Hollow Eyes (Salt Lake After Dark #2) by J.K. Walker

Jazz is embracing her role as the supernatural’s trouble shooter – and the city’s homeless population being preyed upon definitely counts as a problem for her to fix.  Finding out who is responsible and making them stop definitely adds a complication to the holiday season.

A complicated situation that isn’t made any easier by a berserker arriving in town determined to force one of her friends to fight – and he’s willing to target Jazz to force AJ into the ring.

I don’t know how much time has passed between this book and the first in the series, it doesn’t expressly say and it doesn’t need to. The development of the characters alone has created the sense of time without having to expressly spell it out – it’s very neatly done.

Especially with Jasmine. Jazz has transitioned excellent from the first book to her new role as the Council’s trouble shooter. She didn’t ask for it. She may not even like it – but she does take it seriously and I like that. Sure it wasn’t a role she sought out but she recognises it as a role that’s important and a role that comes with a lot of responsibility. Linked into that is her own strength and confidence and desire to prove herself. Does this mean she always makes great decisions? No, she’s driven to solve the problem in the book and she’s determined to do it herself with relatively little help. But, unlike so many reckless Urban Fantasy characters, Jazz actually sells this. She’s driven to solve this because it’s her job, her responsibility and through that her place in the supernatural community. More, it’s her role given by the leaders of that community very quickly because they respected her abilities. She can’t let someone else take it over without implying they were wrong (even if any sensible person would and the Council won’t hold it against her). There’s this ongoing message from Jazz that started in the last short story – this is her job, she takes it seriously and this is what she has to do. Not because she’s the chosen one or the only one with the special woo-woo or anything else (in fact, there are moments where it’s expressly made clear Jazz isn’t the strongest of them all, not even close) – but it’s her job, her role, her responsibility. It’s not pride, or not pride in the arrogant sense or over-confidence – it’s responsibility and duty that drive Jazz as well as a deep well of compassion.

I also like that she’s a female character, in this genre, who is most strongly defined by her female friends. She has a close circle of excellent, close female friends she relies on, she spends time with (and that’s social time – not just “hey I need something, come help”) that is growing if anything. They’re a far more dominant and powerful part of her life than her male friends and even than her love interest (who still needs to drop the awful Cajun accent).

Other good development comes from Mitchell, the hard-ass werewolf leader who is always so abrasive and controlling. I initially thought we were looking at a wannabe dictator but he has a lot more nuance than that. Yes he’s controlling and arrogant, but he also legitimately cares about the community – all the supernaturals – quite possibly more so than any other leader. In fact, he may be the only leader who can or who wants to take point and help the community as a whole – the head witch we haven’t seen much of, head vampire Victoria is doing her level best not to be the Supreme Queen of the area, which is hard because she’s the biggest, baddest thing in town. The werecats are few in number and too independent. Who else but Mitchell can lead? Like Jazz, responsibility seems to drive him. It’s really nice to see that develop alongside her – and alongside Victoria who seems mixed between being friendly and terrifying and in a really awesome

Sunstruck (The Bigfoot Mysteries #1) by Polenth Blake

Ben is the new member of the Spokane Ecology Board, after his predecessor was murdered. Of course, it isn’t generally known what the full nature of the job entails – policing and investigating problems with the supernatural community of Spokane. A community Ben never knew about before – and certainly isn’t a part of.

It comes with a partner – Ari. A Bigfoot. She’s hoping this job will earn her some respect from the Bigfoot colony that has made her an outcast – she doesn’t have a great deal of experience with humans. Her predecessor has also been murdered

Both of them face something of a learning curve. But they have to learn fast – whoever killed the people before them may be targeting them next and, with the evidence heavily tampered with, the perpetrator may be one of the few people they need to trust.

Given that, Thunderbirds having a temper tantrum in town seems quite minor.

This is a neat murder mystery – it’s a story with lots of interesting little twists and tangents that unfold as the book progresses at an excellent pace. It has a few nifty red herrings that are thrown in with skill and aplomb, we have some action that’s in keeping with the characters. It’s a good plot and it has some points I really appreciated – like the action scenes not being one-on-one fights (because why going into such equal battles?) and the enemy not being so simplistic as is common place.

