Cosy Mysteries with a Personal Edge

As I mentioned before, I was rather angry by the time I’d finished the first Spice Town mystery (and I’ve never bought nor otherwise read the others). The novel had a nice love story and certainly hinted at another, it had an amateur detective who would have made more sense than most, being the mayor of the town and thus having a vested interest in its good name, but it had no serious crime. On the other hand, most of Annabel Chase’s novel series are focused as much on the interpersonal relationships as they are on the serious crimes and I couldn’t love them more for it. Why is that?

At first glance, one might think that the different view I have of these series is down to me reading Annabel Chase knowing that there’s going to be a lot of personal conflicts in the books, but not being prepared for it when it came to Spice Town.
And, yes, it is true that I enjoy Annabel Chase’s books for the interpersonal stuff as much as for the cosy mystery part. I have been following her “Federal Bureau of Magic” series from issue one to issue twelve (so far) to see how Eden Fury’s powers grow, her family gets more annoying, and her relationship with the sexy Sheriff in town deepens. I have enjoyed her “Spellbound” series as much for the main character’s relationships in town as for the crimes. Why have I not been as angry about the large wedge of personal stuff in those books when I read the first of them? Why have I been seeking out more of the author’s stories?
Because they’re still cosy mysteries. Yes, the crime is only about fifty percent of the book’s content and the rest of it is personal drama and developments that take several books to come to fruition. At the same time, though, the crimes are also interesting, they have high stakes, and they are resolved in a way which makes sense. Besides, all cosy mysteries have a lot of personal stuff going on in addition to the crime, so that is nothing new or specific to Annabel Chase’s books.

That is what was missing from the Spice Town novel — the cosy mystery to solve.
It’s not that there’s a love story in it. As a matter of fact, the love story was the best part of the book — it was well-written, it was sweet, and it was engaging. Even the suggestion that in time there might be more between the mayor (who makes for a good amateur sleuth as she ought to have an interest in her town’s reputation, given it lives off tourism) and the police chief is fine. They have a prior history, but didn’t think of each other ‘that way’ before due to the mayor being happily married and now widowed. I could see their relationship shift and blossom over the course of more books. So, no, it’s not the interpersonal relationships which put me off the book, quite the opposite.
My problem was that I hadn’t bought a romance novel, I had bought a cosy mystery novel. I was expecting a mystery and I was getting — next to nothing. I’ve mentioned in the blog post linked above that there was no body. What that really means is that there was no tension, no stakes, nothing about the theft was in any way related to the town or to the main characters. That was my problem there.

I generally have a problem with long-running cosy mysteries, as they usually feature an amateur sleuth and it gets harder and harder to believe that the owner of a bookshop, a coffee shop, or a boutique, a local librarian, a professor at a college, or a retired lady from a small, cosy town would actually end up stumbling over bodies that often.
Of course, the problem with long-running cosy mysteries also includes ‘a good reason for them to be invested in the mystery.’ Even if I stumbled over the body of my next-door neighbour who was a terrible busybody (not that my personal next-door neighbours are), I wouldn’t automatically want to investigate things myself. An amateur needs a good reason for stepping into an investigation, especially when it comes to murder and they might be the next one on the murderer’s list. The amateur needs personal stakes in the mystery. As mentioned, that would have been less of a problem with the Spice Town series, as I can see how a mayor would insert herself in investigations which were harming the town’s name. If anything, the amateur sleuth of this series made more sense than many others. Even a professional needs stakes of a kind, but those are usually ‘they have been given that case and it would be bad for them not to solve it.’

