The Diamond Conspiracy, by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Today I'm looking at the fourth book in the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, The Diamond Conspiracy. I think the biggest issue I had was I let there be a considerable gap between the time I listened to the last book, Dawn's Early Light, and this one because I had forgotten a few details and found myself struggling to catch up with plot points. I'm mentioning this now because it's not really a critique of the book more than a failing on my part. However, this series in general has left me feeling ambivalent at times or just not really sure what to think about the series.

The Diamond Conspiracy begins with Wellington Books and Eliza Braun heading back home to England after foiling an evil plan of Thomas Edison in America. On the way back, though, Books and Braun discover that the Ministry has been disavowed by Queen Victoria and her government and a rival organization, the Department of Imperial Inconveniences, has been sent to eliminate all Ministry agents. Worst of all it appears the Maestro, the alter-ego of the Duke of Sussex, is entering the endgame of his master plan which will come to fruition at Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Books, Braun, and the other survivors of the Ministry will have to team up, on the run and with limited resources, to rescue the queen and the Empire.

Overall I though the plot had some promising points. The agents being disavowed and fighting their own government is an interesting plotline. If nothing else it gets our agents out of London and relying on their own resources rather than the Ministry's. I do felt like this book was maybe, maybe just a little too long. I think Ballentine and Morris did enough groundwork that you could fully guess where the last quarter or so of the book was going to go, and their detours and explorations just dragged out the conclusion further than necessary. I kept finding myself thinking, ''Dang, is there still more of this book?'' So I think there was a little bloat, yes, but it doesn't really get noticeable until the end.

I think the biggest issue I had was the introduction of preexisting characters, both historical and fictional, into the story at this point in the series. Having Queen Victoria be in the series makes perfect sense. She is the queen, and the Ministry is a government agency that reports to her, so she's going to show up. And I didn't mind Thomas Edison showing up as a villain in the last book. He definitely seems like the sort of person who would collaborate with a shadowy organization like the House of Usher to build superweapons. Also Edison's a jerk. So it makes sense.

No, the issue I have is the introduction of other people who I didn't think made the plot better. For example, H.H. Holmes, the notorious serial killer, gets a cameo as an operative of the House of Usher. Basically he shows up, is creepy, and then leaves. Maybe he'll show up in later books and have more of a role, but it just felt gratuitous to me. The authors also introduce H.G. Wells which makes the universe feel a lot smaller than it was and it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me why he'd keep going by a different alias every decade. And then there's the introduction of John Carter (of Mars) who really exists just to supply a War of the Worlds style Martian Walker for the final epic showdown between the Ministry and the Maestro and his forces. And while a battle between a Martian tripod and steampunk battle mechs would in theory be really awesome, by the time the book got to the battle I was so bored I just wanted it to be over, which was a real shame.

So I'm left not sure what to think about this book. On the one hand, there are interesting concepts and cool secret agent adventures. On the other hand, the book does feel like it could be trimmed down and I'm not sure how much I like the references to other works by the inclusion of other characters. (And it's definitely possible there are other references in the other books that I just missed.) The result is I feel like this book is okay, but definitely not among the best things I've ever read.

- Kalpar

Dawn's Early Light, by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Today I'm looking at the third in the Ministry of Peculiar Occurences series, Dawn's Early Light. I know that in my review of the last book, The Janus Affair, I said that the plot kind of felt like a jumbled mess more than anything else to me. However, since I can get some of these books for free from the library, I figured I could just truck on with the third book and see if it got any better. I'm happy to say that yes, the third book actually does get much more coherent and I feel that the plot flowed a lot better in this book than it had in previous ones. We also get some explanations about the villains behind the various plots the Ministry has foiled, although there's more that remains to be revealed in later books. Also, Wellington and Eliza are now a couple, although I suspect something will inevitably come up in the next book to strain their relationship.

