Interview with the Vampire
The Vampire Chronicles series, Book 1
Anne Rice
Knopf
Fiction, Horror
** (Bad)
DESCRIPTION: A chance encounter leads a young reporter to the story of a lifetime, when the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac offers to tell the boy the story of his life. From a childhood in France to his days overseeing the family indigo plantation in colonial New Orleans, thence his fateful encounter with the dangerous vampire Lestat who turns him, this is the story of Louis struggling to come to grips with what it means to be a creature of blood and darkness, and whether it is possible to hold onto one's humanity beyond the bounds of mortality.
REVIEW: First published in 1976, this book is an icon of modern gothic horror and vampire fiction, inspiration for innumerable writers, basis for several adaptations. It does not, unfortunately, hold up that well today, at least not to this reader.
It starts with an interesting framing device, as the vampire sits down with the young and unnamed reporter in an empty room. Initially skeptical, the "boy" soon realizes that he is in the presence of a genuine creature of the night - a fact he finds both terrifying and tempting, as what starts as the recording of Louis's memories becomes an obsession to know more about vampires. Most of the tale, though, is Louis relating his own life (and afterlife) story... and this is one of the problems. For all that Rice evokes many great sensory details and paints vivid, atmospheric settings through Louis's narration, the character himself has all the initiative and willpower of a tapeworm, perpetually locked in brooding inaction and morally tangled indecisiveness as he's led around by his companions, often in directions he finds abhorrent but which he is utterly incapable of resisting. It is likely a deliberate echo of older gothic classics that were big on atmosphere and detail and brooding and not necessarily big on proactive main characters, but it's a style I've always found irritating, particularly when I don't care at all for the narrator I'm stuck with. Finding Louis in a state of deep brooding guilt over the death of his devout brother, the vampire Lestat has little difficulty taking control of the man's existence, becoming his master and teacher in the ways of vampirism. Again, Rice weaves together pieces of vampire lore with her own imagination for an intriguing take on the iconic monsters - they have no vulnerability to garlic or religious iconography, but can be killed by sunlight or fire or dismemberment, and other talents seem to develop randomly in individual vampires according to their personal nature - that extends to their psychology, which becomes its own form of damnation even in the absence of any actual proof of divine or diabolical influences. Louis's inherent curiosity drives him to ask questions that Lestat won't or can't answer, but he remains under the master's thumb for far too long before attempting to find answers on his own... and then only when he finds a new master to take over and lead him where he wants to go.
Here is where the rating really took its nosedive. The new master is Claudia, a five-year-old girl he finds by the deathbed of her plague victim mother whom Lestat turns to vampirism so they can become a "family". The vampire relationships all have erotic overtones, for all that the only penetration involved is of the fangs (a theme that goes back well before even the iconic vampire Dracula in fiction), and Rice spares no words elaborating on how the young child-turned-monster is included in this, how Louis's love for her transcends any pseudo-parental bond (as does hers for him). Her growing frustrations at being a child with ultimately adult lusts (as all vampiric lusts are adult in nature) become a driver of her character's increased depravity and manipulation of the infatuated Louis, in ways that ooze utterly repulsive vibes through frequent, lurid descriptions of Claudia. I darned near gave up on this one because it was so unpleasant to wade through, but kept going because I was expecting, or rather hoping, that the twisted pedophilic fever would at some point break. Skirting spoilers, it does not... but it says something when even a child (if a child turned into a vampire) has more drive and conviction and plans than a grown man several decades her senior who can only trail along helplessly in her wake.