But the story is a far better vehicle for the world and the characters

The characters are excellent – Ari and Ben bounce off each other, flounder together, annoy each other, try not to annoy each other, fail to understand each other but keep bouncing back and coming together again trying to decide whether to sit down and figure out what happened or to Not Talk About It. They have pasts and experiences and fully realised characters that I just want to burrow through

If it weren’t for the world, the characters would be the best thing about this book. But the world, with the different supernatural groups, hefty amounts of Native American tradition, entirely newly created lore in places sprinkled with politics, tensions and strong connections to themes of colonisation – is even better.

There was a lot of Native American tradition and beliefs in this book and even without the bibliography at the end you can tell that there has been some research gone into them which is always great to see and helped contribute to the richness of this world (along with the development of the Bigfoots mentioned below). The combination and blending of well researched actual tradition and beliefs with really well founded and well made fictional worlds made for a very strong setting

Mountain Echoes (Walker Papers #8) by C.E. Murphy

Joanne has barely had time to process what happened in Ireland when she receives news her father is missing. She quickly returns to North Carolina, to a place she hasn’t been since a child, to discover not only is her father missing, but so is the man who fathered her child.

He Master is there, seeking to tap into the devastating pain and loss suffered by the Native Americans to power evil beyond imagining; unless they can stop it.

But also there are the people Joanne long left behind, not all of whom are that willing to welcome her back, even if she has finally embraced her legacy of a shaman. There’s also Aida, the son she gave up at birth and a powerful shaman in his own right – and a source of both emotional and mystical turmoil.

Joanne has, in many ways, completely her journey of development in this book and the last book. Last book she confronted so many of the issues she had with her mother – and this book she does the same with her father and with Aidan, the son she gave up for adoption. It’s not easy, there’s some heavy emotional content there, but it’s handled in a very reasonable and mature level – no dramatic angst, not seething rage, no losing their sense of priorities or avoiding the actual plot and disaster they are facing. It also reflects Joanne’s personal growth – she has finally decided to put away her desire for an instruction manual – because she has been doing this for some time now and she’s been managing and achieving great things. Joanne acknowledges her own skill – her own mastery. When her dad does things differently, she accepts that they do things differently, not better or worse. When she does something her dad says is impossible, she doesn’t think she’s doing something wrong, she just knows she does something different from her dad.

Joanne has reached an excellent point where she is willing to learn from others, but not feel inferior for it and not feel like she has to do anything their way – while still being confident in her skills and her achievements and finally settling on the idea that she is strong, she can do things others cannot and there’s no problem with her doing just that. Even if it is unwise at times. It’s a wonderful development after books of denial, books of panic, books of her messing things up epicly through ignorance and confusion and now her finally reaching the end of that path. I love her growth

Not just with magic – but relationships as well, recognising her old problems, her old grudges, when she was often unfair or unthinking or how her perception was skewed. Through a more mature, wiser eye, Joanne looks back at herself and her old home and a fair whack of complex feelings about it

Black Arts (Jane Yellowrock #7) by Faith Hunter

Jane has three jobs in this book – Katie, Leo’s unpredictable second-in-command vampire, wants her to find where two of her working girls have disappeared to; previous good friends of Jane. Leo himself is having a great big shindig and wants Jane to handle the security just in case they’re invaded by werewolves again – especially since the guest is a new addition to Leo’s vampires and he doesn’t trust the man one iota. As ever, Leo is engaged in a long game of lots of subtle plotting and has firmly cast Jane in the role of doing terrible things he can then deny he had any part in.

And Jane’s best friend, Molly, has disappeared. Her husband Evan arrives in town, distraught, knowing only that Molly was heading to see Jane when she disappeared – and that she doesn’t appear to want to be found.

Throw in some deadly vampire magic, some lethal magic artefacts, a whole lot of revelations and a side order of closure and Jane has a very full plate to handle.

We spent a lot of interesting time in Jane’s head this book. Firstly, this is the book where everyone knows she’s a Skinwalker – everyone she meets is told. Jane’s reaction to this is excellent and complex, with both a feeling of exposure after having kept her secret so long but also a vast feeling of relief. She can now talk about these things with people, she can talk about her history, she can be open about her abilities and it’s amazingly freeing. She’s happy to use her sense of smell or her strength (and make it clear to people “Not human, deal with it”, if it shocks them). This brought a lot of her history out in the open for everyone to know, her nature and her abilities which sets us off in a whole new direction and tone for the books.

