Knights Against Monks

The Templar Detective and the Unholy Exorcist by J. Robert Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My first book by this prolific author.

I liked it okay. I'd say this was a pretty good 3, even a 3 1/2, but it's too much a pulp-fiction novel for me to bump it to a 4 or 5. The language makes it a quick read, but it doesn't evoke Medieval France in any way. (It kinda reads as if modern Americans were dropped into the story.) There's a pretty good attempt at being accurate about history, about knights and the Church and so on, but I don't think much of the history would stand up to rigorous criticism. And all that's okay, as it's just supposed to be fun and quick and full of action, which it is. Good pacing. Straightforward language. Decent stakes. It's entertaining, which is what I hoped for.

The characters are mostly sketched rather than fully developed, but it works for the genre, and the writer (who's sold a bunch of books) is genuinely good at keeping the prose punchy and the plot moving along. The chapters are short at about three pages usually, with lots of POV characters, and even if one POV or part of the story doesn't interest you, the scene jumps every few pages, keeping it rolling. The premise of the series is fun, too, with a group of Templars who solve mysteries. In this one, young women are being abducted by a priest and some monks, supposedly to exorcise demons, and it's the Templars' job to track down a young woman they know, along with others, and determine who is behind the abductions and why.

A good novel? Not really, not in my opinion. A fun read, though? Yeah, I'd say so.

Recommended for readers of action and pulp fiction.

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Where Jane Inherits a Mystery

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

[This is a reread. I didn't write a review first time.]

I love these Jane Austen mysteries. It's the main character that brings me back. The crime-solving version of the beloved author is really likable, sympathetic, and great fun to watch. And we get all of that here, once again. I'm sad when she's sad, I'm amused when she's amused, and when she confounds her enemies by putting all the pieces together, she's awesome.

As much as I like it, this one is slightly less fun, since it includes a very subdued Jane who is reeling from the death of someone she really cared about--was in love with--and she is a bit less active as well. Perhaps as a result, we get most of the reveals and most of Jane's brilliance near the end, though it's still a successful mystery. I liked the journal entries from Lord Harold's papers, and though I would have liked seeing them to impact the plot a little more, they do still play their part.

The setup: Jane and her family are settling in to the cottage in Chawton where they famously lived for many years, and they're not being well received. Not only that, there is a body in the cellar when they first move in. It's a rude welcome, and things don't get better very quickly. Jane needs to figure out who's responsible before there's more violence...

I had a little bit of character overload reading this, even though I read it once before, about 15 years ago. It's the connections between kinda minor characters that I lose track of, and then they turn out to be pivotal details. Well, I bet the third time's the charm.

As always, recommended.

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Where Roland Plays His Horn. Eventually.

The Song of Roland by Unknown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Battle of Roncesvals took place in 778. This epic poem of the event comes from maybe two centuries after, give or take, and it can't be relied on to be accurate history, but it serves as a quality literary attempt at telling the story. Honestly, it feels quite foreign to me as a 21st century reader in America, and I suppose that makes sense--I'm not French or Spanish or Catholic or Muslim, and I'm definitely not from the Middle Ages--but it's strange to read the story and just not understand why they do what they do. That's part of what makes this so intriguing and entertaining: trying to understand people from a remote time and place, seeing how they are different and still like us, just the same.

This is an action story, with exaggerated battle scenes like you'd find in King Arthur tales or the Iliad or the Shahnameh or other epics, with one warrior or another wiping out scores of opponents. The army sizes here also have to be wildly exaggerated, but it works in epic like this. The good guys and the bad guys are all heroic in battle, capable of amazing feats, though the Christians are made righteous and the Muslims are slandered horribly. (The poet clearly understood nothing about Islam, even naming Apollo a focus of Muslim worship. The author's errors are as illuminating in their own way of the times and people and general milieu as the stuff he/she/they got right.) In battle, though, even a bad guy can be admired for his heroic feats, and there's a lot of that.