There are some truly beautiful and heartbreaking moments and passages, and some ideas explored in interesting ways. But those are more than outweighed by the snail's pacing of the plot, the unlikable narrator, and the repugnant vibes, plus an ending that feels less like a conclusion than a narrator running out of steam (if with a slight, dark twist at the end of the novel itself).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Lesser Dead (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan le Fanu) - My Review
Certain Dark Things (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - My Review
Friday, April 25, 2025
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Someone You Can Build a Nest In (John Wiswell)
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
John Wiswell
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror/Romance
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When monster hunters wake Shesheshen from a peaceful winter hibernation in her ruined manorhouse lair, she is most upset. It's enough of a chore building a body from scraps of metal and remains of previous meals when fully alert, let alone when she's been slumbering deep in the hot spring pools for months. Still, she manages to kill and consume one of them, a truly horrendous oaf of a human in gilded armor - but not before she is struck by a diabolical crossbow bolt loaded with toxic rosemary. The wound makes it impossible to return to sleep, driving her out of her lair in search of food and straight into more trouble that nearly sees her killed. But she is rescued and healed by, of all things, a human woman named Homily.
It is clear that Homily has no idea who, or what, Shesheshen is. All the woman knows is that, like herself, she's an outcast. The monster is not used to being treated with anything but fear or anger by people, and doesn't know what to make of prey that does not act at all like prey. But, despite herself, she begins to grow fond of Homily - even as her own nature and instincts may spell doom for both of them, moreso when she learns the truth of who Homily is and why she has come to these lands.
REVIEW: It took me some time to consider what I thought of this book and how to rate it. Blending grotesque monster horror with romance and the dysfunctional dynamics of abusive family relationships, it generally works more than it doesn't, but also can't seem to help wallowing in its own pain and trauma and broken lives and sheer graphic gruesomeness.
From the opening, the reader is placed in the point of view of Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting creature of indeterminate nature, as a band of humans insists on picking a fight. She may consume the odd human now and again, using their organs and bones to give herself a temporary solid form, but she's far from the rabid demonic "wyrm" the hunters insist she is. She even has her own pet, a massive blue bear named Blueberry, whom she lovingly feeds entrails to after dealing with her unpleasant visitors. The gilded knight is from a noble family more than well known to her, who seem to have made her extermination their personal mission - but it's not until she is befriended by the ignorant young woman Homily that Shesheshen begins to understand why... and why just hiding out in her lair and hoping the whole matter blows over is not an option. Shesheshen struggles to understand humanity in general, but it's not until she is rescued and forced to spend time among them while not actively stalking her next meal that she feels compelled to make a genuine effort to connect... efforts complicated by her own instincts to not just feed, but find a suitable host body into which to place her parasitic egg sac. (Shesheshen tragically misunderstands her own childhood relationship with her "father", mistaking his "gifts" of warmth and shelter and, later, food for genuine love.) The more the monster learns of Homily's family, the less she likes about what they did to break the woman, and the more protective she becomes, but the lie upon which their budding relationship is built is a ticking bomb (one of many) that must inevitably blow up in Shesheshen's face.
Though there are some interesting notions and initially intriguing characters in this story, at some point it all begins to feel flat and stretched, kicking the reader in the face with Homily's over-the-top abusive family (and the woman's own traumatized reactions), how the monster Shesheshen is ultimately a more humane and just "human" than the flesh-and-blood species, how the real monsters are the ones wearing crowns and bearing swords and destroying the people and the land in pursuit of their own petty grievances, and how love can manifest in myriad ways among myriad people, even people who have been broken by those who should love them most. The story also never resists a chance to bathe in guts and gore and the inhuman biology of Shesheshen. The final parts in particular end up feeling drawn out, part of what made me shave the half-star off the Good rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wild Seed (Octavia E. Butler) - My Review
Thornhedge (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
Mistborn: The Final Empire (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
John Wiswell
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror/Romance
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When monster hunters wake Shesheshen from a peaceful winter hibernation in her ruined manorhouse lair, she is most upset. It's enough of a chore building a body from scraps of metal and remains of previous meals when fully alert, let alone when she's been slumbering deep in the hot spring pools for months. Still, she manages to kill and consume one of them, a truly horrendous oaf of a human in gilded armor - but not before she is struck by a diabolical crossbow bolt loaded with toxic rosemary. The wound makes it impossible to return to sleep, driving her out of her lair in search of food and straight into more trouble that nearly sees her killed. But she is rescued and healed by, of all things, a human woman named Homily.