Jane’s ongoing struggle to reconcile her job and the things she has to do with her strict moral upbringing and her own sense that she is not a good person. She also has the battle between her Christian faith and her returning memory bringing more and more of her Cherokee beliefs to the fore. It’s a wonderful crisis of identity and morality that has been at the margins of Jane’s character for a long time and it really comes to a head in this book.

There was a bad moment – Rick. I hate Rick. No, that’s not fair, I don’t hate Rick, Rick is not a bad character. What is bad is what happens to Jane whenever Rick is around – she becomes a lovestruck fool, her sense of professionalism goes out the window and her emotions get in the driving seat. Some of these are natural reactions, but Jane takes it to the next level – including having to run out of a function she is chief of security for, while the big bad is right there, so she can go be weepy in a corner. Sorry everyone, play nice for half an hour, our chief warrior is bawling her eyes out.

Reveal (Cryptid Tales #1) by Brina Courtney

Shay has always been able to see ghosts, ever since her father left their family when she was 6 years old. It had always been her secret that she kept hidden while she tried to lead a normal life

Until she found Hugh, a very attractive guy – who can see ghosts as well. But seeing ghosts is just a tiny fragment of the truths he can reveal about her nature, her heritage and her father

And the dangers they – and the world – face.

The world is fairly interesting. We have people, Cryptids, with various abilities  due to their DNA being spliced with animal DNA (cats) leading to  the ability to see ghosts and shapeshift and some sundry other abilities which will no doubt arise. None of these abilities are especially original or shiny but nor are they particularly clichéd. It’s nothing exciting but it can work as a background – except the whole building around it is mind numbing.

The way they came about these powers is original – which is good because it’s absolutely freaking ludicrous. One’s ancestor drinking cat’s blood is a ridiculous origin story. Hey, I would be Super Pork Man, empowered by black pudding to be really tasty! This follows ongoing world building shakiness is exacerbated by things like her dad making Shay, our protagonist, super duper powerful by giving her his genes. He removed his ghost-seeing genes and injected them into her giving her… uh… extra Cryptid genes I guess.

I kind of glaze out and try not to think about it too much or my head hurts.

A lot of the rest of the world building is just so generic or, at least, horrendously underdeveloped to make it seem generic because we don’t have any details to make it more than generic. For a large part of the book the enemy is literally called “The Darkness.” Beyond making me want to snark about reaching for torches, it’s so vague and pointless.

This is later developed into Native American mythology – the Darkness is apparent Malsumis – a malevolent figure in Algonquian and Abenaki beliefs. I can’t say I know much about either belief system on which to comment except to say – Native American woo-woo and animalism! Brown people woo-woo strikes again! And my admittedly limited googling points to these being people being from the North-eastern US so the whole rural Texas reservation seems odd (the reservation made up of a dozen people who don’t deal with any other Native Americans seems odd too). This legend is pretty much the extent of delving into any Native American culture (the tribe/nation isn’t even named) and I can’t esc ape the feeling that it’s there for woo-woo justification. The flip side is we are blessedly free from the more blatant stereotyping though poverty is very much apparent.

As a villain in the book, Malsumis isn’t presented in a particularly menacing or dangerous way. People talk about him as dangerous and that’s about it – he wants to destroy the world and/or humanity. Ok, I can get behind a malevolent deity that literally exists to cause nothing but destruction – but I need that to be sold to me. A creature with literally no motive in life except utter destruction of everything is not going to be very human – they need to be inhuman to sell the whole mindset as believable. The Malsumis presented is all too human – and not very menacing with James Bond monologues, cursing out his minions and with the deadly, scary ability to turn to mist and he ended up running away in the face of pretty unimpressive force. He needed more oomph.

And why does he have minions? How do you even get followers when your remit is “the utter destruction of absolutely everything”? Does he offer a really good benefits package or something?

But the main reason why all of this falls flat is that there’s little coherent plot that goes anywhere. There are plotettes.

Demon Hunts by (Walker Papers #5) C.E. Murphy

Joanne and Billy are now the woo-woo team – the pair with supernatural abilities who help with those cases that are just too weird for anyone else. So when people show up dying and partially eaten but without a scrap of any kind of forensic evidence on the bodies, it’s time to call them in.

