The Crimson Thread by Suzanne Weyn

Bridget O'Malley and her family arrive in New York City in 1880 with little more than the clothes on their backs, hoping for a better life than what they left behind in Ireland. They struggle at first, working in sweatshop conditions and living in a dismal tenement apartment. But when opportunity knocks, in the form of Bridget's position as a seamstress in the home of textile tycoon J.P. Wellington, it seems fortune will smile on them at last.

To Bridget's dismay, her imaginative father boasts she can make dresses so spectacular, they will create a sensation and bring the Wellingtons untold riches. Bridget's skills are not equal to the task, but she has an unexpected ally. Ray Stalls, a kind but enigmatic young man from her neighborhood, practically spins straw into gold, launching Bridget into a brilliant new career and the sort of fairy-tale lifestyle she only dreamed of. Until it all unravels.

Suzanne Weyn's young-adult novel, from the "Once Upon a Time" series, is an imaginative reworking of the Brothers Grimm tale, "Rumpelstiltskin" She embroiders her story with the merest hint of magic as she relates how Bridget finds all she has ever thought she wanted and loses it, only to discover riches much more precious and lasting.

The most intriguing aspect of this fairy-tale retelling was how Weyn turned Ray Stalls into a hero rather than the villain. He is the story's most sympathetic character and Bridget's true prince, although it takes her the length of the novel to realize it. Weyn incorporated elements from the original tale - straw spun into gold thread, a quest to discover Stalls's true name -in surprising ways. Bridget was a resourceful, strong-willed character, especially when Ray Stalls vanished from the narrative for a time, leaving her to her own devices.

Weyn portrayed the prejudice many immigrants had to overcome in order to succeed in the New World. She also explored the working conditions of the Industrial Revolution, showing how tycoons built their wealth on the backs of poorly paid employees, and examined the beginnings of labor movements and unionizing.

The book was not without flaws. Bridget's father was the stereotypical Irishman - hot headed and full of blarney. (At least he didn't drink). The plot relied too much on coincidence, and Weyn crammed so many important occurrences into the last 60 pages that my head spun. But I was willing to overlook these problems. It's a fairy tale, after all, with an appropriately romantic and happy ending.

My grade: B+

Sky Coyote by Kage Baker

Sky Coyote, the second novel in The Company series by Kage Baker, was a better read than the first. Baker seemed to find her feet as a writer, spinning a witty, satirical tale of how the operative Joseph saves a Chumash Indian village from encroaching white settlers.

Joseph has worked for The Company for 20,000 years, ever since he was recruited from a prehistoric European tribe. After a brief stay at a Company spa in the Mayan jungle, Joseph is sent to California in 1700, where he must convince the entire population of a seaside village to follow him into a Company enclave. (The Company's agents rescue works of art, rare plants and animals and cultural artifacts from destruction by humankind, so The Company can "rediscover" them in the future for its rich clients.)

Mendoza, the operative Joseph recruited in 16th-Century Spain, joins the California mission. (And yes, she's still bitter about how her last assignment with Joseph, in Tudor England, turned out.) However, the story focuses mainly on Joseph, describing his interactions with the Chumash while revealing his background and the doubts in his mind after centuries of service to The Company.

Joseph describes himself as having "a keen appreciation of the ludicrous." His wry, world-weary sense of humor colors the novel as he describes his efforts to lure the Chumash to the "sky canoes" that will take them to a new paradise. To facilitate his mission, Company technicians use implants, makeup and prosthetics to transform him into Sky Coyote, a Chumash trickster deity.

Baker wrote conversations between Joseph and the Chumash in modern idiom. At first, I thought it sounded odd and wasn't sure I liked it. But Baker soon had me chuckling with the wittiness of her dialogue. Her funny scenes gave me a sense of Chumash culture while reminding me humans have had the same flaws and foibles throughout history.

(For example, one scene had the tribe's holy men arguing heatedly with each other about how to interpret their deity's every word and action. Another had the village's tradesmen asking Coyote whether the gods might be interested in their merchandise.)

