Powell's Books - View All of Barbara Gordon's Customer Comments

: Barbara Gordon, September 15, 2008
This was my first Joyce Christmas mystery, and my last. The blurb suggests that it's Old Home Week for fans, with two favourite sleuths together, and the author might have done better to write just for the fans, and omit the background material on each character and her relationships, material which was repeated and expanded in every chapter. The style was leaden and clunky, and all the characters spoke in the same stilted, formal way, except the outrageously southern one, who spoke the same way but with an accent.
The identity of the murderer was held back in a contrived and hand-waving way, while every other bit of motive and plot-twist was painstakingly explained by author voice-over, leaving next to nothing for an alert reader to figure out--perhaps just as well, since after a few chapters I was more drowsy than alert.
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: Barbara Gordon, December 3, 2007
Pratt takes an admirable chance in beginning with an unlikeable character. Heroine Marla Mason is flawed, but able (eventually) to learn from her mistakes. The secondary characters like the witty and equivocal Rondeau, and holy fool B kept me going through the opening chapters, and with the introduction of chained god Chang Hao, I realised I was in a different sort of urban fantasy, one with a strong hint of Tim Powers weirdness, and settled down for the ride.
I did find the narrative somewhat clunky, with infodumps and repetition of info, which might have gone better in a first-person narrative. For instance, the injury Marla did to Rondeau was dumped on the reader without much need, then, much later in the book - and far more effectively - admitted by Marla to an ally. While I liked the thought that went into providing a backstory to the first novel, I'm now dreading that each new entry in the series will fill it in once more, plus whatever happened in each book since.
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: Barbara Gordon, April 24, 2007
Uneasy blend of high fantasy and kitchen sink drama. The background, very obviously drawn from Czarist Russia, makes this intriguing, but the main character drags the story down with her self-absorption and pettiness. Much potential tension is lost because there is never any doubt that Dion, 'the most powerful demonslayer in the world' will meet any magical challenge she comes up against, while being unable to manage her personal life even half-competently. The story clicks along at a good pace, but I kept wishing that Routley had chosen Kitten or Dally as her viewpoint character, and left Dion at home sulking.
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: Barbara Gordon, March 21, 2007
Absolutely the best book on vampires. With an engaging, conversational style, Barber takes the reader through the first reports of vampires in the 1700s, examining the folkloric vampire, and how the vampire of literature grew from those unpromising roots. His close comparison of the natural processes of decomposition to the 'clues' to a vampire's grave make for fascinating reading, though I don't recommend eating while doing so. Any serious research on vampires should begin here.
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: Barbara Gordon, March 7, 2007
An excellent debut novel. Written with lyrical clarity and a loving eye for the natural world, this retelling of the Swan Brothers folktale brings depth and complexity to the characters while preserving the wonder and magic of its fairy-tale setting.
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