What Remains of Forever by Kim L. Brantley
Kim L. Brantley’s Science Fiction Romance, What Remains of Forever, is an uneven but fascinating Science Fiction Romance about a small group of immortals coming to terms with mortality and the investigator who is intrigued by them.
Richard Evans has been found dead by his friends, Lucien, Aurelia, Octavia, Valeria, and Cassian, a secretive and eccentric group that have known Richard for decades and each other for longer than that. They are immortal and this murder investigation gives them unwanted attention. Independent consultant Adrian Varro is drawn to the case and in particular to the beautiful and enigmatic Valeria who is pursuing her next step with fellow immortal Cassian.
What Remains of Forever has some interesting possibilities in world building and characterization.
The immortal characters are a pretty fascinating enigmatic bunch. Like many literary characters, they hint much about their true identity but leave a lot out so the readers are as curious about their story as those outside their circle in universe are. Adrian's search for answers echoes the reader's own ongoing curiosity with every page turn.
The immortal characters are masterful in navigating a changing world. They have witnessed various battles, trends, political situations, social changes, technological updates. If you have lived that long, you become quite savvy in predicting potential outcomes.
This works to their advantage because the group is particularly wealthy and has a corporation that consolidates various businesses. They not only observe goings on but use their money and connections wisely to implement beneficial changes for themselves and mortals who don't have the expected long life span that they do.
The characters are mostly well written. The stand out in the book is Valeria. She is a sharp, intelligent, enigma who enchants those around her with her appearance, allure, and mysterious demeanor. She is the CEO of their corporation and has a fine sense of business savviness honed from centuries of acquiring business acumen.
Valeria also has a pretty active love life. She had close relationships that ended because of the passage of time or by her partners’ withdrawal from sharing a life with a woman who could outlive him by several centuries. In the book proper, she becomes involved with Adrian and Cassian and has to weigh revealing her deepest secrets to the former or engaging in a long term relationship with the latter who lives those secrets as well.
While the book is well written there are tremendous flaws in writing, character, and plot. Valeria is a decent enough character but not all of the immortals are given the same amount of care. A couple of them are interchangeable and one even disappears from various chapters for no apparent reason except Brantley may have forgotten about them.
There are some stretches of credibility when some characters outside of their immediate circle are revealed to also be immortal as well and are in the convenient right place at the right time to help them.
Despite the murder of Richard Evans being the inciting incident, the resolution is anti-climactic, hand waved, and easy to guess. It is also revealed halfway through the book with more remaining chapters to go. Richard Evans’ death starts out as a important plot point but becomes an nonessential plot device used solely to introduce the characters’ and their conflicts.
There are huge mistakes in the writing process. One chapter is repeated word for word. It's an obvious error in formatting that wasn't discovered during the copy editing or proofreading stages.
The biggest technical error is the change in narration. The book begins in first person limited using Valeria as the point of view character with alternating third person chapters told from other characters’ perspectives primarily Adrian's. A few chapters into the book, Valeria's first person narration is entirely abandoned in favor of third person, again focusing primarily on Valeria and Adrian.
There is no artistic or stylistic reason for this change. Instead it looks like an immediate change in narrators but not in format to fix it. Like Brantley, changed her mind in writing the point of view but forgot to go back and fix it in the earlier chapters.
There is also a huge glaring problem towards the end when the characters' immortal origins are revealed. The story itself is intriguing but it is revealed in a long multi-chapter monologue turning what could be a fascinating backstory into one long tedious info dump of information. If I were the character receiving this information in this manner, I would have fallen asleep halfway through the telling. It might have been better for Brantley to write this backstory in story format as a series of flashbacks instead of an overwhelming slog of explanation.
What Remains of Forever has some intriguing aspects in character and plot. Unfortunately, the book is riddled with narrative errors and overly long and complicated exposition that prevent the book from being highly recommended. Instead it is a book with good ideas but needs improvement in implementing them.
