A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Elayne, Aviendha, and Mat come ever closer to the bowl ter'angreal that may reverse the world's endless heat wave and restore natural weather.  Egwene begins to gather all manner of women who can channel - Sea Folk, Windfinders, Wise Ones, and some surprising others.  And above all, Rand faces the read Forsaken Sammael, in the shadows of Shadar Logoth, where the bloodhungry mist, Mashadar, waits for prey.

Book 7, and the half way point through the Wheel of Time series.  There are only 7 more books to go, well to review anyway.  I've read the first 10 books so many times over the years, that it's rather amazing that I don't have them memorized, despite the overwhelming amount of characters, plots, and concepts that Robert Jordan explored in the series.  Of course, those who have read the series more than once know that it's impossible to remember everything that goes on, or whom everyone is.  Every reread, brings my attention to something I may not have really understood the other times I had delved into this world.  Every read feels like something new and fresh.  I guess you could call it rediscovering my WOT virginity.

Within the pages of this book, Lan resurfaces with Myrelle Berengari, the Green Ajah Aes Sedai his bond was transferred to when Moiraine disappeared.  Since it wasn't done with his permission, though Moiraine did have very good reasons for doing so, Lan is despondent and ready to give up.  When Egwene, who is working to consolidate power as the rebel Amyrlin Seat, discovers what's going on, she uses the knowledge to get Myrelle, and the other Aes Sedai helping her, to swear fealty to her.  She also sends Lan to help Nynaeve and Elayne in Ebou Dar.  Hopefully giving Lan a reason to live again, his love for Nynaeve.

And speaking of Nynaeve, she is quickly becoming my favorite female character this time around.  Between battling a Forsaken and wrestling with her issues, she is showing me a side to her strength I'm not sure I paid much attention to before.

Not sure I've mentioned Brigitte, the hero out of legend who is ripped into the current timeline and becomes Elayne's first Warder.  Right now I like her, though I liked her better in Tel'aran'rhiod, the World of Dreams where all the heroes tied to the Horn of Valere.  She seemed a bit more human, which is odd given the nature of her presence there.  In the current timeline, with all her memories of her former lives, she almost seems to be caught in a space between human and demigod.  Though I will say her temper and overall behavior, things that are supposed to make her more human, grate on my nerves a lot.

Also, Tom the gleeman who was with the crew from the beginning, and Julian Sandar are all over the place in terms of how I feel about them.  They are two of the second tier of characters, that while I understand their purpose, I never feel all that attached to them.  I like them, I like how the interact with Mat, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Brigitte, but they don't matter to me much in the grand scheme of things.  Though I will say, in the earlier books, I really do enjoy Tom.

And can I say how much I'm getting annoyed with Rand and how he feels for Min, Elayne, and Aviendha.  He loves them all, they love him, and while I know it's an unusual situation, if they can deal with, so can he.  He just needs to frickin get over it already, and accept how he feels.  Though Aviendha, I still don't like you as much as I want to, though Min is starting to get on my nerves for some reason.  She hasn't in the past when I've read the books, so not sure why she is registering so negatively with me this time.

Siuan Sanche, I am loving you more and more as time goes on.  The deposed Amyrlin Seat is coming along nicely in her character development and in helping Egwene figure out the true strengths of the position.  And I love her with Gareth Bryne. They play off each other so well.  When they are together, you almost forget she used to be the most powerful woman in the world, and that he is one of the greatest military minds of any generation.

The only other thing of great importance in this book is Rand's desire to go after the Forsaken Sammael, who was ruling Illian.  The fight takes some important turns and has consequences that won't be felt for books to come.  I do like that there final battle destroys Shadar Logoth, thus allowing Mashadar to combine with another character in such a way that changes things for the rest of the series.  Though I must say right now, I still hate the character that it attaches itself to.

One more observation though, I hate the Sea Folk.  They are almost as bad in temperament as the Seanchan and the White Cloaks. There are obvious differences between the three groups, but I can't stand any of them.  For all I'm concerned, the Forsaken are better than them.  Though even there, I hate the "new" Forsaken.

Other Books in the Series:

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven 
Lord of  Chaos

Giveaway Winners!

I recently had two giveaways, and I am delinquent in drawing the winners.  I have no excuses, so all you will get are apologies.  So with no further ado, the winners are.....

