Specialty bookshelf: reviews of children's, mystery, Colorado author and horror titles

Rocky Mountain News

Published September 25, 2008 at 7 p.m.

Text size

More Books

More stories »

CHILDREN

Merlin's Dragon

By T.A. Barron. Philomel Books, $19.99, ages: 9-12. Grade: A

This first book in a new trilogy by best-selling Denver author Barron introduces fans to a new defender of Avalon, a minuscule green-eyed creature who embarks on a dangerous quest to save the wizard Merlin.

Wind sister Aylah, sent by the spirit lord Dagda to look after the lizardlike Basil, tells Basil his life is worth saving, but Basil can't imagine why.

Other than his ability to mimic smells, there's nothing magical about him. He doesn't even know what kind of a creature he is.

Then, Basil dreams that Merlin is killed by a creature hauntingly like himself and sets off with Aylah through the realms of the Great Tree of Avalon and beyond to confront his darkest fears and warn the world of an evil leech.

Final word: Though the story moves at a slow pace and is deliberate in introducing the new series (a bridge between the Avalon and Merlin epics), it draws you in completely and leaves you once again feeling that magical connection to nature you've come to crave from Barron's epics.

- Jennifer Miller

MYSTERY

Dirty Water

By Mary-Ann Tyrone Smith and Jere Smith. Hall of Fame Press, $22.95. Grade: A

Even if you root for the Rox, not the Sox, you've gotta admire this baseball-filled mystery for its deep and knowledgeable love of the game. Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, a third-generation Red Sox fan, joins forces with her son Jere, a Sox blogger, to tell the story of an apparently motiveless murder affecting a warm Boston family. At the same time, the authors bring the Red Sox clubhouse and its denizens to life when an abandoned baby turns up there. Adding to the mystery is an anonymous blogger who always knows a little more about the team than he should. The compelling conclusion entertains while making a point about how the game is run today.

Final word: The story ends well before Boston came to Denver and gave us a drubbing, so you won't have to relive last October.

-Jane Dickinson

COLORADO AUTHOR

Neptune's Chariot

By Irv Sternberg. Outskirts, $26.95. Grade: A-

Coloradan Sternberg's successful foray into historical fiction is based on a true story about a young woman in the mid-19th century world of ever-faster sailing ships.

When 18-year-old Elizabeth Godwin stows away on a clipper ship to escape her proper Bostonian parents, she wants to reach San Francisco to study medicine with her physician uncle. But his earlier death forces her to remain on board for the ship's trip to China before returning to Boston.

Challenges abound during the months at sea: illness, accidents, death-defying storms, a mutinous first mate, the death of the captain and the crew's initial distrust of a woman. Readers will applaud with her shipmates when Elizabeth perseveres and ultimately brings the ship to safety.

Final word: Sternberg isn't Melville, but he's more fun to read, even if the ship lore occasionally becomes a bit heavy-handed.

-Joan Hinkemeyer

HORROR

The Ghost Quartet

Edited by Marvin Kaye. Tor, $25.95. Grade: A

Kaye follows his excellent anthologies, The Vampire Sextette and The Dragon Quintet, with the third and best in the series. In Brian Lumley's The Waiting Place, set in the same spooky moors as The Hound of the Baskervilles, a lonely artist almost loses his soul.

Orson Scott Card, who has written for all three books, gives a new interpretation of Shakespeare in Hamlet's Father. Kaye's offering, The Haunted Single Malt, which should be enjoyed by those who enjoy a "wee dram" of good Scotch, is a traditional English ghost story told in an Edinburg pub.

Tanith Lee's Strindberg's Ghost, set in an alternate Russia that combines Moscow and St. Petersburg, completes the collection

Final word: For my money, the novella is the ideal length for a ghost story, and these are great novellas.

-Mark Graham

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News