Chasing the Sun - Natalia Sylvester

In Lima, Peru in 1992, Andres Jimenez runs a fairly successful label-making company, though he and his family are far from rich.  His wife, Marabela, is a stay-at-home mom and photographer, who once took pictures for the paper but now has been relegated to a space within the house.  And lately, the two have been growing apart--though none of that seems to matter to Andres when Marabela vanishes one evening, and he gets a ransom note in the mail the next day.

This is a novel not about a kidnapping, though of course there is a kidnapping in it, but of relationships, and how we end up where we are, with the people we are with.  It's a story of forced separations and growing apart and then finding each other again, in a myriad of different ways.  Rounding out the cast of characters are Ignacio and Cynthia, the Jimenez children; Guillermo, a consultant hired to help get Marabela back; Lorena, Andres' estranged mother; Carla and Consuelo, the maids of the Jimenez household; and Elena, Andres' childhood best friend and the girl he was supposed to marry before he met Marabela.  All of these people with, perhaps, the exception of Guillermo and Consuelo, are complete emotional messes.  They're all mixed up in all sorts of ways, and Sylvester weaves what's a pretty beautiful story of them trying to find their way through their lives and the tension surrounding Marabela's disappearance.

One thing I really would have loved would have been some scenes of Marabela while she was in captivity.  Having read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's News of a Kidnapping last year, I think I expected a little more "action" from this book.  However, that's clearly not what this narrative was supposed to be, and I can respect that.  One thing I also would have liked would have been more descriptions and interactions with Lima itself.  I love reading books about places I might never get the opportunity to see, and I thought would have really enjoyed seeing more engagement with the location.  That said, however, Sylvester's writing is beautiful--although it is, I must point out, in present tense.  Present tense isn't my favorite and I know it can grate on the nerves of some people, so I think I should throw that out there.  Whenever I read present-tense books I find myself writing in present tense, too, which really annoys me.  However, once you get into the narrative, it doesn't seem as jarring as it does at first, and I did find myself thoroughly engaged with the Jimenezs' story.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Touch Of Power - Maria V. Snyder (Healer #1)

I actually had to double check that this book was by Maria V. Snyder because, uhm, what happened to her writing?  I adore her first novel, Poison Study, though I adored its sequels slightly less, and while I haven't read the Glass series or the Insider duo, I was looking forward to this one.  I just don't understand what happened!  The book was a sloppy mess, and Snyder's writing seems to have de-matured between Poison Study and Touch of Power.  Touch of Power just seemed like a slapdash collection of plot elements, including:

-flower that may or may not be able to kill you
-eleven types of magic, many of which seem to contradict   each other and none of which are properly explained
-multiple princes
-a religious cult
-fifteen realms, one of which randomly has a president that is very out of place
-way too many caves
-a plague that kills anyone who tries to cure it
-a missing sibling
-zombies
-a romance that doesn't really ring true

So.  While I liked how healing magic works in Touch of Power, with a healer assuming an injured/sick person's maladies and then healing herself by just getting better ten times faster than a normal person would, that was pretty much the only good part of this book.  Everything else just feels like Snyder cobbled together a bunch of different story lines, any one of which would have made a respectable novel of its own.  It just felt like this wasn't actually the novel Snyder wanted to write.  I couldn't decide if she wanted to write a zombie novel, a school story about the children of powerful/royal families, a book about a plague-ravaged land, a tale of rescuing a lost sibling, a narrative of struggle about coming to terms with a hated power, or a chronicle of trying to bring down an evil king. All of those were present here, and it was just too much.  Not a single aspect was explored fully, leaving the book a hurried rush from one plot element to the next without anything actually being settled.

Additionally, every single one of the characters in this book lacks dimension.  They are all single-faceted, which makes their "growth" come across as false, especially Kerrick.  What was up with that sudden romance?  While it's not insta-romance in the sense that they fall in love right away, when it does happen, it's pretty instantaneous, with no build or maturation of the relationship at all.  And while Avry is a perfectly nice protagonist, she isn't someone you can really root for, because she's not really struggling.  She's just kind of there.  We're just supposed to accept that Avry is Special, and that is why everything goes right for her.

Speaking of that, what was with that ending?  I have NEVER seen a more blatant cop out on explanation.  NEV.  ER.

Overall, while I'm kind of curious as to what Avry &. Co. will get up to next, I'm not curious enough to slog through another of these when there's much better stuff out there.

1.5 stars out of 5.