When Cait O’Keefe arrives at Sanctuary
Station, a space base circling Earth, she stirs up a lot of interest.
First, she is a lovely sight to behold, with her naturally multicolored
hair and her graceful, sinuous dancing. Second, her birth certificate
says she has two fathers. Her human mother was married to two Sidhe
men, such marriages being a tradition of Sidhe culture. The Sidhe
are the fairy people of legend, but the Sidhe are real, not myth.
Cait believes that on other worlds of our solar system she will
be able to learn about the origins of her people. She accepts a
position with a mining expedition, headed for an asteroid named
Pot of Gold.
What Cait’s birth certificate does not say, keeping it a
useful secret, is that the Sidhe are empathic. Cait knows from
the mental projections of Kyle and Deshawn, fellow members of the
Pot of Gold expedition, that their interest in her is predatory.
Her Sidhe physical strength soon takes care of that little situation.
Matters are again complicated when a Lesbian pair begins courting
her. By this time Cait has found her own love interests, but her
men don’t believe in sharing. Indio and Tiny were best friends
until Cait came between them. Throughout company sabotage, stowaways,
and piracy, Indio and Tiny continue to scrimmage for Cait’s
exclusive attention; until the empathic Cait can’t bear to
be in the same room with their grating emotions. They all have
serious matters to deal with; they need to find a way so they can
work together.
The plot of DOWN CAME A BLACKBIRD has several interesting elements;
however, the main focus is on the interactions between people.
The individual characters don’t have a lot of depth, but
their relationships do. Cait the magnetic charmer, Indio the terribly
scarred space veteran, and Tiny the ex-Marine computer whiz, are
all presented as spacers with a few main characteristics and important
lessons to learn. Author Barbara Karmazin also gives close attention
to the interactions of her secondary characters. There are people
we don’t really get to know as individuals, but we do learn
about them from the way they relate to others. Even the stowaway
kitten has its own little core of relationships. Give the characters
time, keep reading, and they all become clear.
One thing I had difficulty with is the way Karmazin repeatedly
makes the assumption that we know everything she knows. For example,
she has a habit of jumping the action from place to place without
warning. She might skip the walk from elevator to apartment, and
forget to tell us that we have left the elevator. Several times
it took me sentences, or paragraphs, to figure out that we weren’t
where we used to be. Another example is that she sometimes waits
until late in a scene to tell us what Cait is feeling. Because
Cait is presented as a young superwoman, we are unlikely to know,
unless we are told, when she is hurting so much that it interferes
with her thinking.
The reader of DOWN CAME A BLACKBIRD needs to be broadminded about
sex, to accept one particular scene in this triad romance. The
book as a whole is a fast-paced, mildly titillating read, with
two tough but sensitive men and a heroine of admirable strength.The
concept of ancient fairy people assimilated into space age society
is an intriguing one. It will be followed up in a sequel COVENANTS,
to be released in September.
Garet Morgan felt more at home on fighting duty
in Texas than he does returning to the West Point of 1853. Being
a teacher in the same halls where he did his officer training is
disorienting enough. To be threatened by the pathologically hostile
Captain Edgwick within hours of his arrival gets him off to a shaky
start.
Captain Edgwick doesn’t hesitate to add Lieutenant Morgan
to the list of people who despise him. To a war hero, what’s
one more enemy in a whole US army full of them’ Returning
to the quarrel which Morgan had interrupted, Edgwick is challenged
to a duel by Cadet Lambert Gardner, a hopeless student but one
of the best swordsmen on the base. Morgan and Gardner are only
the most recent of Edgwick’s antagonists; but when he is
found dead, that is enough to focus on them the attention of the
brainlessly antagonistic provost marshal Captain Barnard. Barnard
is conducting what he pleases to call an investigation into Edgwick’s
murder. That means trouble for Morgan and Gardner.
The main goal of author Pamela Cummings has been to recreate the
West Point of the 1850s. Her feeling for the history of the pre-Civil
War South is a lifetime love, and she has dedicated a precision
of thought to each detail. The result is that we find ourselves
walking through West Point, shivering on the winter ice.
