logo
Wrong email address or username
Wrong email address or username
Incorrect verification code
back to top
Search tags: Harry-Connolly
Load new posts () and activity
Like Reblog Comment
review 2017-12-23 02:57
The Best UF series you haven't read gets a new installment.
The Twisted Path: A Twenty Palaces Novella - Harry Connolly

I had a hard time writing this one up -- I'm not sure why. I tossed out 98% of what I prepared to post yesterday and came up with this instead. I think the book deserves something better, but this is what I have.
---

Annalise Powliss is a powerful sorcerer who travels through the US on behalf of the Twenty Palace Society keeping magic out of the wrong hands -- generally by killing the owners of those hands (and anyone standing too close to them). Ray Lilly is her Wooden Man -- an assistant whose primary responsibility is to distract her foes, draw their fire, and die in her stead. It's not the world's best gig, but he's an ex-con and doesn't have a lot of prospects (there are other reasons, but you should read them for yourself). The thing is, Ray's worked a lot with Annalise without dying, which makes him a remarkable example of a Wooden Man.

 

So the two of them have been called to the Society's HQ in Europe so The Powers That Be can meet Ray, examine him and . . . well, he's not really sure what to expect. Naturally, while they're there, the pair have an opportunity to take out a supernatural bad guy in their spare time.

 

This is a very different kind of story for this series, the focus isn't on the magical threat, but on the Society itself. Yes, there are Predators to be dealt with -- but that's almost a side-note. The Twisted Path gives Ray, as well as the reader, a much greater understanding of the Society. Not that I ever had a complaint about the focus in the earlier stories, but reading this pointed out what I wasn't seeing before. Initially, you care about the Society's mission in that, 1. they're saving the world, blah, blah, blah; but primarily, 2. because you want Ray to succeed (or at least survive) and therefore you want to see the Society's goals met. Now, I think I have a greater investment in the whole organization.

 

There's just so many things I loved about this -- Ray, the small-time crook from the Western U.S. being in Europe, trying to cope with all the differences that he never realistically expected to see. Just his reaction to walking on stairs that have existed for longer than the U.S. was a great paragraph. Ray's initial response to the peers he's called was so perfect, that I know it brought a smile to my face. Connolly did all the little things right, and that makes it so much easier for the reader to care about the bigger things. He's probably done that throughout the series, but in a full novel, it's easier to not pay attention to those details so you can get on with the story -- so you can find out what's going on. In a novella, you can feel like you can take your time.

 

Not only that, Connolly structured this novella in an atypical fashion -- it allowed him to do some things with the story that were natural, organic, and not-cheating, but were able to take the reader by (some degree of) surprise that he wouldn't have been able to in a straight-forward beginning-to-end structure. It's possible, really, that this is the best writing of Connolly's career -- he's had books that I liked a bit more, but I don't know if he's written anything better.

 

Short, fast, action-driven, but with a lot of things to chew on -- this is a great UF novella for readers of this series. I don't know how it'd work as an introduction to the series, maybe fine, but I think you'd be better off with Circle of Enemies. I bought it within minutes of hearing that The Twisted Path had been released and re-shuffled my week's plans to read it as soon as I could -- which were probably the best moves I made this week.

 

It's been years since I last read one of the novels (or the novelette), so I spent a little more time than I'd have liked trying to remember why we encountered some of these characters before or how this compared to the style of the others. I've got to add the series to my re-read pile, I want to revisit this world soon. If you haven't spent time with it -- go grab Circle of Enemies (don't read the prequel until after you've read #3, if you ask me), there are few, if any UF worlds like this.

 

Source: irresponsiblereader.com/2017/12/22/the-twisted-path-by-harry-connolly
Like Reblog Comment
show activity (+)
review 2015-12-31 20:54
A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark by Harry Connolly
A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark - Harry Connolly

I'm not sure where to start with this one, I guess you start with the most distinctive mark and go on from there. Any criminal plying his trade in Gotham City knows that's Batman's city, and criminals have to factor in his claim to it before doing their crime. Ditto for Metropolis and Superman. Any alien race knows that the Earth is under the protection of The Doctor. You get the idea. Well, the same goes for the living, the undead, the supernatural, the preternatural, basically the denizens of Urban Fantasy in Seattle -- they're in Marley Jacobs' city, and they'd better act like it.

