A book’s cover is its calling card and this cover is gorgeous. A lot of times I’ll read a book and go back and look at the cover and realize how the cover didn’t quite capture the story, or how there are bits of the cover which don’t quite fit with the tale inside. But in this case, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect showcase for The Devil’s Garden. Right away there is the flavor of another land, with the promise of luxurious settings, and beautiful women. And you won’t be disappointed. But, as the description for the novella reads, In the Devil’s Garden, appearances can be deceiving…

Cillian Rede put little store in the magic of gods, but devils he believed in. At seventeen summers, he’d seen more than his share. Turn left or right and you would stumble over one in the city of in’La; among the marsh grass and the fragrant trees, intrigue and corruption were as likely to grow.

From the start Jane Kindred paints a picture; sure strokes which let us know we will encounter the magic of gods, and yet devils as well. In fact, returning to this beginning after having read the book, I truly appreciate how well Kindred set up the entire story in those few opening sentences.

We meet Cillian Rede at the start of the story as a seventeen-year-old boy, but he is quickly revealed as the sacred courtesan Maiden Ume Sky. Ume Sky is sure of herself, having earned her status of one of the most elite courtesans in the Garden, while Cillian is uncomfortable with himself as a male. Ume enjoys the power she has over men, knowing exactly what look will elicit the reaction she desires. She has practiced her art for five years and takes pride in her accomplishments. But her position is about to be jeopardized by her most influential patron, and she will be thrust into the middle of political intrigue and corruption.

Jane Kindred weaves a rich tapestry in The Devil’s Garden, lush and full of fine detail. The story is full-bodied, with all the right elements of love, hate, gods, devils, corruption, and even innocence, yet packed into novella length. An excellent read and one I highly recommend.

Originally reviewed for LL Book Review

If Nora Johnson hadn’t been on campus that day she would have never known her true destiny. Helping her friends move into the dorm that she wanted to call home, Nora accidentally collides with mysterious stranger, Gavin Frey. His very first touch sends flames through her heart. The world seems different-something within her has changed. She tries to resume her mundane life, but she is now consumed with the one whose very presence ignited her soul, the one with eyes of emerald. Nora soon learns that an energy buried deep within has been unleashed. She now wields unimaginable power and has become Gavin’s source, his strength. Her newfound joy is shaken when she discovers that Gavin is not who he appears to be and she has been thrust in the middle of a war of mythical proportions. Negativity allows all things evil to flourish, the earth is under siege. The fate of creation hinges on the power within her heart. Will she be strong enough to survive? A gripping tale of unbounded love and ancient power, The Light of Asteria will take you on an epic adventure filled with war, treachery, and demons, as well as unimaginable delights.

What would you do if you came to visit your mother one day and found her huddled in the closet, rocking back and forth, clutching a baby blanket tightly in her hand? And how does the confused and fearful woman connect to a mafia like-gang, drugs, a baby ring, sleazy cops, and an unknown assassin? These are questions which send Ian McCormick on a quest to find out, and he’s scared to death he won’t figure out the answers in time.

After he found his mother, Corrine, that fateful day, Ian moves in with his mother to care for her. While she does have times of lucidity, she frequently reverts into her own world, losing track of time and rationale, to the point where Ian feels like he will go crazy trying to deal with her. He has been faithfully taking her to a psychiatrist, Dr. Endicott, whom Corrine refers to in her own mind as Dr. Hartley from The Bob Newhart show. Dr. Endicott counsels Ian to find a happy place in his mind and go there when the stress becomes too much.

Ian stopped trying to make sense of the words. Now and then she fell into this pattern of incessant chanting. Repeating words and phrases until he wanted to rip out his eardrums to keep from hearing another sound. Eventually she would stop as quickly as she’d begun.

At times they even had normal conversations. Oddly enough, those were the times that hurt the most. Because that’s when he remembered what his mother had been like before their world had been tipped upside down.

