#21 - The Queen's Dollmaker by Christine Trent

331 pages, Historical Fiction

The Queen's Dollmaker is the story of the life and love of Claudette Laurent, a French woman making her living as a doll maker in England, during the French revolution. The story begins with young Claudette, still living in France, having a chance meeting with young Marie Antoinette, sent to France from Austria to marry the king. Claudette's initial impressions of the young princess shape her opinions of the French royalty in the years to come.

After the initial meeting with the princess, the story flashes forward to Claudette's late teen years. There is a devastating fire in the Paris quarter where she and her family live, and nearly everything in her father's doll shop burns. While the family tries to help their neighbors, Claudette's parents are killed. Penniless and now an orphan, with no friends or family to call upon for aid, Claudette finds herself wandering to the docks. There, she meets a man promising to pay the fare of any French women who want to go to England to become 'maids'. Once they are gainfully employed, they will pay him back. She is naively taken in by this offer, and boards the ship to England.

Aboard the ship, Claudette befriends Beatrice du Georges and her daughter Maguerite. Together, the three barely escape the clutches of the ship master and find themselves employed as maids by an overbearing, social climber of an English matron who both hates and exploits their nationality. Throughout this harsh employment, Claudette and Beatrice save up enough money to finally escape servitude and begin their own business making fashion dolls. Though this endeavor too has a rocky start, Claudette is eventually excels in her sphere; her dolls even catching the eye of the French monarch herself. This seemingly benign career choice leads Claudette down a path of adventure, hardship, betrayal and eventually love and redemption.

The lives of the historical figures in The Queen's Dollmaker - Marie Grosholtz, The Princess de Lamballe, Count Axel Fersen, King Louis XVI, and most notably Queen Marie Antoinette - are blended together with the fictional quite masterfully. Chapters about life at Court and Marie Antoinette's troubled monarchy and marriage mirror Claudette's difficulties. The Queen fails to understand why the people do not love her as she loves them, because she has done nothing differently from any preceding monarchs. The Queen strives to eschew the ornamentation that comes along with her station, and uses a considerable amount of money to create a pastoral life on the grounds of Versailles. This contrast with Claudette's financial struggle for independence makes the French Revolution seem inevitable.

The opulence of the wealthy; the filth, despair and wretchedness of life in a Paris prison during the revolution; the horror of the guillotine; the house arrest and murders of the royal family - all are told faithfully and from the perspectives of the true historical figures of the royalty and the fictional yet still realistic experiences of Claudette.

Not being a huge fan of historical fiction, I purposely chose a story about a period with which I was already familiar. It was very interesting to me to read about the revolution from the royal perspective as well as that of someone more common. Not that I don't understand the desire to break off the bonds of the monarchy's irresponsible leadership and oppression of the French people, but I have always been appalled by the tactics used by the revolutionaries in France. This part of the tale was very emotional for me. The fictional part of the story - Claudette's life and love - was interesting but had too much of the soap opera feel for my taste. All in all, it was an enjoyable book, but it, like most historical fiction, just made me want to read history instead. I would give it 3 out of 5 stars.

#20 - Naamah's Kiss by Jacqueline Carey

645 pages, suggestion

Let me just come right out and say that I sort of recommended this book to myself. I saw it on the shelf at the library and, being a fan of Carey's work, decided that I must read this book. There was no way around it - I cleared my schedule and got to reading. Seriously. Now that I come to writing about it, I have to ask myself, how does one sum up a 645 page book in a couple of paragraphs? Particularly one as engaging as Naamah's Kiss. When I googled reviews of Naamah's Kiss, almost every single review used the word 'lush' to describe Carey's prose. I couldn't put it better myself. Carey has masterfully created a rich and intriguing alternate history of our own world. Her prose is stunning, and I laughed and cried in various places throughout this book, just because of the beauty of her words.

Naamah's Kiss is the first book in the third trilogy set in Carey's alternate historical world, with at least part of the action taking place in Terre D'Ange. The first trilogy is the story of Phedre, and begins with Kushiel's Dart, and the second trilogy is the story of Immriel, and begins with Kushiel's Scion. Because I really don't think I can sum this one up succinctly, I have included the summary from the book jacket:

FROM THE BOOK JACKET:
Once there were great magicians born to the Maghuin Dhonn; the folk of the Brown Bear, the oldest tribe in Alba. But generations ago, the greatest of them all broke a sacred oath sworn in the name of all his people. Now, only small gifts remain to them. Through her lineage, Moirin possesses such gifts - the ability to summon the twilight and conceal herself, and the skill to coax plants to grow.

Moirin has a secret, too. From childhood onward, she senses the presence of unfamiliar gods in her life; the bright lady, and the man with a seedling cupped in his palm. Raised in the wilderness by her reclusive mother, it isn't until she comes of age that Moirin learns how illustrious, if mixed, her heritage is. The great granddaughter of Alais the Wise, child of the Maghuin Donn, and a cousin of the Cruarch of Alba, Moirin learns her father was a D'Angeline priest dedicated to serving Naamah, goddess of desire.

After Moirin undergoes the rites of adulthood, she finds divine acceptance...on the condition that she fulfill an unknown destiny that lies somewhere beyond the ocean. Or perhaps oceans. Beyond Terre d'Ange where she finds her father, in the far reaches of distant Ch'in, Moirin's skills are a true gift when facing the vengeful plans of an ambitious mage, a noble warrior princess desperate to save her father's throne, and the spirit of a celestial dragon.