Wellington Books and Eliza Braun are sent by the Ministry's director on a mission to America, to help the Office of the Supernatural and Metaphysical investigate a series of mysterious disappearances off the coast of North Carolina. This region has the reputation of being the Graveyard of the Atlantic (Which is true in real life), but the disappearances of air and water vessels, especially around lighthouses, has gone well beyond the normal average. Teaming up with the Americans ''Wild Bill'' Wheatley and Felicity Lovelace, Books and Braun discover that the mysterious House of Usher, as well as Thomas Edison, have formed an unlikely alliance and appear to be behind the disappearances.

I think what I appreciated the most was that I finally got an explanation of what the House of Usher was. They were briefly involved in the first book where they had kidnapped Wellington, requiring his rescue by Eliza, but had disappeared from focus. I had jokingly asked if they were just really big Edgar Allen Poe fans and apparently yes, yes they are since their emblem is a raven and their overall goal seems to be...anarchy? The characters expressed some doubt about why the House of Usher is interested in sowing as much chaos and disorder as they are, whether they intend to establish a new order afterwards or just let everything burn down, but they definitely seem to be Poe fans.

We also find out more about the Maestro and while his goals still seem fairly opaque, at least to me, beyond some sort of power grab within the British Empire, we have significantly more information than we had before. And it's clear that the Maestro does not share goals with the House of Usher but is willing to use them to further his own agenda.

The other main plot is the romance between Wellington and Eliza, which is stymied by their inability to talk to each other and the attempts of Felicity Lovelace to woo Wellington, much to Eliza's frustration. I feel like this is a pretty classic case of: relationship drama exists because they're unable or unwilling to talk to each other like adults about it until circumstances force them to. And honestly, that's just not a plot I enjoy. I know there are plenty of people out there who enjoy those sorts of stories because obviously they're wildly successful, but it's just not my thing. I've come to like both Wellington and Eliza as characters, but I did wish they'd just talk instead of dragging it out. Now that that particular drama has been resolved, I do suspect that something may happen in the next book to derail their budding romance.

Overall, I'd say this book was an improvement, if a little dry at times. We're getting a better idea of what the bad guys are trying to accomplish, but there's still room to explore and uncover. It is a little heavy on the relationship drama side, but some people like that so who am I to judge?

- Kalpar

The Janus Affair, by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Today I'm looking at the second of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences books, The Janus Affair. As you may remember in my review of Phoenix Rising I said that the book felt like a bit of a mess with a lot of plot threads that weren't explained or didn't seem to go anywhere. Unfortunately this book is also mostly a muddled mess and almost goes into the territory of crime fiction that inspired Father Roland Knox to write rules for Fair Play Mysteries. In 1928. Overall the result was fairly disappointing and I'm left thinking that the rest of the books in this series aren't worth my time.

So what exactly is the plot? The main story centers around the disappearances of prominent leaders of the suffrage movement in England. Women are disappearing in bright and mysterious flashes of light and never seen again, which is causing panic and fear among the ranks of the suffragists. Eliza Braun, being a supporter and friend of the suffragists herself, has made it her personal mission to investigate their disappearance and has brought along Archivist Wellington Books for the investigation. There are also some other plots going on but they're not terribly well developed and left so frustratingly vague that it feels like the authors just aren't really sure of what direction they want to take the series.

Let's start with the Maestro who is a very vague and mysterious figure. What we do know is that he's been behind the events of Phoenix Rising and is involved in setting the events of Janus Affair in motion. Furthermore he has an animosity for the Ministry and seeks to shut it down or otherwise control it and gain access to artifacts stored in its vaults. Beyond that we really don't know what's up with him. Who he is, what he's trying to accomplish, they're all left frustratingly vague. I get that he's kind of a shadowy, mysterious Big Bad, but I have no idea how dangerous this guy is because I don't know what he's trying to accomplish.