The Chumash remind Joseph of his own, long-vanished tribe as he reflects on his life as an operative. He and many of the other immortals are no longer sure their mortal masters are the wise, benevolent architects of a better future, as they were schooled to believe. Why are the mortals who travel back in time so narrow-minded and fearful? Why have some operatives disappeared after apparently outliving their usefulness to The Company? And why does the historical knowledge given to operatives end with the year 2355?

Baker's stories do require much suspension of disbelief, which I found easier with this second novel than I did with the first. Very little is revealed about how time travel works, or how exactly The Company makes certain select humans immortal. The Company's futuristic infrastructure operates alongside less advanced human societies, without humans ever becoming aware of it. (Could they really keep it all hidden for millennia?) What's more, some mortals, like the Chumash, become employees of The Company, somehow adapting to an utterly alien way of life even though they have no cultural or technological context for it.

Sky Coyote occasionally stretched my credulity a little thin. However, I enjoyed the story enough to put my quibbles aside. The novel was good enough to make me want to read further in the series, but not so good that I'm compelled to read the remaining books right away. I plan to take a break for other reading before I pick up the next Company novel.

My grade for Sky Coyote: B+

In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker

I just finished reading In the Garden of Iden for Carl's 2009 Sci-Fi Experience, and it was an intriguing if somewhat frustrating experience, to say the least. It's definitely one of the more unique stories I've read in awhile.

The premise is terrific. A few hundred years into the future, a global conglomerate, Dr. Zeus, Inc. (known as The Company) has invented time travel. Its agents turn children from different historical periods into immortal cyborgs and trains them to act as The Company's operatives. These immortals collect old manuscripts, works of art and rare plants and animals that otherwise would be lost or go extinct. The Company produces these "rediscovered" treasures at appropriate times ... for a price.

The botanist Mendoza is one such operative, rescued from the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition. Like other agents, she believes her work will ultimately benefit humankind by saving mortals from their own destructive tendencies. She has little regard for humans, perceiving them as violent, unreasonable apes.

I flew through the first third of the novel, which introduced Mendoza and her associates and revealed a little of The Company's methods for creating operatives. Part human and part machine, operatives have heightened senses, lightning-fast reflexes and the ability to heal rapidly, as well as centuries-worth of knowledge.

At age 19, Mendoza receives her first Company assignment. She, her mentor, Joseph, and another operative are sent to Mary Tudor's England to collect samples of rare plants from the garden of Sir Walter Iden, a country gentleman.

Unfortunately, the plot slowed to a crawl once the group arrived at Iden's garden. At the country manor, Mendoza falls in love with Nicholas Harpole, Iden's secretary, an idealistic young man with heretical beliefs not at all welcome in Bloody Mary's England. Their relationship gives Mendoza a new perspective on mortals and eventually leads to her questioning much of what The Company has taught her.

The problem with this portion of the book was that very little happened. Mendoza and Nicholas simply roamed the garden (when they weren't having sex) for page after page, conversing earnestly about God, spirituality and the human condition. Their discourse was so tangled, I had trouble making sense of it. I still haven't quite figured out Nicholas's religious philosophy. It certainly wasn't quite Protestant, or Catholic, or any other creed I recognize from that time. (And I've read a lot about Tudor England.)

I have enjoyed other novels that wrestle with theological concepts. Kage Baker just didn't present them in a way that was enjoyable for me to read. I found my eyes glazing over whenever Mendoza and Nicholas had one of their "chats."

However, I'll admit it was refreshing to have two characters fall in love with one another chiefly for their minds, rather than because they matched some ideal of physical attractiveness. And I liked how Baker described their physical intimacy - joyful, playful and as natural as breathing.

Also, Baker has a knack for writing scenes filled with sly wit and dark humor. A few of these scenes kept this section of the novel from being completely tedious. I also chuckled at how the operatives enjoyed modern conveniences in secret. (For example, the group has a radio disguised to look like a reliquary, and they listen to other agents doing live broadcasts of historical events.)

After reading the first 200 pages, I didn't know if I wanted to continue with The Company series. But then, the plot fired up again, beginning with a humorous section on Iden's Christmas revels and the operatives' reactions to them. Right after that, Iden makes a surprising decision, and at the same time, Queen Mary begins burning Protestant heretics. The Company's mission is endangered, while Mendoza, fearing for her lover's life, frantically tries to find a way to save him. The novel's climax was quite dramatic and thought-provoking, and the epilogue left me wanting to follow Mendoza and Joseph to their next mission.