Having read the other six books set in this universe, Naamah's Kiss definitely has a different flavor than the Kushiel books. Perhaps it is because Moirin is only half D'Angeline, or perhaps it is because this book deals more with Naamah than stern Kushiel. There is still a fair amount of sex in this book, and (as with the other books I have read by Carey) it follows the D'Angeline precept "Love as thou wilt". One thing I enjoy about Carey's style is that even the sex scenes are beautifully written - cheesy play by play sex scenes of crappy romance novels they are not.

Naamah's Kiss crosses over to many genres - it has elements of romance, high fantasy and alternate history. If it is like her other trilogies, this will also be an epic adventure and love story as well. I highly recommend this author to anyone who is looking for a new fantasy type series to read. And, I think I would start with Naamah's Kiss rather than her complete series. This one is much easier to follow for someone new to the series, and (as discussed above), the sex scenes are...different in the other books. I give this one a 4.5 out of 5.

#19 – The Final Key: Part two of Triad by Catherine Asaro

339, Science Fiction

After I read Schism (see post #18), I just had to read the final book in the duology. I am still not sure why this was a duology rather than a single book - too long, perhaps? There were quite a few loose ends to be tied up in Schism – what would happen to Althor? Would Shannon go home or not? Was Soz going to finish military school? What the heck was going on with Eldri? Who would Kurj pick as his heir? These and many other questions were abuzz in my mind when I started The Final Key. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting – it literally began with the last chapter of Schism. Any answers to my questions were not exactly forthcoming.

Even though I had all these burning questions in my mind, it was much more difficult for me to get into The Final Key than it was for me to get into Schism. Perhaps it was because I wanted my questions answered that I initially wasn’t really so interested in the main focus of the story – The Dyad. It could also have been that this was one of the science-y parts of this science fiction novel. In Asaro’s universe, space travel is possible because highly gifted empaths have some degree of control over where they are going. If they are good enough at military school, the chosen empaths are equipped with nano technology that makes them a sort of cyborg. Well, a mechanically assisted being at any rate. They can communicate with their ‘node’, and their node, in turn, can communicate with their space ships, etc to allow space travel.

The most gifted of empaths, the Ruby Pharaoh (Soz’s aunt) and the military leader, Kurj (Soz’s half brother) use special chairs called Dyad chairs to impose their consciousness into the web of space. While using the Dyad chairs, they can sense everything that is going on – Kurj can direct the military while the Ruby Pharaoh can manage communication and other travel through space. As the Skolian society grows, Kurj and the Ruby Pharaoh are increasingly taxed as they are called upon to hold the fraying threads of the net of space together.

As the Cold War style standoff with the Traders finally becomes open war, events are set in motion that forever change the structure of the Dyad into a Triad – with, it appears from the Final Key, alternates who can help lift the burden off of Kurj and the Ruby Pharaoh. I was gratified that my questions were answered, and there were resolutions to the serious issues left open-ended at the end of Schism. Additionally, the introduction of the Triad has certainly piqued my interest in the series as a whole. While I didn’t enjoy The Final Key as much as Schism, it was still satisfying to read. I would give this one a 3.5 out of 5.

#18 Schism: Part one of Triad by Catherine Asaro

389 pages, Science Fiction

One thing that is true of most Science Fiction and Fantasy books is that they are part of a series. There is just something about both of these genres that lends itself to the lengthy saga. One of the downfalls to reading a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy is that this section at my local library is usually fairly scant. When you do find a book that looks intriguing, it is usually one of the middle books in a much larger series. When I found Schism: Part one of Triad, I thought 'Finally - the start of a series!'. While I was incorrect about this book being the start of a series, I discovered with a little internet checking that it is a good entry point to the Skolian Empire series by Catherine Asaro. So, I commenced with the reading.

Although it is the tenth book in this series, Schism is apparently a 'prequel' if you will, going back to an earlier point and describing what is undoubtedly an important part of the history of the series as a whole. Schism sets up the initial hostility between the Skolian Empire and the Traders, and gives a lot of back story to Eldrinson and his many children, central figures in the Skolian Empire because of their empathic ability.

Schism starts off in the idyllic setting of Lyshriol, which, for all its beauty, seems to be a somewhat backward planet in comparison with the technological advances of the Skolian Empire. The principal characters are the of Eldrinson's older children: Soz – the brilliant warrior princess whose father wants her to stay home and have babies; Althor – the strapping, gorgeous star fighter who is banished from home for his 'unnatural' attraction to other men and Shannon – the delicate, elfin child whose extreme empathic nature makes him leave his family in search of others like himself.

Having initially fought with his children over their desires to broaden their horizons and use all their abilities to join the Skolian military, Eldrinson rethinks his position when Traders come to Lyshriol and he is captured. He endures terrible torture at their hands, and comes to the realization that he was foolish to be so old-fashioned about his children's dreams.

I really enjoyed this story, and I couldn't wait to get the next book from the library. Truly, the end of Schism was so emotional. And it just – ended. The rift between Eldrinson and Soz was healed, but there were so many things left unresolved. I couldn't get my hands on The Final Key quickly enough. I have read several reviews where people assert that this was just 'mining the back story' to sell more books, and a kind of rehash of earlier events. Having never read anything in this series before, I certainly couldn't tell.

Being primarily a fantasy reader, the events on Lyshriol were really enjoyable for me. The constant cutting from Lyshriol through space to the military school where Soz and Althor were students made the book a page turner. Just when I got involved with one part of the story, Asaro would cut to the other part, and I would get involved in that. All in all, this was a great book, and one of the better sci-fi books I've read. In some ways, the un-advanced planet vs. the technological behemoths reminds me of Dune (quite possibly my favorite sci-fi book of all time). I would definitely give this one a 4 out of 5, and I look forward to reading all the books in this series!