Among the other things left frustratingly vague are the backstories of our main characters. We get more details about Braun and Books. Books at least is fairly straightforward and we learn that his father put him through a strict training regimen to turn Books into a sort of super-soldier in some misguided attempt to create a horde of them for Britain. Braun's backstory is explained, but actually only ends up raising further questions. We're told that Braun was exiled from New Zealand by the prime minister and the event involved Kiwi suffragists, but what exactly was this horrible thing that caused Eliza to be exiled from her home country remains unknown. It's referenced but never explicitly mentioned and I almost wonder if the writers forgot to put an explanation in.

Most annoyingly for me, a majority of the book is spent on a red herring explanation for why the suffragists are disappearing. Now, red herrings are obviously a major part of mystery literature but the book spends so much time and effort on this red herring that the plot involving the actual culprits suffers as a result. I felt like the authors should have focused and developed their actual antagonists more than this red herring.

So finally, let's get to the antagonists. I'm actually being kind of spoilery here so if you'd like to avoid that skip ahead. Okay, everybody who doesn't want to see this gone? Good. So, the villains of this book are a set of identical twins from India who follow this crazy mash-up of Hinduism and Christianity and believe that women's suffrage is an offense to Kali and Christ so they've been kidnapping prominent suffragists with an electronic teleporter device. And then they want to start a holy war. I think. The reason I say I think is because Books and Braun sort of assume that the two of them want to start a holy war but the villains don't really explain why they're doing what they're doing beyond, ''God wills it.'' Now why is this villain problematic? Well it directly violates rules 5 and 10 of Father Knox's guidelines which is either a reference so obscure to be brilliant or just dumb, and unfortunately I think it falls into the latter category.

For those of you unfamiliar with the rules, #5 states that ''No Chinaman must figure in the story'' which was a critique at the time of mystery novels always having some scary and mysterious oriental villain as the bad guy. By making the villains be a pair of extremely religious Indian women, I feel like it very much falls into having the bad guy be a scary foreigner who does things because they're foreign rather than because of any real motivation. Rule #10 states ''Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.'' Now in the strictest definition of fairness, the writers did foreshadow the utility of twins earlier in the book, but it disappeared again so quickly and came back with absolutely no explanation or warning or even a suggestion that you should expect it that it feels like a clear violation of the rule.

It may be unfair for me to judge this book by a somewhat arbitrary set of rules for ''Fair Play'' murder mysteries, but I feel like there's an important point to be made. In this case, we spend so much time with no real information or guidance on who exactly the culprits are and, as I said, spend so much time on a red herring, that it feels like downright shoddy writing when the real villains are revealed. If this book was more of a satire of Victorian literature, specifically crime literature, then I might be willing to consider it an elaborate reference but I find that probability rather doubtful in all honesty.

Overall this book was a disappointment. The plot is tangled, confused, misdirected, and then so out of nowhere that it becomes just one big confusing mess. We still have no idea what the plans of the Maestro, the big bad for the series, is plotting beyond some general evilness which is frustrating. Things that should be shown or explained simply aren't, which makes the book feel much more incomplete.

- Kalpar

Phoenix Rising, by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Today I'm looking at the first in a series about the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, Phoenix Rising, a steampunk series by Pip Ballantine. I was drawn to this series initially because it seemed to have multiple things I was interested in, namely steampunk and mysterious government agencies that deal with the unusual. (There is a reason I am a huge fan of Warhouse 13.) This book actually started off pretty promisingly with one of our main characters, Wellington Books, Esq., chained to a dungeon wall and about to be tortured by the nefarious House of Usher. Only to be rescued by a timely explosion set by Agent Eliza Braun who has a fondness for weapons and dynamite. Unfortunately the book kind of goes downhill from there and becomes a jumbled mess. As this is the first in a series it sets up conflict for later books, but I feel like the plot created for this introductory novel is haphazard, thrown together, and ultimately unsatisfying.