But even magic can’t work miracles and there’s a limit to what even they can sense, much to their frustration. What they do learn is that their enemy is far more dangerous than they imagined and is going to take some… unorthodox messages to track and stop

Thankfully, Joanne is pretty good at unorthodox methods – as she proves not only to the people around her but also to Coyote, her mentor, finally free from a supernatural coma. In his absence Joanne has grown considerable and they have to refind their balance with what she’s learned, how she’s grown, the path she is on – and the fact they’re both in the real world, in the flesh.

It’s another fun mystery – with a lot evolved. The progression in how the police force treats Joanne and Billy has excellently developed through the series to Morrison now overtly recognising them as his woo-woo experts. The mystery itself is interesting and, while it is quickly solved in terms of “whodunnit” the how to stop it part of the story maintains some excellent tension and questions to keep the story going. The story is really well paced without any lags or moments of boredom, confusion, or vast leaps of logic. But the star of this book has to be the characterisations

I really love the introduction of Coyote, and I really thought I wouldn’t. I expected his presence to shake his mystique and it did. But it did it extremely well because it not only humanised him but helped Joanne to grow. Coyote is a person. He’s more knowledgeable than Joanne, in many ways more capable and Joanne and has powers and skills Joanne can’t touch.

But he is a person and he isn’t god. There are areas where Joanne is better suited than him, there are areas where Joanne is more powerful than him and there are things she can do which he cannot. And him showing up didn’t turn this into a story that focuses on Coyote, Joanne is still the protagonist, she is still the one investigating, she is still the one in charge and the one who makes the decision in her city and her life. I liked that it made it really clear that they can be powerful in different ways and walk different path. That Coyote, healer, teacher, advisor has far greater strengths in those areas – but Joanne doesn’t have to follow the same way; she’s a warrior, a defender, a soldier who heals things and makes things better in her own way. I liked that he had his precious philosophy that was truly valuable to him – but at the same time it was acknowledge he could have that and not need Joanne to follow it.

To me this is especially important given how much Joanne has grown and learned over the last few books. She needs a mentor, not a boss and not a character to remind her how much she doesn’t know, how new she is and how weak she is. After what she has achieved in the series, she has proved her worth and her capability even if she has made mistakes and caused problems in the past, she has also gone on to fix them. She needs a peer, not a school teacher and it was really well written to give her that.

Another element that impressed me was the emphasis on Joanne being a healer - even while she’s a warrior and even while hunting a “monster.” There is always a willingness to be sympathetic to the enemy even while being prepared to kick its arse and stab it until it stops moving. Even while knowing it has to be stopped, Joanne can still sympathise with the pain the Wendigo feels

Also we have a Wendigo which is actually a Wendigo which has at least a nod to the actual legends of a Wendigo rather than just being a fancy werewolf you have to kill with fire as we see so much in this genre. There was some depth behind it. This is something this series does well – the creatures, the realms, the legends have had some research behind them, there’s some work to present the legends as they actually were, their beliefs as they are actually held and not just raid random cultures for any spare monsters they have around. It’s detailed, it’s deep and it’s fascinating. However, I still have a minor complaint that it’s also damn confusing at times. The writing can become very abstract, very confused and very lost especially as Joanne travels from realm to realm to realm. It’s a lot tighter than it has been in previous books and it’s a definite improvement but it is still an issue.

The Walker Papers have some of my favourite characters in the genre. Joanne herself has a lot of depth from her mixed heritage, rather than it being there of convenient woo-woo (though it is a constant source of the latter). She recognises her conflict outsider feeling with her mother’s Irish family and her father’s Native American family (it’s neatly done in one line – who she always thought of herself as deathly pale compared to her father’s family but going to her mother’s funeral she realised how much darker she was than her relatives). She has steadily grown and grown to accept both elements of her heritage and marrying them together without running from both as she had – even down to her very name; changing Siobahn Walkingstick to Joanne Walker.

The Six Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher

Summarising this book is a difficult task because there’s so much going on.

At the dawn of creation, god built the world on the bones of the defeated darkness. Step by step his angels drove it back, but there was one, the leader, the first, the source of the darkness that could not be stopped, could not be killed and instead had to be chained and buried in the Earth itself.

And now, those chains are loosening. The town of Golgotha in Nevada, a town that already attracts all things weird and bizarre, becomes the sight of the battle for the end of the world, a battle to keep the darkness chained. With powers from so many sources, under the eyes of the angel guardian and the best people Golgotha can throw against it - it's a diverse and powerful group, each with their own story and stake in the battle

This book is huge.

