Books By C. LItka

Books By C. LItka

Saturday, October 12, 2024

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 69)

 


This week we have another of those books written by women, mostly for women, I suppose, that I enjoy, liking both small scale stories, and period pieces. This one dates back to 1938 and it can be seen as a retelling of the Cinderella story. I read it in one day. My wife, who was between books, also liked it.

At the moment, these posts are running more than two months behind my actual reading. I like to have a backlog to ensure a weekly post, but the lag is getting a bit long, and reading a book in a day, does tend to increase that backlog. I may have to go back to posting the review of two books to catch up or just slot a couple into my Wednesday blog slot when I have nothing to say, instead of  just saying nothing. We'll see.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 


Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson  A-

This is a story about a penniless governess, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew, who at the start of the story, is at an employment agency and is given an address of a person wanting a governess. Standing before the block of flats, she prayed silently; 'Oh Lord! If I've ever doubted your benevolence in the past, forgive me and help me now.' She added a rider to her prayer, with the first candid confession she had ever made to her conscious mind. 'It's my last chance. You know it. I know it.'

The listing seems to be a mistake, because when she is met at the door by the lady of the flat, who was obviously dragged out of bed at 10:00 by the ringing of the doorbell, there is no child present in the flat - but there is a man, and not the lady's husband. But never mind... she's invited in, and is drawn into the hectic life of a stage actress and her bright young friends, and lives a new and wonderful life for a day.

Being lazy, I have links to two more complete reviews, if you want to know more about the story:

Strange at Ecbantan 

The Next 50

The entire story takes place within a single day. The pace is cheerfully breakneck, the characters charming, the situations, one after another, are little vignettes of the freewheeling life of young, theater people in pre-WWII London.

Winifred Watson wrote six novels, three were rural romances set in the previous century, and three were contemporary novels like this one. Henrietta Twycross-Martin wrote, in the introduction to the book;

"...they deal with the development and resolution of sexual and family tensions in ways that may flout convention and the law, but that allow women to survive and ultimately flourish." 

And she adds, having met the author when she was 93; "She said to me 'I have lived a very happy life'. And in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day she wrote a very happy novel."  It is.

A bomb in the London Blitz drove her out of her house and into her mother-in-law's house where she lived for six years, until they could get their own again. She said that she needed to be alone to write, and by the time she and her husband move into their own home, it seems like the urge to write had passed, and with the exception of a half finished, and lost ms of another novel, she didn't write again.

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

New Kobo Policy - $.99 Series Starters - Apple Audio Solution?


Some business housekeeping news this week.

I recently tried to find my books on Kobo's ebook website, and neither putting in my name, nor entering a title of a book, would bring up any of my books, despite the fact that they are distributed to Kobo from Draft2Digital. Moreover, if I went to  the "My Book" page on D2D's site, clicked on a book and then on the Kobo logo below the listing, it would take me to a Kobo page, or should I say an alleged Kobo page, for that book. Now this is probably a Kobo issue, however, I decided to take the opportunity to delist my books with Kobo via D2D in favor of uploading them myself to Kobo.

I debated about listing them at the same price as they are listed at Amazon. Kobo does not report the sale of free books to Draft2 Digital, so I don't know how many I've sold for free on Kobo. It's a case of "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?" sort of thing. Which is to say, not knowing how many, or if any, books I sell on Kobo, it is easy to give up those unrecorded free sales. I doubt I've sold very many, judging from the number of reviews they received. Once upon a time, I did list my books on Kobo myself, and in that case they did report how many free books you sold. It wasn't many, not worth keeping a separate account, so I went back to distributing them via Smashwords. This time around, I'm thinking that if I don' sell more than a couple free books a month, it wouldn't make a difference if I put a non-free price on from a sales point of view. They might be not only more visible with a price, but more attractive in Kobo's version of Kindle Unlimited lending library, so adding a non-zero price may be a plus

But on further consideration, I decided to see just how many I sell at free, and then make a final decision at the end of the year. If I can't give them away on Kobo, I might as well not sell them.

In another bit of news, I've lowered the prices of my series starting ebooks, which is to say, The Captain of the Lost Star, Sailing to Redoubt, and The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon to $.99, which is typical for a series starter, if not for free. I could try to make them perma-free, but The Captain of the Lost Star is exclusively Amazon at present, though I'm thinking that I will use that six book format for Kobo as well, but I don't  think it's worth messing with Amazon at present. I have two free books on Amazon.com and maybe a free book in some of the other stores, so I have free sample books covered already.  I'll just let that sleeping dog lay.

