An Oath of Dogs: A Science Fiction Mystery on a Corporate Moon

I'd never heard of either An Oath of Dogs or its author, Wendy N. Wagner, and would probably never have encountered them if the book hadn't been nominated as a BOM (Book of the Month) on a Goodreads science fiction group.  It didn't win, but it sounded interesting.   I thought I'd check out availability.  The Kindle price was a bit steep for an author I'd never tried.   I checked libraries.  Since libraries are closed, I expected to put it on a list of potential library reads for the future.  To my great surprise, there was an e-book available.   So I went to Overdrive and downloaded it.  This meant I needed to prioritize it because I had a due date.

                         

First, I need to sound a note of caution.  Terrible things happen to dogs in this novel.   If you really love dogs, you might want to skip it.  I don't want anyone to be blindsided and get exposed to things that may be tremendously upsetting to them.

Why should you read it?  I was hooked by the suspenseful mystery element.  The book starts out with a murder. The protagonist, Kate Standish, was also mysterious.  Why did she need a therapy dog?  What had happened to her?  Mysteries pile upon mysteries.  Why had an anti-technological Christian sect, known as the Believers, left Earth?   Is Songheuser, the corporation that the protagonist works for, as benevolent as it seems?  Will we ever find out who killed the widely liked Duncan Chambers?  The suspense gets ramped up and never stops until it's resolved.

There were problems.  Some characters were stereotypical --most notably the loggers who work for Songheuser.  For me, they brought to mind Monty Python's satiric Lumberjack Song which demolishes the stereotype.  There was also a paranormal phenomenon described using a theological term that I thought was inappropriate.  Christians may find that offensive.

Speaking of Christian portrayal, the Believers are referred to as neo-Mennonites.    Yet they have at least one saint which isn't a feature of Mennonite tradition. Saints and images of saints are associated with Catholicism, Episcopalianism (AKA Church of England)  and the Orthodox Churches. Yet I do have to say that Saint Hepzibah was my favorite aspect of Believer practice.

One Goodreads reviewer had a problem that wasn't one for me.  That GR member's issue was with the profitability of logging on a distant planet and shipping it back to Earth over interstellar distances.  If there were a logging industry on Earth, I can see how this wouldn't make sense.  Yet it seemed heavily implied in An Oath of Dogs that environmentalists had won on the home planet.  I can easily imagine that items made of wood had become a luxury on Earth for which there was a high demand among the wealthy.

 I thought that from a mystery perspective, this was a well plotted novel with unexpected developments.   I also found some of the characters engaging.  Unfortunately, it was also a very dark book with some horrific elements that I didn't enjoy.   My response to An Oath of Dogs was ambivalent. I do think that Wendy N. Wagner writes well. I might be willing to read another book by this author.

                              

                    

Cheater's Game: A Lassiter Legal Thriller About Corruption of College Admission

Cheater's Game by Paul Levine is the third book I've read in the Jake Lassiter series of legal mysteries and thrillers.  I reviewed the previous two Lassiter novels, Bum Luck
and Bum Deal at their respective hyperlinks, and really liked the protagonist for his heart and his courage.  I gratefully received an ARC of Cheater's Game from publicist Wiley Saichek.

                           

The cover definitely draws attention to the book. It's very illustrative of the case.  Jake Lassiter's brilliant nephew, Kip, is charged with taking SAT tests on behalf of high school students from families in the  the top 1% .  Kip is guilty, but the novel clearly shows that this is an example of selective enforcement.

In Jake's defense of  Kip,  he brings forward some issues that will cause readers to think about justice, and whether juries should consider fairness.  If the law is enforced unfairly, how can that be redressed?  We have laws about various types of discrimination, but there are other forms of unfairness that occur in the justice system.                          

 Jake's fiancee, brain expert Dr. Melissa Gold, also plays an important role.  I learned about a brain condition in this book that I'd never seen mentioned before .  

I think that Cheater's Game is provocative and original.  I consider it a strong candidate for best thriller of 2020.

                 

    

The Bar Harbor Retirement Home For Famous Writers

 
I usually don't review my Goodreads giveaway wins on this blog.  I am also extremely behind on them. The last one I reviewed on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer was Unsheltered  by Barbara Kingsolver.  You can read that review here .  Despite my best intentions, I didn't read any Goodreads giveaway wins in 2019.  I did have more blog tours than usual and more requests from authors, publishers and publicists that I decided to accept. More than half of my 2019 blog reviews were in the blog tour and review requests category.