I'll never understand why Roland would rather sacrifice himself and all his troops than blow his horn and call for reinforcements. It's explained, in a way, but I just don't get it. It's just bad tactics, and it's a terrible waste of lives. And the court martial at the end for the traitor--who makes a case for his actions, claiming that Roland deserved it, that his betrayal wasn't treason against the king--ends with thirty of Ganelon's kinsmen being hanged. What? Why?

It's a wild story but entertaining, and brief enough that it's still a good read despite the challenges it poses to a modern reader. The copy I have includes a really good afterword by Guy Gavriel Kay, and he does a good job of putting the poem into perspective for the reader. I recommend getting that version.

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Where Vindice Gets Everybody Back

The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not generally a fan of tragedy, tbh, and this one is pretty bloody, but it kinda works. I liked it. 4 stars.

Vindice, with the help of his brother Hippolito, wants to get revenge on the duke who killed his fiancé. The play begins with Vindice holding the skull of his poor beloved, reflecting on the terrible duke--who poisoned her because she wouldn't give in to him--and his terrible son, and his terrible bastard son, and his terrible second wife. (Later we learn she has terrible sons of her own. It's a bad family.) He wants to repay them all.

The story is mostly how he gets close enough to trick them and bring them into conflict and place them in compromising positions so they look guilty of crimes they hadn't committed--though they committed plenty of others. They poison the duke back by dressing the skull up with a mask to look almost real, in bad light, anyway, and get him to kiss her. Then they use the duke's body in another trick to catch his heir and some of the corrupt nobles. The plots and schemes and misunderstandings and lies are confusing, getting a bit out of control, and in the end the revenging brothers themselves get caught and pay the price, but not until they've gotten everyone they hated killed. Pretty bloody. But it's also funny, in a way, especially in being so over the top. I think I'd make more of it with a second reading, cuz Elizabethan language and custom is still a bit tricky, IMO, but even just crashing through it is still pretty entertaining.

It isn't light, and it's not a happy ending, but it's not as big a bummer as, say, Othello or Antony and Cleopatra. Vindice didn't win in the way characters do in comedies, but I'd say he broke even.

Worth a look. Recommended for drama types.

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Where the Church Is Keeping Secrets

The Malta Exchange by Steve Berry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first book by this popular bestselling author, and I'll say it kinda worked for me. I found it decent to read, a little bit each day, over time, but I didn't really enjoy it until the last 20% or so. For me, 3 stars means I like it some, that the book is good enough to finish, and maybe good enough to pick up another. It's a successful series, so chances are I'll like one of the other titles a bit better. I should try.

The last fifteen chapters or so had action and conflicts and characters that made sense to me, and it was fun from that point on. I didn't feel that way about most of the book leading up to it. There are so many different agencies and individuals involved, many of whom are secretly betraying their side, that the interaction of goals and purposes is just a tangle. British, American, Maltese, and Vatican intelligence; an ancient military order; a couple secret groups within those organizations; traitors within the secret groups... It's too hard to keep all of them straight enough to discriminate between their true motivations and their apparent motivations. (IMO, of course.) I had to just read it like I'm watching a movie in a language I don't speak and hope it makes sense later. In the end, it did.

Anyway, I exaggerate a little, maybe. I've got other books on my shelves from this series and I'll give at least one more a try. I like the perspective of the author and his take on religion, so that's good, and the history stuff--about the Hospitallers in the middle ages, Napoleon much later, and Mussolini during WWII--are interesting and entertaining. I also liked learning about Malta. Nice.

Regular readers of this author will probably make a lot more sense out of the novel than I did. I expect they represent the good number of 4s that this book got. New readers--like me, maybe you--should probably check out the first in the series and see if it's an easier entry. I'll let you know.

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Where Ruggiero Loves Beatrice

The Children of the King A Tale of Southern Italy by F. Marion Crawford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wish we had half stars. This is better than some books I've called 3-star reads, but I couldn't quite give it a 4. Alas.

