Magic Lost, Trouble Found by Lisa Shearin - review

Magic Lost, Trouble Found
Lisa Shearin
*****
fantasy
2007

cover - I like this cover.  A strawberry blonde, confident looking young woman standing there with a sword, the exotic lavenderish sky in the background.  {Is "lavenderish" a real word?  well - to me it is.} That is exactly what the main character is like - strawberry blonde, confident and able to take care of herself in a fight.


Magic Lost, Trouble Found is one of those "sleeper" books for me.  You've heard the term in relation to movies - a movie that doesn't seem like it's going to be a big hit, yet ends up to be one of the best movies you've ever seen for whatever reason.  When I first started this book, I couldn't quite get into it.  I think I ended up putting it aside for at least three years - possible more....yes, in fact I started it in 2007 and finally finished in in February of 2012.  That's quite a wait.  The first time I didn't get past the first chapter, and to be fair, I had brought it with me when my daughter, granddaugher {then 7 months old} and I flew to Los Angeles to visit my brother.  We were pretty busy, and I ended not reading much until we came home, and I became engrossed in other books.  I kept seeing it on the shelf and thinking I should read it...time passes....then I joined that challenge and decided to grab it off that shelf and see if I couldn't finish it.  Once I got into it, I found it was pretty interesting.  


Raine is a fae, living in a city and world populated with faes, goblins and other folk.  There are wizards, thieves, etc.  It's set in a time with no cars or motorized items - think of Willow or Lord of the Rings.  Raine has a small talent - she can find things with a small bit of magic.  She comes from a line of magic users and has been living with her cousins - a large family of happy, busy pirates and thieves.  She has a friend, Quentin, who frequently gets into situations because of his tendency to try to make money by stealing.  She also has friends in the local version of a police precinct.


Her friend Quentin has taken a job, and she's decided to watch over him, to make sure that nothing goes wrong.  Only the job he took was to steal from a notoriously dangerous wizard and of course, something does go wrong.  Goblins - two factions of goblins interrupt and a battle follows.  To keep the item safe, she puts it around her neck while getting Quenting out of danger - and gets stuck with an evil amulet that kind of likes having Raine wear it.  Turns out this amulet is pretty important, and is wanted by quite a few people - one to hide it away and keep it safe and others to use for your typical nefarious purposes.


Goblins in this particular world are not your typical goblins - these guys are human shaped, with silvery gray skin; they like to stay in darker places and can be quite mesmerizing.  They are pretty blood thirsty though.  Turns out Raine has had a long will they or won't they relationship with a certain goblin who happens to be related to the royal goblin family - this matters later in the book.  And now, there are some pretty evil goblins after her and the amulet.  Her cousin, Phaelen {a dashingly roguish pirate} helps her - he's a fun guy to read about.  They have a fun relationship with interesting dialogue - and he's taught her all he knows about picking locks, etc.


Raine needs to find a way to get the amulet off her, into safe hands  before it takes her over.  She's finding new abilities the longer she connected to it.  People, good and bad, are after her, she's not sure who she can trust {besides her family} and she ends up inadvertantly getting her aunt and cousin involved, as well as her wizard tutor, and her cousin Phaelen.  The entire book is fun to read - good dialogue, interesting interactions between characters, adventure, a few good fights and a couple of heart thumping moments between her and a certain detective.  Wizards, magic, Goblins, Fae, spellsingers, roguish pirate captain cousin....Lots of great stuff in this novel.  A good read, and the first in a series.  The narration is first person, with very little in the way of infodumping - there are parts where Raine explains a goblin way of life, for instance, but these are kept short and sweet, and do the job - it explains so that you know a bit more about the story, the person or  the talent.  Shearin does a good job with this.


I'm happy I read this book.  I promptly went out and bought the second in the series and in true contradictory fashion, I haven't read it yet.  Which is silly, because I know I have a good story with great narration and lightly snarky dialogue to go with it.  {I love a lightly snarky dialogue - there's nothing so off putting as over-snark, where the author is so out of control with having her character be a smartass that the person comes across as a super sarcastic asshole} I plan to read Armed & Magical soon, and if it's as good as the first, then I have the rest of the series to look forward to - which is always good thing.


There are currently six books in the series - the next up is Armed & Magical, and the latest novel All Spell Breaks Loose is available now.

Monday - It's Monday!

I totally should have looked for a superbowl or football related lol cat, but after a long day, I just wasn't into browsing for pics. So we have misunderstood black kitty instead.

Like most Sundays, all but my middle son had left the house for a day of football with "the guys". My middle son usually spends the day in and out of his room and on and off the computer, watching parts of the game while I relax on my bed with a book or my laptap. This is how most of our Sundays go, except that I usually also have my granddaughter with me. Only the last two weekends I've been granddaughter-free, which isn't as fun as it sounds. Today, I had plans to have a pajama day by myself in my room with the books...

then I heard my oldest son and his girlfriend. Turns out they had come to spend the day with me and middle son. Oldest son loves football, but he would rather watch the superbowl with a teeny group than go to a huge superbowl party. Which was fine with me, especially since they brought snacks, pepsi, cookies and premarinated tri-tip with them. Marinated overnight for a very tasty tender beef. They did all the cooking and preparing. They brought the girlfriends new little puppy - a very small long-haired chihuahua named Maleficent (yes, after the Disney villianess). So this very tiny, laziest puppy ever spent most of the day on a shoulder, or a lap or a cushion on the couch while my dog, Skippy suddenly decided he needed to mark different areas in the house! Then he spent the rest of the day alternating between sulks and trying to get to know Male. She wasn't impressed - at all.

all in all, it was a nice low key day. Good food, I ended up watching the game, rooting for the Giants and had fun listening to the boys rib each other.