It is clear that Homily has no idea who, or what, Shesheshen is. All the woman knows is that, like herself, she's an outcast. The monster is not used to being treated with anything but fear or anger by people, and doesn't know what to make of prey that does not act at all like prey. But, despite herself, she begins to grow fond of Homily - even as her own nature and instincts may spell doom for both of them, moreso when she learns the truth of who Homily is and why she has come to these lands.
REVIEW: It took me some time to consider what I thought of this book and how to rate it. Blending grotesque monster horror with romance and the dysfunctional dynamics of abusive family relationships, it generally works more than it doesn't, but also can't seem to help wallowing in its own pain and trauma and broken lives and sheer graphic gruesomeness.
From the opening, the reader is placed in the point of view of Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting creature of indeterminate nature, as a band of humans insists on picking a fight. She may consume the odd human now and again, using their organs and bones to give herself a temporary solid form, but she's far from the rabid demonic "wyrm" the hunters insist she is. She even has her own pet, a massive blue bear named Blueberry, whom she lovingly feeds entrails to after dealing with her unpleasant visitors. The gilded knight is from a noble family more than well known to her, who seem to have made her extermination their personal mission - but it's not until she is befriended by the ignorant young woman Homily that Shesheshen begins to understand why... and why just hiding out in her lair and hoping the whole matter blows over is not an option. Shesheshen struggles to understand humanity in general, but it's not until she is rescued and forced to spend time among them while not actively stalking her next meal that she feels compelled to make a genuine effort to connect... efforts complicated by her own instincts to not just feed, but find a suitable host body into which to place her parasitic egg sac. (Shesheshen tragically misunderstands her own childhood relationship with her "father", mistaking his "gifts" of warmth and shelter and, later, food for genuine love.) The more the monster learns of Homily's family, the less she likes about what they did to break the woman, and the more protective she becomes, but the lie upon which their budding relationship is built is a ticking bomb (one of many) that must inevitably blow up in Shesheshen's face.
Though there are some interesting notions and initially intriguing characters in this story, at some point it all begins to feel flat and stretched, kicking the reader in the face with Homily's over-the-top abusive family (and the woman's own traumatized reactions), how the monster Shesheshen is ultimately a more humane and just "human" than the flesh-and-blood species, how the real monsters are the ones wearing crowns and bearing swords and destroying the people and the land in pursuit of their own petty grievances, and how love can manifest in myriad ways among myriad people, even people who have been broken by those who should love them most. The story also never resists a chance to bathe in guts and gore and the inhuman biology of Shesheshen. The final parts in particular end up feeling drawn out, part of what made me shave the half-star off the Good rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wild Seed (Octavia E. Butler) - My Review
Thornhedge (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
Mistborn: The Final Empire (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
Friday, April 18, 2025
Me (Moth) (Amber McBride)
Me (Moth)
Amber McBride
Fiewel and Friends
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Poetry
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Moth lived big and bold and bright as the sun itself, full of music and dance, destined for Julliard and a wonderful future... until the car crash that took her family, broke her leg, and left her with the scar across her face. Maybe if she hadn't burned so bright, hadn't taken up more than her share of space and energy and life, Death wouldn't have had to balance the books by stealing her mother and father and beloved brother - or at least Death would've taken her, too. Even the hoodoo magic learned from her late gray-bearded grandfather can't bring back the dead, nor can it undo the great mistake of her survival, so she's stuck living as a shadow of herself in the home of an aunt who hardly seems to notice her, going to a suburban school where nobody bothers talking to her, trying to shrink herself small enough to disappear altogether.
Then the new boy Sani arrives in school, mere weeks before the end of junior year. Like her, he is full of music, pencil forever tapping out rhythms. Like her, he is overlooked. Like her, he is filled to bursting with unspoken pain.