 

What makes Jacobs stand out from Harry Dresden, Atticus O'Sullivan, Daisy Johanssen, Kitty Norville, etc. isn't her collection of eccentricities, though she has plenty, it's that she's on the older side -- 65, I think. She's pretty wealthy -- and has many wealthy friends. But most of all, she's a pacifist -- other than her persuasion and charm, her powers (or the powers of any working with her) will not be used for violent/destructive/harmful purposes. Period. It's not that she gives some half-hearted try for a page or two before giving up and throwing spells around, she just won't. Think about that for a second. She has to be smarter, faster (on foot and mentally), and more determined than those she finds herself opposing.

 

...and if you ever look at a love potion/spell the same way again after hearing Marley describe the true nature of them? Check yourself.

 

Her nephew is living with her for a while. Albert is just back from serving in oversees, looking for work, getting treatments from the VA and trying to keep himself together, when his brother (not the world's greatest anything) is killed. Apparently by a vampire. Marley has to find out what happened to him and why, and brings Albert along. This is his introduction to a world he thought was mere fiction, and to Marley's approach to problems. Both are difficult for him, as much as he wants to leave his past behind. Soon, they discover that Albert's brother was into the supernatural goings-on of Seattle without his Aunt knowing, and what he was up to just might have got him killed (or it was due to him being a horrible person).

 

I'm not even going to try to describe how werewolves, vampires, hunters, etc. work in Connolly's world here -- you'll have too much fun finding out for yourself.

 

This was a lighter UF adventure -- especially when compared to Connolly's Twenty Palaces books, but almost any would make it seem lighter. And he deals with the fun the same way he deals with the grim -- with skill and confidence. The story moves along at a nice clip, educating the reader about the world as Albert's being taught.

 

Character, philosophy, story, magic system, the ways that UF staples are dealt with -- all distinct, all serving the different kind of story that this is, and used/written in an almost perfect way. I don't want to oversell this, and I know I'm in danger of it -- but really, folks -- this one is special. The only real complaint I have is that this is a stand-alone. You will like these characters, this world, and this story and you will want more. One day soon, I hope, Fantasy/Urban Fantasy readers are going to wake up and realize what kind of writer they've been ignoring. Until then, count me in for whatever comes next from Connolly.

-----

Disclaimer: I should probably add that I got this as a backer reward for supporting The Great Way's Kickstarter. But that really didn't impact my take on the book, it just meant I read it earlier and for less money than I would've otherwise.

Source: irresponsiblereader.com/2015/12/31/a-key-an-egg-an-unfortunate-remark-by-harry-connolly
Like Reblog Comment
show activity (+)
review 2015-07-28 06:35
A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark by Harry Connolly
A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark - Harry Connolly

I bought this because I loved the idea of an urban fantasy starring a 60+ year old pacifist. At the start of this book, the eccentric and rich Marley Jacobs is holding a fundraiser at her house. Aloysius, her sleazy nephew, stops by and tries to convince her to give him a love potion so he can win back Jenny, his ex-girlfriend and Marley's current assistant. Marley has always found Aloysius to be tiresome, and now she's finally had enough. She forces him to see himself for who he really is. It seems like a change for the better, except she never sees him alive again.

Although she didn't particularly like Aloysius, Marley still wants to find out who killed him and why.  For one thing, Jenny is being blamed for his murder, and Marley is convinced she didn't do it. For another, Marley is worried that her last words to Aloysius might have played a part in his death. With Albert, her nephew and Aloysius's half-brother, acting as her new assistant, she plans to figure out the truth and stop any more killings from happening in her city.

I'll start with the good. I'm really glad that a character like Marley exists. I can think of very few older female fantasy protagonists. Connolly only hinted at Marley's younger days, but I imagined her as being something like Buffy Summers, traditionally kick-butt and tough. Then things went really, really wrong, she was forced to rethink her entire way of life, and over the years she morphed into the Marley of this book. While her pacifism was sometimes frustrating, I admired her determination to never purposely hurt anyone. She didn't even bend this rule – there was no “by killing this one person, I can save thousands of lives” moment, even though there were certainly opportunities for it, and she wouldn't even let Albert kill or hurt anyone in her stead.

