If you like Dr. Watson spin-offs, have you run into Alexandra Christian’s Dr. Watson and the Ladies Club Coven?
I make book quote videos – little 15 second things over on TikTok under the handle of “Erin Penn Books”. If you would like to see my near daily attempts of combining a book quote, cover, some music, and a little video magic friend me there for year-round crazy stuff.
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The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
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Aiden Bishop knows the rules. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until he can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest at Blackheath Manor. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others. With a locked-room mystery that Agatha Christie would envy, Stuart Turton unfurls a breakneck novel of intrigue and suspense.
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a breathlessly addictive mystery that follows one man’s race against time to find a killer, with an astonishing time-turning twist that means nothing and no one are quite what they seem.
MY REVIEW
I slipped into editing mode while reading this book because I kept wanting to see if the timeline worked. I guess mystery readers do this all the time. The timeline and mystery is tight and complicated.
Very much a story about how different eyewitnesses see things from different angles and not everyone has the same motivations.
Only instead of the normal changing of points of view (POVs) for the various eyewitnesses, relating what they saw to a police officer or detective as is typical in mysteries, the “hero” is jumping between characters within the story to solve the mystery. It wouldn’t be a problem, except some of the characters are aware they are in a story too, and they have started changing the plot.
Checked out for public library. Support your library – foot traffic defines their budget.
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To Beat the Devil: A Techomancer Novel by M.K. Gibson
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175 years have passed since God quit on mankind. Without his blessing, Hell itself, along with the ancient power of The Deep, were unleashed upon the world. Two world wars and oceans of blood later, a balance was reached. Demonkind took its place as the ruling aristocracy. Mankind, thanks to its ability to create, fell to the position of working proletariat. Alive, but not living.
Lucky Us.
Welcome to New Golgotha, the East Coast supercity. In it, you will find sins and cyborgs, magic and mystery, vices without virtue and hell without the hope of heaven. In the middle of it all is Salem, smuggler extraordinaire and recluse immortal, who has lived and fought through the last two centuries, but his biggest battle is just beginning.
To Beat The Devil: A Technomancer Novel is an incredible adventure full of cyborgs and demons, gods, magic, guns, puns and whiskey, humor and heart. Follow Salem as he embarks to discover the meaning of the very nature of what mankind is: our souls. And, who is trying to steal them.
MY REVIEW
Short Version: An action-packed urban fantasy with some crazy fight scenes varying from single mano-on-demon to full scale wars with thousands and back again. Also emotional character development (but not at the expense of the action), a fantastically dark world built to many layers, and a couple of flaws often found in first novels which fade into the background the longer the story goes on because it is a rocking, heart-pounding story full of twists, red herrings, and cool cyber-technology.
Long Version:
“The protagonist isn’t out to save the world –that ship has long since sailed…” (a line from the Foreword). In a world abandoned by the capital G, humans and demons have come to an uneasy truce with demons being overlords and humans being serfs running all the technology. Salem is a lightrunner, basically a quiet smuggler capable of a great deal of violence when necessary. He has developed a nice (as in survivable) little life with associates and no friends, when one of the associates sends a piece of business his way that changes things. Life may no longer be survivable, but it certainly becomes interesting.
As mentioned in the Short Version, the book is both very good and has a few flaws so let’s get into that.
1. PRO – None of the action is boring. Every fight scene is different, from the opening fight with a Demon Bishop, to the land war, to the final fight with the big bad. Mr. Gibson changes fight strategy from single person to large group, from intent to kill to just maim a little, from physical fists to cyber tech. I’ve rarely run into such a wide range of fighting.
2. FACT – Has a great deal of “language”. Fits the character and situation (after all, hell come to earth), but pushes this book firmly in R for language alone. (For me this is a CON, but I know not all readers have the same issue.)
3. TRIGGER – One rape scene. Done quickly.
4. FACT – Male version of Urban Fantasy. Okay, what I mean by that – the female version has a paranormal female, usually with two love interests who support her but never overshadow her and all characters exist in relation to her. The male version of UF has gun porn instead of soft porn and again everyone exist in relation to him, usually with the male secondary characters having agency and the female characters, if any, existing to jiggle.
4a. PRO – Gun Porn – The guns are sexy. The cybertech more so. Oooh, the McGyvering and Blade Runner vibe is hot. Really, To Beat the Devil has some of the most interesting information dumps about guns and cyber, I actually read through all of them and enjoyed it while I did so. They were short and sweet.