This is where the big difference between the FBM and Spice Town comes to light.
Eden Fury’s cases are often deadly. She has to go up against demons of any kind, has to protect the populace of her little town (which is a hotspot for the supernatural), has to make sure the regular humans do not realize that vampires, werewolves, witches, and other supernatural beings do exist and live among them. Eden is as invested in those cases as she is in her regular life. She is a professional at investigating, so when something happens in her town, it’s her job to find out what it is. She cares very much for people and wants to keep them from harm. Both boosts her stakes.
The Spice Town crime is based on a theft, which is already a let-down of kinds. Yet, if the main character were invested in the theft, if the money for the fireworks display had come out of her tight budget and now it’s gone, if the fireworks were meant for a special celebration in town and advertised and now there’s all those tourists who want to see it, I can see high personal stakes which would make the story interesting. If the author had completely left the theft out of it and only written that romance, it might have been fine, too, although then that wouldn’t have been a mystery novel, but a romance one. As-is, the story reads like the author wrote that romance, then realized she was due a mystery novel, and put in that theft during the editing of the first draft, just so she would meet the requirements. That is how the book reads for me.

Cosy mysteries with a personal side to them are fine. They can be a lot of fun to read and especially a series which slowly develops interpersonal relationships book by book can be very addictive. The crimes might be solved by the end of the book, but will Eden get further with Sheriff Fox? Will she get new fury powers from using hers in the climax of this book? It’s easy to see why I’ve immediately pre-ordered the next book after reaching the end of the currently last one. If you call something a cosy mystery, however, you have to deliver on the ‘mystery’ part, not just on the ‘cosy’ one.

Episodic Stories

Episodic stories and episodic novels are an underestimated format. They allow for a more loosely-connected story with more of a break between the episodes and still support boosting the stakes and raising the tension throughout. My own interest in this format was raised when I read “The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings” (see review here) and was fascinated by how the stories within raised the overall tension and stakes. Afterwards, I tried it out with “The Lady of the Dead” (coming February 2023) and plotted several other story collections like this one. What are episodic stories and how are they best used? Read on.

Travel stories are an easy way to incorporate the episodic format into a novel. In a travel story, your main characters are travelling from one place to the other, so all stories you tell about the trip will be episodic by nature. The characters will be in a new place with a new setting, different problems, and new conflicts in every story. Novelty comes easy like this, too, as long as you make all the areas they visit very different from each other. Still, don’t put too much faith into the novelty — each of the episodes of the travel story must be able to stand on its own. Stories in an episodic format always have to, otherwise you’re just writing very long chapters.

Episodic stories are by their very nature more fragmented than a regular novel or novella. Even though a short story can have 15.000 plus words, it is still much shorter than a novella, not to speak of a novel. A set of such stories is bound to be less well-connected than a single narrative, no matter the form. Since there is no strong connection in the story binding them together, there needs to be something else.
Generally speaking, all stories in a book should be the same genre, if nothing else. Yet, for an episodic story, this isn’t enough. Stories must at least share main characters. Ideally, there is also some sort of plot which goes through all stories, internal or external.
At the same time, every story in an episodic format needs to be a full story, including their own beginning, middle, and end. If a story can’t stand by itself, if it is missing a resolution or isn’t really introducing the situation, it is not a story, only a bigger chapter. If every story stands on its own, though, should you escalate?

There are two different types of episodic books. One is made up of different stories which share genre and cast, but are not in any way connected beyond that. The other is made up of stories which have a plot going through all of them — either an internal plot which allows for the main character to grow or an external plot which pushes the stakes story by story. Both types can be fun to read and have their advantages and disadvantages.
Episodic stories where there is nothing more than a collection of stories with the same characters have the advantage that you can usually read them in whatever order you wish. Each story can stand on its own, even if there might be a passing reference to a story that came before. A good example of this type of book would be most of the Sherlock Holmes canon, Solar Pons (see here), or the Father Brown stories. In all cases, the stories themselves are not interconnected and there is no rise in tension from the first to the last in the book. All stories feature the same main cast with some recurring side characters (such as the various Scotland Yard detectives in the Sherlock Holmes series), yet, apart from a few stories (“The Final Problem” and “The Empty House” from the Sherlock Holmes canon come to mind), all can be read in any order. There might be a theme in some of those books, but the stories themselves are in no way interconnected.
On the other hand, an episodic novel has stories which are interconnected to a degree and thus build more tension for the reader. Still, each story must stand on its own, but there might be references to earlier stories in the later ones. In “The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings”, for instance, each story is one case in which the hero and the villainess cross paths and swords. In the beginning, there is no retaliation for the hero’s actions, the villainess pushes them aside as ‘bad luck’ or something similar. Yet, after he’s stopped her several times, she takes actions directly against him, to the degree of dropping all pretence, cutting herself loose, and personally trying to kill him. Therefore, the big finale of the last story has high personal stakes for the hero and brings him into a deep conflict with the villainess. The tension is rising throughout the book (much better than in the similar story “The Sorceress of the Strand” by the same duo of authors) and it is necessary to read the stories in order to understand why it does so.

