Obsidian Prey by Jayne Castle

This book is one of Jayne Ann Krentz's science fiction Harmony books when a group of humans left earth and landed on the planet Harmony and set up a base there.  But the curtain between the planet and earth would close and these colonists would be stuck with each other, for better or worse.  Aliens had once lived on this planet long ago and left it.  They are believed to have lived underground in the catacombs that are made of some kind of green mineral.  Over the years, the humans began to develop psi abilities which allowed them to use amber to "rez up" things such as cars, microwaves, cell phones, locks, etc... Some would develop particularly strong psi talents that required the use of amber to do, such as tuning amber (it has a unique frequency and if you go into the catacombs without tuned amber you will wander around until you go mad and die), read auras, handle and create  "ghosts", or UDEMs (electrical energy that manifests in the form of a ghost) in the catacombs, music talents, botany talents, the ability to find and handle minerals, the ability to use alien technology.  The list is pretty endless. There are also dust bunnies, mysterious creatures with an endless apatite, who come and go as they please, collect the oddest things and form attachments with humans. They have the loyalty of a dog who always knows when you need him and the independent streak and the insistence that you take care of his needs first of a cat. They're adorable.

When Lyra Dore first started receiving the purple orchids with the card "We belong together" she knew they could only have come from one man: Cruz Sweetwater, the man who broke her heart and her bank account three months ago when his family took over an amber ruin that she had found and shown to him believing him to be a buyer under another name.   Instead, he reported it to the government, who in turn gave the contract to Amber Inc. to take care of, which is his family's mining company.  She went broke trying to sue him in court to get the claim back.  It also turns out that the Sweetwaters and the Dores have a long history of not liking each other.  The Dores have no luck, while the Sweetwaters are lucky as hell.  

At an art gallery, Lyra spots Cruz and he comes over and insists he needs to talk to her. She thinks this is when he is going to give his big apology and beg her to come back to him, but no, there are five men trapped inside of the ruin and no one can open the trapdoor, would she help?  He also still needs someone to tune the amethyst amber they found in the ruins and she is the only one they've found qualified to do so.  Lyra can tune amber of any kind and do special things with it.  The Sweetwaters are also amber tuners but they often have a second ability too: a hunter talent of some sort.  Cruz can generate a psi fog confusing your senses by using his obsidian amber.  He can also hunt down a psi print someone left behind.  They also know, quite quickly when they meet them, who the person is they are so supposed to be with forever. And for Cruz that is Lyra. 

Cruz asks her out to dinner the next night and Lyra's friend and the gallery owner, Nancy convinces her to go.  Nancy handles Vincent's, Lyra's dust bunny, art work.  They sell it under a false name and some mysterious buyer has been buying them up.  The money has been going toward paying the bills Lyra owes after losing the court case.  After dinner, they are attacked by two thugs who produce some ghosts. They want to kidnap Lyra and take out Cruz.  But Cruz takes them both out and calls in the Ghost Hunters Guild to have them deal with them and get any information out of them that they can.  Lyra was caught in his fog when it happened and she thought she was having another one of her hallucinations that she has been having. They happen during the day and everything looks warped and nightmarish.  

Cruz tells her that the feeling she had was caused by him and his talent.  He also tells her that the men getting trapped are just the latest incident at Amber Inc.  One of the relics was stolen and a lab tech was murdered.  He believes that someone is setting her up and he plans to stick to her like glue til this is sorted out and then forever after that because she's the girl for him.  He may not have sent the orchids, but he tells her his feelings for her never stopped. The only problem is that his company seems to really need her services and maybe he'd say anything to get them.  Will she ever be able to trust him again? 

Lyra is a real stubborn mule who refuses to believe anything Cruz or his family says about him having a broken heart over her or him telling her that in his family they know when they meet the one and she is meant to be his.  She just thinks it's about hot sex and getting her to work the amber. The two fight like cats and dogs sometimes, neither willing to give an inch.  But what could you expect from a Dores and a Sweetwater?  

