Book Review and Author Support

[jana_denardo]

Shira Anthony has a great post on how to support your favorite authors. You should check it out here I do try to review everything I read. About the only thing I don't review are the things I don't finish. More often than not, it isn't that the writing is bad, it's just not a good fit for me and I would hate to drag someone's rating down because it wasn't my kind of book. Not to say I haven't rated low. I have if I felt it warranted and I do say why. Nothing annoys me more than a 1 star rating with no explanation. No, strike that, I'm annoyed more by people giving one star ratings for books that aren't even out yet.

And I keep meaning to post some of reviews here, at least for ones from the same publishing house as I and here's one by a gentleman who's been a guest blogger here before. No bad ratings here. I really enjoyed the hell out of this book.

Murderous Requiem by Jamie Fessenden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book hit a lot of right notes for me, pun intended. I love music, magic and mystery and all three combined in this novel. It even got me doing some research into Ficino.

Jeremy Spencer had started an occult order with friends back in college, heavy on free love and magic. The original group, the Brethren, included Jeremy’s lover, Bowen, Seth and his wife (more in name than anything else), Alex and Marianne. Jeremy left to get his Ph.D. in Renaissance music and having grown tired of the openness of the relationships. He wasn’t fond of sharing Bowyn with Seth.

Years down the road, Jeremy has been asked back to the Temple, now under Seth’s leadership and has grown into a rather large group. Seth has a piece of music by the philosopher, Ficino and wants Jeremy to transcribe this score and get to the heart of it. Jeremy finds himself drawn back into Temple life, especially Bowyn’s, reluctantly at first.

As he settles into Temple life, and getting back with Bowyn after several years, Jeremy comes to believe the Ficino score is some form of ceremonial magic, not that he’s terribly surprised by this. After all, Seth wanted him to translate it. The works of John Dee and the Enochian angelic language are woven into this (funny, I knew their works but not Ficino, says a lot).

In the meantime, Jeremy is also drawn to Christopher, a young man who suffered great abuse before coming to the Temple when he hit eighteen recently. Jeremy is more interested in helping Christopher but the young man is very mistrustful of that.

As all the things start to boil, the tension ratchets up and as the title suggests, when it comes to a head, things go very badly. I don’t want to say more than that and ruin some of the surprises. I really enjoyed this. I particularly like Jeremy. He seems like someone I’d have as a friend.




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