The winner of a hardcover copy of Born on a Mountaintop: On the Road With Davy Crockett and the Ghosts of the Wild Frontier is..... Emma of Words and Peace!

The winner of my Wichita Art Museum giveaway is.... Tasha of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Books.

Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013

Growing up, even as an American, I was in awe of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  Here was an individual, who as a woman, rose through the political ranks to become one of the strongest and most capable leaders to run any country, let alone the United Kingdom.  As an adult, despite disagreeing with almost all of her politics, I still stand in awe and of respect for her.

You don't have to share someones politics, to recognize the amount of influence they had over their country,and over large portions of the world.  She, through talent and willpower, set out to turn her country back onto what she thought was the correct path.  Over her long political career, she had to prove time and again that not only was she capable of doing the job, but she had to overcome other people's misconceptions of her.  No matter what else you may think of her, you can not say she didn't prove her doubters wrong.

She passed away of a stroke on 4-8-2013.

New Jack Swing on Wordsmithonia Radio

If I couldn't have grown up in the 20s or 30s, the 80s and 90s would have been my second choice.  Of course it helps that's when I was actually growing up.  I think whether we are talking movies or music, those four decades brought us huge leaps in innovation and creativity.  There was such a feeling of levity and joy in both forms of media.  Even in works that were meant to make you cry or think, were made with this pure joy that comes across both visually and audibly.

Being a child of the 80s, and I do mean child, I was born in 76, 80s and early 90s music has been stuck in my brain for as long as I can remember.  I'm addicted to the stuff, especially certain styles that just brings a smile to my face when I listen to them.  Last month I gave you some examples of Freestyle, this month it's going to be New Jack Swing.

As a sub genre of music, it really had its roots in Freestyle, Jazz, R&B, Hip-Hop, and popular dance music.  What Freestyle was to the Latin communities and clubs, New Jack Swing was to the black clubs of New York City and other major metro areas.  It features the vocal and lyrical qualities of R&B against a backdrop of Hip-Hop and dance beats.  Much like Freestyle, it relies on drum machines and synthesizers for much of the rhythm.

The number of artists who put out New Jack Swing albums is as large and diverse as R&B music itself.  Some of my favorites are Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, Bell Biv Devoe, Johnny Gill, Ralph Tresvant, Paula Abdul, Keith Sweat, Guy, Al B. Sure, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Johnny Kemp, Whitney Houston, Karyn White, Sheena Easton, TLC, Babyface, Boyz II Men, Jade, En Vogue, SWV, and I could go on an on.  I'm not going to, because I think you got the point.  What a lot of us think of popular 80s/90s R&B is classified as New Jack Swing.

Now I'm not going to be posting videos by all of those I mentioned above, but I thought I would post a few of my all time favorite songs.

That Which is Crooked by Doris Miles Disney

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Prissy, puny Wally Howard knew hot it felt to be the runt of the litter.  His father had deserted him, his mother ignored him, and his siblings hounded and humiliated him.  Brother Henry, that cur, stole the only girl Wally ever cared about, and bitchy sister Ginny, who ran things, kept him on a short leash.  And there was that nosey little pup of a niece, Anne, always sniffing around looking for trouble.

It was a dog's life, all right, but Wally wasn't about to roll over and play dead.  Because he knew a few tricks - and all of them involved murder.

Back in May of 2012, Becke, the moderator of the Barnes & Noble Mystery Board, introduced a thread on Doris Miles Disney.  She was an American mystery author during the Golden Age of mystery writing, but she wasn't one I was familiar with before this introduction.  I was intrigued by some of what Becke had to say about her, and  what some of my fellow participants said after they read one of her books.  It wasn't a long discussion, but it was enough for me to put her on my list of authors I look for when I go to a used bookstore.  So when I found one that had an interesting blurb on the back, I picked it up and took it home.

In the beginning, I was really enjoying myself.  I already knew that Wally was going to be our main killer, there is no way you can get around that if you read the back cover.  So when his character is the first one we get to see, and to know, I was hooked.  The book progresses through the years, so right now, Wally is but a young boy, but there is something a little off about him.  We learn some information, about a baby sister dying in the crib and his father's violent death, that just doesn't sit right.  You know there is more to the story, but this is a kid we are talking about.  Why should any reader start to suspect him of anything right away?  If anything, you just think he's strange and twisted by the two deaths he's already been exposed to.