Not just in length – the world is vast and complicated with the story going back to the very creation of the universe, to a small town in Nevada where the strange and the unusual walk. There are a vast number of different powers and forces to incorporate into this small town, each of them having a massive effect of the overall story. The story itself is huge, with lots of different stories, lots of individual threads all coming together to form the whole.

And that’s told with a huge number of characters, each bringing more information, more world building, more angles and opinions and each being an essential part of the overall battle and progression. But each isn’t just a tool – they’re not just there for world building or to add their special powers or special resources or special insight – they’re all fully fledged, powerful characters in their own right. They all have histories, they all have links to other people, they all have their own wishes and desires – each of these many stories doesn’t just add to the whole, but they’re all deeply personal stories of the characters. They don’t just tell the story, they tell their stories.

The angel Biqa, at the dawn of creation conflicted and upset by God’s plan and his methods. Jim, the 15 year old boy running away from his past and that haunts him. Mutt, the Native American rejected by his people and facing resentment in the town. Maude, in an unhappy marriage for the sake of her daughter and trying to reconcile her current life with the teachings of her childhood that she intends to pass on. Mayor Harry, trying to reconcile his place as a pillar of the community and his Mormon faith with being gay and having found a man he loves. Augustus Shultz, still hurting and grieving from the death of his wife, caught between trying to hold onto her memory and finding love again. They all have their own, powerful stories to such a degree that I simply cannot pick out one protagonist because it’s all of their stories.

Even characters that are more referenced than having their own story told – like Sheriff Highfather- are still extremely rich characters with their own back stories, personalities and presence as full people in the book.

Review: Chasing the Trickster by April Grey

This is a story with a twist that follows 3 people. There is Linda, wife, mother, photography graduate setting out to make her life work. She doesn’t have a perfect marriage and even her photographs have odd, phantom images, but she is making it work, alongside Pascal a university professor who asks her to work with him to write his book as they bother become enamoured with each other.

Then there’s Nina, photographer though plagued with phantom images in her work. She’s supported by good friends and neighbours, but her life falls into chaos when her ex-lover returns out of the blue with hurried instructions that they have to flee to New Mexico – after goons try to kidnap her and nearly kill her friend.

And Pascal, devout Catholic, still reeling from his divorce and fighting his deep affection and growing love for Linda and then Nina. And he’s carrying a passenger, the pagan god Cernunnos, god of lust and fertility who is constantly pushing him away from his rigid morality.

Then there’s the Trickster. A powerful god he has taken an interest in the characters – and definitely has his own agenda.

This book was a real rollercoaster for me. When it started, I loved it. I loved the concepts, I loved the switching to the three main characters/time periods and was eager to see how they fitted together. I wanted to see the conflict between the Trickster and Cernunnos and what it meant for Pascal that he was carrying such a supernatural passenger. And the characters themselves were complex and flawed with major issues in their lives that seemed like they were going to be addressed – like Linda and her deeply flawed relationship, Pascal and his wrongheaded policing of his wife’s sexuality. Nina being torn between her mysterious lover and her deep abiding loyalty to her friends.

And the story started well – we had a brief introduction and then Nina’s life was suddenly thrown into chaos. Goons were chasing her, her lover had a god in his mind, her best friend was in hospital with a bullet in his chest and she was hurrying to Santa Fe to try and find some answers to the chaos that had suddenly over taken her life.

An excellent start.

Then it kind of petered out. The supernatural took a huge step back, occasionally appearing as a voice in Pascal’s head but otherwise it became a story of the mundane. Pascal and Nina taking a road trip, with their growing sexual tension and conflict with Pascal’s rigid morality. And memories of Pascal and Linda working together on his book, spending time together, growing every closer and always with that underlying tension of his attraction and affection meeting his morality and

It was decent, but it was a mundane tale, the magic and the mystery seemed to have become lost, even the reason for the road trip seemed to fallen by the wayside. And I had no idea how Linda was supposed to fit into the narrative or why introducing Linda and Nina was supposed to solve any of the problems Nina was facing. There was a lot of foreshadowing laid out and a lot of character development. We were introduced to many of the characters that added so much texture and depth to Pascal’s life and Linda became a fully formed person. But I was still lost and kind of wondering what I was reading and why.