And finally I contacted D2D about the three books of mine that had not been converted to Apple audiobooks. I received a very quick response from Tara, who discovered that the problem was likely that the books in question did not have complete tables of contents. I never paid much attention to tables of content before, but now, I guess I better. In any event, I reworked the manuscripts so that their conversion process found all the chapters and reuploaded them. Hopefully this will fix the problem. We'll see. At least I received an explanation as to what may be holding them up.

Saturday, October 5, 2024

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 68)

 


This week we go back to the source. Last week I reviewed Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog.  Her story was a nod to Jerome K Jerome's most famous novel, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) That novel being available on Gutenberg, I downloaded it... And so once more we are on a small boat on the Thames. This time making our way up it from London.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 



Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)  by Jerome K Jerome  B

Though described as a novel, it is more of a fictional travelogue with a great many humorous anecdotes hung on the incidental narrative of a boating trip. The story, such as it is, describes a boating expedition up the Thames River in the late 1880's undertaken by three men, and a dog. The actual journey it is loosely based on the author's honeymoon, with his bride being replaced by George and Harris in the fictional journey. He wrote it right after they returned from their honeymoon. How much of the voyage outside of the actual river is authentic I don't know. What I do know is that many, many years ago I collected books on London, and I picked up a two volume set called The Thames Highway by Fred S Thacker, more or less under the impression that it would deal with the Thames of London to the sea. However it covered the entire length of the Thames - with maps. I never read it, as it was rather dry reading, mostly a list of this sites in great detail, but reading Three Men in a Boat allowed me to put it into use, tracing their progress on a series of maps of the river. You never know... Which is why you should never throw anything out.

Being a fan of clever, witty writing, I enjoyed this book and his dry humor, though, as I say, I can't really consider it a novel. Rather it was an excuse to tell a wide variety of humorous little stories on all sorts of subject. I believe humorous stories was the type of writing Jerome had been producing before writing this book. The book proved to be so popular that it has never been out of print, and though he wrote other books and plays, none were as popular as this one.

He did however, write a similar book some years later with the same characters called Three Men on the Bummel. This time they go on a bike trip through Germany. I downloaded that one as well, and will be reporting on it in a few weeks.

This is a famous book, and something of a classic. It's a nice light read, but nothing more that a collection of humorous stories and a glimpse into life in Victorian England.



Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Revealing My 2025 Novel Release Date!

 

A slightly revised cover

Are you weary of long, dark, and grim fantasy epics? Tired of evil priests, ruthless kings, sinister queens, knaves, and scoundrels—intricate palace intrigues and endless wars? Are you jaded by blood-soaked tomes of battle after battle, death after death? Need a break from accounts of disembowelment, torture, rape, and murder? In short, are you looking for a different sort of fantasy? Look no further.

Chateau Clare is a leisurely paced, mundane slice-of-life fantasy novel set in a post-magic, Edwardian-era sort of world. The stakes are low, and the company pleasant. In it, Lan Teya discovers he’s the heir of a once slightly sinister and powerful Great House—a scion of a family he never knew he belonged to. With his inheritance comes the long abandoned estate of his sorcerer ancestors—Chateau Clare. As the new master of Chateau Clare, Lan Teya reluctantly sets out to renovate it. In the process, he discovers not only its secrets, but also uncovers a great injustice suffered by his immediate predecessor at the hands of the other Great Houses—a wrong he reluctantly feels he must right. But at what cost?

Chateau Clare is a slow paced novel of everyday life in an imaginary, but semi-familiar world, filled with colorful friends, little mysteries, and a hint of romance. If you’re looking for heart-thumping excitement, move along, nothing to see here. But, if you’re looking for a nice, pleasant read, Chateau Clare may be just your cup of tea.

C. Litka is the author of sixteen tales of adventure, mystery, and travel set in richly imagined worlds. In Chateau Clare, he has written a novel of everyday life and little mysteries with his usual cast of colorful, fully realized characters. If you seek to escape your everyday life, you will not find better company, nor more wonderful worlds to explore, than in the stories of C. Litka.