This book is really great and lives up to the expectations from the other books in the series.  As usual, you don't need to read the other books in the series to read this one, but they are worth reading.  For once you start off with the man already knowing that he belongs to the woman and has a plan in place to get her back.  That she doesn't follow the plan is what makes the book so much fun.  These two were a real treat to read about and Cruz's family was quite interesting too (Big Jake the cantankerous grandfather and Jeff the cousin who wants to be the first to leave the family business and work for the police).   This was a real page turner and full of surprises.  I can't recommend it enough.

Link to Amazon:   https://www.amazon.com/Obsidian-Prey-Harmony-Book-6-ebook/dp/B002DW93BU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502717722&sr=8-1&keywords=obsidian+prey+jayne+castle

Illusion Town by Jayne Castle

This book is one of Jayne Ann Krentz's science fiction Harmony books when a group of humans left earth and landed on the planet Harmony and set up a base there.  But the curtain between the planet and earth would close and these colonists would be stuck with each other, for better or worse.  Aliens had once lived on this planet long ago and left it.  They are believed to have lived underground in the catacombs that are made of some kind of green mineral.  Over the years, the humans began to develop psi abilities which allowed them to use amber to "rez up" things such as cars, microwaves, cell phones, locks, etc... Some would develop particularly strong psi talents that required the use of amber to do, such as tuning amber (it has a unique frequency and if you go into the catacombs without tuned amber you will wander around until you go mad and die), read auras, handle and create  "ghosts", or UDEMs (electrical energy that manifests in the form of a ghost) in the catacombs, music talents, botany talents, the ability to find and handle minerals, the ability to use alien technology.  The list is pretty endless. There are also dust bunnies, mysterious creatures with an endless apatite, who come and go as they please, collect the oddest things and form attachments with humans. They have the loyalty of a dog who always knows when you need him and the independent streak and the insistence that you take care of his needs first of a cat. They're adorable.

The founders also insisted on what is called a Covenant Marriage.  If you have one of these, it is nearly impossible to get out of.  You can pay to get out of one, but you will be broke by the end of it. The founders believed that close connections were important if they were going to survive. And these days no one gets out of being nagged by some family member about getting a CM, even the gays.  The founders also set up what is called a Marriage of Convenience, which was basically a classy way of saying you were shacking up with someone.  It could be broken at any time, by either party.

This book takes place mainly in Illusion Town, a kind of Las Vegas whose motto is "Where the thrills are real." It is set out in eight zones: the Fire and Storm Zones are uninhabitable due to intense paranormal radiation, the more opulent casinos and nightclubs were in the Amber and Saphire Zones, the low-rent enter gambling establishments and racier shows were in Amethyst and Emerald, the Dark Zone was a neighbourhood community with a few gambling places and clubs but was mostly where people who worked in the casinos lived, and the Shadow Zone was the least prosperous of the zones and whatever glamour it had was only visible at night and during the day the casinos were closed which is unheard of in the other zones.

Hannah west, a dreamlight talent who dream walks, has a shop set up where she is known as the Finder since she is able to find lost objects.  She was left with a couple Clara and Bernice who had a magic act together by her parents who died in a drug deal gone bad. Her mother left her with a crystal necklace that was to be her inheritance. Hannah has just found the missing piece of crystal which forms a map to the Midnight Carnival a very special find that she files a claim on.

The book opens with Hannah and one of her former clients, Elias Coppersmith finally agreeing to go out on a date.  When Elias heads out he finds out something bad has happened and the promise he gave Hannah that he would not ask her for a favor goes down the drain. The next thing the two of them are in a cheap motel trying to remember what happened. Worse, Elias has a certificate on him that says the two of them are in and MC.  What would possess them into getting an MC and what would cause them to lose their memories? The answer to the last question is quickly answered that they were psi-burned, which can cause memory loss. Now it's only a matter of trying to figure out what happened.