Corrine is convinced that someone is watching her and tells Ian about the men who watch her from across the street. At first Ian believes these men to be a figment of his mother’s imagination and part of her psychosis, but then wonders if she may be telling the simple truth. After several months of dealing with the problem of his mother’s insanity he wonders what could have caused such a drastic and seemingly overnight change. Since therapy has produced no appreciable results in over the months, Ian decides to take matters into his own hands and hires a private investigator to piece together the past to see if they can determine the catalyst for the change in Corrine. Enter Lucianna Martel, the private investigator, and her uncle Vinnie. As the investigation proceeds, Ian and Lucianna discover there is more going on than meets the eye, and thugs and cops alike may be part of a hit list which includes Corrine.

Hit List is a good suspenseful read, and Darcia Helle does a masterful job at painting the character of Corrine in the depths of her insanity. The story primarily alternates between Ian’s point of view and Corrine’s point of view, with some sections written from Lucianna’s point of view. The sections you spend with Corrine are well done, and as the reader you experience Corrine’s confusion, and her knowledge which surfaces periodically that she is blocking out a life-changing event. Unfortunately, once the reason for Corrine’s behavior is known, it is a little bit of a let down, as Helle has done such a good job in penning Corrine’s fear of remembering and apparent paranoid delusions, the cause simply does not support the results. Despite this, the read up to the reveal is compelling and will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next.

Preview Hit List on Amazon.com

Reviewed for the LL Book Review

Copyright © 2008
Lulu.com
$17.50 Paperback
132 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4116-4226-3

As I Rode with Cullen Baker opens, we are met with a scene evocative of Gone with the Wind with Tara burning in the background. Set in the South in the midst of the civil war, fifteen year old Jessica Linville watched while the Federal cavalry burned her house to the ground. When I was younger, I used to love a story set in the south during civil war times with a feisty female character at its center, so this book drew my interest immediately. Let me clear one thing up right away, despite my reference to Gone with the Wind, the character of Jessica Linville is nothing like the character of Scarlett O’Hara. Jessica is a proper young lady with manners, a sense of propriety, and has a genuine caring attitude toward her fellow man. And Scarlett had none of those qualities. However, the character of Jessica is a strong one, and she has a strong voice which carries the action of the book as seen through her eyes.

In order to escape the renegades who are taking the very last that Jessica had, Joshua, who has worked for the family Jessica’s entire life, hacks off her hair, dresses her in slave clothes, and they run off through the night. Jessica lost her mother six years previously to fever, and her father recently in battle, so she lived with the family servants, all of whom, except for Joshua, ran when the soldiers arrived. Joshua didn’t want to let down the memory of her father by running out on her, but did his best to try and get her to safety.

      With bluecoats in the wide drive, he’d forced me into the darkness, saying, “We can’t stay, Miss Jessica. These renegades would harm you.”
      Now, silhouettes of a dozen riders trampled the lawns, cheering as my home burned. I threw myself prone in the dirt in despair, and felt the thudding hooves beat like devils’ hearts in my chest.
      Joshua seemed gone a long time before I saw him returning through the neglected cane rows. Sporadic shouts broke through the diminishing roar of flames, and I prayed that none of those men would notice the hunched figure dodging flickering bands of firelight.
      He knelt beside me, gasping, “Here’s the shirt you got to put on.” Disentangling part of a bundle, he didn’t wait for my approval but began tearing at stubborn dress hooks, uncovering me to the chill air.
      He slid the correct arm into place as if I were an infant. “Step outen them clothes, shimmy an’ all. No— don’t stand up—”
      Pushing at the pale green dress material, then the white linen, I stripped to the skin and shoved first one foot, then the other, into the legs of a slave boy’s britches. They were limp with being worn, and though I was small for fifteen, tight through the hips. Joshua set a hat, rank with sweat, on my disgraced head, and I realized he was disguising me as a boy.