That, in short, is my 2025 Novel, Chateau Clare

The paperback version of Chateau Clare is already available on Amazon for $12.99. I saw that it is, for some reason listed under the "Supernatural mysteries" category as well as the two categories I selected. This suggests that Amazon scans the blurb of each book, since it included the word "sorcery" in the description. Interesting. 

The Amazon ebook will be released on 24 October 2024 You can preorder your ebook copy on Amazon for $3.99. The audiobook version on Amazon will follow within a day or so, also for $3.99 

All the other ebook versions of Chateau Clare will be available for my usual price of FREE. Find them on Google, Apple, B & N, Smashwords, Kobo, and a host of other European ebook stores on or shortly after 24 October 2024.

The FREE audiobook version on Google will drop shortly after 24 October 2024. The FREE Apple audiobook version will, maybe, follow, sometime. There is no telling when, or even if, Apple will release it after I submit it. I'm still waiting on three books I submitted nine months ago to appear.

Some Author Notes:

I've come to realize that Chateau Clare represents a return to my original story concept of Some Day Days and A Summer in Amber, which is to say it's a light, romantic novel, period. I set those stories in the future simply to free myself of the constrains of a known time and place and the past and future that surrounds a historical time and place. Also, it frees me of all the research setting a story in the past with any realism involves. In this case, Chateau Clare is set on a different planet in the far future, but it is just a light, slightly romantic novel with a little mystery to drive the leisurely plot along. For marketing purposes I've slotted it in as general fantasy and cozy mystery, since I'm done with science fiction. The reality is that there is a minor science fiction base, but it owes next to nothing to science fiction, and can pass as mundane, or low fantasy. More or less.

I had fun dreaming up this story last summer, and writing it this spring. I did not consider what my readers might want when I wrote it, so that if it disappoints my readers, it's on me. I also did not go back and trim 30,000+ words off of the first draft, like I should, so readers might well find it way too wordy and boring. That's also on me. So if sales and rating suffer for all that, it's also on me. But that's a price I'm more than willing to pay to write just what I want, just the way I want it written. And well, unless Amazon makes me, I don't ask any reader to pay me money for my work because I do it for fun. On the flip side, I'm not going to work for nothing. I'm only willing to have fun for nothing, and thus, I write the books I, personally, want to write. I'm more than willing to trust that they will find a few readers who also appreciate them. I hope that this doesn't sound arrogant or condescending. All I'm saying is that I approach writing as a work of art, and expression of the artist's creativity, without commercial considerations. And because of that I understand that if you don't produce an appealing product, you can't kick if it doesn't sell. I won't.

So, with Chateau Clare I've gone back to my roots as a writer. I think I'll be staying there.




 

 

 

 







Saturday, September 28, 2024

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 67)

 


A reread this week. I must have first read this book some twenty years ago or so. The impression of it that lingers on is that it wasn't as good as its premise promised.  A few months ago, I watched a video talking about the books of this author, and this book, so I decided to see if the premise, which sounds right up my alley, fares any better this time.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 


To Say Nothing of the Dog  by Connie Willis  C

This is the second novel in Connie Willis' Oxford Time Travel series. The first one was Doomsday Book. There is also a novella Fire Watch with some of the same characters that are in this book, and two further novels, Black Out and All Clear. All except Doomsday Book have something to do with World War II, though in this case, the main action is set in the countryside around Oxford in 1888. I've read the Doomsday Book, and this story. I DNF'ed Black Out and have not come across Fire Watch.

This entry is a first person narrated, mad-cap comic story written in the manner of those screwball comedy movies of the 1930's, with a silly premise, lots of fast, witty, sometimes nonsensical cross talk, and clever dialog. It also includes plenty of historical and literary references for your education and entertainment. It's a homage Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (Not to Mention the Dog) and a satire of upper-class Victorian Era England. I's also a mystery novel that recalls the detective novels of the 1930. And it's an intricate time-travel novel that explores the idea that small events play critical roles in history - the flap of a butterfly's wings which cause a typhoon in China. That's a lot of things. It's too many things. Oh, and its very long. The mass market paperback clocks in at 517 pages. It's too long. 

