Tides by Anne Azel

Publisher:    Bedazzled Ink

It’s unfortunate when a book that has a basically good story is ruined by poor production methods.  With all of the editing programs and qualified editors that are available, there is no excuse for a book that has multiple errors.  The problem diminishes as the book progresses, but the first few chapters are full of mistakes, including misspelled words and words that are missing from the sentences.

Jackie Cunningham is a former TV and press journalist who has reached that point in her life where she can live her life exactly like she wants to.  She’s in her 70s and dying, so she says what she thinks without compromising or worrying about who she upsets.  Before she dies, Jackie has a few things to take care of.  She wants to make sure that her niece Paula, Paula’s partner and their child are set up comfortably in the home that Jackie owns on the coast of Newfoundland.  She’s also willing to take care of the rest of the family if they’ll just leave her alone.

The story is told in alternating scenes from Jackie’s early life and the present.  Because of the time in which the book is set, Jackie is not out as a lesbian most of her life, but that didn’t keep her from having a full and healthy sexual life; however, her real partners were the adventures she had and the adrenaline rush she got from them.  She avoids her real partner to dash around the world after stories.  This creates another problem with the book in that it reads like a listing of famous historical events in the twentieth century.  Instead of developing any of the experiences completely to show Jackie’s character, it’s almost like listening to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” where incidents are spewed forth so quickly, most of them aren’t heard, much less understood.  It seems that Azel is creating a record of the century rather than trying to tell a story.

Few of the characters are very interesting, though the end of Jackie’s life is fun.  As the family circles like vultures, she derives great pleasure from setting up an oceanographic institute for Paula and showing her obvious favor for Paula’s family.  It’s also clear that she is somewhat jealous of the freedom that Paula feels in today’s world.  The reader will easily imagine Jackie wondering what her life would have been like if the attitudes towards homosexuals had been different.

Tides could have been a much better book with a little more time and a great deal more detail to how it was published.  As it is, it comes off as OK, not terribly offensive, but not outstanding either.  Azel has certainly done better in the past.

The publisher is aware of the problem with some of the books and has promised to replace any of them that are flawed if the reader contacts the company.

 

Gold Mountain by Anne Azel

Publisher:               P. D. Publishing


Asian culture gave birth to a concept called minimalism. The idea is to create a picture or image by providing as little information as possible and then letting the viewer or reader's imagination fill in the gaps; thereby creating a more complete picture than was actually presented. An example of this is Japanese haiku where the skillful use of a few syllables creates a complete poem. Perhaps this is what Anne Azel was trying to do when she wrote Gold Mountain. Since the story is set primarily in a transplanted Asian setting, that style seems appropriate, but it presents challenges for people who are not used to that type of reading.

Kelly Li is a second-generation Chinese woman living in Canada. As the second daughter in the family, she was a special disappointment to her father who wanted to have a son more than anything, so Kelly has had to struggle on her own to succeed in the Gold Mountain, the name given by the Chinese to the Americas in the 1800s. Despite the rejection of most of her family, she has created a life as a successful attorney, only to have that threatened by family duty, something that Kelly cannot escape, when she is drawn into a murder that has its roots in the twisted dynamics between her relatives. Her obligations to her family also threaten to destroy a budding relationship with Jane Anderson, a policewoman who is struggling to come to grips with her own sexual orientation. Jane is attempting to deal with honesty on different levels. She is trying to live her life as she truly feels she should after a period of living with deception. She also finds herself in the position of being a law enforcement official drawn to someone who at best is lying to her and at worst may be a murderer. She has to weigh her own feelings against what is best for her young daughter. This is the story of both of these women as they struggle to align family obligations with the lives they would like to live and try to mesh those lives so that they can be together.

Gold Mountain has great potential to demonstrate the differences between cultures and it does give some insight into that, but the style that Azel chooses to use keeps the story from fully developing. The characters don't seem complete. The reader may not totally grasp what causes them to react the way they do to situations. There are hints at their motivations, but not well-articulated explanations. Azel tells the story by having alternating chapters expressing each character's point of view, but there is no blending of those views; nowhere to say here is A and B and how they fit together. If the reader likes a story where all of the plot points are told and explained, then there may be difficulties with reading this book. 

This is similar to reading a heavily outlined story where the parts have not been connected smoothly. There is a great deal of information, but it's incomplete. The reader knows where the characters are going and how they get there, but the rich detail is missing. Incidents seem rushed and tied up almost too neatly.  There is a good story in what is written, but it requires work on the part of the reader to pull it out.  Anne Azel has experimented with a different style. Whether or not she has been successful is left up to the reader.

America by Anne Azel

Publisher:           P. D. Publishing

Anne Azel is an accomplished writer who has won awards in multiple categories.  In America she has chosen to highlight the spirit of American lesbians.  It may be her best work yet.

America is a collection of short stories and vignettes about different lesbian couples.  Some of them are nothing but snapshots, while others are longer stories.  Some of them barely show a relationship beginning and others take the time to fully develop a story and the characters.  Those stories show the possibilities of what could be full length books.  What the stories have in common, besides being about Americans, is to show women at their best – loving, struggling and sometimes misunderstanding each other.  There are modern pirates, corporate raiders, tangents of memories and romance on a tropical island.  Each one reveals a different aspect of love and relationships.  In the mix the reader also is given a look at a cross section of American life.

Azel shows her skill as a writer when in the shortest pieces she's able to give the reader a complete picture with the right choice of words.  She proves that it's not how much is written, but how it's written.  The nice thing about an anthology is that the book can be put down after a short reading.  The catch with this book is that the reader won't want to put it down.

This book is worth the time spent with it.

