Here's February. As usual the (non-Gutenberg) links are Amazon affiliate
ones which could, in theory, earn me a pittance should you enter the
store through one and buy something.

==

Hijack the Seas: Seismic
by Karen Chance
https://amzn.to/41Qa3hg

Once there were gods on Earth. They were not nice people. Somehow
one of them, Artemis, grew a conscience, maybe: What happened exactly
is still unclear at least as to what her motivations and ultimate
plans were, but there's no argument that she created a barrier that
drove the gods from Earth and to this day keeps them from returning.
Earth's human mages, the Silver Circle, maintain the barrier and
it's such an important task that they tend to ride roughshod over
any distractions such as the less obsessed and hierarchical witch
covens, the vampire Senates, the Fey and the demons of the hells.
Too bad they need all those people now as the gods have been fighting
a covert war to come back for years and they are getting very close...

Cassie Palmer is the Pythia, heir to the leftover energy of Apollo
a force not, quite, sapient which has devoted its wielders to the
preservation of history. It's an awesome power, so it's certainly
unfortunate that Cassie was never trained in its use before it came
to her. On the other hand this young woman, often frantic and dead
on her feet does not back down -- ever and is one hell of an on-the-job learner. With strong ties to the vampire Senates, just maybe she
can pry the Pythian court out of the stifling embrace of the Silver Circle
and forge alliances with all the other, prickly & distrustful, power centers before the godwar goes totally South...

In this outing, Cassie is in Faerie supporting her lover John Pritkin's
claim to Niume's throne. Bringing the light fey sea kingdom onside
in the war would be a major plus. Unfortunately the claims to the throne
are adjudicated by one of those fantasy trial-by-combat regimes and
being a grandchild of Ninume doesn't get you much. It wouldn't be
hopeless, Pritkin being one hell of a fighter, except he has been
cursed with a fear spell even he can't break, the contest is rigged
and their closest ally throws him in jail. Then the balloon goes up
and Cassie & Pritkin along with other, very hostile, contestants,
sea kingdom rebels and a whole undersea race who hate all of them
find themselves thrown into the one place closed off to Pythias,
where the Pythian power cannot follow. Did I mention that by
the looks of things they have lost everything and the gods are
back?

This was a very enjoyable book. I thought the series had gone off
track a bit on Cassie's long Pritkin-quest, but things are moving
right along here, and Chance continues to deftly manage likable
characters in real danger with continuing strong elements of farce.
It's a combination that probably shouldn't work, but it does and very
well. Cassie continues as well to be one of those characters who
just doesn't realize how unusual she is. The usual arc of somebody
meeting Cassie is: Is this woman serious? No, she's not serious.
Wait, I think she's serious. I would die for this woman.

My only complaint would be the continuing digressions caused by
Cassie's visions, and that did seem more under control here (and
at least she didn't get thrown into actual other dimensions while
walking to the kitchen or whatever which has happened before).

This is book 13 of the series main-line and I do believe we are
getting close to the end.


Meet the Tiger by Leslie Charteris
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72869

When I reviewed _Bulldog Drummond_ some months ago, I speculated
that series and this one shared their origins in the ferment of the
years immediately following the Great War. In fact it turns out
that is not quite true with _Bulldog Drummond_ being published in
1920 (and thus likely written in the immediate aftermath) and _Meet
The Tiger_ (sometimes _The Saint Meets The Tiger_) in 1928, some
considerable time later. Among other considerations this means
there is no real need to address what Simon Templar was doing during
the war, and that his England is more or less back on an even keel,
with the Army pillboxes installed on the coast to act as invasion
tripwires now available as rental property to those unconventional
enough to make the enquiry...

We first meet Simon Templar resident in one of those pillboxes,
situated some bit outside an isolated English coastal village, one
with no telephones and one motorcar. We are told that Templar has
a daily schedule which includes a morning swim after which he
breakfasts on whatever his ex-marine manservant, 'Orace, has prepared.

As even our first meet-up shows, Templar is not a conventional man,
so why he would maintain a routine at all is a bit of a mystery,
one somewhat solved when someone takes a shot at him on his way back
from the beach, and thus the game is afoot.

As it develops, Templar is an adventurer of sorts. Just how widely
spread and how fraught his adventures have been is never quite clear
as he is constantly full of himself and likes to wind others up,
but certainly he's been around the block. Some time ago he stumbled
into a series of circumstances that led him to be alone with a
dying, murdered man who told Templar the tale of a daring gold
heist from a bank in gangland Chicago by a group known as The Tiger
Cubs. The gold, he was told, was exfiltrated to England and this
selfsame isolated village, stored there while The Tiger worked a
clever scheme to get legal title to it. Unfortunately the man died
before he could tell Templar who the Tiger was, and, somewhat characteristically for isolated English villages, there is quite a
cast of shady characters any of whom might be that selfsame mastermind.
Also there is a local heiress who is quite easy on the eyes and has
her own problems which may or may not be related...