4b. CON – Women – The handful of named women in the book all look in their twenties, wear g-strings and bikini tops if not just naked all-together, and either lust after the main character, have slept with the main character, or has the main character lust after them. Except for the one which is the lover of a secondary character. Typical male urban fantasy, inherited from the spy-thriller tradition. And a total turnoff for a female reader. Every single effective fighter in this book is male, even when the female characters are described as scary fighters (after their boobs are detailed); if the scary female cybers do do any fighting, it is off screen. Somehow I noticed this more than normal within the manuscript and the rating lost a star on the non-agency of the females in the story.
5. PRO/CON Worldbuilding – Very detailed bleak world. Great backstory; maybe – no (sigh) definitely – a little too much exposition describing the backstory. Several NOTICEABLE introspections put into the book just to provide the cool backstory describing the world as well as aside breaks into the past for a short couple paragraphs here and there. In fact part way through the book the method changed from introspection exposition to the flashback breaks; a content editor should have asked the writer to go back and even out these two methods of backstory reveal. As this is the first in the series and the first book by the author, I expect the exposition issues will not happen in future books. Usually backstory is a little heavy in the first book of a series. And as I mentioned, the writer did find a better device while writing. I did enjoy each jump further down the rabbit hole when the worldbuilding reveal happened in dialogue between characters. Some of the flashback scenes were stories and some were just exposition – as Mr. Gibson continues to grow as an author, I expect the flashbacks will become more integral to the story and less worldbuilding expositions.
5. CON – Poor transitions. The first three chapters glaringly have jumps in transitions. This issue goes away later in the book. In fact the whole book gets better and better as the story goes on – usually in small press and first-time author works, the story gets less tight and technical writing skills get less polished as the story goes on because the writer rewrote the first three chapters a dozen times and ignored the rest of the book. During the first couple of pages of the second chapter I wasn’t certain we didn’t change Point-of-View characters – so much of the beginning of the second chapter felt like a repeat of the first chapter, but the voice felt different and the jump between the two chapter nearly a complete break. If I hadn’t received the book in exchange for honest review from publisher I might not have pushed past chapter three – which would have been a pity because after that weak beginning everything keeps getting better and better.
6. PRO – The most amazing part of the book, especially for an Urban Fantasy, is the personal growth of the main character. The guy starts as a self-centered smuck. The journey this book is about isn’t just the plot of solving the mystery(ies), but also about the character growth. Mr. Gibson does a very good job of establishing the personality of the main character and making the growth believable. I’ll be interested to see if Mr. Gibson can keep that portion of the story plot up for future books.
In conclusion, To Beat the Devil is an action-packed urban fantasy with great fight scenes, emotional character development (enhancing the action, not slowing it down), a Blade Runner apocalyptic world built complete with demons (and worse than demons), and a couple of flaws with technical writing (transitions and expositions) which fade into the background the longer the story goes on because it is a rocking, heart-pounding story.
Photo by Justin Chrn on Unsplash
Damn, this one was pretty in the I worked all night and found a dead body kind-of way. Cleary, the coffee grabbed this morning before driving to the site wasn’t enough. Josh shook his head to clear it. Add getting laid to the list of things which needed doing soon.
“It’s a gas station on the West side. You’re lucky to have a body,” she snarked back. Her voice carried an accent from a little further upstate, more suburbia.
Most people wouldn’t hear it, but the detective made a study to pick it out. Either the gas station attendant was sliding down the social strata, or she was running from her rightful white privilege class for some reason. The way she dared his eyes had his gut saying number two. People didn’t meet cops eyes unless they wanted to fight something, and had the power to back it. This woman didn’t think her white privilege was anything less than pristine card to be played whenever needed.
She waved to the cracked door where McCarthy stood watch. “Do you have everything you need? Shift switch happens in about an hour, and I need to get things ready.”
“We could use better lighting. Maybe the new bulbs for the light above the door.” Josh watched her brown eyes. The irises had blasted wide when first seeing him but were contracting now. Fear, lust, anger? Which emotion played against the dark circles under her eyes? Not fear. He licked his lips.
The witness nodded. “Can’t do the light bulbs; those are special orders, but I got something. Give me a minute.” She walked around the building to the berm near the roadway. Curious, he followed.
In the false dawn light, a deflated wavy guy lay in a collapsed pile. She started unplugging the unlit spotlight aimed at him. That should work.