The main difference between a book with a collection of short stories set around the same characters and a book with an episodic novel in it is the interconnection of the stories.
Reading the Sherlock Holmes canon doesn’t require remembering the first story in a book when you reach the last one. Some characters turn up several times, such as Mycroft Holmes or the Scotland Yard detectives. Some characters are only seen once. Some are mentioned later on, such as having suggested Holmes to a friend or acquaintance who is now coming to seek help. Each of the stories can be reprinted elsewhere on its own.
“The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings” or my own story “The Lady of the Dead” don’t make much sense unless you read the stories in order and follow the rising stakes throughout. They are episodic in that each is an episode in the same narrative. Each story has their own beginning, middle, and end, but the end of each but the last story will influence what happens later.

Writing and reading episodic stories can be a lot of fun. I wasn’t even aware of how fun it could be to have these episodic stories at my disposal until I read “The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings” and tried writing something similar later on. It has also helped me put a few of my other stories caught in ‘plotting hell’ into a new perspective. Sometimes, it is much better to write an episodic novel where all stories converge in the end than to try and write a regular novel or construct a set of novellas. My own ‘Dark Universe’ idea, for instance, wouldn’t have worked as a regular novel and would have been challenging to write as several novellas. As a set of episodes which merge into a high-stake story in the last one, they will definitely work. Give episodic formats a look and see how they suit you — you might be positively surprised!

Magic in the Dangerous Damsels Series

After last week’s review of the second book in the “Dangerous Damsels” series, I want to throw a bit of light at the use of magic in the series. The magic is not the main part here, first of all, as the books are a fun romp of action, romance, comedy, and melodrama, but it is persistent throughout and comes with a few interesting ideas and implications.

As mentioned, the magic is not the main part of the story. It is not relevant to the main plot, as these are not stories about someone discovering they have magic and going on a quest to learn to control it. All four main characters of the two books, both female leads and both male ones, can use the setting’s magic, because everyone can, which is an interesting aspect.
In the first book, we have a look at how the sky pirates use the setting’s magic to lift off with their homes and fly them around — into battle, on a plundering trip, or just because they want a change of scenery. In the second one, we see how the witches, the second group to come out of the discovery (or, rather, rediscovery) of the spell, use the magic in a much more discreet and understated way to manipulate small objects and cause things to happen. Both ways are equally valid, of course, and nothing speaks against a pirate using the spell on small objects or a witch taking over a house to fly it. It’s a matter of philosophy which has lead to the formation of two different factions who both think they are practising magic the only right way.

An interesting aspect of the Latin poem which is used to levitate objects of any size is that there is no inborn talent needed to use it. Everyone who knows the stanzas of the poem and can pronounce them correctly can use the spell.
Among the pirates, it is common to teach a servant or two about the spell so they can fly the house in the absence of the owner or while the owner wants to relax a little and have tea during the trip. Funnily enough, though, the Wisteria Society ladies are averse to teaching their husbands the poem in question, because men should know their place and take care of household and children while the lady of the house is out plundering. This does not go for the two male leads of the series’ books, both of whom are pirates in their own right. Sometimes, the servants need a bit of practice, but that’s mostly due to them speaking with an accent or otherwise having to learn proper pronunciation.
In the first book, Queen Victoria is taught the poem by one of the junior members of the society and easily manages to make Buckingham Palace take off and steer it across the countryside. It’s her first time, but she has no problem with making the huge building do as she wishes. In the second book, an elderly woman whose house the pirates attack by accident (it has a door the same colour as the villain’s) demands the poem as reparation payment and then sets off to fly around on her own.
While we haven’t seen a pirate use the poem for something more subtle so far, there’s also the fact that the female lead of the second book, who is a witch, quickly understands how a house is steered herself, despite never having done so before.
Magic in this setting is marvellously democratic — everyone can do it.

