I really don’t want to write this review, but part of the agreement required when taking part in the Mini Book Expo for Bloggers is that you must review the books you are sent, even if you don’t finish them.  I didn’t finish City of Pillars by Dominic Peloso.  I wanted to finish it.  I wanted to like it.  But I didn’t.

The book has a good premise: a man is mistakenly given a cryptic manuscript and must do everything he can to stay alive when the bad guys come looking for it.  I’m sure there is more to the book than that, as the back cover promises “an ancient, worldwide conspiracy”, but I didn’t get that far.

Sadly, this book just isn’t particular well written.  It suffers from many technical errors, like wordiness, telling instead of showing, and many, many passive sentences.  It is told in the first person, and yet we are told too many times what other characters are thinking.  Take this passage as an example:

“Who are you, and what crime would you like to report?” said the officer mechanically.  his badge said ‘Frank Daly’.  He had been working a long shift and was a bit tired.  He had manned the desk for almost a year now and had heard it all.  His main function was to stop all of the nuts from bothering the real detectives.  He resented his job.

Now, unless the protagonist went out for a beer with Frank later, there is no way he could know any of this.  It breaks the suspension of disbelief that an author has to create to make his story successful.

And that brings me to what was most disappointing to me.  By telling this story in the first person from a distance of eight or ten years, the tension is taken out of the book.  Clearly the author survives the pulse-pounding showdowns he is recounting.  I never became hooked, and gave up after about 80 pages.

I do think that there is a seed of a great story here.  And I think with the help of a good editor, and maybe a shift to a third person perspective, this could have been a great book.  I’m interested in seeing what Peloso writes next, and hope that it is the great book that the City of Pillars could have been.

• Buy City of Pillars from Amazon.com
• Publisher: Invisible College Press

And to add some fun to this post, here is a picture of the Baby Man reviewing a book.  He says, “Yum!”

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but I am a huge Jane Austen fan.  Reading about Mr. Darcy, the various Janes, Emma, and all the rest makes me long for the days when it was “… a universal truth that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”  I’ve devoured all of Jane Austen’s books, and have even sought out a few of the “sequels” in an attempt to stay in Ms. Austen’s world just a little bit long.  Unlike the originals, the sequels have been a bit hit and miss.  I remember one in particular that was quite a bit more ribald than anything Ms. Austen would have written.

The latest Jane Austen sequel to land on my night table is Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride by Helen Halstead.  The story begins just slightly before the end of Pride and Prejudice, with Jane and Elizabeth preparing for their wedding and for leaving their father’s house.  It is essential the story of how Mr. Darcy’s friends and family accept, or don’t accept, his lovely new wife Elizabeth.  Along the way, we learn how her sisters fair, what becomes of Charlotte and Mr. Collins, and how Lady Catherine deals with it all.  I really don’t want to say too much for fear of giving away anything.  I will say that I am exceptionally happy with how everything turns out, including the fate of Wickham and Lydia.

I was so pleased with this book.  It is a wonderful continuation of Ms. Austen’s legacy.  Ms. Halstead does a very good job of capturing Ms. Austen’s style.  There were times I almost felt like I was reading an original Austen work.  And yet, I also got the feeling that there was something of Ms. Halstead in the book too.  She was able to flesh out characters like Georgiana, and introduce new characters who well suited to the world of Darcy and Elizabeth.

Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride is a book that I believe will be well loved by all Jane Austen fans, even those who are a bit sceptical of “sequels”.  I eagerly await Ms. Halstead books, and know that I will enjoy it whether it is an Austen sequel or an original piece.

Buy Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride by Helen Halstead from Amazon.com

Helen Halstead’s website: www.helenhalstead.com/

By the Sea from The Sampler Girl