A fortune teller's slip of paper you would get at a carnival is in her purse and she believes that they must have gone to the Midnight Carnival and they quickly remember it was to escape the bikers. They figure out the bikers must have been trying to stop Hannah from working to help Elias's company who has men stuck behind a waterfall of dreamlight that was triggered while they were mining Ghost Town nearby. So they figure the best way to get the bikers and whoever is out to stop them is to get the job done.  Of course, they don't realize the commotion their marriage will cause in the DZ (Dark Zone) where her family is or in Coppersmith's family or workplace.

The more Hannah tries to brush off the MC as nothing the angrier Elias gets.  Both of them are falling for each other of course but Hannah cannot believe that she is capable of having a relationship with a man due to her dreamlight talent and he's a rich Coppersmith to boot. Elias on the other hand does not see any obstacles. Of course when the job in Ghost Town becomes more complicated than it at first appeared and it seems that more people are after Hannah the two must learn to trust each other as never before in order to survive this ordeal, after all in Illusion Town the thrills are real.

Quotes:

She hurried up the stairs, reminding herself that the two of them had been through worse during the night. They had been attacked by a motorcycle gang. They had been psi-burned. They had gotten married.

-Jayne Castle (Illusion Town p 100)  

Hannah watched the very still men in the street. “Are they--?” “Alive.” Elias glanced at the devise in his hand. “I think. Still working out a few bugs in the crystal-ware. I didn’t want to risk using it with us inside the car, not at that power level. Too much chance of blowback. Might have taken us out, as well.” She swallowed hard. “I see. Wow. Okay. Who needs a bodyguard when you’ve got an engineer handy.” 

-Jayne Castle (Illusion Town p 125) 

“You’re not exactly normal. Neither am I. Coppersmiths don’t have a problem with not being normal. You could say it’s a family tradition.” “You don’t know how much that means to me,” she said. “Thank you.”  “It’s not a compliment, damn it. It’s just a fact.” She smiled. “It’s the best gift you could have given me tonight.”

-Jayne Castle (Illusion Town p 147)

“Life is simple for a dust bunny,” he said, “It’s a priorities thing, I guess. What didn’t kill you in the past isn’t worth obsessing about and there’s not much point trying to anticipate what might try to kill you in the future.” Hannah wrinkled her nose. “Because whatever it is, it will probably come from the one direction you least expect it to come from.” 

-Jayne Castle (Illusion Town p 206)

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Town-Novel/dp/0515155756/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482936581&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=Illusiion+Town

 

 

The New 52! Suicide Squad Volume One: Kicked in the Teeth by Adam Glass (Writer), Federico Dallocchio (Artist), Clayton Henry (Artist), Ransom Getty (Artist), Andrei Bressan (Artist), Cliff Richards (Artist), Ig Guara (Artist), Scott Hanna (Artist), Val Staples (Colorist), Allen Passalaqua (Colorist), Jared K. Fletcher (Letterer)

This reimagined Suicide Squad opens with them being sent out to deal with a plague centered in a football stadium. The members are Deadshot, Diablo, Harley Quinn, Savant, Spider, Voltac, and King Shark.  After killing everyone in the stadium except a baby which is the package they are sent to get, they leave and await evac.

But instead of evac their implants inside their necks which can be triggered to explode at any time by Waller, the head of the Squad who works for the government, are recalibrated for another thirty-six hours so they can do another job.  They are criminals and are working off their sentences by doing dangerous jobs no one else wants to do.

Added to the Squad are YoYo and Boomerang, who has been put in charge of the group and given a switch for everyone's implants.  Boomerang and Deadshot have a bad history together and he can't believe that Waller put him in charge of this mission.  But Deadshot got infected at the stadium and he's in no shape to lead. Hopefully, the baby will provide a cure.