And he, alone of everyone else in the whole world, actually sees Moth - the real her, the girl she's half-forgotten she is at heart.
Summer is coming, and though neither will say it, both know that this will likely be their only time together before the world tears them apart again. Can these two broken souls save each other, or will they end up burning each other to ashes?
REVIEW: This is a poem in the form of a story, or a story in the form of poetry, a tale of deep grief and deeper magic - both the hoodoo traditions of Moth's gray-bearded grandfather and the native Navajo beliefs of half-Native Sani - and how very, very hard it is to heal a shattered dream. Moth blames herself for surviving the crash, for the grief that drives her aunt to drink, for having dared to dream so big that she unbalanced the world... until Sani arrives, a kindred spirit she recognizes from the moment she sets eyes on him. He, too, seems drawn to her, though he hides many secrets and secret pains of his own. More than once, Moth must ask whether his light is the moon to guide her or the flame that will burn her, and the answer is never clear or simple; the traumas that bring them together are the same ones that keep threatening to push them apart. Always, though, is the sense that, however strongly they feel for each other, there will be no long and happy life together; they both hurt too deeply and burn too brightly for their love to last longer than the span of a season, and they both feel driven to squeeze as much love and joy as they can out of that time... and, maybe, possibly, enough healing to keep going on with their own broken lives afterwards. The poetic language lends a surreal sheen to the tale, as does the magic realism that forms the bedrock of Moth's spirituality; there is no doubt that her gray-bearded grandfather's rituals and spells influence her life and fate. A twist at the end nearly drug the story down a half-notch, mostly because it's been overused, but it more or less works here.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Dan Gemeinhart) - My Review
Fat Kid Rules the World (K. L. Going) - My Review
Three Quarters Dead (Richard Peck) - My Review
Amber McBride
Fiewel and Friends
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Poetry
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Moth lived big and bold and bright as the sun itself, full of music and dance, destined for Julliard and a wonderful future... until the car crash that took her family, broke her leg, and left her with the scar across her face. Maybe if she hadn't burned so bright, hadn't taken up more than her share of space and energy and life, Death wouldn't have had to balance the books by stealing her mother and father and beloved brother - or at least Death would've taken her, too. Even the hoodoo magic learned from her late gray-bearded grandfather can't bring back the dead, nor can it undo the great mistake of her survival, so she's stuck living as a shadow of herself in the home of an aunt who hardly seems to notice her, going to a suburban school where nobody bothers talking to her, trying to shrink herself small enough to disappear altogether.
Then the new boy Sani arrives in school, mere weeks before the end of junior year. Like her, he is full of music, pencil forever tapping out rhythms. Like her, he is overlooked. Like her, he is filled to bursting with unspoken pain.
And he, alone of everyone else in the whole world, actually sees Moth - the real her, the girl she's half-forgotten she is at heart.
Summer is coming, and though neither will say it, both know that this will likely be their only time together before the world tears them apart again. Can these two broken souls save each other, or will they end up burning each other to ashes?
