TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Will review soon at www.fantasyliterature.com.

This book has been on my TBR list for a long time, ever since it was in a Humble Book Bundle. I really enjoyed it. I don't know if I can categorize it, but there's an unusual romance plot, as well as some elements of crime fiction and some of light fantasy. I would almost call it urban fantasy, except it's nothing like anything else I've read in that genre. There's a strong theme of Eastern spirituality, but I don't know enough about that topic to understand it very well. Hopefully I'll understand it better when I read it again, and I'm sure that I will.

The romance is between a 50-year-old woman and a man who seems to be about the same age. I've never read a romance featuring a woman older than her early 40s, so I was really happy about that. I also liked the portrayal of the complex mother/daughter relationship between Martha and Liz. We never actually see them together, but their love for each other drives the whole plot. Liz believes that her mother deserves adulation from everyone she meets, and the author succeeded in creating a character who lives up to that high esteem, while still making Martha human and imperfect.

This book feels relevant to current discussions about the barriers women face in the tech industry, although it definitely isn't about that topic. It's amazing that this was first published in the early 80s, because it doesn't feel dated at all. I also like that the main villain is not mustache-twirlingly-evil, but bad in a relatively ordinary kind of way. This line is pretty insightful, and I think it applies pretty well to the people in tech who are often in the news these days:

He never obeys the rules if he thinks he can get away with it.

25% and DNF.

This is a short little thing, I shouldn't just quit it like that, but I can't do this. Everything about this book makes me not want to read it at all. Sorry about that. I'm not writing the review to diss or to try to hate on this, but I do not want to forget my reasons why I got absolutely annoyed by it.

Martha Macnamara's daughter is in trouble, so she does what most of us would; calls her mother, so said mother leaves New York to meet her in San Francisco. In her posh hotel she meets a weird Asian man, named Mayland Long, who seems impossibly old for someone looking middle-aged. Once Martha's daughter, Elisabeth doesn't show up, they decide to find her.

Sounds suspenseful, hm? A mother trying to find her daughter, desperately seeking the help of a mysterious man. HAHA. Yeeeeah, no. We will have no Liam Neeson style a'la Taken. No. Martha Macnamara is an absolute airhead. Her daughter is impossible to access and she has no idea what happened to her, maybe her body is rotting in a ditch, maybe some Saw thing is happening to her. Martha... marvels on chandeliers, plays with toy cars, listens to stories about random shit told by Long. They hang out. She laughs when Long is trying to ask questions to her daughter's old acquaintance and doesn't even pay attention to the things being said.
In short, she feels like a kid with attention issues in the body of a middle-aged woman. So annoying.

But hey, the prose is actually just like the protagonist; it drifts around and makes me skim, which is not something I enjoy. But is all just feels so inconsequential, like a song that was meant to be background for something and when you pay attention, it just feels like it was written by a squirrel of average intelligence. Maybe it was a thing in the 80's that I should know about to not be some uncultured swine, I don't even know, I just feel I am not enjoying myself and that's that.
To me it's all just uncomfortable and... dare I say, pretentious?

Another thing. Miss MacAvoy obviously has her interests, like Irish mythology and Taoism and all, which is nice, but her characters keep talking about things that you will not get if you are not actually knowledgeable about the exact things she is. It makes me feel totally out of the loop. Don't get me wrong, I like looking up a few things that I hear about in books, that can be interesting, but this level of artsy prose with things I have no knowledge about mix together into a jumbled mess of nonsense to me.

As I finished the book fast, I can't say much more about the story and resolution and the overall pacing, but god, this wasn't one for me. At this point I don't feel I should keep reading when nothing at all works for me.
Not going to lie, I am a bit disappointed. I wanted to read this book for a long time and all.

So long and don't drag on! (Hurr hurr, get it? Dragon. Shoot me now, after that pun not even my mother would look for me if I disappeared. Sorry.)