Then, at about 60% things began to fall into place again. A lot of major action picked up, some major themes were developed – including the ongoing powerful theme of environmental and the major consequences of that – especially in relation to healthy children being born. All of the little foreshadowing elements of Pascal and Cernunnos’s life came together to make the Trickster’s grievance very real and understandable. Things happened, there were grand revelations, all of the foreshadowing was suddenly wonderfully clear – and then we get the grand revelation of Linda and Nina. I cannot spoil it without completely ruining the book – but it brings a whole new level of themes and concepts to the book and turns what happened before completely on its head.

The last quarter of the book went extremely quickly, with the cards laid on the table it was back to being an excellent, fascinating read with very complex characters with a lot of major issues and concepts to explore and an exciting, intriguing story that pulled me back in and the whole book up to its previous heights. The full extent of the Trickster’s game was revealed and the major choices facing the characters now became ever clearer as well as the smaller game Cernunnos had been playing in his own circle.

I think there were a lot of issues that were touched on in this book and, in varying ways, challenged and resolved. Pascal’s sexism in demanding his wife not use birth control then being upset that she lied to him was fiercely challenged by Linda and Nina. Linda’s shaky relationship with her husband frequently had his bad behaviour and even bullying referred to as what it was. The issues of consent with using Pascal’s body for sex between Nina and Cernunnos was another one touched on – as was the concept of consent and Cernunnos’s powers of lust and attraction.

Review: Coyote Dreams by C.E. Murphy, Book 3 of the Walker Papers

 Joanne has relationship issues. There’s her boss who she still has a lot of unresolved feelings for and he seems to have a new girlfriend. And she wakes up with a heavy hang over and a naked man next to her. Definitely some issues to examine

But she’s in high demand, her good friend and co-worker is asleep and won’t wake up. And by her senses the problem is magical, not medical, something is draining his essence. While trying to work through the problem, it rapidly spreads consuming not only her friend’s family, but running rampant through the police force.

The hospitals become strained and the police themselves are reduced to a skeleton crew – and Joanne has only the slightest idea how to fix this, relying on cobbled together research from the internet. Worse, her mentor, coyote, is unavailable and may even be prey to the entity himself. Every time she accesses her abilities, the thing swoops in, seeking to drag her down into unwaking sleep

And the more she learns, the higher the stakes are.

This world is incredibly deep and amazingly fascinating. Joanne’s shamanic power and need to visualise her magic working around her and how that reflects in how she imagines and sees things. I’m glad she’s embracing her powers and her life and beginning to move out, into the world as a shaman.

And this book we saw a lot more of Joanne’s story, who she was as a child and why and why it took her so long to finally come into her shamanic heritage. We saw her grow and learn and learnt about the path it took to develop Joanne from the child she was to the woman she became. In terms of realism and depth it’s really well done.

We learn more on the nature of Coyote and have a lot of information about different realms. This series never just decides to raid Native American culture for concepts so we have a lot of n

The investigation is… difficult. It lags because there’s a lot of dead ends and Joanne is usually on the run. We get to see more people are open to the supernatural but it does feel like a lot of the time Joanne is flailing around not going anywhere or achieving anything. Or even making it worse as she keeps poking at her opponent and getting slapped down and others get caught in the web. There is a sense of frustration and desperation, but I think it dances on the line between portraying frustration and causing it. And towards the end of the book I was past ready for it to be over – it dragged, I’m afraid.

Unfortunately, the problems of the previous books are present in this one in spades. As a shaman, Joanne spends a lot of time in different planes of reality, switching between many many different ones. She also has prophetic dreams which can be surreal, show her the past and show her, again, different planes of reality. And she has visions in the middle of the day, also plunging her into different realms, into the past or various other supernatural, mysterious and magical places.

She can enter any of these places with almost no warning at all.  You’ll be reading along then vision, no plane shifting, wait is this a dream? Is it a memory? Is it a past life? Is this a nightmare? Is this real? Is this a vision of the future? Did this happen or that and where are we now? Is this image metaphorical? Literal? What am I even reading?

I re-read several time. I scratched my head. I frowned. I made sure I was alone and in silence because I could concentrate.  It’s very easy to get lost, very easy to be confused and there’s a lot of times when something happens that has absolutely no relevance to anything. Maybe it gets explained at the end of the book – but that doesn’t stop you being floundering and confused in the meantime.