Author: cherylmahoney

I'm a book review blogger and writer. I have published four novels, The Wanderers; The Storyteller and Her Sisters; and The People the Fairies Forget; and The Lioness and the Spellspinners. All can be found on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. In my day job, I'm a Marketing Specialist. Find me on Twitter (@MarvelousTales) and GoodReads (MarvelousTales).

Sailing For the Stars in 2013

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations17 Comments

Merry Christmas!  I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday!

13sfexpI’m also looking ahead to January–time for the Sci Fi Experience at Stainless Steel Droppings!  This will be my second year participating, and after the great time I had last year, I’ve been very much looking forward to it.  My plan in 2012 was to read old Star Wars books, new Star Trek books, and Orson Scott Card.

That’s pretty much my plan this year too.  🙂  Plus Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I went through a Star Wars period in middle school, read a lot of books, and then stopped when I got tired of mopping up the last traces of the Empire again.  I remember some books fondly though, and I’ve revisited some of them in 2012.  For the Sci Fi Experience, I specifically want to reread the Callista Trilogy, about a Jedi from the past who gets involved with Luke.

P1020254I have three unread Star Trek books on my shelf that I picked up at a library book sale several months ago, and this looks like the perfect opportunity to read them.  I also want to reread Federation, because it’s been a long time for that one.

I also have the first three books of the Pellucidar series by Edgar Rice Burroughs sitting on my shelf.  It’s the last one of his series that I haven’t read, so I’ll definitely be diving into those–pun intended, since they center around a world at the Earth’s core!

And as to Orson Scott Card, last year I read Ender’s Game and this year I plan to read its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, and then decide if I want to pursue the rest of the series.  Ender’s War (pictured) has both of the first two books, if you’re wondering.

I’m also very excited to join in with the Dragonflight group-read.  It’s a wonderful book I’ve been meaning to reread for a long time.

vintage-sf-badgeThanks to the addition of Burroughs to my plans, I’ve decided to also jump in on the Vintage Science Fiction Month hosted by Andrea at Little Red Reviewer.  The plan there is to read science fiction from pre-1979, and since I’ve got Edgar Rice Burroughs and “Star Trek Lives”-era novels, I seem to be right on track for that one too…

So.  I think that should be enough to be getting started with! 🙂

Christmas Round-up of Reviews

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

Happy Christmas Eve!  I will most likely be watching The Charlie Brown Christmas Special some time today, to put me in the proper mood.  I’ve written about a lot of favorite Christmas movies and stories in the past, so I thought this year I’d do a round-up of past reviews with a Christmas theme.

Books

Sometimes there’s nothing like the classics, and you can’t go wrong with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  So much in it has become so iconic, and it’s a wonderful read–from “Marley was dead” right up to “God bless us every one!”

Not at all a classic, this year I’m rereading The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig, a delightful Regency spy story set at Christmas, with a guest appearance by Jane Austen, featuring a heroine who grows into the role, and a stumbling but well-meaning hero named Turnip.  It’s funny and romantic and very Christmassy.

Movies

As mentioned, Charlie Brown is probably at the top of my must-see Christmas movies.  It’s just the most insightful 20-minute cartoon I’ve ever seen.  And a good deal more insightful than many more “impressive” movies!

Next on the list is It’s A Wonderful Life, especially the last hour.  It’s just barely related to Christmas in plot, but much more so in the themes of family and redemption and what really matters in life…beautiful.  So moving.  I don’t always watch the entire movie, but I try to find time to at least watch the last hour.

I covered several movies in a Favorites Friday last year, most notably Holiday Inn and White Christmas.  They’re not quite so insightful, but they’re light and they’re fun in the best tradition of the old musicals.  How can you go wrong with Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas”?  And he does–in both movies!  Plus Holiday Inn treats you to proof that Fred Astaire can even stumble gracefully.

I wrote out Christmas card envelopes this year while watching You Can’t Take It With You, which has nothing at all to do with Christmas except for the themes.  It’s another Frank Capra movie with half the cast of It’s a Wonderful Life, including an unrecognizable Lionel Barrymore and a quite recognizable Jimmy Stewart.

I seem to have a shortage of Christmas books!  So–what Christmas books should I be adding to my list?

Saturday Snapshot: A Party for the End of the World

On By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot16 Comments

A friend of mine had planned to host a holiday party Friday evening–and when she realized it was the last day of the Mayan calendar, it promptly became a Holidoom party, with appropriately-themed food and activities.  There were Ground Zero Grilled Cheese sandwiches, Dinosaur chicken nuggets, a Chocolate Tar Pit, and Zombie Gingerbread Men.  And I am happy to report that we saved the world in a truly epic game of Pandemic.

It was a pot-luck, so before the party I set myself thinking along the lines of puns…and cooked up a dish of Mushroom Clouds, Radiation Leeks and Mutant Yellow Tomatoes.

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I couldn’t come up with much in the way of themed-clothes, but I did wear my skull-and-crossbones socks!

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Heading to any holiday parties this weekend? Ever been to a party with a stranger theme?

Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!

