The Last Rose of Shanghai

I recently found out that Weina Dai Randel published this book and had to get it. Her prior two novels were fantastic.  The Moon in the Palace and Empress of Bright Moon are popular at my public library and are always checked out.  My reviews of them are my most read reviews. These two books comprise a duology about a woman who became China's only ruling empress. 

The Last Rose of Shanghai was an enchanting read. Beginning in 1940 our heroine Aiyi Shao is an 18 year old heiress and the owner of an unpopular Shanghai nightclub. She soon meets a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Ernest Reismann, and asks him to work for her playing the piano in her club. He agrees and the club gains alot of new customers who want to hear him play jazz on the stride piano. Aiyi and Ernest are attracted to each other and although Aiyi is engaged to childhood friend Cheng, she meets him in the room he is renting. Almost immediately they fall into bed. Ernest becomes famous in Shanghai and is sought after by several other club owners. However, the war in Europe, the South Pacific and the Japanese occupation of China keep tearing the two of them apart. Ernest is wanted by the Japanese for killing a Japanese soldier and the soldier investigating the killing has threatened to shut down Aiyi's club if she does not tell him where Ernest can be found. His fate is bound up in Aiyi's handling of the matter. However, the war continues to escalate and their choices between love and survival become more desperate. 

I love that we now have a WWII story that takes place in China. The Japanese occupation of China is the prominent  war story and I learned alot about how that affected people of that time and place. In addition, the racism of the Asians toward the white Europeans is also prominent and is shown in detail. The Asians had different feelings toward the Americans and British but generally did not trust either of them. The cultural restrictions on Aiyi demanded that she marry the man her parents betrothed her to when she was a baby. Cheng was the typical domineering male but, in contrast, Ernest was sensitive to the needs of others.  

Ms. Randel is a fantastic writer. All 3 of her books were engrossing. I always appreciate it when a historical author shines a light on a not well known history. Randel shows us the horrors of the starving poor in Shanghai amidst the glamour of luxury hotels, nightclubs and family compounds. Soldiers from several countries are present everywhere and add to the unease of the city. Last Rose is told from two different points of view, Aiyi's and Ernest's. It also has an alternating plot from the current era where we read about a documentarian interviewing Aiyi about this time period. This plot has very little space in the novel though.  It is 90% about WWII.  

The Last Rose of Shanghai is an excellent read and I highly recommend it to all readers. It could very be in my top ten books of 2022. 5 out of 5 stars. 

Book of the Month: January

The Girl in the Painting by Renita D-Silva is my favorite read for the month of January. It is an epic story of India. Four alternating plots are gathered together in this captivating story. One plot takes place in 1913 where our heroine Margaret is growing up in Charleston, England. During the same time, Archana is growing up in India. In 1926, Margaret has fallen in love with her new husband Suraj and his native country India. Having moved from England to India after Suraj obtained his law degree, the couple moved to his parent's home after their sudden deaths. In 2000, Emma McEwen plans to divorce her husband and seeks solace from her grandmother Margaret, now back in England. 

The book is really about Margaret and Archana. Both were interesting characters. Both of them had awful upbringings but Archana was poor because she married an untouchable so she suffered much more both emotionally and physically. Her story was the most compelling.

Book Cover of the Month: January

Double Blind by Sara Winokur has a fascinating cover. The tree branches and the path through the mountains reflect the type of story inside. The main character, Brynja, is a forensic geneticist. She uses DNA to solve crimes as well as locate her long-gone brother.  I think the path on the cover looks similar to a DNA sequence so it is appropriate for the book. The falling snow reflects the Icelandic setting. In addition, the blue, red and white color scheme is attractive.

The author's day job as a molecular geneticist has enhanced her storytelling abilities. What is amazing to me is that she lives in California but writes about Iceland.  Double Blind is her debut novel.  Check it out.