The premise is that, in the near future when time travel is possible, an American heritress, whose ancestor in 1888 had an experience in Coventry Cathedral - the flap of the butterfly's wing - that led to the heritress becoming very wealth, now wants to reconstruct Coventry Cathedral down to the last little detail as it was on the day it was destroyed in the blitz of 1940, including a piece of decoration called "The Bishop's Bird Stump" - which is the story's MacGuffin. Using the promise of continuing funding the program, she has the time-traveling historians uncovering every detail of the cathedral, driving them to make more trips to the past than it is advisable. One of these historians inadvertently brings back something from the past. This should not have been possible, and thus, seems to threaten a cascading series of changes in the time-line that could affect large events in history. This needs incident to be repaired, even though time itself seems to have a means of doing so automatically. All very confusing.

The narrator is one of the historian who, as a side effect of too much time travel, is slightly gaga. He's sent back to 1888 in part to give him the two weeks he needs to recover from too much time travel, and to do something, that neither he nor the reader ever quite gets in his lala-first person narrative state. Unsure of who he is to meet and what to do in this time period, or where exactly to go to find his contact, he gets roped into taking a boating trip down the Thames with a fellow he meets who has the dog in the title, the homage to Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), which I'll now have to read. And from there the time plot slowly unwinds.

The premise of the story is silly by design. It's a comic novel, after all. It's silly enough for me, at least, not to care about the premise, and more importantly, not care about the problems of finding the MacGuffin, and fixing the problem with time. Since, as I said, it's a comic novel, after all. Screwball comedies run for something like 90 minutes. This book takes hours and hours to read - far too long for a screwball comedy - such that I found that the series of mad-cap comedy situations grew wearisome rather quickly. The mystery aspect was constantly being pushed back by the mad-cap situations and did not really come into play until after the climax of the story. 

The mechanisms of time travel in this story, if you paid really close attention to them might have been semi-explained, and may have made sense within their premise, but you better pay very close attention. Take notes. Connie Willis did not write this novel on the fly. I am quite sure she had to have every little detail of the "slippage" in putting people in and out of time, worked out and written down since this slippage is the main way of measuring the damage to time. You'll need to do the same, if you care. I didn't bother because it made no real sense to me, i.e. whatever. Every time travel story never makes logical sense, if you bother to think about them. This means that despite all the thought and detail Willis put into the story, it still nonsense. It was all handwaving and mumbo-jumbo.

As much as I admire clever writing and prefer first person narratives, which this story had in abundance, I found the deliberate silliness, too much for my taste. It completely undermined the book's attempt to illustrate "the devil in the details" of history, and the seriousness of the situation with time. 

And boy, did this story run too long for my taste - it ran on and on, even after it reached its climax. Indeed, by the end, I didn't care about the MacGuffin and the solution to the mystery or the restoration of the new cathedral, or the implications of the time travel premise of the story. I skim read the last 15% of the book - enough was enough. But as usual, that's on me. Your mileage may vary.

Back to time travel. Despite the comic nature of the story she tried to make the time travel stakes in the story seem very important - the changes caused by a person bringing something from the past back to the future might even change the result of World War II, unless this incident is somehow fixed. But this makes no sense. It never does. No "change" in history can ever be detected because that change would already be part of the history of the period it is being viewed from in the future. Which is to say that if they weren't Nazi time travelers, Germany didn't win WWII, and so they should have known nothing needed fixing, and that there was no need to worry at all. But the premise is that they did worry, and went to elaborate lengths to fix the "problem."

All time travel stories have logical flaws that must be overlooked if one is to enjoy time travel stories. While I could do that for the Back to the Future movies, they were not to be taken seriously, I usually can't overlook the flaws for time travel stories that want me to take them seriously.

In this case, it has has a number of rules for time travel. One is that you can't bring anything back to the future from the past, except... central to this story is that you can... as well as an number of others that I'm not quite sure about, given the mad-cap narration of this story. Now, I'm willing to turn a blind eye to sending people back into the past using "coordinates" that will land them at a certain date, time, and location within a margin of seconds, even though the earth is rotating, while it is rotating around the sun, even as the sun is rotating around the galactic center, as the universe itself is expanding, which would seem to make it extremely unlikely anyone could place a person back to the correct spot on Earth at any given time. Fine. But what I won't forgive is one of the central premises of this series is that time actively won't let itself be altered - correcting any change in the "Grand Design." Somehow. In this series, historians can not be "dropped" close enough to any pivotal event in the past that would allow them to affect the outcomes in any appreciable way. And when they are dropped far enough away and before any event - in time and space - they are still, somehow, prevented from interfering with these critical historical events. Unless you believe in either an active deity or that the universe is a video game, this rule makes no sense. The fact that universe has a natural law that prevents people from altering it suggests that humans, and their activities, are the central purpose of the universe, so much so that human activity itself becomes some sort of unalterable natural law that can't be violated. How? Who knows? The why, however is clear - to make the stories work. 