Three Doses of Murder by Anne Azel

Publisher:             P. D. Publishing


A sequel to Murder in Triplicate, Three Doses of Murder serves up forensic scientist Aliki Pateas and her extended family again as they tackle three more murders. As she moves from story to story, Aliki is trying to find a way to finally propose to her lover Dawn, but bodies keep getting in the way. 

In "Dead Duck," Aliki and her half-sister, Robbie Williams, are flying home for their brother's wedding and so that Robbie can meet her real father for the first time. As if that weren't trying enough, ritual sacrifices that are occurring draw them into a complex murder investigation. 

"Dead Right" has Aliki reeling when a serial killer convinces her that she was responsible for an airplane full of people crashing. She feels she has to go undercover to catch whoever did this, but it could cost her the relationship with Dawn and even her life. 

The final story, "Dead Ringer," has Aliki, Robbie and their families in South America to attend a conference. A scientist disappears, mummified bodies are involved and they end up in a desert in northern Chile trying to survive. Aliki's dreams of being able to propose to Dawn and have a nice quiet family wedding don't seem to have much chance of happening; but Robbie, her wife, Janet, and all of the children will do all they can to help the process.

It's obvious that this book was originally part of one book combined with the previous volume of stories, Murder in Triplicate. The opening line is, "A few months later, the Pateas and Williams families found themselves together again." This makes no sense unless the stories were together in one volume. It also shows that the editor should have paid more attention to the second volume. If a reader does not know there is another book, that sentence is going to have her totally confused. 

Once again Azel delivers some fun stories with interesting characters. The mysteries won't tax your brain much, but Three Doses of Murder is fun to read and a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

Murder in Triplicate by Ann Azel

Publisher:           P.D. Publishing

Aliki Pateas has a successful career as a forensic scientist, but something is missing from her life, so she decides to go home to the family she hasn't seen in fourteen years. There are surprises waiting for her there. The family business has grown due to her brothers' hard work and her father has taken in a young woman and her daughter who needed help to live with him. They're the relatives of an old friend, but Aliki will also discover they have a connection to the Pateas family. She can't help but feel herself drawn to Dawn Freeman, and young Mackenzie has a severe case of hero worship for the famous woman. 

Aliki hopes to spend time becoming reacquainted with her family and developing a relationship with Dawn, but she draws mystery to her like a magnet. She finds herself dealing with three cases in a row.

In the first, she has to investigate a plane crash and murder that has significant consequences for Dawn. She also discovers that the famous actress Robbie Williams, someone Aliki has clashed with in the past and who is married to Janet, the woman Aliki thinks she loves, is really her half sister. 

In the second, she goes after a serial killer called the Fire Clown only to have him come after her family. She unites with Robbie to catch the killer, who almost succeeds in killing them.

The third story has Aliki and Robbie working together to solve a murder which they're trying to hide from their wives and daughters. The problem is that all of the women in the Pateas/Williams family have an itch to be involved in solving mysteries and they end up in a comedy of errors that almost has tragic consequences. Through all of this, Aliki slowly comes to realize that Janet is not the woman of her dreams, but Dawn is.

Anne Azel is a well-known retired forensic scientist and popular with people who like to read her online stories. The Aliki Pateas stories first appeared on the Internet and are well developed. There isn't particularly a great deal of suspense to the mysteries, but they are interesting stories and provide some pleasant light reading. The characters are what make the stories worthwhile however. Aliki and Robbie can't stay out of trouble and provide some comic relief, while their partners try to keep them on an even keel, which proves to be almost an impossible job.  

Murder in Triplicate is the type of light reading that would be good on vacation or when you want to pass a few hours.

Iron Rose Bleeding by Anne Azel

Publisher:                 P. D. Publishing

If you care about the Earth, this is a difficult story to read.  It's classified as science fiction, but too much of it is true to be ignored.

Courtney Hunter has more curiosity than is good for her.  For the past two years she's been working as an archivist at TAP International, headed by Taylor Alexandria Punga, a mysterious woman with powerful contacts all over the world.  The facility where Courtney works has the highest security possible, which doesn't make sense since she can't see that the company makes anything, so she steals a special clearance ID tag so that she can snoop around.  When she is caught she's offered an opportunity that she can't refuse.  She can become Punga's protégé or be terminated.  The training requires a lot of reading about economics, environmental issues, weather patterns, and politics, with one inescapable conclusion.  The Earth is in trouble.  Eventually, Courtney discovers that TAP represents an alien race that is studying the planet and may have an answer to save it, but the cost will be high, possibly higher than humans should pay.  Courtney can't decide whether cooperating with the other race will make her a hero or the planet's biggest betrayer, but she finds herself with unexpected ties to TAP and comes to realize that cooperation may be the only way to save all of them.

Azel has done a tremendous amount of research about what is happening to the Earth for this story.  As TAP keeps saying, all of the information is available to anyone who wants it, but, like TAP's organization, Azel brings it together in one place to create an alarming and very depressing scenario.  It's the type of book that makes you want to run out and join every type of organization devoted to environmentalism that you can find.  A lot more could have been developed about this issue, but Azel rushes the story to an incomplete conclusion.  There is also a story involving the aliens that is hasty and not explained well.  The characters are appealing, but what motivates their actions is often unclear and there is an issue between Courtney and TAP that is shocking and definitely needed more exploration.  This is a good story that could have been much better with detail and elaboration.

Iron Rose Bleeding tells a distressing story that is, unfortunately, all too real.  The reader should be prepared to be bothered by what is revealed about the Earth and its prospects.  However, maybe the reader should be bothered and that way something might be put in motion to try and reverse these trends.  Azel provides aliens who come to save the Earth.  One could wish it was going to be that simple.