Just what is Waller playing at here with putting Boomerang in charge and having them go out on another mission so soon?  And when Harley finds out the Joker's dead there will be hell to pay.  Deadshot just wants to keep going for his little girl and the visitation he gets and Diablo wants to make amends.  The rest want to get out as soon as possible. The use of color is bold and slaps you in the face especially when it comes to Harley Quinn and Diablo's letterbox is black with red letters which fit him and is very cool, if at times hard to read.  The plot is really quite great and sets up a very interesting series that I can't wait to continue.  

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Suicide-Squad-Vol-Kicked-Teeth-ebook/dp/B008RNK76E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502456645&sr=8-1&keywords=suicide+squad+the+new+52+volume+1

Moon Dance by J.R. Rain

Samantha Moon once carried a gun and hunted down the bad guys while working for HUD in Orange County California and had a happy marriage.  But that was six years ago. Until one fateful night when she is attacked and left for dead by a vampire and becomes one herself.  Now she works as a private eye at night while taking care of her two kids during the day after a short nap that leaves her feeling sluggish.  To drive the minivan, which has tinted windows, she slathers herself with sunscreen and wears clothing all over herself and a big floppy hat and makes a mad dash for it under the detached garage.  She might burn a little bit but heals fast. Her kids and family believe that she has a skin condition that makes it so she cannot go out in the sun.  Her sister Mary Lou knows the truth and helps out however she can. Her husband Dan set up a delivery service with a butcher to get cow's blood so she doesn't feed on humans.  She is able to stomach certain alcohols such as certain types of wine but they have no effect on her and they have no taste. She can also drink water. She still drinks them to give herself a sense of normalcy especially when she is out with her sister at their favorite bar talking about her vampirism, Dan's cheating, and her latest case.

Her latest case involves Kingsley Fulcrum who turns out to be a werewolf but is also an excellent defense attorney who has gotten off lots of people some of them guilty as sin and real bad guys.  Recently in front of the courthouse, he was shot five times in the neck and head and he wants Moon to find out who did it. The police are saying it was a random shooting and are getting nowhere.  Samantha finds herself attracted to Kingsley but fights it because she is still trying to save her marriage not just because they once loved each other, but because Dan will take the kids if he divorces her.

Moon goes to see Detective Sherbet at the Fullerton police station in order to get a copy of the report on the shooting of Kingsley.  It's just her luck that he is a sharp detective and tells her after seeing her that he believes that she either has a skin condition that prevented her from meeting him at any time but night and also accounts for her looks or that she is a vampire.  He gives her the file and his ten cents worth of advice on the case. He also believes that it was connected to a client but he doesn't have the resources to go through all his files and chase down all those leads.  She's welcome to do it and good luck to her. He hopes that she'll share what she learns with him. She says yes, but in reality, she plans on telling him only what she wants to and only when she wants to.  But she likes Sherbet.  He's a good cop.

This book will keep you guessing as to who the killer is.  You also really feel for the trials and tribulations that Samantha goes through in her life as a mother and wife.   Moon is also a real smart ass and has a way of trying to see the bright side of things in a darkly humorous way.  This is a great start to the series and I highly recommend it.

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Dance-Vampire-Hire-Book-ebook/dp/B002Q0Y27Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502282068&sr=1-1&keywords=moon+dance+jr+rain

  

Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God, and Genius in the Music of Prince by Ben Greenman

Greenman is a free-lance journalist, a critic, a man who has helped others write their story (Questlove, George Clinton, and Brian Wilson), and has written both fiction and non-fiction works.  He is also the biggest Prince fan ever and owns nearly every Prince song there is to be had.  I mention this in order to show that he is qualified to examine Prince's music and making determinations about it.

Prince was an extraordinary artist who was quite prolific, destroyed the notions of race and gender, and "redefined the role of sex in pop music".  Prince was like a machine who never stopped making music often staying up all night then waking up early the next morning.  He was obsessed with it. He had side projects where he mentored others and produced their records, writing the songs on the albums.