Here we are again, at another Monday. We've survived Superbowl Weekend, the past work week, and now we're starting on another week. Hurray for living, hurray for reading and yeehaw for football! And now on to the book week in review. It's Monday, What Are You Reading is hosted by Sheila of Book Journey. This is the weekly meme where we discuss books we've read, what we're reading now, etc.

This week, I'm just putting pics up and info regarding the books as the pics come up - meaning I'm not organizing them by read, currently reading, etc. So here goes:

I started out the week reading Trance, by Kelly Meding. I bought Trance because I enjoyed Meding's first novel so much. The only thing is, is that this novel - while having an interesting plot and a great beginning started to lose my interest in the third or fourth chapter. After trying to read it a little longer, I ended up putting it aside. It's superhero supervillian type of characters and while I enjoy that once in a while, sometimes this type of story bores me. I think I'm just not in the right mood for it now, so I plan to try it again a little later. Meding remains a good writer, but this one just isn't for me at this time.

On the other hand, I also have the second two Meding books in the Dreg City series. I enjoyed very much Three Days to Dead. I started reading a few days ago As Lie The Dead, and so far, it's just as interesting as the first book in the series. So this is one of my current reads, one that I plan to continue reading - even if it share currently reading status with a couple of other books.

I was happy to see The Mortal Bone by Marjorie M. Liu in the bookstore the other day. I went back (couldn't get it at the time) and bought it - and I am saving it for next weekend or possibly the weekend after. That's if I can stick with reading the other few current reads without adding this one to them. Any of the Hunter Kiss novels deserve to be the only novel being read at any current time. They're always a good read. Apparently The Mortal Bone has been out since December 27, 2011. Funny that I couldn't see it in Barnes & Nobles until February, 2012! I wonder what's up with these bookstores, lately. The last five or so books that I've tried to get on the release day from Barnes & Nobel, I've had to wait for two weeks at least, and in this case it's been over a month since the release date. I know I didn't see it until last week, and I've been cruising the shelves at least five times since December.

I've never ever read anything by Cherie Priest other than excerpts and raving reviews about her books. Based on the excerpts of some of her work and the reviews by readers who really seem to enjoy her fiction, I bought Bloodshot. I just started reading it last week. I don't know if it's because of my recent Saintcrow reading marathon or something else, but it's not keeping me interested either. Right at the moment it feels like one of those books I could read, and then forget about right away. Kind of "Ehhhhhhh". I want to be wowed when I'm reading a book. So I also put this one aside for now. Maybe I'll be more interested later. It's been known to happen.
One of my other current reads is a book by E.S. Moore. To Walk the Night just came out recently. Happily, you can read an excerpt on Amazon.com. Starts out strong with a ending of a fight, or slaughter rather. I'm about two chapters in and so far the only thing that's bothering me is the internal angst about the main character being a monster, though she's apparently one monster who is cleansing the streets of her own kind. But then I'm always a bit annoyed with inner angst and when a character hates a part of themselves - I just lose patience with it. doesn't mean the writing is bad, I just don't have a lot of patience - especially during certain times of the month (which, by the way I should be through with, C-'MON already, I'm not planning on birthin' any more babies, can I just be done with the ovulation part?) So, I'm still enjoying To Walk the Night, and it's currently one of my current reads. LOL

The only book that I finished reading last week was a book leftover from my 2011 reading list. In fact, it's a book that I've had for over three years, I started it last year and misplaced it, then went on to other books. For the Just For Fun reading group (on Goodreads) I read this for my February book. Just for Fun is a group where we read one book a month from our shelves just for fun. You have to pick from your own TBR bookshelf - a book that's been sitting around waiting for you to notice it again after putting it there....... I don't know why I took so long to read this one. Man, there's funny dialogue and situations along with danger and a whole different take on Goblins. This is not your average goblin character... So since I've enjoyed Magic Lost Trouble Found I also decided to start the second one of the series by Lisa Shearin that I just happen to have on my TBR shelf. Armed and Magical is another of my currently reading novels (this makes three so far, that I'm currently reading). I like the character in this novel, as well has her cousin - dark, dangerous and happily amoral - Phelan is a fun character to read. The main character - Raine is a strong elf, female and not a helpless being- nope, her cousins and relatives have made sure she knows how to fight. Good series, with great dialogue and interesting plots. Call me shallow (only as far as book covers go, though) but I definitely like the later book covers way better than the earlier books. The face and the way her head is being held just looks weird. See? That's definitely a shallow statement. But I'm being honest, the later covers look a lot better.
This brings me to the end of my Monday reading list - I've given up reading a few, and I'm currently reading at least three books - three interesting novels.

I leave you now with this last LOL Cat pic - one that all single women who are obsessed with cats should take a warning from.