The setup is classic buddy cop which, if we're being completely honest, works. Wellington Books is the brains (probably why his last name is Books), typical strait-laced individual from England with an aristocratic heritage. Eliza Braun is the muscle, further emphasized by the reader pronouncing her last name ''brawn'' instead of ''brown'', which is what I thought it would be but I'm a Germanophile. She's a bit of a loose cannon, solving problems with explosives, and is far more relaxed coming from the frontier colony of New Zealand. Now these two different personalities are going to be forced to work together! Yeah, I know, it's a very stereotyped buddy cop, odd couple sort of set up that's been done so many times it's practically cliché. But. It works. And to be honest I like the characters so that's at least something the book has working for it.

The problem mostly seems to be, as I said, with the plot. The book starts out with Wellington being rescued by Eliza from the House of Usher, the long-standing enemies of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Since Wellington is the chief archivist for the Ministry and privy to numerous secrets he's obviously a valuable prize, but what exactly the House of Usher wants with him is never really explored. In fact the House of Usher pretty much disappears from the novel after that. There are two scenes where they show up, but in both cases they die very quickly and what exactly their plans are remains unknown. This is frustrating to me because I feel like the first novel in a series shoulders the biggest burden in establishing the universe of the series. So I'm left asking questions like, ''Who is the House of Usher? What do they want? What are their goals? Why are they enemies of the Ministry? Are they just big Edgar Allen Poe fans?'' None of these questions get answered and it's just really frustrating to have some people you think are going to be villains but are hardly in the story at all.

The main antagonist for this book is the Society of the Phoenix whose goals are also...poorly defined. Wellington and Eliza are investigating an abandoned case that Eliza's former partner was working on before he disappeared and then turned up stark raving mad. They think there's a connection to grisly murders where people showed up either completely flayed, completely exsanguinated, or completely de-boned. ...sorry, I don't know of a fancy word meaning all of somebody's bones are gone. But why these murders are happening and how they're connected to the Society is vague even to the characters and they spend considerable time stumbling around in the dark. For most of the book we're not really sure what the Society is or what their goals are either. There's some sort of vague mention of wanting to preserve the British Empire but it remains mostly vague. The book is set in the 1890's when the British Empire is still at its height, if being challenged by newer powers on the scene, so why they think the empire's in decline remains elusive. Also how they intend to maintain the power of the Empire is also vague.

And on the one hand, it's okay for the characters to not know a lot as they're investigating a mystery, but by the end I'd have appreciated some more detail. The Society's evil plan is eventually revealed but why they're doing what they're doing is never explained. It's all very well and fine to build a giant death ray, army of mechanical monsters, or killer cheeses, but it's helpful to have a reason. It's almost like the Society was bound to fail because they weren't entirely sure what they were doing either, which doesn't make for terribly good villains.

There are also numerous plot threads which are left for later books to pick up, which are slightly more infuriating because there are so many of them. First of all, there are forces within the British government who wish to shut the Ministry down and are engaging in a clandestine campaign for that purpose. Secondly, there's an unknown force, pulling the strings of possibly both the Society and the House of Usher, but what they're planning is still frustratingly vague beyond being bad guys. And then there are aspects of both Eliza and Wellington's backstories that are mentioned but not really explained and I'm sure will be gone into detail later. For example, why is Eliza exiled from New Zealand? Is serving in England really an exile for her? What's that all about? Also why is Wellington afraid of guns? I assume it's tied to his military service which is referenced in passing but it was mentioned to briefly I actually thought I'd imagined it until the authors brought it back again. There are just so many things tossed in that it makes the story that much more of a jumble.

Ultimately this book's plot is a mess. As interesting as the characters are, the motivations of the villains remain vague and ambiguous for most of the book and that makes the stakes unknown. We don't know if it's the fate of the world or just the fate of Mrs. Miggins Pie Shop. I mean, both could be bad but I think the fate of the world slightly outweighs the fate of the pie shop. I honestly don't know if I'll continue listening to this series or not because of how downright confusing everything was.

- Kalpar