Most of these groups or solo acts were made up of women. He also offered help to those who were already established, such as Stevie Nicks (who actually asked him), Paula Abdul, Bonnie Rait, and more.  His female groups really begin with Vanity 6. They had very minor success even though Vanity wasn't the greatest singer. Vanity would be replaced with the woman who played the female lead in Purple Rain, Apollonia, and the band would be renamed Apollonia 6. While she had a better singing voice, the songs were too good and lacked the "punkish insistence" of Vanity 6.  Some of the songs that were meant for Apollonia 6 ended up going to others, such as the Bangles ("Manic Monday"), Shelia E. ("Glamours Life") and Prince himself ("17 Days").  Shelia E. and Sheena Easton, both protegees of Prince, benefitted greatly from working with him. But that was not always the case with the protegees who worked with him. Ingrid Chavez was no winner and neither was Carmen Electra, Tamar Davis or Bria Valente and let's please forget Kim Basinger.   Jill Jones was another exception of a protegee that worked out.  He worked with her on and off throughout the 1980s and finally released her album in 1987 which "offers a nearly perfectly disillusion of the Minneapolis aesthetic synth-heavy funk loaded with double entendre, heartfelt ballads, and layered vocal arrangements." He was a Svengali, however, his connection with his own female identity meant he was just as caught in the web as they were.

On all of Prince's albums, he always gave thanks to God. He had a faith in God that came out in his music. On the song "Let's Go Crazy" it starts off with a church organ and a sermonesque talking bit about the afterworld.  He recorded a song called "God" that was subtitled "Love Theme From Purple Rain" that was put on a B side. In America and Britain it was instrumental, but elsewhere there were words that described the end times and how you should dance in response to it.  The song "Temptation" describes how Prince let his carnal desires keep him from the divine.  "Sometimes It Snows In April" shows Christopher Tracy as a Christ figure waiting for resurrection.  "The Cross" couldn't have been more plainly faith-based.

The book also covers sex in his music, race and politics in his music, why he changed his name and the chaos that ensued, his frustration with his fans and the internet, what he was like on stage, and how he was able to produce so much for so long.  This book was an odd if somewhat interesting read. The author reminds you of the English major who sees symbolism everywhere when sometimes a lyric is just a lyric so to speak.  He does love the music but is not too blind to admit when a song sucks.  I also have to say his knowledge of the music is unparalleled.  One thing I really enjoyed was the list of albums and songs at the end with his pick of one song from the album and a brief description of why it was so good.  Overall this wasn't such a bad book. It was highly informative and gave this Prince fan some songs to hunt down.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dig-If-You-Will-Picture-ebook/dp/B01MRU59CS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502109433&sr=8-1&keywords=dig+if+you+will+the+picture

  

The Good, the Bad, and the Emus by Donna Andrews

This is the one of the funniest in the hilarious Meg Langslow mystery series, all of which are named after birds (the first is Murder With Peacocks, but others include: Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos, We'll Always Have Parrots, Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, Stork Raving Mad, Some Like it Hawk, The Hen of the Baskervilles, and Lord of the Wings).  Meg is a blacksmith who lives in a small college town in Caerphilly, Virginia with her husband, a drama professor at the college, their two children, her parents who live next door (including her "retired" father a doctor who is obsessed with mysteries and in solving any murder that happens in their area and her mother a classy woman with excellent tastes, that do not always agree with Meg's idea of decoration).  In their large house on a farm they bought, they have found various family members living with them, including Rose Noir, a vegetarian who makes things with herbs and such to give away and sell and her brother Rob, who passed the bar, but never wanted to be a lawyer, but created a killer game about lawyers, that his company, that is wisely run by someone else, has made him a lot of money and Rob has continued to create more successful games.  They also live with many farm animals and two dogs: a small dog named Spike, who is extremely vicious and people avoid, and Rob's Irish Setter, who may be sweet, but is so large and has been taught to jump on people, that some are scared of her too.  Meg also has a great many family members on her mother's side that are hard to keep track of, and frankly remind me of a friend of mine, who is also from Virginia and has a large extended family.  If you need anything done, there is always someone in the family who can.