Stacking the Shelves

It's been some time since I have participated in this meme. After hearing about a favorite author's next book I decided it was time for me to revisit the meme. A few weeks ago it came to my attention that Nancy Bilyeau will be publishing the sequel to her The Blue historical novel.  The new book is titled The Fugitive Colours.  It is scheduled for publication on May 12, 2022 and I hate to have to wait four more months to get it. 

If you haven't read The Blue you need to. It is the story of Genevieve Planché, an English-born descendant of Huguenot refugees, who wants to be a painter. After meeting a famous artist she is offered an opportunity to learn how to paint on porcelain in exchange for obtaining the secret of a china company's recipe for the color blue. If she is successful in obtaining the secret, she will get her wish to travel to Venice for training in oil painting.

All of Bilyeau's novels have been fabulous reading. I especially loved The Blue because I am an artist so this four month wait will be excruciating.

We Only Kill Each Other

Comixology has issued three releases to date of the We Only Kill Each Other comic by Stephanie Phillips. I have read all three. The 4th comic will be released on February 15, 2022 and the 5th on March 15, 2022. It is a gripping story about Nazi Party sympathizers in the United States before the beginning of WWII as well as the Jewish gangsters who oppose them. The story takes place in 1938 New York City and is based on actual events. Dark Horse will publish a paperback containing all five comics on April 19, 2022. I am planning to buy the paperback because this is a story that I will want to read over and over.

Levi Solomon and Jonas Kaminsky are Jewish gangsters. Jonas is a rising small time gangster who is embroiled in a turf war with Solomon and Solomon is an old time mob boss with millions of dollars tied up in gambling and booze. However, they have something in common. They both hate Nazis. Jonas is tasked with attending rallies held by Nazi sympathizers to stir up trouble and trouble seems to always find him. The Jonas character is the protagonist. We read about his life experiences with anti-semitism including being told he cannot play baseball because he is Jewish.

The comic reads like a traditional mystery novel. Each release ends with suspense and I hate having to wait another month for the next installment to be published. If you haven't tasted this comic yet you may want to wait until the paperback is published. It will be a joy to binge read the entire story.

Piecing It All Together

Piecing It All Together is the first book in the author's Plain Patterns trilogy. I reviewed the second book here. The story opens with Savannah Mast's fiance dumping her a week before their wedding. She flees California for the safety of her Amish grandmother's farm near Nappanee, Indiana. Savannah is not planning on staying long but becomes unexpectedly entangled in the search for a missing Amish girl. She can't leave, especially not when her childhood friend Tommy Miller is implicated as a suspect.

When Savannah accompanies her grandmother to Plain Patterns, a nearby quilt shop, the owner and local historian, Jane Berger, relates a tale about another woman's disappearance back in the 1800s that has curious echoes to today. Inspired by the story, Savannah does all she can to find the Amish girl and clear Tommy's name. But when her former fiance shows up, begging her to return to California and marry him after all, she must choose between accepting the security of what he has to offer or continuing the complicated legacy of her family's faith.

I enjoyed the current era subplot, Savannah's story, but was bored by the other one, the story of Emma Fisher. There wasn't much of a connection between the two and the reader is told early on that two of the characters are related. The Emma Fisher subplot does not explain the relation or what characteristics Savannah and Jane inherited from Emma. I found myself skipping pages when Emma's story was being told.

2 out of 5 stars.

The Taste of Ginger

The Taste of Ginger is Mansi Shah’s debut novel. While advertised as the story of a first generation American trying to figure out where she belongs, it touches so much on race that it is hard to view the book as traditional Indian fiction. The main character is Preeti Desai, a thirty year old woman living in Los Angeles who is working seventy hours a week as an attorney. She has an older brother Neel who she is close to as they shared the experience of emigrating to the U. S. from India when they were children. The two of them emulated their white fellow students in an effort to assimilate into American culture. How much that affected both of them is not discussed between them until the family returns to India for a family wedding.