In their attempt to clear their names, Morgan and Gardner have
the help, and otherwise, of several notable characters. Taking
far too much initiative, in Morgan’s opinion, is Gardner’s
sister Elizabeth, whose education and assertiveness were out of
place in Virginia. Morgan’s Southern ideal of a charming
woman is Capt. Edgwick’s daughter Dorothea: appreciative,
a wonderful listener, and an intoxicating relief after dealing
with Elizabeth. Col. Robert E. Lee, superintendent of the academy,
is firm but fair, a gentlemanly cousin of Lambert and Elizabeth.
Calhoun Singleton, Gardner’s roommate, admired by everyone,
is a top student and the very image of a gentleman. Sergeant O’Malley,
in charge of the stables, knows more than he would appear to in
his state of drunkenness.
Each of the characters named above are perfect examples of their
type. As a recreation of life, they are completely believable.
As the subjects of a story, they would be more interesting if they
had a few unbelievable quirks. Even the motivation for the murder,
a quirky action even in the army, is absolutely true to type. I
knew for certain who did it, based on character type alone, half
way through the book.
With its people acting exactly to pattern, DUTY, HONOR, MURDER
needs a little extra help to hold the attention. It gets it: the
setting, exotic to us, is drawn with such reality that it feels
like we are seeing just what the hero sees. Cummings’ hobby
is research, and she uses it to full effect in a mystery which
could easily be the first of a series. Morgan, Gardner, and Elizabeth
have plenty of stories left in them. Pamela Cummings also wrote
the Eppie Finalist romance MY REBEL BELLE.
Joy Calderwood
THE STARRY CHILD
Lynn Hanna
NovelBooks
Contemporary Fairy Tale Fantasy
When Rainey’s husband died in a plane crash,
she didn’t just lose a husband. Their eight-year-old daughter
stopped talking. To care for Sasha, Rainey gave up a high-powered
career. Fleeing a scientist who is determined to try experimental
treatments on Sasha, they have moved from city to city, using up
their savings. Friendship after friendship is lost because people
are antagonistic toward Sasha’s strange behavior. Now, Child
Services is going to take Sasha away from Rainey.
Rainey and Sasha have no one on their side but their next door
neighbor Emma, until linguist Matt Macinnes joins their little
group. With Matt, Sasha mysteriously speaks ancient Gaelic. Sorting
through the clues in her behavior, Matt believes Sasha is connected
in spirit with a Scottish princess of ancient legend.
Nothing but the imminent threat of losing Sasha would have induced
the determinedly practical Rainey to go along with Matt’s
nonsense. Mythological swords and crowns’ Souls trapped in
a thousand years of mourning’ A fairy, standing on her hand,
asking her to save the man she loves - maybe that will be enough
to get through to Rainey. The story seems set for a predictable
resolution. Then we are surprised by a delightfully satisfying
ending.
Backstories are of great importance in THE STARRY CHILD. Sasha
isn’t the only character with an ancient past. Matt, the
protector, lives with the agony of times he failed to protect those
he loved. Now he is about to find out why. In the sudden understanding
between Matt and Sasha, Rainey is the odd-person-out. Her fear
of faith and hope is greater than all her other fears put together.
Rainey’s stubborn mistrust, what she calls realism, forms
the most discordant note in this book. There has to be a saving
grace for Rainey, if only to make the book enjoyable reading.
THE STARRY CHILD is a modern fairy tale, bureaucracy overwhelmed
by stars, ancient redwoods, and a Celtic princess in disguise.
Fairy tales don’t take kindly to shades of gray, which explains
why Rainey and Sasha are under attack by so many enemies. In real
life, there would be passers-by sympathetic to their plight, fellow
mothers recognizing the difficulties Rainey is dealing with, concerned
citizens demonstrating against the evil scientist. Instead, they
face an unbelievable degree of misunderstanding and malice, emphasizing
the contrast with the warmth of their few friends.
Author Lynn Hanna says that, as she first shopped THE STARRY CHILD
around for a publisher, most editors and agents were afraid to
take the chance because it has elements of several different genres.
The website of Novel Books says that during its original publication
in 1998, THE STARRY CHILD was chosen as one of the Top 200 Books
of Women's Fiction of All Time. No matter what the criteria for
the "Top 200" were, obviously most editors and agents
need to rethink. The story of THE STARRY CHILD has its own identity.
The considerations of Marketing, however insistent, can’t
change a story’s identity. As Matt says, "God save us
from all realists."
THE STARRY CHILD can be ordered at http://www.novelbooksinc.com/
for its August 25 re-release.