The challenges of using magic in the setting are to memorize the stanzas properly, learn the proper pronunciation, and be able to speak. Even if a whispered stanza is enough for a witch to move objects, she must be able to speak. If a witch or pirate is gagged, they cannot use the magic at all.
The focus on pronunciation rather than a specific talent which sorts the world into mages and non-mages is interesting and refreshing. It is also something which makes the many high-society members of the magical community make more sense — elocution lessons are common in the education of the high-born and so is learning Latin in the first place. Both together guarantee a good grasp on the poem and a high success rate when using it.
The higher classes have a slight advantage when it comes to learning the spell — both because they are better at correct pronunciation and because they are more likely to know someone who knows the spell —, but it isn’t unattainable for the rest of the world. After all, Black Beryl found it in a bottle. Who knows how many more spells are floating around in the oceans of the world, waiting to be found by someone?

The magic is also a big part of the setting’s novelty factor, of course. Flying houses are not common in fantasy stories and they make for something different than the airships which one would suspect in a late-Victorian and thus near-Steampunk setting.
The houses are both more novel and more manoeuvrable than an airship and the idea of just packing up your own house and travelling to a place where you want to be, with no need for a hotel or pension or hours in a train or, in modern times, a car or plane, is certainly interesting.
The other novelty comes from who is choosing the pirate life (and that of a witch to a smaller degree). It’s women who, in our real history and in a regular Gothic novel or Regency romance would have had few options for their lives. Instead of only being the passive damsels who need rescuing, they rescue themselves, with and without the use of magic. The magic has freed those women from the constraints of society and given them a better option.

What can we learn from the use of magic in the “Dangerous Damsels” series? Magic doesn’t always have to be the focus of a story to exist in it. In this series, the magic is part of the novelty factor, allowing for people to fly houses. It’s also a useful tool, as you can levitate everything with it — no matter whether it’s a muffin, a garden shed, or a palace. The magic isn’t a big thing, but it is something people rely on regularly and without thinking much about it. It’s not the most important part of the story, but it plays its part well and makes the story better.

Review: The League of Gentlewomen Witches

“The League of Gentlewomen Witches” by India Holton is a sequel to “The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels” (here’s my review) and makes not secret of it. In the very first chapter, the main character of the first book is name-dropped and she will appear as a side character in later chapters. After enjoying the first book of the “Dangerous Damsels” series very much, I actually pre-ordered this one and I’m glad I did and got it right as it came out that way. I had a fun time reading it, just as I did with the first one.

The first book in the series has established the general world-building — about a century before the late-Victorian ‘now,’ a woman named Beryl Black got stranded with her husband, a rather unsuccessful explorer, and found a message in a bottle on the beach of the Caribbean island she was stranded on. The message was a Latin poem which, if properly pronounced, enables the user to lift and direct an object of any size. Beryl first used it to fly back to England in a small hut, then outfitted her house with cannons, and became the very first sky pirate under the alias of Black Beryl, flying her house on plundering runs.
She shared the poem with her friends and some of those, too, took to the skies, forming the Wisteria Society. Other friends decided to use the poem in a more discreet way, not moving full houses, but small objects to manipulate the world around them (or steal and sell the objects — witches have to eat, too, after all). They’re known as the Wicken League and are considered witches.
The first book in the series deals with the pirates and is focused on Cecilia Bassingthwaite. The second book deals with the witches and is focused on Charlotte Pettifer, who is destined, according to her aunt, to become the next leader of the Wicken League.