Neel's wife Dipti is pregnant with their first child when the family travels to India for a wedding. During a rickshaw ride through town, a car crashed into them and Dipti is injured. She is immediately hospitalized and soon falls into a coma. Neel calls Preeti to give her the news and she agrees to fly to India immediately. For two weeks Dipti hovers near death until a decision is made to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her life. While Preeti is in India she has to deal with her mother whom she has been estranged from for several years.  Her mother did not like that Preeti lived with a white Christian American man without the benefit of marriage. It was bad enough that she chose a white man but living with him pushed her mother over the edge. Preeti refused to give Alex up. Alex was her first relationship with a man and she took the relationship seriously.  While supporting her brother, they begin to talk about the difficulties they had in moving to America. It was never spoken out loud before. The reasons that their parents made the decision to leave India did not make sense to them as they suffered financial problems that they would have avoided by staying put. 

I enjoyed this book immensely but feel that the race card was played too heavily. Preeti saw everybody in terms of the color of their skin. She attached judgments also based not only on color but also on the darkness of a person's skin. Sure, she developed these feelings from her parents but no one else in the family had as many issues with race. She worked hard to be like the white people she worked with and thought it made her happy. During her trip to India she saw her countrymen in different ways depending how light or dark their skin was. Darker skins were from a lower class while Preeti was a Brahmin. Around the halfway point in the story I got tired of the use of labels and decided that I no longer liked the Preeti character. As the main character she should be admirable but her constant thoughts of race turned me off and I don't think that she was happy with all of her hangups. 

There was one other problem that I had with the book. The author writes about Preeti finding an old photo of her mother with a man that she did not know. Preeti asked several family members who the man was but they all told her to ask her mother. She never asked her mother and the book does not tell us anything more about the photo. It seemed like to photo was going to reveal a family secret but we never discovered what that secret could have been.

All in all, this was a good read.  I am rating it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Winthrop Woman

I selected this historical novel because I thought that my ancestors might be in it. The book is a historical biography of Elizabeth Fones Winthrop, daughter-in-law to John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. My people were cousins to John Winthrop and lived in the same English village as the Winthrops. Lavenham is also known as the birthplace of Harry Potter. Yes, my people are in the book and some of them traveled with Governor Winthrop in 1630 to the Massachusetts Bay Colony on the Arbella. I highlighted my copy of the book each time an ancestor was mentioned.

The Winthrop Woman was published in 1958. Elizabeth Fones was the niece of Governor John Winthrop and she married her cousin Harry Winthrop, which gave her prestige among the Puritan set. Elizabeth was a Puritan in name only. She scandalized her family and community with brazen behavior such as sleeping with a cousin before marriage, necessitating the marriage. Before her marriage Elizabeth blasphemed God during a conversation at home and was flogged in front of the entire family and household staff. She became areligious after the flogging and despised her uncle Winthrop for demanding that she receive the beating. Although Elizabeth was in love with her cousin Jack, she agreed to marry Edward Howes after Jack left England. She broke that engagement after dillydallying with Jack's brother Harry. At first, Elizabeth and Harry were happy in their marriage but Harry was an alcoholic and a spendthrift. When Jack returns to England he is shocked that Elizabeth did not wait for him, even though he never told her of his desire for her. Elizabeth still loves Jack but is stuck with Harry. In order to tame his son, Governor Winthrop demands Harry move to the new world with him. On the way, Harry is drowned. Elizabeth follows him to the colonies, not aware that she was a widow. She is unable to abide by societal rules here either, maintaining her damning reputation.

I was surprised that Governor Winthrop became more conservative after emigrating to Massachusetts Bay Colony. He wanted to please the colonists who were already on American soil. The Separatists in Plymouth Bay were much more conservative than the Dissenters in Massachusetts and, being politically ambitious, Winthrop did whatever he had to do in order to be re-elected as the Governor of Massachusetts Bay. Sound familiar? He was cruel toward anyone who opposed him and loved to think up punishments for alleged wrongdoers. You didn't have to actually violate the law to be accused of wrongful acts. Sound familiar again? Some of these acts included celebrating Christmas, which Winthrop celebrated when he lived in Lavenham. However, his conservative views became radicalized as he gained more and more power. I had been taught in elementary school to idolize these first Americans but their personal foibles are fully on display here. Their politics are no different than the brash politics of today with everyone distrusting everyone else. As the saying goes, the more things change the more they stay the same. 