As he gets older, his desire to be the apple of his mother's eye and his hatred of his older brothers continues to grow.  He's never happy.  He thinks his mother doesn't love him as much as the others, and for a boy that desires nothing else but to be that one special kid, this burns him up inside.  Of course it doesn't help that his older brothers see him as a runt.  In their eyes, he is a puny boy who would rather put flowers together, than be outside working on the farm.

As Wally continues to grow up, he continues to get odder and odder.  He takes a job at a bank, "woos" a young lady for two years, but never takes it anywhere, and lives a life that seems to be a cover for something else.  He still hates his brothers, including the few that have died over the years.  One of them died in a bar fight, the other died falling off his front steps.  Wally and his sister-in-law are both there when it happens, and Wally quickly comes up with a story to make it appear to be an accident, when it was actually a result of a confrontation with the dead man's wife.  Both the woman and her son, are then beholden to kind uncle Wally for the rest of the book, and it proves to be the nephew's blind spot for years to come.

All Wally ever wanted was to be was comfortable and loved by his mother, so when his brother Henry comes back to town, Wally feels threatened.  It's Henry that steals Wally's girl.  It's Henry that takes her away and comes back with a baby in tow.  It's Henry, that years later, is still humiliating and bullying Wally, sometimes in front of Wally's "degenerate" friend, the local pharmacist.  Wally can't bare to be shamed in front of his friends.  He doesn't want anyone to look at him any differently, and since Henry is threatening that desire, Henry is the next one bumped off.  He is killed in such a way that it looks like an accident.  That event will promise to be the start of his ruin.

Henry's death destroys their mother, who sickens and eventually dies.  His mother never seems to forgive the slowness in Wally's reaction time, a slowness that may have doomed Henry to a watery grave, instead of a quick save.  When she passes, Wally's older sister, Ginny, is put in charge of the house and the fiances.  And they live like this, well into old age.  Wally, Ginny, and Henry's daughter Anne, one big "happy" household.

They live in the house for years.  Wally working his bank job, Ginny living a cold spinsters life, and Anne growing up in a household where one of the two adults hates her, the other spoils her.  Now Wally tried his best to hide his disdain for his niece, but he just couldn't help but show it at times.   Most of his strange behavior is attributed to being an old bachelor, who hangs out with the wrong kind of men.  They are the kind of men that Ginny considered degenerate, and it's for that reason, Ginny refuses to leave her estate to Wally.  It's also one of the reasons Ginny decides to sell the home, the home Wally has lived in his whole life.  You can probably figure out who is going to be the next to die.

But it's that last murder, the poisoning of Ginny, that forces Anne to reevaluate her uncle Wally and the years she spent with him.  After Ginny's death, he starts acting even stranger and in such a way that Anne's hackles are risen, though nobody pays all that much attention to her.  Even the young man she has fallen, the previously mentioned nephew, doesn't really believe her.  It's that blind loyalty to Wally, that forces Anne to maybe think he is in on the whole thing.  And when Ann starts to piece together what she remember of her father's death, a death she witnessed, Anne starts to fear for her own life.

Wally, who by now is in his 60s, isn't fooled by Anne.  He knows something is up and that Anne is about to put all the pieces together, so he waits for her one night, and the two of them have it out.  He not only confirms her beliefs about Ginny and Henry's deaths, he admits to killing that baby sister in her crib, and shooting his father.  It's too much for Anne, and Anne knows she's next.  Thankfully for everyone, the young man arrives just in time to help rescue Anne, and witness Wally's suicide.

When I sat down to type this review, I wasn't planning on it being this long, or so detailed.  What I really wanted to talk about was how I reacted to the book as a gay man.  I understand the book was written in the early 40s, and that some allowance needs to be made for that, but I'm having a hard time doing so.  Everything Wally is, everything Wally does is blamed on his being weak, prissy, puny, and not masculine enough.  It's his friends Ginny blames for his selfish behavior and for his inability to take care of himself.  While the author doesn't come out and say Wally is gay, everything points to that.  And his gayness is then blamed for what he does, as if it were a disease.  Now granted, it was considered a mental illness then, but tying his murderous, sociopathic heart to the fact he is gay, is just a bit much for me.