This is a breezy and entertaining book, though definitely not without
its problems. Charteris was well aware of those and at various
times would claim the book did not officially exist, finally relenting
to have his first novel republished with a explanatory introduction.
I would say the problems include an amazing number of coincidences,
some improbable geography, Templar relying on verve when he really
should have a plan, and a bit of characterization on his erstwhile
lady love, Patrica Holm, which ascribes to her stalwart leadership
capabilities in The Saint's absence but yet leaves her blind to
one of the most obvious contrivances in the book and forgetful of
one of the most elementary precautions (and one in which she had
been specifically instructed).

It's also a book entertainingly aware of convention (and somewhat
foreshadowing Templar's later in-universe outing as a novelist):

At last he rose to go, and she accompanied him to the gate.

"You seem quite sane," she said bluntly as they went down
the path: "What was the idea of talking all that rot?"

He looked down at her, his eyes dancing.

"All my life," he replied, "I have told the truth. It is a
great advantage, because if you do that nobody ever takes
you seriously."

"But talking about murders and revolvers----"

"Perhaps," said the Saint, with that mocking smile, "it
will increase the prominence of the part which I hope to
play in your thoughts from now onwards if I tell you that
from this morning the most strenuous efforts will be made
to kill me. On the other hand, of course, I shall not be
killed, so you mustn't worry too much about me. I mean,
don't go off your feed or lie awake all night or anything
like that."

"I'll try not to," she said lightly.

"You don't believe me," accused Templar sternly.

She hesitated.

"Well----"

"One day," said the Saint severely, "you will apologise for
your unbelief."

He gave her a stiff bow and marched away so abruptly that she gasped.

It was exactly one o'clock when he arrived home at the Pill
Box, and Orace was flustered and disapproving.

"If ya 'adn't bin 'ome punctual," said Orace, "I'd a bin
out looking for yer corpse. It ain't fair ter give a man
such a lotta worry. Yer so careless I wonder the Tiger
'asn't putcha out 'arf a dozen times."

"I've met the most wonderful girl in the world," said Simon
impenitently. "By all the laws of adventure, I'm bound to
have to save her life two or three times during the next
ten days. I shall kiss her very passionately in the last
chapter. We shall be married----"

Orace snorted.

"Lunch 'narf a minnit," he said, and disappeared.

Given that this was a originally a one-off and not expected to start
a 50 year series, and given, as mentioned, that it was a first novel,
The Saint is not exactly as we come later to know him. For instance,
he spends the whole book within the law (at least while in England)
which is unusual for the Robin Hood Of Modern Crime. Given that,
it is rather unexpected and offputting when he slugs the local cop,
something that he would never do to his nemesis the long-suffering
Inspector Claude Eustace Teal.

Did he get his prophesied happy ending? Well, he never got one
aspect of it during his entire run, but the book does end on a
bit of a risque note for a 1920s English novel...

(As a note on the text, I started reading an ebook version I bought
from Amazon, but it was an awful scan full of typos: Get the
Gutenberg edition which is completely superior. And as a side note
Harry Harrison ghosted one of The Saint's late adventures, which
may give some insight into the origin of The Stainless Steel Rat...)

A Brief, Interminable Peace: Alexis Carew #7
by J.A. Sutherland
https://amzn.to/43vroNB

Sutherland was one of the several casualties of the Covid era. He
explains that he developed severe Depression which kept him from
writing for several years. He doesn't exactly put it that way, but
I take this book as his way of easing back into the craft: It's a
smaller tale than the war stories and a more intimate one.

Alexis Carew is spending time on her home world. The events of
_The Queen's Pardon_ have left her without a command and in doubt
as to her future as an officer in the Queen's Navy. While she
misses darkspace, she's definitely enjoying spending quality time
with her lover Delaine and in fact is enjoying a nice "post-activity" skinny-dip with him when a Queen's Courier shows up to inform her
she is summoned to New London to meet the Queen herself.

Of course there are no direct flights from her fringe world to the
Capital, and even getting to a transfer point is something of a
trip so Alexis and Delaine end up signing on as crew on a ship
transporting indentured colonists to new worlds. (It helps that
this irritates the Queen's Courier who is a bit of a prig and whom
Alexis immediately got on the wrong side of). It's an old ship,
in poor repair and while the captain seems to mean well he's not a
paragon. That would probably be OK on a normal flight, but the
ship has been "unlucky" lately and crew start disappearing, space
storms strike and there's a mutiny, of sorts, in the indentures.
Somehow, as Delaine observes, Alexis always ends up in command of
*something*. If she can get through this, maybe she *will* be ready
to meet the Queen...

It was nice to spend time with Alexis again, and I do hope that
Sutherland is in a better place now and can get back on schedule.
This outing is pretty much stand-alone and there were no real
developments in the political meta-plot (war is doubtless coming
again, but we don't get any hints here) or the evil-corporation
meta-plot (Alexis does learn that some of the corporation's Captains
can be brave and noble if a bit butt-headed to begin with, but it's
doubtful that anyone at that level would be in on the grand scheme.)
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

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