Both organisations are in play in the book, because both have the same target in mind: an amulet which Black Beryl created out of the bottle in which the poem was found. As the bottle must have housed the poem for a long time, the amulet is thought to be immensely powerful (although nobody knows what the power is), so both the pirates and the witches want it.
Charlotte is supposed to secure it for the witches, but finds herself in a bind when a pirate flies off with the amulet (and the poor guy holding it at that time) and she is in need of quick transport. That transport can very well be provided by Alex O’Riley, a pirate she’s had a run-in with before and whose house is closest to her position. Alex, on the other hand, despises witches for what one did to him as a child, and wants the amulet for himself. Yet, she manages to be ‘kidnapped’ by him, although not to commandeer his house.
From there, the story is off to twist the tropes of Gothic novels and Regency romances into new shapes to the reader’s amusement.

One thing I love very much about the book is that while it presents the reader with new main characters (Charlotte and Alex, obviously), it doesn’t ignore what came before. Not only does Alex have a smaller role in the first book already, as he’s a good friend of Ned Lightbourne, the male lead, and comes to Ned’s help, but Ned and Cecilia also turn up in the story again (as do many of the pirate ladies, including Cecilia’s now-married maiden aunt whose new marital status is a result of the first book’s climax).
Ned and Cecilia are still very much in love, but they are also both pirates and want the amulet as much as everyone else. Even Cecilia’s current state (she’s pregnant) doesn’t keep her from being an adventurous woman who enjoys her life. I was not expecting this at all — most authors who write about different romantic couples let those who have finished courting and are happily married drop from the story. I’m glad, though, that the “Dangerous Damsels” series isn’t doing it. It’s so beautiful to see Cecilia and Ned together, now a perfect team, who are still deeply in love, too.
Yet, the focus remains on Charlotte and Alex who have their own problems to work through, from Charlotte’s aunt who insists she needs to stay single over their growing interest in each other to Alex’s hatred for witches which comes from his own childhood. That doesn’t mean, though, that the story is dark and depressing.

As in the first book, India Holton manages to create a fascinating and engaging tale that keeps you reading from the first to the last page. She wields all the tropes of both Gothic novels and Regency romance masterfully and name-drops real-world books like the full Jane-Austen canon or Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” at fitting times.
Twisting the tropes into something new and making fun of them as she does is one thing which already endeared her first book very much to me. In the second one, for instances, she makes fun of the ‘last room at the inn’ trope which she played straight in the first one. Everyone knows that when a couple thrown together by circumstances is forced to spend a night at an inn, there will only be one room left and this room will only have one bed in it. Well, in this book, there is the inn and the one room, but that room dares to have two beds in it (which the couple immediately pushes together to work through some sexual tension).

Charlotte is in a similar place at the beginning as Cecilia is in the first book — both are in a cul-de-sac they can’t get out of on their own. Cecilia is being kept from full status as a member of the Wisteria Society because she might be too much like her father, Charlotte is seen as ther future replacement of her aunt who is still rather healthy and probably not going to die tomorrow. Both meet men they immediately feel pulled towards, but still refuse to go along with easily (Ned first turns up as an assassin sent to kill Cecilia, Alex has his briefcase stolen by Charlotte). Both are also active and proactive — they are not, in the regular way of seeing them, damsels at all.

“The League of Gentlewomen Witches” is a great fun, it has action, romance, comedy, and melodrama of the best kind. The mixture of all of the elements is what makes it a joy to read. Comedic situations, as a fight in a coffee shop over a thrown book, turn into action, such as being followed by the theft victim and using discreet magic to stall the follower, then into bickering with romantic undertones as he catches up, and back into action when the only way out is escape by flying bicycle. India Holton is good at all of theses things, which is what makes the book such a great read and has earned it a place on the list of my books to certainly reread.

Judging Stories

When it comes to judging books and other media, we’ve grown used to doing it in a very binary way. When we judge a story, we judge it in absolutes — it’s either perfect or horrible. There is no nuance to it and nuance is what we would really need. If we’re fans of a story and someone dares to criticise it, we’re quick to fly at them to defend our perfect story. If we don’t like a story and someone dares to praise it, we’re just as quick to fly at them to teach them how horrid it is. Neither is really useful in the long run or will help us criticise stories properly. Therefore, this post is all about how to judge stories without being too judgemental about it.