This historical novel was very readable even though it was written over 60 years ago. I loved reading about the people who began this American experiment. I was struck, though, by the similarity of our politics in the initial 25 years on our continent with the politics of today. There is no difference. During the first three elections for selectmen and governor, Governor Winthrop and his buddies changed the voting boundaries to ensure that only their kind of Puritan was elected. There was also alot of name calling.  I can only conclude that we are what we have always been. As for our Elizabeth, she was only able to get away with her misconduct because of her affiliation with Winthrop.

5 out of 5 stars.

A Patchwork Past

A Patchwork Past is book two of the Plain Patterns trilogy. It is about former Amish girl Sophie Deiner, daughter of a bishop, who left her home in Napanee, Indiana while she was pregnant with her boyfriend's child. Three years later Sophie is suffering from lupus and must rest for two weeks per doctor's orders. She decides to return to her parent's home because she knows that she will be able to get alot of rest as well as eat her mother's fabulous home cooked meals. As Sophie heals, she befriends a group of migrant workers who work in Amish owned farms in Napanee. The farm owners rely on them to work their fields. None of them would survive without the migrants. Sophie is shocked when she learns how bad their living conditions are and begins to advocate on their behalf. However, that ex-boyfriend who got her pregnant opposes her ideas. Lyle is the foreman of a farm in the area and bullies his help as well as Sophie. He wants to know about the baby. Lyle is afraid that one day a kid will land on his doorstep and accuse him of being their father. Sophie has never told anyone about her miscarriage and does not plan to. Friend Jane who runs a local newsletter also runs a quilting bee. During the weekly quiltings Jane relays the history of an Amish couple who rescued survivors of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. This encourages Sophie to become more involved in fighting for the migrants in her region.

As a Chicagoan, I thought it was interesting that members of the Sullivan family met Sophie's ancestors in Chicago before the fire began. They are mentioned in passing. The traditional story concerning the start of the fire is that a cow owned by an immigrant Irish woman, Mrs. O'Leary, knocked over a lantern which resulted in the entire city being burned to the ground. However, as most Chicagoans know, this is a myth. This story began as an anti-immigrant story directed at America's newest immigrants, the Irish. The person who really started the Great Fire was Pegleg Sullivan who was drunk when he tripped over the lantern. It is also interesting how the author was able to create a story based on immigration. Both the 1870s plot and the current era plot deal with the issue of immigrants. This is pretty unusual in Amish fiction but the author pulled it off amazingly. The book had an Amish fiction feel to it, not a political feel. I must admit, though, that at times it seemed that the author was preaching her politics. While my politics appears to match the author's, I prefer not to read about it in fiction.

The main character, Sophie, was presented well. The reader learns how her anguish over deciding to run away and live as an Englisher affected both her and her family. While reading I thought that Sophie might stay in Napanee and return to living the Amish lifestyle. However, there won't be a spoilers here. Most of the book was about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 which also makes the book historical fiction. I loved this plot. It was a trip down history lane for me but I think everyone will enjoy reading about the Fire, including how the Amish were involved. 

All in all, A Patchwork Past was a great read. 4 out of 5 stars.

Mandarin Plaid

Mandarin Plaid is book 3 in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mysteries.  6 novels in the series have already been published. The story opens with the theft of designer Genna Jing's sketches of her inaugural collection of her new Mandarin Plaid label. Genna is positive that these designs are worth a fortune so when she is contacted by the thief who demands a $50,000 ransom, she is willing to pay. Genna contacts Lydia Chin, a Chinese American private investigator, to perform the drop. However, during the drop everything goes wrong. Lydia loses the ransom money and her partner Bill Smith is arrested. Genna is shocked about the loss of her money and sketches and fires Lydia. Unable to let it go, Lydia and Bill continue to look into matter and are led from sweatshops in New York City's Chinatown to the drawing rooms of New York's wealthiest citizens and into the dark underworld of prostitution, drugs and murder. The task they have taken on includes no only to find out who stole the ransom money but also who is willing to kill in order to keep all of this a secret.