A few books back, Meg's father found out that the famous animal rescuer and television star, Dr. Blake is his father.  In this book, Blake has hired a PI to find the woman who fathered the child he never knew about and could not find after he had to go on a quick trip to the Gallipolis Islands.  Meg is said to look exactly like her.  The PI has found a woman, Annabel, living an hour away, who is the cousin of the woman, Cordelia, whom he thinks is Meg's grandmother.  A recluse, she only agrees to meet with Meg if she helps to solve the murder of her cousin, six months ago.  She believes it is their evil neighbor, but other suspects soon begin to turn up, when Dr. Blake finds about the wild Emus living in the area, who were released into the wild by their owner, a rancher who could not make a go of it.  These Emus are causing problems for the town and people are starting to shoot them, so Blake, with his followers and cameras, arrive to make a rescue.  Then, someone gives Blake a poisoned bottle of scotch that he gives to another man, who almost dies from drinking it.  But that is not the last victim.

Meg soon finds herself becoming close to Annabel, even though she is slightly resentful that her grandmother lived so close by, but never got in contact with them and now she is dead, while Annabel is still alive.  Cordelia was interested in buying back the farmland they had sold and created a pottery and art studio and place for artists to sell their wares, but she is not the only one interested in that property.  She had it checked for mining purposes by an environmentalist who said it would be a disaster and not worth it for the minerals inside to go through with.  However, others would like to open a mine there and just might do anything to have that happen.

While Meg begins to suspect that one of the volunteers who came with her grandfather to help with the emu rescue may be the killer, she cannot figure out why. It will take all her skill and her notebook that tells her when to breathe to figure this one out.  This really is a great book in the series that adds to the history of the Langslows by allowing Meg to find out about her grandmother.  I cannot recommend this book enough.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Bad-Emus-Langslow-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00HP1I7UM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501855070&sr=8-1&keywords=the+good+the+bad+and+the+emus

Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambly

This is the fourth Benjamin January novel in the series about the doctor/piano player who lives in New Orleans in the 1830s as a Free Man of Color.  This is perhaps, so far, one of her most serious and dangerous books in the series.  January has just been recently robbed and is in need of money, but that is not what ultimately makes him take on this job for the policeman Shaw.  January's former master, Simon Fourchet is having trouble on his sugar cane plantation, Mon Triomphe.  The slave's food has been poisoned, a butler murdered when he snuck a drink of Fourchet's liquor, and another slave killed in a fire in the mill.  There are voodoo marks everywhere and Fourchet believes there is the possibility of a slave revolt, but he is not entirely convinced and wants to hire January to uncover the truth.

After some convincing by his sister and Rose, he reluctantly agrees, mainly because there is a good chance that if something is not done, the slaves will be punished severely for this.  There had been a revolt in 1798 on Fourchet's family plantation, but most of the slaves were caught and killed.  So January leaves behind his Parisian French for the African patois of a field hand (there are many different dialects of French in the area).  He pretends to be his violin player friend Hannibal's personal slave.  Hannibal, who suffers from consumption, is invited to stay on Fourchet's plantation when his health takes a turn for the worse.  January, who was too young to work in the cane fields before being freed by his mother's lover, still remembers how things work on one, and is placed in the fields since they do not have enough hands.  It is hard work and January's tender, piano playing hands are soon blistered and bleeding and he is aching all over from working from sunup until dark.  It will take a while for him to recover and be able to play again at the winter balls if he can survive this at all.