When you look at a story in an objective way, you will find that every story has its weak points. There is something about every story which could be better. Stories are written by people and people are not perfect. In addition, the audience’s experience and taste plays a considerable role when it comes to judging the different parts of a story. A woman might judge a story differently from a man when it comes to sexism. A person of colour will have a different view of racism than a white person.
Most classic examples of literature have their problems. Sexism and racism are common in the classics because people had another opinion of the world then. For Stoker, the ideas that women are weaker than men (with the exception of Mina, who is also called out as an exception) and that foreigners aren’t as good as British people were normal. He wouldn’t have seen any problems with his way of portraying Lucy and the three vampire ladies (whom I refuse to call Dracula’s ‘brides’ as it’s not in the book), with Dracula himself as a foreigner, or the ‘quaint ways’ of the peasants Jonathan sees on the way to the castle (who know much more about the dangers than Jonathan does, by the way).
Don’t get me wrong here, though, I do not suggest that you never touch “Dracula” with a ten-foot pole in the future. It is a classic for a reason and I think more people should read the slow-burn novel instead of watching the movies and series which can’t really recreate the novel’s pace. I just suggest that when someone remarks upon problems with a story, there’s no need to viciously defend it. They might be right and there’s a good chance the story has a problem. That doesn’t mean you can’t love a story despite its problems.

The instinct to protect a story we really love comes from our own attachment to it. The story speaks out to us, it touches something within us.
Each and every one of us has a different life and gains different experiences. Those will influence how we judge a story. A woman who has been fighting sexism for a long time will have no patience with a story which is heavily relying on a sexist magic system or pushes all the female characters aside as weak and useless. A man might not have a problem with it at all, might not even see the problem because the men in this book are powerful and get a lot to do.
When the man then learns that some people don’t like the story because it is sexist, he might feel attacked because he likes the story and he is not sexist. That, however, is not what the criticism of the story is about. It’s not ‘if you like this book, you’re sexist,’ but ‘the book is sexist.’ There’s no need to be defensive, because the criticism is about the book, not about the reader. Nobody is saying ‘you are sexist because you like this book.’ They’re merely saying ‘this book is sexist.’ Which leads to the problem of judging a story in a binary way.

Nothing in this world, not even the colours black and white, is on a strict binary. Not even sex, despite what some people will still tell you. People don’t have clear-cut morals, we all have our little grey spots. What goes for people, also goes for media.
Calling a story ‘trash’ for having problems is not helpful, neither for the author (if they even read the critiques of their books) nor for the fans. Saying that a story has ‘problematic parts’ is much closer to the truth, because parts of it might not hold up to scrutiny. That sexist story mentioned above might have a sexist gendered magic system and keep female characters on the outskirts, but it can at the same time have great plots and engaging action.
In rare cases, a story might be horrible overall — even though even the most horrid stories still may have at least one or two aspects which are well-done. In most cases, a story simply is not perfect — nor does it have to be.

When criticising a book, it is important to look at all aspects of it. Some aspects might be bad, others will most likely be good.
When you criticise something, you need to look at the big picture. “Dracula” has sexist and racist undertones (and they’re quite strong at times), but it is also a book which manages to raise tension well and can interweave several plot-lines into a strong narrative. It has powerful scenes and manages to be very readable despite being written like a case file — made up of several different diaries, letters, and even a few newspaper articles. None of the good points excuses the bad ones, yet none of the bad ones destroys the good ones.
Keep in mind that your own view of a story will also influence your critique and listen to what others have to say. Don’t assume someone else’s critique is invalid just because they criticise something you liked or didn’t even notice. A man might not notice sexist themes in a story, simply because sexism plays less of a role in his life. That doesn’t mean he should just push a critique of sexism in that story from a woman aside. That critique might very well be valid. Just that you don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Sometimes, you’re just not in a position to see it.

No matter how objective you try to be, your own opinion of the story, how much or how little it speaks out to you, will always influence your criticism, too. It might be easier to stay objective if the story doesn’t speak out to you that much, but a bad opinion will sneak into your critique as well. Try to stay balanced in a critique and cover both, the good and the bad. Try to stay objective while you do so and refrain from attacking someone, be it for liking or not liking the story you criticise.