REVIEW: This is a poem in the form of a story, or a story in the form of poetry, a tale of deep grief and deeper magic - both the hoodoo traditions of Moth's gray-bearded grandfather and the native Navajo beliefs of half-Native Sani - and how very, very hard it is to heal a shattered dream. Moth blames herself for surviving the crash, for the grief that drives her aunt to drink, for having dared to dream so big that she unbalanced the world... until Sani arrives, a kindred spirit she recognizes from the moment she sets eyes on him. He, too, seems drawn to her, though he hides many secrets and secret pains of his own. More than once, Moth must ask whether his light is the moon to guide her or the flame that will burn her, and the answer is never clear or simple; the traumas that bring them together are the same ones that keep threatening to push them apart. Always, though, is the sense that, however strongly they feel for each other, there will be no long and happy life together; they both hurt too deeply and burn too brightly for their love to last longer than the span of a season, and they both feel driven to squeeze as much love and joy as they can out of that time... and, maybe, possibly, enough healing to keep going on with their own broken lives afterwards. The poetic language lends a surreal sheen to the tale, as does the magic realism that forms the bedrock of Moth's spirituality; there is no doubt that her gray-bearded grandfather's rituals and spells influence her life and fate. A twist at the end nearly drug the story down a half-notch, mostly because it's been overused, but it more or less works here.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Dan Gemeinhart) - My Review
Fat Kid Rules the World (K. L. Going) - My Review
Three Quarters Dead (Richard Peck) - My Review
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Wanderers (Chuck Wendig)
Wanderers
The Wanderers series, Book 1
Chuck Wendig
Del Rey
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The end of the world started with one teen girl inexplicably walking out of her home, apparently sleepwalking, though her father and sister try everything to wake her up. Then a neighbor joins her... and another... With experts stumped and efforts to stop the walkers ending disastrously - they become highly distressed, and if restrained too long they will literally explode from internal pressures - politicians and conspiracy theorists inevitably weigh in, turning the growing "flock" into a flashpoint that could tip an already fractured America over the edge into violence and anarchy. But worse is on the way, and unless a handful of individuals - a disgraced scientist, a misled pastor, a damaged ex-cop, the sister of the first walker, an over-the-hill rock legend, and more - can keep their heads, not just America but the whole of the human race itself could vanish in a matter of months.
REVIEW: It took me some time to consider what I ultimately thought of this book, an epic apocalyptic tale clearly inspired by recent political occurrences (though predating the COVID pandemic). It has an intriguing premise and some decent characters going through very harrowing, even gruesome events, mildly let down by an ending that didn't quite deliver.
From a prologue that foretells disaster with the discovery of a comet (traditional harbinger of change and disaster, further underlined by the inexplicable death of the discoverer), the tale starts fairly quickly with the farm girl Nessie walking out of her home, pursued by elder sister Shana, who takes a little too long to work out that this isn't just a prank by a spirited young teen but a serious problem. From there, the tale introduces the rest of the core cast in turns, from the former CDC scientist contacted by an agent from a mysterious top-secret AI through the small-town man of the cloth Matthew struggling to reconcile his faith with a disintegrating home life and new pressures to explain the inexplicable and a faded 1980's rock star still clinging to his faded glory days and party persona long past their usefulness. As the walkers grow more numerous and attract more attention and conspiracy theories, a second threat pops up that dovetails neatly with the first to set the stage for a true end-of-the-world scenario... and, inevitably, kick off fresh waves of paranoia, xenophobia, and violence, fueled by opportunistic fringe politicians and supremacist militias. Interludes add glimpses of how the greater world reacts to the unfolding crises as civilization slowly collapses into chaos. The core story moves decently, with a few lulls (and a couple times where characters didn't behave particularly intelligently given the situation and what they knew), pulling off some interesting twists on its way to the final showdown for the fate of the world and future (or lack thereof) of humanity high in the Colorado mountains. Then there is a wrap-up that felt oddly weak and short-changed some characters and a couple storylines (plus a late-stage "twist"), perhaps explained by the fact that there is a sequel.
I wavered on whether to shave a half-star for the ending. Even with a sequel, I felt it could've done a better job sticking that landing with what it had, plus it failed to make me especially interested in continuing, as it seemed more like Wendig ran out of steam rather than the author had a whole second book's worth of material to explore. I ultimately decided to keep the solid fourth star, but only barely. It was, overall, a fairly solid story of an unfolding apocalypse and the horrors, and small glimmers of hope, that come with the end of the world.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow (Tad Williams) - My Review
The 5th Wave (Rick Yancey) - My Review
The Wanderers series, Book 1
Chuck Wendig
Del Rey
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The end of the world started with one teen girl inexplicably walking out of her home, apparently sleepwalking, though her father and sister try everything to wake her up. Then a neighbor joins her... and another... With experts stumped and efforts to stop the walkers ending disastrously - they become highly distressed, and if restrained too long they will literally explode from internal pressures - politicians and conspiracy theorists inevitably weigh in, turning the growing "flock" into a flashpoint that could tip an already fractured America over the edge into violence and anarchy. But worse is on the way, and unless a handful of individuals - a disgraced scientist, a misled pastor, a damaged ex-cop, the sister of the first walker, an over-the-hill rock legend, and more - can keep their heads, not just America but the whole of the human race itself could vanish in a matter of months.