The story started out slow. A conversation about the need to drop the ransom ran several pages and some of the characters repeated the same information over and over. While the conversation was realistic it did not advance the plot and I was bored. The author wrote about the fashion business which was appealing to me as I enjoy sewing. There were a number of aspects to putting on a runway show that I was not familiar with and it added some enjoyment to the story. However, I still  could not become engaged in the novel. The characters didn't captivate me either. The dialogue between Lydia and Bill was boring. Yes, people actually talk like they did but it detracted from solving the mystery. The slow beginning seemed to have a snowball effect that I was unable to overcome. The plot premise was good though and the title of the fashion collection was sublime. 

An entire series could be written about the travails of the fashion business and this fashion label specifically. It would need to be executed better. Unfortunately, I can only rate this mystery 2 out of 5 stars. I feel bad about the rating because this story had considerable promise and is highly rated by other reviewers.

The Vivaldi Cipher

The Vivaldi Cipher takes place during the election of a new Pope in mid-18th century Venice. Famed violinist Antonio Vivaldi is a close friend of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni who is expected to be elected as the next Pope. Before Ottoboni is killed during the conclave, Vivaldi learns about a ring of art forgers who are replacing the Vatican's priceless artworks with expertly painted fakes. Feeling desperate, Vivaldi hides a message in a special melody hoping that someone will take down the culprits. There is an alternate plot that takes place in the current era. When a dying mafia don gives his final confession, he informs the priest hearing the confession that there are many forged paintings in the Vatican Museum and that the key to their identities lies hidden in a piece of music. Father Dominic, prefect of the Secret Archives, investigates. He is mystified when he finds a cipher in an old composition from Vivaldi. Wanting to stop this centuries long conspiracy, he calls upon fellow sleuth Hana Sinclair and Dr. Livia Gallo, a music cryptologist, to help him crack the code and learn which paintings are fake. However, the Camorra, an Italian mafia clan, refuse to allow Father Dominic to interfere with their lucrative operation.

While this is an engaging story I could not help but think that the secret concerning the art thefts was divulged to too many people. By the time Hana and Dr. Gallo consult with other art experts as well as those providing security for them, 10 people know what the secret is. They, of course, tell more people and this deathbed secret is no longer much of a secret. Everyone in Venice who counts knows and so do several folks at the Vatican, putting them all in danger. 

That said, the story was engrossing. I couldn't put the book down and spent an entire day reading it. As an art lover, the descriptions of the artist studios interested me. Of course, it should go without saying that the Venetian setting was delicious. Reading about the boats gliding through the Grand Canal reminded me of my own gondola rides in Venice several years ago. The mask shop described in the novel sounds like one I actually visited so the book sent me on a huge trip down memory lane. 

It was quite creative for the author to hide clues to the art thefts in a musical score. The score needed a cipher so that someone could discover the clues. Esteemed musician Antonio Vivaldi created the cipher in the story as well as the score. The type of music was also another clue so there were many twists and turns in this mystery.

One of the characters, Dr. Gallo, is a music cryptologist which I had never heard of before. It is an actual profession though. The cipher is created by assigning a letter to each note in a score. A secret message can be found by decoding each word and then each sentence. Music cryptology has been written into the novels of other authors as well as in to a TV program. It is a new concept for me though. I found out from Wikipedia that it was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.

While advertised as a historical mystery, approximately 60% of the story takes place in the current time period.  I thought that it was a great book and both historical fiction and mystery fans will like it as well. 4 out of 5 stars.

.Self

.Self (pronounced dot self) is one of the newest Comixology Originals limited series comics. It is a science fiction story that imagines what would happen if a piece of technology made a bootleg copy of your entire life and then showed up on your doorstep. Further imagine what would happen if someone hacked into that technology and made additional copies of you and sent them out into the world to pursue different life paths that you did not take.  This is what you get with .Self.

