The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas

The second volume in the Elemental series – the boys at Eton take a holiday at one boy’s uncle’s estate on the Scottish coast.  One boy, Wintervale, was not able to attend as his mother was not well.  But suddenly, Fairfax and Titus see the boy in a skiff trying desperately to escape from an Atlantis frigate.  When all seems lost, the boy, looks back at the frigate and it is caught in a maelstrom, sucked under by the whirlpool.  He seems completely out of it when he reaches shore and when the prince administers a remedy, he goes into a seizure.  From then on, he has a terrible time walking and has to be helped everywhere.  But worse, Titus now thinks his vision of Iolanthe being the one who will help him succeed in his quest to overthrow Atlantis was wrong and it’s Wintervale instead.

The book is written in two timelines.  In the other timeline, Iolanthe and Titus are in the Sahara desert and don’t remember anything.  However, they’re attacked by agents of Atlantis and fight their way across the desert until allies rescue them.  The book does tie both together at the end.  Which apparently the real showdown that will be explained in book three.

The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas - (5/23)

The same author as A Study in Scarlet Women.  This is a fantasy set in an Earth where Atlantis and The Domain are populated by mages of differing abilities.  Our main characters are Iolanthe Seabourne, a young woman who suddenly is able to call down lightning, a great feat for an elemental mage,  and Prince Titus, Master of The Domain.  Opposed to the pair is Atlantis, ruled by the Bane.  In order to hide Iolanthe, Titus disguises her as a boy and she spends the next year at Eton with a magical spell that makes everyone think ‘he’ is Fairfax, a great cricket player.  Titus also lays a spell to keep any image of Fairfax from being recognized.  Through training in the Crucible, a magic book with tests, Titus trains Fairfax to get better with the one element she has no control over; air.  And he falls in love with her, but struggles to keep his eye on the goal; the overthrow of Atlantis.

Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire

A masterpiece that creeps up on you.  Two young girls in Russia – one, a peasant, Elena, whose father died trying to save a bunch of girls from a flood, her mother is dying, her brothers have been ripped from their home and there’s no food, no medicine and almost no one left in her village.  The other, Ekaterina, comes in a train that stops for a bridge to be repaired.  This one is a near-princess, part of the nobility, who has a rich Aunt, a governess, and a butler trying to rein her in, though she is bored.  The two girls become somewhat friends.  Ekaterina shows Elena a gift, a Fabergé egg, they’re taking to the Tsar, who wants to show-off his godson, Anton.  The egg has three mythical scenes: Baba Yaga’s chicken house, the ice dragon, and the firebird.  But the train lurches into motion and Ekaterina falls out of the train with the egg, while Elena falls into the train.

While Elena girl finds herself forced to hide, she ends-up having to impersonate Ekaterina in order to try to keep the butler and the governess from getting in trouble.  Meanwhile, Ekaterina is cornered by a snow tiger and herded to a bridge.  On the other side, she finds Baba Yaga’s house, but instead of eating the offered, poisonous, soup, she gives the egg to Baba Yaga.  Meanwhile, Elena, at a stop of the train, tries to escape.  She sights the Firebird and reaches to take a tail feather so she could get a magical wish granted.  But a hen, chased by a fox enters from the other side just as the Firebird becomes aware of the peasant girl and turns on her.  The hen crashes into the Firebird, grabs a feather and the fox runs off.  An explosion occurs and there is an egg left behind.  Elena grabs the egg as a possible replacement of the Tsar’s gift.

The story is narrated by a monk, who had the favor of the Tsar, then lost it by helping the girls.  All three of the children go off on an adventure with Baba Yaga, meet the ice dragon, who is causing floods and an almost non-existent winter to happen.  His teeth are used to make a fence, they turn into an army, matryoshka dolls, extra large in size come along and marry the soldiers, everyone goes home happy.

Years later, under communism, the children have grown and take care of others in a kitchen.  The monk wanders the country, still observing and bringing the end of the story to a brilliant conclusion.

Hades by Candice Fox

Fox’s first novel is dark and probing.  Hades is a man who fixes things for criminals.  But when he’s brought a car with two battered and wounded children inside, he cannot dispose of them.  Instead he takes them in and raises them.  But Eden and Ethan can’t forget what happened to them and who the men were who killed their parents.  When they grow-up, they’re brilliant, they become cops, then detectives in the police department, and they’re sociopaths when it comes to their enemies.  And they’ve been using their resources to hunt down and kill the men who killed their parents.  There’s only one left.  Enter our narrator, the new partner to Eden.  The last one died in action.  Our narrator has his own problems, with alcohol and with women.  He becomes suspicious of the brother and sister detectives, but he’s busy dealing with a surviving victim of a serial killer.  The ending is both inevitable and a surprise.

Get Real - Donald Westlake

A Dortmunder novel – John and his occasional cohorts are asked to talk to a reality show producer about filming them while they do a real job.  No one in the gang wants to go to jail, but the producer offers them a cash bonus and per diem.  It sounds sketchy, but they agree to rehearsals while looking in the building for something worth stealing.  It has Westlake’s usual flare for comedic scenes of misunderstandings and an ending that make the book worth reading.

A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

An interesting variation on the Sherlock Holmes stories.  Charlotte Holmes has an extraordinary mind.  She has no interest in becoming married to a man.  So after her father reneges on his promise to pay for the education that she might become independent, she intentionally loses her maidenhead to a married man.  That way he cannot be forced to marry her and her worth as a prospective bride is dashed in the eyes of any other man.  Then she ‘runs away from home’ determined to establish herself.  Unfortunately things do not go as planned.  A childhood friend, who is now a Lord, tries to watch out for her, but that only brings anger.  She ‘happens’ upon an ex-actress who is a widow, whose name turns out to be Mrs. Watson.  It is she who concocts the scheme of fronting a ‘sick’ Sherlock Holmes, whose sister, Charlotte, takes messages to him.  This book highlights three murders which happen to be inter-related.  In the end, a mysterious man seems to be behind it all.  His name is Moriarity.

Well written