Without its sagging middle section, this would have been a very good novel. In the end, it did intrigue me more than it frustrated me, so I will continue with the series for now. My grade for In the Garden of Iden: B-

Lust and love in historical fiction

The title Royal Harlot should have tipped me off.

I picked up Susan Holloway Scott's novel about Barbara Villiers Palmer, notorious mistress of England's Charles II, expecting a certain amount of titillation, but also hoping for an enlightening glimpse into merry Restoration London.

I got smut.

I have no problem with a bit of smut. A well-placed sex scene can liven up any story filled with treaties, treason, war, politics and beheadings. After all, where would Henry VIII be without the beguiling Anne Boleyn or that tart, Katherine Howard?

But a third of the way into Royal Harlot, I already felt bludgeoned by the sex scenes. Reading this novel was a bit like watching Showgirls.

Heaving bosoms and throbbing manhoods do not a plot make. Therefore, I finished the book totally unenlightened about Charles' Dutch wars or his divisive religious policies. Scott spent just a few pages on the Great Plague and Great Fire of London. (I learned more by quickly skimming Wikipedia entries than I did from this book.)

But I did discover Charles II and Barbara Villiers liked sex. A lot. My grade: D

Thankfully, another of my recent reads, Loving Will Shakespeare, brought the past vividly to life while offering a convincing love story. Carolyn Meyer's novel focuses on Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, who became Shakespeare's wife.

Historians know little about Anne, other than Shakespeare bequeathing her the "second-best bed" in his will, and that she was eight years older than her husband. Meyer's Anne is a lonely girl growing up in an unhappy home, who despairs of ever finding someone to love her. She is drawn to Will by his charm, creativity and zest for life and as he becomes a young man, finds herself unexpectedly falling in love with him. Their romance will be bittersweet, as Shakespeare will spend most of his time in London, wedded more to the theater than to his wife.

The novel included many wonderful scenes of rural village life in Elizabethan England, including holiday customs, marriage traditions and the excitement generated by the queen's annual progress. My grade: A-

Morgan Llywelyn's Strongbow: The Story of Richard and Aoife, another novel centering on a love story, left me wanting to know much more about its protagonists. It was an absorbing, touching read, but too short. My grade: B-

Richard de Clare (Strongbow) was a Norman knight denied his lands and titles, who fought on behalf of Aoife's father, the deposed king of Leinster in Ireland. I discovered through a Google search that Richard and Aoife were the parents of Isabel de Clare, who married William Marshal, one of medieval England's greatest knights and statesmen. Does anyone know of any other books focusing on Strongbow or Aoife?

The final book in this love-themed reading roundup is the best book I've read this year so far: Peony in Love by Lisa See. A ghost story, a historical fantasy, a family saga and a coming-of-age tale, the novel immersed me in the unfamiliar world of 17th-century China and captivated me with its beautifully told story.

The novel is set during a time of political and social upheaval in China, when thousands of women left their cloistered existences to pursue intellectual lives, writing and publishing their own work, before society forced them back into their family compounds. A woman's right to express herself is a major theme of the novel.

Peony is a 15-year-old aristocratic girl obsessed with the controversial opera, The Peony Pavilion. During a performance of the opera staged in her family's compound, she secretly meets and falls in love with a poet, Wu Ren. Locked in her room for her transgressions and to await her arranged marriage, Peony becomes so absorbed in writing her thoughts about the opera, she forgets to eat, and dies just before her scheduled wedding.

From there, the novel explores intricate Chinese beliefs about the afterlife as Peony roams the world as a hungry ghost, visiting Wu Ren and influencing his subsequent wives to continue writing about the opera. Peony's story mirrors The Peony Pavilion but also deviates from the opera in unexpected ways. She learns surprising, heartbreaking truths about the women in her own family, and ultimately finds a way to be remembered and honored as an individual.

Peony in Love was a hypnotic, strange fairy tale that required some suspension of disbelief to be enjoyed. I willingly followed the story where it led me, sometimes slowing my reading to savor the beautiful writing, sometimes speeding up in my impatience to discover what would come next. My grade: A+