REVIEW: It took me some time to consider what I ultimately thought of this book, an epic apocalyptic tale clearly inspired by recent political occurrences (though predating the COVID pandemic). It has an intriguing premise and some decent characters going through very harrowing, even gruesome events, mildly let down by an ending that didn't quite deliver.
From a prologue that foretells disaster with the discovery of a comet (traditional harbinger of change and disaster, further underlined by the inexplicable death of the discoverer), the tale starts fairly quickly with the farm girl Nessie walking out of her home, pursued by elder sister Shana, who takes a little too long to work out that this isn't just a prank by a spirited young teen but a serious problem. From there, the tale introduces the rest of the core cast in turns, from the former CDC scientist contacted by an agent from a mysterious top-secret AI through the small-town man of the cloth Matthew struggling to reconcile his faith with a disintegrating home life and new pressures to explain the inexplicable and a faded 1980's rock star still clinging to his faded glory days and party persona long past their usefulness. As the walkers grow more numerous and attract more attention and conspiracy theories, a second threat pops up that dovetails neatly with the first to set the stage for a true end-of-the-world scenario... and, inevitably, kick off fresh waves of paranoia, xenophobia, and violence, fueled by opportunistic fringe politicians and supremacist militias. Interludes add glimpses of how the greater world reacts to the unfolding crises as civilization slowly collapses into chaos. The core story moves decently, with a few lulls (and a couple times where characters didn't behave particularly intelligently given the situation and what they knew), pulling off some interesting twists on its way to the final showdown for the fate of the world and future (or lack thereof) of humanity high in the Colorado mountains. Then there is a wrap-up that felt oddly weak and short-changed some characters and a couple storylines (plus a late-stage "twist"), perhaps explained by the fact that there is a sequel.
I wavered on whether to shave a half-star for the ending. Even with a sequel, I felt it could've done a better job sticking that landing with what it had, plus it failed to make me especially interested in continuing, as it seemed more like Wendig ran out of steam rather than the author had a whole second book's worth of material to explore. I ultimately decided to keep the solid fourth star, but only barely. It was, overall, a fairly solid story of an unfolding apocalypse and the horrors, and small glimmers of hope, that come with the end of the world.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow (Tad Williams) - My Review
The 5th Wave (Rick Yancey) - My Review
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Mrs. Plansky's Revenge (Spencer Quinn)
Mrs. Plansky's Revenge
The Mrs. Plansky series, Book 1
Spencer Quinn
Forge Books
Fiction, Mystery
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Recently widowed Mrs. Loretta Plansky has a good life in Florida, playing tennis at the club (thanks to her brand-new hip) and visiting her aging father at his care facility and fielding requests for support from her children and grandchildren. Thanks to her late husband Norm's popular invention (well, it was her idea, but they both developed it), a knife that toasts bread as you slice, she has quite the comfortable nest egg, more than enough to see her through her twilight years. So when she gets a late-night call from her wayward grandson Will, she hardly hesitates to wire him money to help him out of a jam... only it was not her grandson at all, and the next day she learns that her entire life savings - over three million dollars - has vanished. Worse, the FBI rather bluntly informs her that she's unlikely to recover a penny of the lost funds. There are just too many cyber criminals running too many sophisticated scams, and too many international diplomatic mine fields to pursue them... in this case, to somewhere in Romania, a hot spot for such activity under a government that is notoriously reticent to help Americans investigate what is essentially a lucrative cottage industry to many impoverished towns. Loretta may not be a spring chicken anymore, and she may have the odd memory lapse, but she's not about to stand back at let the bad guys get away with stealing her late husband's legacy and her family's security for the future - and if the feds can't or won't do their job, well, then she'll just have to do it for them.