I'm not willing to say that it ruined the book for me, though it came pretty damn close.  I tried to be calm and collected when I was reading the book, but it took all my willpower to do so.  I wanted to sit the author down and let her know her ideas of what a gay man is like, are completely wrong.  That we aren't murderers who take out our family remembers when they threaten our depraved comfort.  Since I can't do that, I need to vent in this review.

With that all being said, I'm glad I read the book.  I'm even willing to read another by her, but if it deals with the same sort of subject matter, I'm also willing to say I'll be done with her.  I will not read a third book.

Challenges: VM (Amateur Night)

Annette Funicello, 1942-2013

I'm too young to remember Annette Funicello when she was on the Mickey Mouse Club, though I have watched episodes of the show when she was on it.  When the Disney Channel first came into existence, it aired repeated episodes.  And while I enjoyed the show, it was her movies with Frankie Avalon that have stuck with me since I was but a wee lad.

For the most part, those movies are older than I am, but they were on TV all the time during my childhood.  And while they aren't great examples of cinematic fine art, they are a lot of fun to watch, and the music was always a joy to hear.  It's throughout those movies, that I first experienced the music style of that era, and it's a music style I love still today.

She lost her twenty-six year battle with multiple sclerosis earlier this week, and she will be missed and remembered for her music and the joy she brought to her audience.

Lost Ecstasy by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Kay Dowling - young, lovely, and spirited - was used to luxury, expensive pleasure, and the gentlemen who could afford them.  But when she accompanied her wealthy family to her late grandfather's ranch, it was ordinary Tom McNair who caught her eye.

But when Tom was arrested for a not-so-ordinary murder, Kay's life was suddenly turned upside down.  No one but Kay believed in his innocence.  And now someone was out to silence Tom - or take revenge; Kay wasn't quite sure which.  But she was determined to help Tom prove himself.  Even if she had to put her own life in danger to do it...

First off, this synopsis, other than the bare bones of it, has nothing to do with the book.  It makes Kay sound like a floozy, flitting from man to man until she meets Tom McNair.  Since there is only one other man in her life, her father's secretary, that even has a remote claim on her, she doesn't really seem the type of girl to flirt up a storm.

It also makes the murder and the revenge scheme on Tom sound like the main plot points of the book, which is so far off the mark, it makes me laugh even thinking about it.  First off, it wasn't a murder, it was a ranch hand shooting at an Indian who was stealing cattle.  That same Indian took months to die, and then it was from the bad care he got, not the gunshot.  Now the revenge part is true.  Another Indian follows him across the country, after he's joined a traveling circus/wild west show.  That same Indian does try to kill him, but Kay's life is never in danger.  All told, I think those two aspect of the book took up maybe a third of the pages.

The other two thirds is taken up with this rather bizarre romance between Kay and Tom.  It's so filled with self doubts on both sides, that I wanted to pull their hair out in frustration.  They both go back and forth on whether or not they like each other, or are right together.  Then when her father has enough of it, he packs the family up and goes back to New York.  Tom follows a little later, once he is about to be arrested for the shooting, and while at first it seems they will get together, there is a misunderstanding and he goes back home.  Once there he joins a the traveling shows, ends up back in New York, where our two love birds meet up once again, and decide to get married on the spot.

The action then takes us back to Wyoming, where the spoiled little rich girl is trying her best to be a rancher's wife, in what her family thinks are squalled conditions.  Needless to say, the rest of the book details a fight, her moving back, him pouting and feeling bad for himself, and joining the traveling show once again.  He just happens to end back up in New York.  They just happen to run into each other again and after some fighting, decide to live happily ever after.  And he still refuses to take her families money.  The End.

So if you couldn't tell, this is not my favorite Mary Roberts Rinehart book.  It has elements of two genres, western and romance, that I really don't care that much for.  To tell you the truth, if this had been set outside of a western setting, I may have been able to deal with the almost pure romance aspect of it more than I was able to.  The combination of the two, just didn't do anything for me.  There was mystery and intrigue, but not near enough of it for me.  Not even close to the amounts I've come to expect from her books.  I have a feeling this should not be shelved within the mystery section, but should be regulated to the romance department.

Challenges: VM (Yankee Doodle Dandy)