As someone who greatly dislikes plot holes and stories written for the convenience of the author's plot, this story, and all time travel stories, are a hard sell for me because you need to turn a blind eye to the inevitable hole(s) in the logic of every time-travel plot. And in this case, the idea that apparently the intrinsic laws of time-space physics are so tied to human history that they activity operate to prevent it from being modified is several bridges too far. 

So as you can see, I've had a lot to say about To Say Nothing About the Dog, without saying anything about the dog. Perhaps that's a sign for a good book, one that you should give a try. It is an ambitious book, well researched, and well written. You think about it. And I think that in my old age, my lack of patience may've well affected my view of this book. I'm pretty certain that I read it from page one to the end the first time I read it. Still, even back then, it failed to live up to my expectations. History, it seems, has not been altered.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Finally

 


Some publishing news this week.

This past weekend I finally published the audiobook versions of the stories contained in The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star Sea as a six part series called The Lost Star Stories.

This project turned out to be something of a saga. Back on 17 July I posted here that my summer project was to break those two books into three novels each in order to allow them to be made into audiobooks on Amazon and Audible sine, they were too long to use Amazon's Virtual Voice auto-narration program. I worked up six new covers, and submitted them in August. Side note; it seems that you can't submit more than three books at any one time on Amazon. I suppose to limit spam books.

The first three books of the Lost Star Stories went almost without a hitch. At first, I didn't upload them right using Amazon's Kindle Create app, so they didn't get the table of contents that they need to be made into audiobooks on Amazon so they did not appear as being made into audiobooks. I was a bit puzzled, but since the last three weren't even released yet, I let it ride. Eventually I figured that out that I hadn't done it right, and re-uploaded them again the right way and they were good to go. But by that time I was dealing with Amazon over the last three books in the series derived from The Lost Star's Sea.

On 7 August I wrote that I was having problem with those three books being approved by Amazon, because some 4 plus years ago, someone pirated them and uploaded them to Amazon, and I had to prove to Amazon that it was my indeed, book, which I did. Ever since then anytime I've made any sort of alteration of the text of The Lost Star's Sea, Amazon ask me again to prove that I'm the work's owner. That happened again this time. They must either have scanned the text and flagged the content, or saw that I noted that the stories had previously been published as part of The Lost Star's Sea. This time around it took even longer to straighten things out - almost a month. But this time, after they had approved the books, and they appeared to be "Live," they weren't for some reason. Their pages came up as unfound, with a picture of a dog. So it was back to Amazon and their chat support program to get this straightened out. Suffice to say that the chat person couldn't fix the problem so they transferred it to the tech staff, and it takes nearly a week to fix anything. Long story short, it was only last week when everything was finally sorted out and ready to go. Since I don't expect to sell many books, ebooks or audio, all this delay was no big deal - I wasn't losing any money with the delay.

But in any event, all six books are now available from Amazon (only) as ebooks and audiobooks for $3.99 each. I don't plan to publish paperback editions of them, as I would likely be their only customers, and I can live without them.


Just to be clear, the stories are still available for free in ebooks and audiobooks on Google, Apple, B & N, Kobo and Smashwords, pulse a bunch more platforms as The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea, as well as in paperback form from Amazon. The Amazon audiobooks are just future proofing my work and getting my work on Audible.


As a final note, I think that  Amazon's virtual voice narration was quite good, if read a little slow for my taste. Perhaps it can be speeded up a little in the audio app. They promised a male British English voice for the summer, which has yet to appear, but when it does, I might change the narrator, and when I do, I'm planning on going back with a list of key names and places to make certain that common names and name places are pronounce consistently across all the books. I think I know how to do that now using the search process. We'll see.

Next week more publishing news. Stay tuned.