In Romania, teenager Dinu has shown a knack for picking up American English and its many confusing colloquialisms, making him a rising star in his uncle Dragomir's phone scam business. Dazzled by praise and money (and too familiar with the bruises that come with letting Dragomir down - a man who essentially runs their small Romanian town, even owning the local law), he sees a bright future ahead, full of motorcycles and women and maybe, someday, even a trip to see the almost mythic country of the people he's helping to fleece. After all, it's not like he'll ever have to face a victim of his crimes - a crime that hardly seems like a crime at all, just words over the phone and numbers on a computer screen. But he soon discovers that the bright future he thought he saw for himself may instead be a trap from which he'll never escape.
REVIEW: It looked like a light cozy mystery with a little humor and a plucky heroine. At times, it is indeed that. But Mrs. Plansky takes far too long dithering and fumbling before finally getting to the promised "revenge" of the title, just as Dinu is far too dim and self-absorbed as he meanders though the heady success and addictive easy cash of his first successful scams only to slowly realize just what he's actually got himself into and how firm and cruel Uncle Dragomir's grip over his life truly has become.
The reader meets Loretta as a cheerful retiree on the tennis court, living her best life in the Sunshine State. If her 98-year-old father, slowly deteriorating to the point of needing extra care, is a weight on her, and if her family seems more interested in the checks she might write them than keeping in touch out of love, well, she enjoys being able to help others, and it makes her feel wanted and important, filling a void left by her husband's passing. She drifts through many memories of Norm at random times, distracting both the reader and herself from the greater story, which is in no hurry to get going. On Dinu's end, it's tough feeling much empathy for a brazen thief, even one too naive to connect his actions with the harm those actions do half a world away; he's confused when his crush breaks up with him after watching him work, and never really does seem to figure out why. In his defense, though, his only model for masculinity has been his uncle, essentially a mob boss, who commands loyalty with a mixture of charisma, lavish gifts, and visits from enforcers when displeased, but Dinu's own attempts to buy love and loyalty with gifts go terribly awry, not helped by having a brain clouded by adolescent hormones and impossible dreams. Eventually, after much denial and more dithering on both their parts, they each determine their own ways to change their circumstances... both running into unexpected obstacles and sidetracks before their paths cross in Romania. As an investigator, Loretta is very much hit-and-miss on actually investigating, luck playing a disproportionate role as she slowly circles in on the thieves behind her misfortune. Her age is both a liability - her mind has a bad habit of wandering, her new hip never signed up for pursuing suspects and creeping through secret passages, and her stamina is not what it was fifty years ago - and an asset, as elderly women are often dismissed and overlooked. Eventually, things come together for an ending that feels a little too neat and easy after the long and meandering buildup.
