Cassidy Jones and the Seventh Attendant: An independent novel review

Before you say it, I know: I am not in the target demographic for this book, or any of Elise Stokes’ Cassidy Jones adventures. Still, I enjoy reading them — despite the strange looks I get from others on the bus when I’m reading the latest installment in paper form.

Elise Stokes hit it big with her first novel, Cassidy Jones and the Secret Formula. After being reviewed by a 13-year-old reader, it was picked up by a middle-grade school as assigned reading. Then it won some awards and Elise Stokes became a prominent author of middle-grade or “young adult” fiction.

She followed up her first book in a year with Cassidy Jones and Vulcan’s Gift, but there was a longer delay for the third book. Now that I’ve read it, I understand why.

The plot

As most of the English reading world knows — at least, most of the “YA” market — Cassidy Jones is a normal teenage girl from Seattle. She’s awkward, lacks confidence and isn’t particularly athletic. Then, in true superhero fashion, she’s accidentally dosed with top-secret “Formula 10X,” being developed in her neighbour’s basement lab, which gives her super-strength, speed, the ability to heal quickly and enhanced senses. With the help of her neighbour’s son, Emery, another 14-year-old whose genius IQ has earned him university degrees already, Cassidy foils nefarious plots, rescues her kidnapped father and fights escaped tigers.

In this installment, the bad guys from the first novel return, searching for Formula 10X — which was destroyed in a fire after Cassidy’s accident. It turns out that the specifications were hidden in 10 separate microchips, scattered around the world. The baddies have recovered nine of them (using murder at least once); the last piece is hidden in an ancient Egyptian headdress on display in a museum in Seattle. Emery, Cassidy’s genius sidekick, learns of a plot to steal the chip, so Cassidy dresses as a mummy to spook the bad guys. This has some funny consequences, such as new rumours about a resurrected mummy running around the streets of Seattle.  

But when one of the thieves turns out to be Emery’s father, the mysterious Gavin Phillips, the plot twists — and so do Cassidy’s emotions.

High quality

The third book is a little darker and more serious than the first two. Cassidy is growing up and dealing with a new level of emotions when it comes to boys. Boys are starting to pay attention to her, as well, in ways that are new to her. 

And there’s a love triangle slowly emerging. I think that Stokes portrayed her character’s reaction to that skillfully and believably: it’s plain to Cassidy, but she deliberately chooses not to think about it. I can believe that in a 15-year-old who’s trying to deal with some pretty extraordinary events in her life.

Stokes also spends more space in this novel describing the stress her character has to deal with from having a secret identity—a second life that she has to hide from her own family.

And as with Stokes’ first two novels, the third shows top-notch writing style, editing and production — and a gorgeous cover designed by David C. Cassidy. A fellow member of Independent Authors International, Stokes is living proof that independent writers produce work that meets and exceeds professional standards.

Less action

There is not as much action in this book as in the first two. Cassidy seems to spend more time stressing over her relationships with her friends, rivals, unwanted suitors and her family than she does fighting bad guys. To me, this made for a more interesting story, but I wonder how Cassidy fans feel?

The other slight weakness I found in this story is that you really have to have read at least the first novel to follow this one. The bad guys from both previous novels combine forces in this one. The text also refers to characters and events from the other novels. I kept having to try to recall the previous books to understand some of the plot points in the third (it’s been over a year since I read them, after all, and I’m not getting younger, either).

But those are minor nits to pick out. This is another excellent novel by one of the best writers in the MG/YA field today. There’s lots of room left in the story-arc, too, so we can all look forward to Cassidy Jones and the Luminous soon.

5*

Khirro’s journey: An outstanding novel by a novelist with chops

An independent novel review

Bruce A. Blake is a professional fantasy writer after my own heart. I have already reviewed his first novel, On Unfaithful Wings, giving it a full five stars.

Khirro’s Journey, Book One: Blood of the King is the first book in the traditional fantasy trilogy, and this one is not only an outstanding novel in its own right, it does a great job of creating an audience for the following books.

By doing things right , Blake proves he’s earned his chops as a writer.

First, there’s the hero, Khirro. He’s not a prince, not a warrior, has no magical powers or special training, other than in agriculture. A lifelong, hands-on training program in agriculture. He’s a farmer, and at the book’s action-packed opening, he’s far worse than uncomfortable in armour and a sword is heavy and useless in his hands.

That’s one point for Blake: the flawed, weak and identifiable hero.

Next, he wastes no time in back-story or world-building. He gets right into the action — following Elmore Leonard’s rule, presumably, about “leaving out the parts readers tend to skip.” The book opens with Khirro, in uncomfortable armour, being knocked from a castle wall by undead warriors. Another body crashes onto a stone stairway landing on top of him. It turns out to be King Braymon. In his dying breaths, he begs Khirro to take him to the Shaman. To do this, Khirro has to carry the mortally wounded king on his back and run from a zombie warrior.

A skilled writer, Blake exposes the characters gradually, through their actions. He keeps the pace moving quickly forward, compelling the reader to keep turning pages (or swiping the e-reader screen, more likely).  

Blake does not glamourize the medieval fantasy world, either. It’s hard, it’s awful. Kings are cruel, lives are short and brutal.

And everything is believable, even the magic spells, the zombie warriors and the monsters.

Characters

Khirro is a true everyman, and someone we can all relate to. He is the most common kind of man in medieval times (while the setting is an imaginary world where magic works and the undead walk and fight, like most epic fantasy, it’s parallel to our own world’s European middle ages in economics and technology): a farmer. Blake gradually exposes details about Khirro’s back-story only as the plot demands it. While at the outset, it’s clear that Khirro is an unwilling soldier and would much prefer being a farmer than a soldier, as the story progresses we learn that Khirro’s life on the farm was not idyllic, either. Khirro remains fully believable through all his back-story and his own redefinition as he is forced to face challenge after challenge.

Other characters are well-drawn, if a little stock: the royal guard, the terrifying, unstoppable one-eyed assassin, the Shaman. But others really leap off the page as three-dimensional: Maes and Athryn, the magician brothers; and Elyea, the harlot, especially. (How Blake is able to create such believable, sympathetic whores is something his wife may wonder about.)

Even the dead king gets a thorough character development, and turns out to be a mostly likable, if flawed man. There are very good reasons he should be restored to the throne.

Plot

The story is a good, old-fashioned quest. One of the oldest stories, yes, but it has lasted for good reason. Khirro is the only man left with the knowledge of the way to the Necromancer, a fearsome wizard who lives in a haunted land, so he can bring a vial of the dead king’s blood in order to resurrect the monarch. Again, Blake brings out the importance of this gradually, as the story demands the details. Along the way, the good guys face greater and greater challenges, and the bad guys show their resourcefulness and intelligence, too.

Blake doesn’t shy away from the queasy plot point on the morality and sheer advisability of restoring a dead man to life. What would it mean for everyone if the king were brought back from the dead? And what would the king and the kingdom owe the Necromancer for doing that?

But it’s not all dark. Humour is an important part of Blake’s writing, and there are passages that made me smile in this book.

Overall, Blake delivers a polished novel here. It stands on its own and tells a great adventure story filled with horror, suspense, mystery, romance and humour. It also leads well into the second and third books of the series. You’ll be hard put not to buy them as soon as you finish Blood of the King.

5 *****