J.M.C. BlairCritiques

DNF’d about halfway through. Not written badly, but I just didn’t care about anyone. There are too many characters and you never quite get to know them so you end up not caring whether or not they die and ultimately not caring about the plot either. It is written in omniscient POV and it gets a bit confusing jumping around in the characters heads when they have convos with each other. Not terrible, just not compelling.

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Well, I didn't DNF but I did skim, a lot, after 40%.

Well, I didn't DNF but I did skim, a lot, after 40%.

I received a complementary advance reading copy of this book from Riverdale Avenue Books via Netgalley for a fair review of it. The comments about it are my own.

On one level, this is an imaginative man on man romance involving a young gay man Jamie Dunn and a creature/being called Dr. Danilo who is the human form of an ancient Egyptian god but with the traits of a vampire. On another level, it's a shocking story, with an atmospheric background and a continuing threat of imminent harm. It also has a theme of repressed gayness and self-hate. At the beginning Jamie encounters and befriends several young gay men struggling with their orientation; one such closet case turns violent with his repressed rage, killing Jamie's roommate.

A redeeming feature is that Jamie and Danilo take a grand tour of London, Paris and Berlin before ending up in Egypt. In the European cities they visit the museums featuring Egyptian artifacts, such as the head of Nefertiti in Berlin. Their Egyptian visit starts at Alexandra and includes stops in Cairo where they visit the pyramids at Giza before travelling up the Nile to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. This is the best part of the book. The rest is a disturbing dark and creepy story.

There's plenty of blood, gore, and gratuitous violence which makes it an unpleasant read. As to being erotic, the sex scenes are often violent and disconnected from the core story. My rating: needs improvement.½

Third in A Merlin Investigation featuring Merlin of Arthurian legend in Medieval England.

was really looking forward to this book. I enjoy the Camelot and Merlin tales. I loved Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment). So to have Merlin as an amateur sleuth was an appealing concept to me.

Plague has been brought to England via merchant ships. Merlin and his two aids, Nimue and Petronus, are in the port town of Dover for the autumn market festival. Merlin is first on the scene and identifies it as the plague. They hurry back to Camelot to be a nerve center and try to be a communications hub for news of the spread of the plague. But on the way back they come across a Baron brutally murdered at Stonehenge. Then a death occurs at Camelot seeming to be the plague, but Merlin isn't convinced. Could somebody be killing off contenders for the thrown by mimicing the plague? Merlin grows more suspicious as the body count rises.

The book leaves much in the way of period language completely out which was a bit jarring. Even more jarring are the modern concepts of how disease spreads that Merlin embraces. Merlin has a reputation as a wizard that he hates. He is portrayed as a scholar and an early physician who hates all forms of superstition. He is flippant, arthritic, cranky and has a really cynical view of the world and of human nature. Merlin's cynical outlook is perhaps why this seems to be a bit darker book than I was anticipating.

Merlin's aid Nimue is a rather liberated and free thinking woman for the time period which is really out of place. Out of all the characters she has some potential but was only a minor player in this book. I hope she gets more attention in other books in the series.

Arthur seems to be two different people, one self absorbed who won't listen to wise council and the other a statesman adept at...

Read the complete review here:
http://mysterysuspence.blogspot.com/2010/04/review-pendragon-murders.html

The idea of a mystery series set in Camelot with Merlin as the chief detective appealed to me, but I ended up disappointed with this book. There were too many anachronisms; at times it seemed like the author was trying to set the story in a specific time period, but the effect fell flat. The characters were supposedly Dark Age Britons but they talked like modern day people. It just felt disjointed and uneven to me. Some major events were described in an off-handed way. That being said, it was an intriguing idea and I did enjoy several of the characters.½

Plot: Fairly predictable most of the time, though there are some twists. No subplots for side characters; the story follows the college years of the narrator.

Characters: is everybody on American college campuses gay and in denial? The book certainly makes it look as though that's the case. Occasionally rather annoying narrator who never quite crosses the line into irritating. Not-quite-mysterious mysterious stranger. Stereotypical side cast.

Style: Boring, constant writing style. There is either too much or too little description. Some nice horror elements and a good take on Egyptian mythology. Far too much emphasis on the main character being gay, though.

Plus: Slash content, great description of Egypt.

Minus: Too much of the slash content, boring writing style.

Summary: An okay read if you're interested in a combination of fantasy, horror, history and gay romance.