Saturday, September 21, 2024

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 66)

 


A new Cadfeal Mystery this week, and another good one. I am sure glad I picked this series up. Whenever I need a book to read, I can just go to my bookshelf and pick up the next Cadfael story knowing I've got a good book to read.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 


The Raven in the Foregate
by Ellis Peters  A

Every book has a range of reader reactions and ratings, often from one star to five. Clearly the tastes of readers vary considerably. Still, knowing that, I can only say that I'm almost certain everyone will enjoy Edith Pargeter's (writing as Ellis Peters) Cadfael stories either as mysteries, romances, or as historical fiction. For some reason, these stories are something special for me. They are, in my opinion, almost perfect stories in a world were almost perfect is about as good as you can expect. So what are those reasons?

First, I like small scale stories. I'm not a fan of epic tales and sagas. This story is the fourth story set in one year 1141, the "Anarchy." In December of that year. Important and interesting events are happening around the abbey of Shrewsbury, which affects their lives, but the focus is on the inhabitants of that monastery, the city, and the surrounding area. Secondly, the stories feature two very likeable main characters, the wise 60 year old former Crusader now a monk, Cadfael, and the young but wise Sherriff, Hugh Beringar, as well the various monks of the abbey, along with new, interesting, sometimes charming, sometimes slightly sinister, characters arriving at the abbey for each story - all of them well drawn in words. "Well drawn with words" describes every aspect of the books, from characters, historical setting and the life in the monastery, to the mystery and action. Thirdly, they seem to be written with a deep knowledge and understanding of the historical period they are set in, with lots of period detail to give them an air of authenticity. They are written in a style that is both readable and suggestive of the time period, which is hard to do. Fourthly, I like the stories themselves. For sure, they all follow a formula. You have your mystery, usually a murder, or what appears could be one, to solve. Each one, however, is different, with a rich, well developed background that is often related to what is going on in the world beyond Shrewsbury and the abbey so it ties the small story into the larger history of the period. One other element of the formula is that there is always a young couple who usually fall in love at first sight, but whose happiness is threatened by the mystery, so that Cadfael not only solves the mystery, but smooths the road to true love by doing so. 

And lastly, the writing... Take this descriptive passage of Christmas eve as an example. I find it evocative, without being flowery or ornate. It is simple, concrete, but evocative. My ideal.

A soft, sleety rain had fallen earlier, but by that hour in the evening it was growing very cold, and there was frost in the air. The low, moist sky had cleared and grown infinitely tall, there were stars snapping out in it almost audibly, tiny but brilliant. By morning the roads would be treacherous, and the frozen ruts a peril to wrenched ankles and unwary steps. There were still people abroad in the Foregate, most of them hurrying home by now, either to stoke up the fire and toast their feet, or to make ready for the long night in church. And as Cadfael crossed the bridge towards the town gate, the river in full, silent dark motion below, there was just enough light left to put names to those he met, coming from their shopping laden and in haste to get their purchases home. They exchanged greetings with him as they passed, for he was well known by his shape and his rolling gait even in so dim a light. The voices had the ring of frost about them, echoing like the chime of glass.

Or this description of a taciturn man;
A good man, with his own preferences and peculiarities, and certainly no talker, but if you needed him, he was there, and like his master, would not send you away empty.
Those who could not be easy with his mute company at least respected him, and those who could included the most innocent and guileless. Children and dogs would sit companionably on the steps of the north porch with him in summer weather, and do all the talking necessary to such a friendship, after their own fashion, while he listened.

I admire the use of simple concrete details to create a picture without resorting to ornate or flowery language may be why I love her writing. 

Well, I suppose that I've gone on long enough about Edith Pargeter's writing and should talk about the story at hand. 

As I mentioned, the story is set around Christmas in 1141. King Stephan has been freed in exchange for one of the Empress Maud most important backers who had been captured by the King's forces led by King Stephan's wife, the Queen. Now it is the Empress Maud who is on the defensive, holed up in the west of England, fortunes once again reversed. The long civil war, thus continues. This civil war, by the way, is one that RRR Martin drew on for his Game of Thrones books. 

This story starts with the death of the popular parish priest of the abbey, and the appearance of his replacement, a strict and unpleasant priest who proves to be very unpopular, so unpopular that he quickly ends up dead. That's the mystery. But we also have our romance and ties to the ongoing civil war interwoven in it, which I won't spoil. Just read the book. This one was another excellent addition to the series. It is really amazing how she maintains the quality and originality of each book in the series.