A Masked Man Walked Into a Bar…

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday2 Comments

Several weeks ago, the Blog Hop topic centered on characters from different origins meeting each other.  A fascinating subject–and one I’ve played with before, as I once wrote a few friends short stories for their birthdays, centered around the idea of a group of their favorite characters hanging out in a tavern together.

Just for fun, I thought I’d share the opening of one of those stories, “Masked Men and Zombies.”  I’m not sure if it will make sense to anyone but my friends, but if people are amused, perhaps I’ll share more another day.  🙂

I don’t own any of the characters in the story (except the squirrel), no copyright infringement intended, etc., etc.  And by the way, this will make a lot more sense if you’ve seen this video from Eddie Izzard.

******

The date was March 24th.  The year was absolutely impossible to determine based on the people present.  But it was definitely March 24th, in a tavern whose location is also somewhat vague.  From whatever street it fronted on, in a city unknown, a man was entering.  He was tall, dressed all in black, and had a vaguely menacing air.  Considering this tavern, and considering the inspiration behind its population, from this description there were at least four distinct individuals this could have been.  The fact that he was wearing a mask did not narrow things down.

The unidentified masked man (hereafter UMM, until we latch onto a name) strode into the tavern and crossed through the crowded room to the bar.  To all appearances, there was no one at said-bar.  Said-UMM slammed one black-gloved fist on the countertop and demanded, “Bartender!”

A slightly drunken pirate popped up from behind the bar.  “You rang?” Continue reading “A Masked Man Walked Into a Bar…” →

The Private–and Public–Life of Elizabeth I

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews2 Comments

LegacyI think you know that I love Susan Kay’s Phantom.  But I won’t gush on about it (for the third time); I mention it only as context for why I decided to read Susan Kay’s Legacy.  And to acknowledge that I set the bar unattainably high for this book.  I didn’t really expect it to be another Phantom–but can you blame me for hoping?  Well, it wasn’t another Phantom (but nothing is) and while it was good, in the end I feel a bit…mixed.

There are actually some resemblances between the two books.  Just as Phantom explores the life of the Phantom of the Opera, from pre-birth to post-death, Legacy explores the life of Queen Elizabeth I, from Anne Boleyn’s first flirtation with King Henry VIII, all the way up to Elizabeth’s death.  We follow Elizabeth from a precocious child to an adrift young girl, to a clever woman in mortal peril from shifting politics, to a masterful queen, to a legend (or even a goddess) in her own time.  And we see the various men who orbited around the Virgin Queen.

While the focus is on Elizabeth, just as it was always on Erik, Legacy has a wider-angle lens.  Phantom has a scope across decades and continents, but Legacy plays with the intrigues of courts and the ups-and-downs of European history for nearly a century.  Kay spent 15 years writing Legacy and it shows, in good ways and bad.  It’s obviously meticulously researched, and while I appreciate and am impressed by the historical details…it also means that it’s a book about history as much as it is about Elizabeth.  So if you like British history (and I do), this is masterfully presented–but it also removes us from the characters to some extent.

The characters are also difficult.  You may tell me that the Phantom of the Opera should not be relatable–but Kay’s version is.  Legacy is populated by the royal court of England, and almost without exception they are self-serving, conniving, power-driven individuals with very little loyalty and few qualms about selling one another out for political advantage–even if the one they’re sacrificing is a sibling or a wife.  I fully believe this is based in real history so I’m not claiming it’s not plausible–but it doesn’t make for a group of characters that I’m going to get attached to.

The book is interesting all the way through, but it was a good 300 pages (or about halfway) before I much started caring about anyone.  I did eventually care about Elizabeth, and about the two most constant men in her life–childhood friend and quasi-husband Robin Dudley, and chief advisor Lord Burghley.  They’re the two people Elizabeth comes closest to having genuine relationships with, and I think that fact goes a long way towards my caring about all three.  The third man in Elizabeth’s life is the Earl of Essex, but you’ll have to wait quite a while for him to arrive!

Part of the difficulty getting engaged with the characters may have been the point of view.  Phantom alternates first-person narration, so you always know exactly who’s talking to you.  Legacy is omniscient, or a frequently-changing third-person limited (I have trouble telling those two apart) so we’re not as grounded in any one character.  The center is Elizabeth, but we get her story from constantly shifting eyes.

And there’s a lot of narration telling us the history.  The book isn’t dull history, or entirely history–there are romantic moments and moments of high drama and emotional tension.  But there’s also a lot of history.  Often very interesting history…but somewhat heavy history too.

The end of the book is ultimately quite sad, and if you know the course of Elizabeth’s life, that’s inevitable.  Because it’s history, I don’t think it’s giving much away to say she starts to lose her grip by the end.  Kay tells it well and it’s moving–although I realized that the end of Phantom is heart-breaking, tragic and beautiful, while the end of Legacy is just sad.

So the final verdict?  It’s a masterful piece of historical fiction–but be prepared that you have to be just as interested in the historical as in the fiction if you pick up this book.

Other reviews:
QG’s Book Reviews
The Misadventures of Moppet
A Girl Walks into a Bookstore
Rosebush Maze (also offering Phantom comparisons)
Confessions of an Avid Reader (who felt there was not enough history…so opinions may vary!)
Whew, popular book!  Anyone else?