The story begins with Natalie Winters living a comfortable life in Seattle with her husband and a robot vacuum that she treats like a pet. Because her husband is a techie, Natalie has an account with Postscript, a service designed to allow people a sense of closure after death. Postscript gives people an opportunity to preserve themselves for one last visit with loved ones and works easily. All you have to do is swallow a capsule and Postscript begins logging your social media presence, your memories and everything else and saves it in a blank body. Upon your death, Postscript will give you 48 hours of an extra life to sort things out with your family and friends.  Our heroine Natalie discovers that her Postscript account has been hacked and is confronted by several blank bodies who think that they are her. In an effort to destroy Postscript Natalie smashes the device but she soon realizes that she has to find the uninstall pill to stop it.

The premise for this plot is phenomenal. Who would have ever thought about backing up your self onto a hard drive? Cartoonist Christopher Sebela! The Natalie character is a tough woman who can physically fight anyone. However, she is overwhelmed and angry from the angles that her blank bodies have taken. She soon receives many emails from friends and relatives asking her to explain herself but Natalie does not know what they are talking about. Her husband Simon is too busy with his medical practice to help her. He is really a secondary character in the story with Natalie and her additional bodies taking center stage.

.Self will be a 5 issue comic.  I have read the first and second issues, which were published in November and December 2021 respectively. I suppose that issue 3 will come out this month but I have not heard anything about it. In an interview between the author and syfy.com Sebela stated that the story will continue with Natalie's Postscript account being further hacked and the bodies of several different Blanks being uploaded to it, causing her more confusion. 

5 out of 5 stars.

Royal Heir

Royal Heir is the 3rd installment of the Jagiellon Dynasty Series by P. K. Adams.  It takes place in Poland and Lithuania beginning in 1563.  The series began as a historical novel about Queen Bona. Bona has already passed away when this story began and it did not seem fulfilling or interesting to me. The plot concerns the son of Bona's best friend. 

The publisher's summary:  

At twenty-eight, Julian Konarski runs the family estate outside of Krakow, and he finds the job boring. Leaving the day to day work to his steward, he spends his free time reading Machiavelli, debating philosophy with friends at the university, or drinking at taverns at night. It is while on his way back from one such revel that Julian witnesses a brutal attack on a young nobleman in a dark alley in Krakow's ill-repute district. When the attackers flee, Julian rushes to aid the victim, but the unfortunate man dies in his arms. But before the last breath escapes the nobleman's body, he entrusts Julian with a mysterious message. Filled with sympathy, Julian promises to fulfill the dying man's wish and find its intended recipient.

When the judge presiding over the inquest dismisses the death as a result of a drunken brawl, Julian decides to conduct his own investigation. Aided by his cousin Rozalia and an impoverished noblewoman Magda, he soon discovers a connection between the murdered man and the household of Princess Anna, heir presumptive to King Zygmunt August. The search for justice becomes a desperate race to stop the throne from being usurped - but by whom? And will Julian avoid the deadly trap his elusive opponent is determined to set for him? 

I am sad to say that I did not like this installment of the series. It was dull. If you have not read the earlier books in the series, you will have no idea who the characters are. The main character, Julian, is not specifically named until page 57. Every paragraph begins with the word "I" and even though I had read the prior books I was not sure who "I" was. I kind of thought that he was the son of Queen Bona's female assistant but after a year passed from the time the last book came out, I was not sure. The author wrote alot of inner dialogue.  Each page we hear about Julian's thoughts, what he wanted to do on a given day, what he wanted to eat, etc... Even the crime to be solved was not known until around page 83 and I could not tell if this murder was the one that the plot would concern. All our information about it comes from Julian's thoughts.  

The series started out well with books one and two.  If there are subsequent books in the series I hope that the author will go back to the writing formula that has worked for her in the past. This is her fifth novel but only the first bump. I can't see that any action in this story will advance the series for future novels so let's hope she gets her groove back.