Unfortunately, the color of Joshua’s skin turned out to be a problem in the town where he attempted to send a wire to someone to come and pick up the boy, Jess. In one of the senseless acts that abounded during that time period, a mob of men attempted to lynch Joshua, but then shot him as Jess was trying to remove the rope from around his neck. Before the mob could turn on her, Cullen Baker rode up on his horse, scooped her up, and rode out of town. Thus began Jess’s adventure with the notorious outlaw, Cullen Baker.

Although Cully knew from the very start Jess was not a boy, he does not blow her cover, and goes to some lengths to help preserve it because he takes her to the camp of the Independent Rangers, who specialized in pursuing and capturing men who deserted the Confederate Army, but which more often than not took advantage of the fact that most of the men in the Arkansas and Texas areas were away at war, leaving mostly elderly men, women and children. This left the door open for acts of intimidation, rape, theft and violence for groups of well armed men like the Independent Rangers. Jessica’s feelings toward Cully are ambivalent. She can’t seem to reconcile the fact that he would save and protect her from a mob, but also steals. But then Cully gives the money away.

      The next place we stopped was a frame shack that a big wind would blow into Cass County. The rusted tin roof must have leaked considerably, and the cracks where chinking had fallen out were wide enough for a ferret to crawl through. A dirty-faced boy about ten answered the knock. He looked cold, in a thin shirt, trousers which struck his shins two inches above his ankles, and barefoot. Saving his shoes—if he had shoes— for winter, no doubt. More of the money passed to him. He beamed at Cully and threw a cheerful wave to me. I waved back.
      “Consumption,” Cully explained, settling himself in the stirrups. “Won’t last till Christmas.”
      I was sorry for the boy, especially because he had to live his short life in such poverty. At least, before the war ruined things, I’d known comfort and plenty and the love of respectable people. “Cully.”
      “What?”
      “Which do you think is worse—to have nice things and lose them, or never to have them in the first place?”
      “You tell me,” he said shortly, and then we came to a settlement of three houses together, none looking like it could withstand a hard rain. He parted with more currency at all of them.
      When we were on our way again, I couldn’t help asking, “What will we do for money?”
      “There’s ways of getting more.”
      “Stealing it!”
      “How the hell else would I get it? You see anybody around here going to give me a job and pay me a wage?”

I Rode with Cullen Baker is a fast paced read, somewhat short in length as is necessary for the target age group. While some of the story line is somewhat predictable, RLB Hartmann spins an engaging tale and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next. Hartmann uses the historical figure Cullen Baker, and weaves a story set during a time when his whereabouts were unknown, making the story potentially feasible. The Cully in the story is a much more romanticized version of the historical figure than you will find in the Wikipedia information about Cullen Baker. However, it was fun to suspend my disbelief and take a journey back to the south of the civil war times and take a ride with a wild desperado with a not often seen softer side. I think Hartmann’s target audience will love the adventure.

Preview I Rode With Cullen Baker

Originally reviewed for the LL Book Review

Copyright © 2008
295 pages
$14.75 – Paperback
$ 0.88 – Download

ISBN: 978-1-4092-5214-6

When this particular book was posted on the Pick Me! tab of the LL Book Review, I knew, being the only woman regular reviewer, if I didn’t review it, the book would be declined. We keep a separate document with all of the review requests submitted where we, after reviewing the available information about the book, signify whether it is a selection we would like to review or not. Just for grins, after I added Birth in Suburbia to the list, I left it open to see how long it would take my fellow reviewers to place an N next to it. As soon as they looked at the list, they updated this selection as a No, and it was left to me to give it the final thumbs up or thumbs down. I went through my usual process of first reading the review request submission, then going to the product page and reading the preview available.

When I read the preview for Birth in Suburbia, I was pleasantly surprised. Based on the write up, I knew this was a novel and not a textbook, but was apprehensive about whether the author truly pulled this book off in novel format. The preview convinced me there was a story line and what I read was well written, so I asked for the book for review. I’m going to cover a couple of things that I feel hamper this book from being as good as it could be first, so then I can focus on what I liked about it. I’ll be candid, I don’t like the title. I feel that the title so limits the readership of the book that the author will lose some sales because of it. I’m not sure what I would call it, but I know I would take the word Birth out of the title, as that alone limits the appeal to expectant mothers. The same can be said for the book cover. Three pregnant women holding their bellies will appeal to expectant mothers and very few others. This may be the author’s intent, in which case both the title and the cover should serve it well.