The Bar Harbor Retirement Home For Famous Writers (and Their Muses) by Terri-Lynn DeFino was a book I won from Goodreads in 2018.  I review Goodreads giveaway wins in the order  I received them.  I should have read this one a while back. This month, I was fortunate to have some time before a review commitment deadline.  I am trying not to have crowds of them this year.  In other words, I am subjecting my deadlines to social distancing.   Review commitment overload isn't deadly, but good books aren't getting their well-deserved attention from me on a timely basis.

                         

With reports on nursing and retirement homes being centers of coronavirus infection in the news, this novel taking place at a  retirement home that was intended to nurture older authors seems utopian in some ways.  Bar Harbor Retirement Home is not a perfect place, nor are the characters perfect people.  Yet this concept does cause me to think "Wouldn't it be nice if...?"

How wonderful is it in practice?  Actually, it has very good results. There's a collaboration between several authors that probably would never have occurred in other circumstances.  I know from my own experience that effective collaboration involves compromise, and compromise did indeed have to happen in this case.

The physical and emotional wounds of the attendant Cecibel made her the most memorable character in The Bar Harbor Retirement Home For Famous Writers.  We are asked in the Reading Group Guide why Cecibel considered herself a monster.  I would ask why anyone considers themselves monsters.  Monsters come from fairy tales and other types of children's stories that influence us powerfully even once we become adults.  So many appear to believe that when things go badly some individuals or category of individuals must be monsters.  In addition, the stereotypes about beauty and ugliness in fairy tales engender widespread prejudices.  Cecibel is a victim of these prejudices in addition to her overly developed sense of responsibility.

It seemed to me that Cecibel saw herself as like Medusa.  She thought that terrible things would happen if she was fully revealed --not just her physical self, but the entire story of her past.  She needed to be freed from this destructive self-image in order to truly live her life.

Despite my interest in Cecibel, I found characters in the collaboration more sympathetic.   When I didn't find out how that story line was resolved, I was disappointed.

I hoped to enjoy The Bar Harbor Retirement Home For Famous Writers more because I liked the concept so much, but I really did need closure on the lives of the characters in the collaboration.   So I'll be rating it lower on Goodreads than I might have otherwise.

                           

Matchstick Girl--A Fairy Tale Retelling Set In 19th Century Russia

Matchstick Girl by Suzanne Hocking was chosen as a Book of the Month by the Goodreads group Read Women.  It was chosen as an LGBT book.  The protagonist might be considered bisexual, but I didn't perceive this novel as being about her sexuality.  It could have taken place in any number of cities, but it's a retelling of "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Anderson that's set in 19th century St. Petersburg in Russia.  I purchased this book on Amazon and this is my review.

                                 

This is a retelling of "The Little Match Girl" because the protagonist, Yelena, was sold by her father to a brothel when she was five years old.  Taras, the brothel keeper, then sent her out to the street to sell matches. Taras was a pretty sleazy and abusive individual, but at least he thought a five year old was too young for prostitution.

The Match Girl metaphor is extended throughout the novel by Yelena's identification with actually being a matchstick and her association with fire.

Later in the book, Yelena got a couple of Tarot readings from a fortune teller who becomes a minor character.   As someone who has studied the Tarot and its history, my main problem with these readings is that all the cards seemed to have illustrations unique to them.  The first fully illustrated deck appeared in 1910.  Tarot cards were originally playing cards.  The majority of the deck are numbered cards in four suits which show their connection to playing cards.  Before 1910, these numbered cards usually had the symbol of the suit repeated in the number the card represented.  For example, the Three of Swords would display three swords, but nothing else.  These numbered cards were often interpreted using numerology which is the very ancient idea that numbers have associations. This is the second historical novel I've reviewed in which there was a Tarot reading before 1910 with a fully pictorial deck.  See my review of  The Peddler of Wisdom here.

Although I mostly admired Yelena for her determined efforts to establish a better life for herself and her chosen family , I was annoyed by some of Yelena's behavior -- particularly when she picked on a very vulnerable girl in order to be accepted by a mean girl and her friends.  This reminded me of the worst aspects of  many YA novels.

 The prose in Matchstick Girl was high quality, but there were long sections of this novel that didn't engage me.  I would have preferred this book to have been pared down to a novella.  Perhaps it would have made a stronger statement about social injustice at a shorter length.  I expected more of  Matchstick Girl than I got.  So I have to say that it was disappointing.