is warned off, but she and Chandler start digging. Signs point to Garcia’s abusive ex, a former oil giant, but soon Jen turns up more suspects who have an even greater motive for committing murder

Soon Jen is in the crosshairs of those who will ensure the truth never comes to light, no matter the cost. She has to move quickly before she becomes next on the killer’s list.

My Thoughts: The second Jen Lu thriller starts with an accident on a golf course. Star environmental lawyer Patty Garcia is supposedly hit with a golf ball which causes her death. What first looks like a tragic accident soon looks like a murder...to Jen. 

Jen finds it suspicious the Garcia would die just after winning a case against Big Energy which could result in trillions for efforts to clean up the environment, and just a day before she announces that she is a candidate for president and thus receives Secret Service protection.

Jen and her bio-computer Chandler begin to investigate and soon turn up a number of suspects. The prime one in her opinion is Garcia's ex-husband James Culpepper whom she divorced because of domestic abuse. Culpepper was an oil executive who lost his job because of the scandal and has reinvented himself as an advocate for "wronged" men. In fact, he was supposedly in the middle of a live podcast when Garcia's accident occurred. 

But there are other suspects. Big Oil isn't happy with Garcia's court win and is even less happy when it learns that she may have discovered a document which would indicate that they knew that their products were causing climate change as early as the 1960s which would multiply the amount they have to pay in reparations catastrophically. 

As Jen searches for a copy of that report she finds that she's not the only one and finds that anyone who might know about it is on a hit list. 

This was an entertaining near-future thriller with interesting characters and a fast-paced plot. I enjoyed the extrapolation of current events to their possible future results. I liked the way Jen and Chandler work together. I enjoyed that some of the story was from Chandler's point of view and had his unique view of human beings.

Favorite Quote:

"I have no problem with women's independence," he intoned. "But don't you agree with me that it shouldn't be an excuse for turning the tables and constantly giving women an advantage in hirings? In promotions? And in everything else?"

Zach said, "Makes sense if you discount the fact that women still are second class citizens by just about any measure."

Jen said, "Pesky things, those facts."

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

Book Review: The Last Exit by Michael Kaufman

The Last Exit
Author: Michael Kaufman
Series: A Jen Lu Mystery (Book 1)
Publication: Crooked Lane Books (January 12, 2021)

Description: Perfect for fans of Ben Winters and Cory Doctorow. In this thrilling near-future novel, the secret to eternal life is closely guarded by people who will do anything to protect it--even if it means destroying everything in their path.

Set in Washington D.C. in the near future, climate change has hit hard, fires are burning, unemployment is high, and controversial longevity treatments are only available to the very rich. Enter resourceful young police detective, Jen B. Lu, and her 'partner', Chandler, a SIM implant in her brain and her instant link to the Internet and police records, and constant voice inside her head. He's an inquisitive tough guy, with a helluva sense of humor and his own ideas about solving crimes.

As a detective in the Elder Abuse unit, Jen is supposed to be investigating kids pushing their aging parents to "exit" so they are eligible to get the longevity drug. But what really has her attention are the persistent rumors about Eden, an illegal version of the longevity drug, and the bizarre outbreak of people aging almost overnight, then suddenly dying--is this all connected? Is Big Pharma involved?

When Jen's investigations of Eden take her too close to the truth, she is suspended, Chandler is deactivated, and her boyfriend is freaked out by "the thing inside her brain." This leaves Jen to pursue a very dangerous investigation all by herself.

My Thoughts: This near-future dystopian mystery stars police detective Jen B. Lu and her partner Chandler who is a SIM implant in her brain. Unemployment is high, climate change is making Washington, DC, much hotter than it has ever been. And Jen's job with the Elder Abuse unit has her investigating a number of crimes where kids are pushing their parents to "exit" -- submit to euthanasia so that their children can take a longevity drug. 

Jen has her own issues with her mother who is suffering from dementia and nearing the time when Jen can sign for her exit. Jen is still dealing with all the various kinds of abuse she suffered at her mother's hand as a child and thinks the decision to end her mother's life will be easy. 

Then Jen starts hearing rumors of something called Eden which is supposed to be an underground longevity drug prepared outside of Big Pharm. But Big Pharm has heard the rumors too and has their own plan to discredit Eden. 

Suspended from the police department and with Chandler deactivated, Jen has to gather allies who are willing to fight to find answers. 

This was an engaging story about an undesirable future that still seems to be a possible extrapolation of current events if we don't make changes soon. Chandler tells the story which gives it a unique viewpoint. Fans of political thrillers in a dystopian setting will enjoy this story.  

Favorite Quote:

"Do you have a Bible?"

Olive looked offended. "Of course we have a Bible.Two. One in Spanish and one in the original English. I go to the Assembly Hall each and every week."

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.