But I still liked it, finding it interesting and entertaining for a number of reasons. First of all, it's written in a very smooth, glib way, with unornamented prose that feels more modern than it really is. It was published in 1885, but sounds (to my ear) at least 50 years more recent. Also, it makes Italy of 150 years ago or so very real, and very much a character in the novel. I found that enlightening, and learning often feels fun to me.

The main characters, at least the rich ones, seem like characters in a early 20th century British mystery novel, enjoying a long summer of ease on the Italian coast. The Marchesa, especially, is always lounging, always doing things in a languid manner, never showing too much emotion, and her dutiful daughter is a lot like her, but seems to be half waking up as she is being courted and pressured into an arrangement with a titled but poorer man who she realizes is a bad man too late. If someone had died on page 20, I might have thought I'd wandered into an Agatha Christie novel.

The two young Italian sailors, here called the Children of the King, are interesting in a different way. They are trustworthy but rough; principled; hard-working; and noble in spirit, though thoroughly working class. They man the ships that the wealthy elites lounge on all summer, and they have to watch without comment as their social betters play out their moneyed dramas. The commentary works both ways in the novel, with the rich Beatrice noting with interest the deep convictions and strong spirit of the sailors, though she has no emotional interest in them, while the poor servants (sailors, maids, and so on) watch and inwardly judge but outwardly obey the privileged and pampered elites who, to them, live in a different world. It's easy to see which side the author favored, though he's not too unfair to Beatrice, IMO. And I come down on the side of the servants, who are the more admirable characters here.

Another thing that interested me is how I never could quite decide what genre this book belonged to. Before I opened it, I expected it to be romance in the style of Dumas or Scott, and later I thought it might turn into a romance in the style of Nora Roberts, but in the end it's more like a Henry James novel, or E.M. Forster, or even Hemingway. That is to say, the genre is just... novel, I guess. With a tiny bit of adventure in a warm climate. A tad of romance. A bit of "novel of manners," too. Which all adds up to just novel.

I don't read that very often. It's alright.

Anyway, I like the author's style, and I'll happily pick up another book (off the shelf right beside it where I have 3 more) and the next one might be closer to my type. But this was still pretty good, and since it reads briskly, I think a lot of people who've never tried the author might enjoy it.

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Where the Governess Finds Love and Mysteries

The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this novel, especially the last 80 pages or so, and though I wasn't loving it much in the first half, I'm rooting for the author, so I'm glad it took off. (IMO.)

The writing is very good, all through. And the characters are well-realized for the most part. I like the slow release of characters' histories, and I'll admit that I was surprised at one reveal, and thought it was better than what I was expecting. I wish the main character had been a little more active and empathetic earlier; she definitely improved. But I struggled through the pages with Margaret being blackmailed and just living with it. Of course, it is a theme throughout the novel that women are often trapped and made powerless, so it was probably intentional, and it matches the dynamic so often found in Austen novels or Jane Eyre or Agnes Grey. But Margaret is portrayed as especially timid or retiring, and I found it hard to admire her for much of it, as well as less fun to read.

When the mysteries start to be revealed, the MC starts being more active, showing more backbone, and for me it becomes a lot more fun to read. And though the ending isn't everything I hope for in such a novel, it makes perfect sense, and I have no real complaint.

(Okay, I do have a complaint. The Victorian sense of place, of class or station, of one's social position, is so noxious to me that, even though it's historically accurate, I cringe every time characters remind themselves and each other of what isn't possible--who is or isn't allowed to cook, and who can show emotions, and who can comfort whom or sit down to a meal together or sit together at church or consider marrying. It feels so toxic and contrary to human happiness that I get irrationally angry.)

Overall, this is a well-written, cleverly-plotted novel, promising other interesting books to come. And the author (based on her youtube channel) seems like such a pleasant person, I hope she has great success. A second novel is out, so I'll be looking for that one.

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