Spirits of the Law (Suddenly French Mystery #3) by Elle Jauffert Elle Jauffert’s Spirits of the Law of the Suddenly French Mystery Series is a charming and at times sinister cozy mystery that combines the usual stand alone murder with an ongoing story arc that carries through multiple volumes.
Local medium Starlight Dreamfield dies in a car collision that appears to be murder rather than an accident or suicide. She might have discovered or predicted something that one of her former clients disagreed with.
For Claire Fontaine, protagonist and former criminal defense attorney turned caterer and gourmet chef, Starlight’s death is yet another unsolved mystery in her life. She survived a murder attempt via vehicular manslaughter but it left her with a ruptured brain and Foreign Accent Syndrome in which she suddenly acquired a French accent. Her beloved sister, Aurora also went missing twenty years ago and her family has been looking for her ever since.
As Clair investigates Starlight’s murder, she discovers a long trail that connects Starlight's murder, to Aurora's disappearance, Claire's attempted murder, and the secretive and scandalous history of Caper Cove, California the town Claire calls home. It is an intricate conspiracy that spread across decades, even centuries of unsolved crimes, secretive criminal history, and deaths of multiple witnesses.
This mystery has plenty of small town pleasantness found in most cozies, an effectively troubled protagonist, and an interesting if a bit convoluted mystery that ties everything together.
Caper Cove is a quaint small town similar to others in this subgenre. It has holiday traditions in which just about everyone in town participates, such as this volume’s Halloween festival.
It's a place where everything is taken seriously from the history of the town’s founder to celebrations that preserve tradition.
The residents strive to keep the town's reputation as a peaceful, pleasant location intact. The independent shops, old mansions, and friendly townsfolk put the readers into a false sense of security when violent murders occur.
Claire is a highlight in this volume. She presents the right combination of kindness and trauma that is found in such a cozy mystery’s protagonist. Most of Claire's trauma comes from her backstory which is respectfully handled and keeps the narration from being too mawkish or cloying.
The Foreign Accent Syndrome is a condition that she has learned to accept even as it confuses others around her. There are several parts where people assume that she's a French immigrant newly arrived in the US and are thoroughly confused when they meet her American father and people who have known and grown up with her.
The accent however opens doors professionally because many people assume that Claire is a sophisticate who studied gourmet cooking in her native France rather than a local girl and American citizen who likes to cook. Foreign Accent Syndrome is a strange baffling condition but it is one that Claire has learned to live with and succeed despite its presence.
By far the biggest trauma affecting Claire's life is the disappearance of her sister, Aurora. There are some dramatic moments where she thinks that she sees someone who might be her but the image disappears before she can learn the truth.
The effects that Aurora's disappearance has on both Claire and their father shows that the anguish of a missing person never really goes away. It's moved to the back of the mind as current mundane issues take precedence. In Claire's case, it makes her more empathetic towards other people with similar struggles.
The mystery has its share of interesting clues and leads. There are moments of suspense especially considering some of the suspects are people that have been known by Claire and her friends and family for years. It's chilling to read that someone that you know, trust, and have plenty of happy memories with could be a murderer or at least complicit in one.
One of the intriguing aspects is the potential of a paranormal mystery. Starlight's medium skills are seen mostly as fraudulent. However, there are moments when she intuitively knew more than she should have if she solely used conventional means.
The appearance of apparitions are seen as potentially ghosts, hallucinations, mistaken identities, or returning characters from the past who then inspire more questions by their presence. That uncertainty allows readers to offer their own speculations about what they think is going on until they discover the answers.
However, the twists can get unwieldy as multiple mysteries are tied together in this investigation. Many of the subplots are only tangentially connected to the central mystery.
Conclusions are made because of surprise discoveries which lock the readers out of the loop when they want to follow the clues to solve the mystery for themselves. One lead is so obvious that it would be a surprise if it didn't lead to that conclusion.
Despite the convoluted multiple mysteries, Spirits of the Law is a well done cozy mystery with plenty of small town charm and suspense to keep readers interested.
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