While Marley was nice, Marley and Albert together were even better. They had some fabulous dialogue. I loved watching Albert try to adjust to the idea that, even though he was an ex-soldier (his military career ended when his trigger finger was shot off), Marley honestly didn't want him to be her bodyguard or her muscle. She hired him primarily as her driver, her conversational companion, and her door opener, and that was it. The very first thing he had to learn, as Marley's assistant, was how to stand back, trust her, and let her do her thing. Although his fight-or-flight response was still in Afghanistan mode, he gradually got better at this.

Now for the bad. I hate to say this, but the story plodded a bit. The things that kept me reading were Marley and Albert's conversations and the occasional glimpses of how supernatural stuff worked in this world. I loved the part with the ghost, even though I wasn't fond of Marley's very broad definition of “ghost.” I also enjoyed the vampires, troll, and dragon (even though it was a little like something out of a Godzilla movie). The problem was that, after a while, I kept losing the thread of what Marley and Albert were trying to do. They'd visit one person, supernatural or otherwise, find out a little more about Aloysius's sleazy life, and then move on to the next person. There was no way to tell what was related to Aloysius's death and what wasn't, and Marley either played things close to her chest or didn't have much more of an idea about what she was doing than Albert did.

That leads me to Marley. I'm not sure what Connolly was trying to do with her. On the one hand, she clearly had tons of supernatural and magical knowledge, was acquainted with some amazing beings, and was so vastly wealthy that even her home burning down was more of an annoyance than anything. On the other hand, I was never sure whether her actions were prompted by her years of knowledge and experience, or whether she was just doing stuff because it felt right at the time. She'd do things like booby trap her own home or damage some random car, not because she had any evidence that her actions might be helpful, but because she just had a “feeling.” It got to the point where, in my mind, I read Marley's “feelings” as “authorial laziness,” and I hated them because I felt they robbed Marley of much of her potential awesomeness.

Then there were the other things that just didn't work. For example, there was the “moment” between Jenny and Albert that felt weirdly sudden (they'd literally just met, and Jenny was still twitchy over the possibility of accidentally running into Aloysius) and that never actually went anywhere. Then there was Scribe. Scribe was a terrible idea, and yet another pointless thing that could have been dropped from the story without hurting anything. I had the nagging suspicion that Scribe existed mostly to explain away any and all of the book's POV oddities.

The thing that really got me was the ending, in particular the last few sentences. It was like Connolly couldn't decide whether to end the book on a light note or a tragic one, so he decided to do both. I'm sure it was intended to be funny, but it just left me feeling angry. All I could think about was what would have to happen next. Either Marley would have to exist like that forever, or she'd have to wait for Albert to rescue her. Both options upset me, for different reasons.

I really, really liked certain aspects of this book, which was why it was so disappointing when others fell completely flat. I can still recommend this as being pleasantly outside the urban fantasy norm, but it could have been so much more amazing than it was. I'm still debating whether I want to try any of Connolly's other books.

Additional Comments:

I don't think there were more than a dozen typos, but they were all pretty distracting – usually missing words, or words that should have been taken out but weren't. In one instance, early on in the book, Marley was called “Marley Jacob” rather than “Marley Jacobs.” Also, I winced when Marley “plucked out a few locks” (200) of someone's hair. No. You can pluck a strand of hair, but you'll probably have to cut a lock of hair off, unless you plan on yanking out some of the person's scalp as well.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Like Reblog Comment
text 2015-07-28 02:56
Reading progress update: I've read 214 out of 214 pages.
A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark - Harry Connolly

I thought this was going to be a 3-star read, until I got to the ending. I think it was intended to be humorous, but instead it just made me angry.

 

Connolly did a wonderful job with certain aspects, and badly flubbed others. Ugh. It's books like this that make assigning ratings a pain.

Like Reblog Comment
show activity (+)
text 2015-07-27 15:20
Reading progress update: I've read 120 out of 214 pages.
A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark - Harry Connolly

"Careful, dear. You don't want to become one of those men who whine about women's taste in men. That's a quick route to Jerkville."

 

Albert glanced into the rearview mirror at her. "Jerkville?"

 

"Creep Town."

 

"Isn't that where Aloysius lived?"

 

"All right then, Masturbation City."

 

"Okay, Aunt Marley, now I'm officially uncomfortable."

More posts
Your Dashboard view:
Need help?