The spacing of the book is double spaced and combined with the wide margins and large indents makes the book much longer in page length than it needs to be. Reformatting the book to widen the margins, decrease the indents, and changing to single spacing vs. double would significantly reduce the page length, and as a result, the base cost, which is something all POD authors need to be conscious of. By making those changes, the reduction in page length would allow the author a little more freedom with character development, which I felt was somewhat lacking. I believe Carol Falaki to be a good enough author to develop the characters well, but I had a sense as I read the book that some sacrifices were made to allow for detailed explanation of the birth process and to keep the page length down a bit.

Friends Debbie, Helen, and Liz are all pregnant with due dates close together. Chrissy rounds out the group of friends, and she already has a daughter and is divorced, and not eager to enter any new relationships. Each of the friends is facing a different path in life and Birth in Suburbia follows each of these friends down their path toward birth, and in the case of Chrissy, outgrowing bitterness. Carol Falaki has chosen to provide a picture of three different types of births and gives each of her main characters one of the types.

Birth in Suburbia begins with Debbie, who is the central character for the book, unsure about her marriage, and unsure about what to expect from the birth of her impending child. The below passage is what sold me on reading Birth in Suburbia because here was a story line I could sink my teeth into. As the book opens, Debbie is walking down the street on her way to meet Chrissy and is approached by a very old woman.

     A pale knotted hand reached out and gently touched Debbie’s stomach. Debbie smiled; she was used to it.
     ”Mothers never leave their children,” the old woman said.
     ”I have no intention of leaving my baby.”
     ”Not you dear. We are all children you know.”
     Debbie looked past the woman, along the street, to where Chrissy was waiting for her.
     ”They used to burn midwives as witches,” the woman added. “I was one you know.”
     ”A witch?”
     ”A midwife dear, long ago. There’s something you should know.”
     The woman’s look was direct, and for a moment Debbie felt like a rabbit caught in headlights.
     ”Your mother is with you.”
     The woman lowered her hand and without another word continued on her way. Debbie watched her turn the corner. The sound of the shopping basket wheels faded into the warm air.
     That old familiar lump in her throat, that unresolved anxiety, returned. Debbie’s mum had died three years earlier.

Liz, unmarried and doesn’t want to be, has made the decision to have a home birth, and we follow her as she prepares for the birth of her baby at home. Her mother, Maggie, is very supportive and her father, Harry, just wants to stay out of the way. Helen is married to Nigel, who is involved and excited about the upcoming birth of his child. Helen’s mother, Anne, is concerned about Helen’s pregnancy because she herself had a bad experience. Helen goes late and ends up needing to be induced and ultimately requires an emergency Caesarean section. Debbie, is married to Sean, but is insecure in the marriage as her due date approaches. She remembers how Chrissy’s ex, Jack, started behaving as she got closer to the delivery of Natalie, and Debbie is very much afraid that Sean is having an affair. She also feels alone facing birth without her mother. Debbie gives birth in the traditional hospital, non-complication style.

One additional character arrives toward the end of book – Gemma, who is completing her training to become a midwife. I would like to have known a little more about Gemma, as she was present for all three of the births. Maybe just a bit about why she decided to become a midwife, and some of the challenges she had faced so far in her training. I liked her character because she provided the perspective of experiencing the three different types of births with a fresh eye, rather than someone who has done this hundreds of times in the past.

There is a fount of information about the birth process, and feelings both physical and emotional that birth mothers go through prior to birth, in this book. At the end of the book, my feeling is that this should be categorized as a novelized text book, as it has its feet planted firmly in both categories with the wealth of information it contains as well as the fictional story lines.

Preview Birth in Suburbia at Lulu

Originally reviewed for the LL Book Review.