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Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter Elizabeth is in trouble, she just doesn't know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Elizabeth for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at San Francisco's most luxurious hotel. Yet she has not tried to contact Martha since she arrived, leaving her lonely, confused and a little bit worried. Into the story steps Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who lives at the hotel and is drawn to Martha's good nature and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter. Mayland and Martha become close in a short period of time and he promises to help her find Elizabeth, making small inroads in the mystery before Martha herself disappears. Now Mayland is struck by the realization, too late, that he is in love with Martha, and now he fears for her life. Determined to find her, he sets his prodigious philosopher's mind to work on the problem, embarking on a potentially dangerous adventure.… (more)
User reviews
This book was compelling. It was beautifully written and it just sucked me in.
Martha MacNamara comes to San Francisco at her
They don't write stories like this any more--straightforward and fairly simple with a minimum of characters (7 total) and subplots (maybe 1). Martha and Wayland are deftly portrayed through dialogue and shifting POVs, which during their extended conversations may smoothly switch between them with every paragraph. These two are richly realized, with many of the insights implied through dialogue rather than bludgeoning the reader through internal exposition. The other characters, not so much--one- or two-dimensional supporting cast sufficient to move the plot forward. There's plenty of action, but the plot is simply a crisis that allows our two protagonists to shine. It's a sweet tale chock full of Chinese philosophy, and of course a happy ending. The most amusing aspect of it was completely unintentional--the book was published in 1983, and the computer technology described is so obsolete today as to be funny, much worse than the computer technology described in Bimboes of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb.
I found out later it’s both a Hugo and Nebula nominee circa 1984.
The
So we have two damsels in distress, several computer programmers with more skill than sense, a looming daybreak deadline, a Zen prophecy lurking about, and one old dragon who is thinking it would be easier to just go back to sleep.
Long's thoughts and actions are definitely the best part of the novel. And I enjoyed very much reading of Martha, although Elizabeth I could never sympathize with. The computer wizardry that’s described is twenty years out of date, which is both a good thing and a bad depending upon how you look at it (bank-robbing computer programs: cliché? or easily recognized and understood?) And it’s just a slim little thing, not two hundred pages. How on earth did I miss this?
I have some friends in Silicon Valley. This book is so going to start making rounds there.
The book gets its four star solely based on the
More of a cutesy romance that any one who loves those romance novels will enjoy very much.
The fantasy / dragon element can be eliminated completely from the story and it won't be changed too much.
This is a low key
Recommended.
This book and I just don't get each other. I don't feel like I know enough about Chinese dragons to appreciate Mayland's character (or at least I don't know as much as I felt the author was expecting me to know). And the suspense aspect of the plot was too thin to make up for this.
Read in 2015 for the SFFCat.
The main characters are quite complicated, and refreshingly far from
But when Mrs. Macnamara arrives, Liz has disappeared. An elderly gentleman by the name of Mr. Long invites her to tea, and soon the two are embroiled in a search for Liz that has deadly - and sometimes farcical - implications.
This won't take you long to read, and I highly recommend it for fans of feminist/fantasy/romance. Mind you, parts of this will annoy all of you, but that's part of the shine of this gem.
The story itself is unusual, inventive, and
Also featured: a substantial blond mustache, lovingly described. (And we're back to very, very early 80s.)
A mother (Martha) leaves her east coast touring band to fly to California
This Openroad edition has some odd formatting quirks where paragraph breaks aren't as clearly signaled as they should have been. There isn't much jumping of viewpoint, just switches between Mr Long and mostly Martha. The biggest question is perhaps how much of Long's claims to believe it's a well worked 'low' urban fantasy in this respect.
This book and I just don't get each other. I don't feel like I know enough about Chinese dragons to appreciate Mayland's character (or at least I don't know as much as I felt the author was expecting me to know). And the suspense aspect of the plot was too thin to make up for this.
Read in 2015 for the SFFCat.
I love that