There were some fun moments and amusing bits, but I never really took to Loretta as an investigator, nor to Dinu as a bamboozled young man trying to make a better life for himself under circumstances inherently inhospitable to good lives. The whole just felt too much like like Loretta's mind, forever distracted from itself and what it was ostensibly doing.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Slow Horses (Mike Herron) - My Review
An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good (Helene Tursten) - My Review
Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt) - My Review
The Mrs. Plansky series, Book 1
Spencer Quinn
Forge Books
Fiction, Mystery
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Recently widowed Mrs. Loretta Plansky has a good life in Florida, playing tennis at the club (thanks to her brand-new hip) and visiting her aging father at his care facility and fielding requests for support from her children and grandchildren. Thanks to her late husband Norm's popular invention (well, it was her idea, but they both developed it), a knife that toasts bread as you slice, she has quite the comfortable nest egg, more than enough to see her through her twilight years. So when she gets a late-night call from her wayward grandson Will, she hardly hesitates to wire him money to help him out of a jam... only it was not her grandson at all, and the next day she learns that her entire life savings - over three million dollars - has vanished. Worse, the FBI rather bluntly informs her that she's unlikely to recover a penny of the lost funds. There are just too many cyber criminals running too many sophisticated scams, and too many international diplomatic mine fields to pursue them... in this case, to somewhere in Romania, a hot spot for such activity under a government that is notoriously reticent to help Americans investigate what is essentially a lucrative cottage industry to many impoverished towns. Loretta may not be a spring chicken anymore, and she may have the odd memory lapse, but she's not about to stand back at let the bad guys get away with stealing her late husband's legacy and her family's security for the future - and if the feds can't or won't do their job, well, then she'll just have to do it for them.
In Romania, teenager Dinu has shown a knack for picking up American English and its many confusing colloquialisms, making him a rising star in his uncle Dragomir's phone scam business. Dazzled by praise and money (and too familiar with the bruises that come with letting Dragomir down - a man who essentially runs their small Romanian town, even owning the local law), he sees a bright future ahead, full of motorcycles and women and maybe, someday, even a trip to see the almost mythic country of the people he's helping to fleece. After all, it's not like he'll ever have to face a victim of his crimes - a crime that hardly seems like a crime at all, just words over the phone and numbers on a computer screen. But he soon discovers that the bright future he thought he saw for himself may instead be a trap from which he'll never escape.
REVIEW: It looked like a light cozy mystery with a little humor and a plucky heroine. At times, it is indeed that. But Mrs. Plansky takes far too long dithering and fumbling before finally getting to the promised "revenge" of the title, just as Dinu is far too dim and self-absorbed as he meanders though the heady success and addictive easy cash of his first successful scams only to slowly realize just what he's actually got himself into and how firm and cruel Uncle Dragomir's grip over his life truly has become.
The reader meets Loretta as a cheerful retiree on the tennis court, living her best life in the Sunshine State. If her 98-year-old father, slowly deteriorating to the point of needing extra care, is a weight on her, and if her family seems more interested in the checks she might write them than keeping in touch out of love, well, she enjoys being able to help others, and it makes her feel wanted and important, filling a void left by her husband's passing. She drifts through many memories of Norm at random times, distracting both the reader and herself from the greater story, which is in no hurry to get going. On Dinu's end, it's tough feeling much empathy for a brazen thief, even one too naive to connect his actions with the harm those actions do half a world away; he's confused when his crush breaks up with him after watching him work, and never really does seem to figure out why. In his defense, though, his only model for masculinity has been his uncle, essentially a mob boss, who commands loyalty with a mixture of charisma, lavish gifts, and visits from enforcers when displeased, but Dinu's own attempts to buy love and loyalty with gifts go terribly awry, not helped by having a brain clouded by adolescent hormones and impossible dreams. Eventually, after much denial and more dithering on both their parts, they each determine their own ways to change their circumstances... both running into unexpected obstacles and sidetracks before their paths cross in Romania. As an investigator, Loretta is very much hit-and-miss on actually investigating, luck playing a disproportionate role as she slowly circles in on the thieves behind her misfortune. Her age is both a liability - her mind has a bad habit of wandering, her new hip never signed up for pursuing suspects and creeping through secret passages, and her stamina is not what it was fifty years ago - and an asset, as elderly women are often dismissed and overlooked. Eventually, things come together for an ending that feels a little too neat and easy after the long and meandering buildup.
There were some fun moments and amusing bits, but I never really took to Loretta as an investigator, nor to Dinu as a bamboozled young man trying to make a better life for himself under circumstances inherently inhospitable to good lives. The whole just felt too much like like Loretta's mind, forever distracted from itself and what it was ostensibly doing.
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