He makes friends and begins to find out information about the slaves, such as the relationship between Quashie and Jeanette, who is being forced to have sex with the evil overseer, who has it in for Quashie and blames him for anything that goes wrong on the plantation by having him severely whipped, as when the sugar cane knives go missing and are mostly destroyed.  On the plantation, women are given, in a sort of marriage, to male slaves in order to get more work out of them.  Kikki, for instance, is first given to Reuben, until she lets Madam Marie-Noel Fourchet, a sixteen-year-old cousin of the Doubrey's who owns a large piece of land and have a complicated history and are upset at her for marrying Fourchet, who now has a chance of owning her father's plantation, Refuge, lets her marry Gilles, the murdered butler.  She is Fourchet's third wife, the other two having died.  The first gave birth to his eldest son, Robert, who was away in Paris with his annoying wife and children when the trouble first began.  The second son, Esteban, is the only surviving child of his mother. The others were believed to have been killed by the slave nanny.  Robert makes many overtures toward his stepmother and seems to have feelings for her that it appears she does not share.

Mohammad, the old blacksmith, provides January with information, including the whereabouts of the slaves when the various incidents occur.  It is indeed a true puzzle because it appears that a slave or former slave is causing the trouble.  But why?  Or maybe it is one of Fourchet's many enemies, which include Trader Jones who trades illegal items to slaves and others and is hated by everyone up and down the river.

January has Hannibal return to New Orleans and talk to Shaw about looking into Fourchet's will and his son's activities in New Orleans.  He is only supposed to be gone a day, but when a couple of days pass, January becomes quite worried.  He has a signal he places on a post visible to the ships passing for Shaw to know that he is ok.  He places a different colored neckerchief for each day of the week.  When two slave cabins catch fire along with some other buildings, Fourchet is affected in a minor way by the smoke and needs to spend some time in bed.  With each day, however, he gets sicker and sicker.  Now January is terrified because the Ney brothers are in league with the Doubreys against Fourchet and the Ney brothers are known for grabbing any slave and selling them upriver and January is in danger of having this happen to him.  His only option is to take down the handkerchief and hope that Shaw gets the message and him and Hannibal return in time to save him.

This is a dark novel that really explores the life of a slave on a cane plantation, which is the hardest type of plantation to work on.  You can actually get an idea of the complicated relationships between master and slave and that not all masters are good ones, like in Gone With the Wind, or evil, like in Uncle Tom's Cabin.  This, in my opinion, is a truer account of a slave's life and how throughout, they manage to find happiness when and where they can, however fleetingly, and endure, no matter what they are put through.  This is also a story of the evil found in the hearts of humans that can lead one to consider and commit murder and other acts of violence.  This book is a true tour de force and a worthy read. 

Quotes

Hell, thought January, stumbling on blistered feet, aching, his mind curiously clear.  What window had the ancients looked through, to see that Hell would actually be a Louisiana sugar-mill on a November night?

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 67)

 

January recalled what the Romans has said, that Death was Freedom for a slave.

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 101)

 

Given the Creole system of keeping land and family together and everyone living and working under one roof, I’m a little surprised there aren’t more murders in such households.

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 110)

 

As Cinderella would probably tell you, even a prince who only recognizes your footwear is preferable to a lifetime cleaning out grates.

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 111)

 

You can’t defeat the army, he thought. But if you lie quiet in cover you might save yourself and win a skirmish or two.

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 125)

 

How is it women can sit and talk about men, and they get all prickly and hot when they think men are talking about them?

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 136)

 

In the few moments over the past four days when he wasn’t sound asleep or wishing he could be, he missed Rose desperately, and, though he felt childish for doing so, missed his piano nearly as much.  Missed the godlike logic of Bach, and Vivaldi’s wry grace.  Missed the peace they brought to his mind and his heart.

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 143)

 

Behind every great fortune there is a great crime, my dear Theo.  Surely you know that.

--Barbara Hambly (Sold Down the River p 281-2)

 

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