“Boss doesn’t like running the thing after one, not cost effective. Dayshift turns Dancer on at six.” The witness tugged to spotlight hard to get it moving over the grass.
Josh reached down to the top handle, lifting it. “Let me.”
After blowing her hair out of her eyes, she muttered under her breath while following him. “I really hate how strong guys are. Just isn’t fair.”
At the back of the building, he aimed the light at the door, then held out the plug which the witness plugged in behind a vending machine. The light brightened the area beyond daylight.
“Thanks, Miss…” the detective said while standing.
“Miller.” She gestured at where her name was attached to her shirt. “Call me Brooke.”
“Miss Miller, please don’t leave before I have a chance to talk to you.”
“Look, I can’t stay long. I got another job after this one.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Sure you will.” The witness shook her head while walking to the glass doors to go inside the store.
Joshua pushed her from his mind for the moment. Time to look at the body.
The bathroom door handle didn’t turn in his hand. Taking a closer look, he saw it had been busted at some point. A screwdriver or something jammed in. It didn’t look new, but he would need crime scene to take pictures just in case. Opening up the door, he got the full impact.
No one had dignity on the crapper, and someone made very sure this woman would be immortalized in this position. A growl slipped out from between his gritted teeth.
Young. Early twenties. Autopsy always runs a rape kit, but with her genitals exposed like that, triply so. Cute kid. No scars. Healthy looking with a bit of pudge. A butterfly tattoo on her ankle peeking above the blue lace underwear. Another ink, this one a Pokémon he thought, on her shoulder under the tank top strap. Someone trying to collect them all?
The wrist slits wouldn’t have done much damage, but the two big gashes down either arm would have hit arteries and veins. Did she bleed out here or elsewhere? The toilet’s red water said at least some of the blood fell here.
“Crime unit is here,” reported McCarthy behind him.
Time to turn it over to the evidence experts.
Walking over to where the team were snapping on their blue gloves, Joshua closed on the lead. Poveda knelt beside her kit, her dreads tucked into a wrap. Looking up at his six-foot-four frame which had gotten him through college on a basketball scholarship, she asked, “Another one?”
“Fourth one, second in the city. Fucker is playing with us.”
“Every two months like clockwork. Think the chief is going to call in a profiler or the FBI serial unit?”
“Considering he is up for reelection in November, depends on which he thinks will get him the most votes.” The detective looked east toward the pinkening horizon, considering. “For now, he dropped it into my lap.”
“Damn bastard was never a good cop.”
“All cops are bastards.” Josh’s lip curled up in a half smile.
“But not all bastards are good cops.” Poveda stood. “We got to break the cycle.”
They bumped fits without bumping, keeping her gloves pristine. “Do your magic, mama, I got a witness to question.”
(words 868, first published 11/13/2023)
Gas Station Killer Series
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Thoughtfully imaginative and action-packed, Steeplejack is New York Times bestselling A. J. Hartley’s YA debut set in a 19th-century South African fantasy world
Seventeen-year-old Anglet Sutonga lives and works as a steeplejack in Bar-Selehm, a sprawling city known for its great towers, spires, and smokestacks – and even greater social disparities across race and class.
Ang’s world is turned upside-down when her new apprentice Berrit is murdered the same night that the city’s landmark jewel is stolen. Her search for answers behind his death exposes unrest in the streets and powerful enemies. But she also finds help from unexpected friends: a kindhearted savannah herder, a politician’s haughty sister, and a savvy newspaper girl. As troubles mount in Bar-Selehm, Ang must discover the truth behind both murder and theft soon – or else watch the city descend into chaos.
MY REVIEW
The opening is a mesmerizing account of climbing a chimney to repair it, perfectly explaining the main character, the city, and the culture in a single moment. The moment when our main character realizes the Beacon is missing.
The story then unfolds in this alternate universe without magic or weird-science, from the era of steampunk without being steampunk. Part murder mystery, part political thriller. Our seventeen-year-old protagonist, whose skin color bars her entry to everything with power and money, discovers herself in the middle of power and money.
All she wants is justice for a boy no one cared about. A hidden murder of a throw-away child in a throw-away occupation; steeplejacks fall all the time. To solve his murder, Ang will have to climb high in the city’s political soot and ash, and risk falling even further. If she falls, she will be just another steeplejack crumpled by the city’s harsh cobblestones.
But if she doesn’t fall, she just might ignite a war.