Worth Noting: Daisy’s War by Shayne Parkinson

I, my wife, and most people who have read the Promises to Keep quartet of ebooks are big fans of indie author Shayne Parkinson. For those of you unfamiliar with the quartet, I reviewed the books 2 years ago in On Books: The Promises to Keep Quartet and again in On Books: Promises to Keep are Promises Kept, and have been waiting for the next book in the series to arrive. My wife and I are still recommending these books to anyone who asks for an excellent read.

In the past week or so, we were wondering if Shayne Parkinson had finally released the next volume in the series. We hadn’t heard anything and it hadn’t crossed my mind to check Smashwords, when, ‘lo and behold, I received an e-mail from Shayne advising me that Daisy’s War, the latest book in the series has been published and is now available at Smashwords.

I immediately went to Smashwords and downloaded the fifth book in the series. I began reading it within hours. I expected Daisy’s War to be of the same exceedingly high quality as the first four books in the series (all 5 or 5+ stars) and am not disappointed. I couldn’t put the book down and so finished it within a couple of days.

Daisy’s War picks up where the series left off, the early decades of the 20th century. Here is the description from Smashwords:

In 1914, Daisy lives in the quiet New Zealand valley where her family has farmed for generations. Her world seems a warm and safe one. But the Great War is casting its long shadow over New Zealand. Daisy watches in growing fear as more and more of the men leave to fight in Europe, and the War strikes ever closer to the heart of her family.

The brief description doesn’t do justice to the book. The book is a reflection on World War I and its impact on New Zealand, a far-flung outpost of the British Empire, as seen through the eyes of a child who almost understands the whats and whys of war but can’t quite grasp them. Daisy’s dreams take a back seat to the impact of World War I on her extended family and how the need for soldiers ultimately leads to conscription, beginning with single young men but rapidly moving to include married men with children, including Daisy’s father.

The story seems incomplete. We tangentially are given glimpses into the war’s effect on the adults. Because of how the prior books were written, I think Daisy’s War should have run with both major and minor story lines, the major being the tale we are given and the minor a more in-depth look at the effect on the adults. For example, Daisy’s Uncle Alf returns from the battlefields a changed man. We are briefly given a glimpse into why and we know that the children want to avoid him, but we are not given more insight into the change in family dynamics. Perhaps this broader look at intra- and interfamily dynamics is a tale that will be picked up in the next book.

Regardless, this is the outstanding book that I had been waiting for. The only thing missing from the book is an explanation of the character relationships at the beginning, before the Prologue, that a reader can either review to refresh one’s memory or ignore. It has been 2 years since I last read this series and at first it was difficult to figure out who the characters are and their relationships to each other. The first book in the series begins with Amy’s story and the child she had out of wedlock that she had to give up for adoption. In Daisy’s War, we read, for example, of “Aunt Sarah” and “Granny,” and it took me some time to recall that these are the out-of-wedlock daughter and Amy, respectively. Other relationships also took some time but did come back. For example, who was Grandma (as opposed to Granny)?

This is a gripe I have with many authors who write continuing series. It is not so bad when in every book in a series the characters remain the same, just the circumstances change. But in a series like this where there is a constant generational change and an expansion of the families and a long time between books, it should not be assumed that readers will remember what happened in a book that was released more than 2 years ago or recall who married whom and begat whom who themselves went on to marry and beget. In that interim, I have read thousands of manuscript pages for work and hundreds of books for pleasure; some refreshing is necessary.

In this case, the lack of the information poses another problem: The book doesn’t work well as a standalone book. You need to have read the previous books in the series to understand the importance of what is happening. Although that is good from a series sense, it is bad from the reader sense. A reader who picks up this book first, not having read the previous entries in the series, will not walk away singing the high praises the books deserve. Instead, they will be disappointed because much of the impact of book relies on knowing the relationships.

Regardless, as with the first four books in the series, Daisy’s War is exceptionally well-written. If you have read and enjoyed the first books in the series, then this is a must read for you. The book is reasonably priced at $2.99 and is clearly a 5-star read.

If you haven’t read Shayne Parkinson’s books, begin with Sentence of Marriage, the first in the series, which is free at Smashwords. If you  like historical fiction and/or family sagas, you are likely to find this a captivating series.

On Books: Promises to Keep are Promises Kept

Over the past few months, you have read my praise for the Promises to Keep quartet by Shayne Parkinson several times, beginning with the original review (On Books: The Promises to Keep Quartet) and then as an example of quality ebooks in Finding the Needle in a Haystack of Needles (I): Reader Reviews. Once again, I am compelled to discuss these books.

But first, because I do not want you to think I am shilling these books, let me issue my denials upfront: I do not know the author; I have never met the author. I have exchanged a couple of e-mails with her through MobileRead, an ebook discussion forum, which she initiated to ask me to perhaps edit a comment slightly I had made about her books on the forum because she thought perhaps I was giving away a surprise to those who had not yet read the quartet (in the end, it was agreed to leave the comments as they were because the books aren’t mysteries). I receive no remuneration of any kind in exchange for these mentions. Have I covered all the bases?

Okay, now to why I feel it important to reiterate praise for these books.

My wife and I are avid readers. Every time we go to a bookstore, she walks out with as many books, if not more, than I do. I suspect her to-be-read pile challenges mine if we ignore ebooks. Why ignore ebooks? Because my wife doesn’t own an ebook reader and doesn’t buy ebooks. She has consistently refused to share my reader, saying that she bought it for me and can see how much I enjoy it (all of which is true).

Our taste in reading material differs greatly. Although we discuss books we have read and recommend some of them to each other, we both recognize that it is the rare book that we would both enjoy and with our to-be-read piles growing weekly, the likelihood of one of us picking up, reading, and enjoying a book recommended by the other is slim. She likes what I call do-good nonfiction, e.g., the story of a school built in a poor remote area, and Maeve Binchey-type fiction. I prefer nonfiction books about hard subjects, e.g., wars, both ancient and modern, and my fiction rarely ventures from the scifi/fantasy genres. Even so, we do discuss books and what we have read.

Nevertheless, after I finished reading the Promises to Keep quartet, I insisted that Carolyn borrow my Sony Reader and try these books. After a bit of coaxing, she did and now things are different at our table — all because of the Promises to Keep quartet. First change is that I haven’t had access to my Sony Reader for nearly a month. Second change is that where we tend to read our magazines at the lunch table, she now reads one of the quartet books.

The third change is probably the most telling change: Carolyn is an excellent painter (visit her website to see what I mean) whose paintings are in collections worldwide. So she often spends her evenings (along with her days) in her studio working on the newest painting. Her habit has been — and this has been true for the many years we have been together — to watch an hour or so of TV at the end of the day as her method of unwinding before bed. But not long after she started the Promises to Keep quartet, her habit changed: now the TV is silent and she unwinds by continuing her reading of Parkinson’s quartet.

The fourth change, and perhaps equally significant, is that we now have regular discussions about the books in the quartet and about the characters. Neither of us had previously felt a desire to discuss more than once or twice a particular book, and certainly not to engage in speculation about fictional characters.

The final change is that Carolyn is actively recommending these books to friends. In the past she would mention a good book to a friend, but that would be the extent of it. With the Promises to Keep quartet, she is repeatedly recommending the books and providing links for her friends.

All right, you’ve got the picture about how much both of us like these ebooks, how outstanding we think they are. Well, just to reinforce the notion, let me repeat some words Carolyn has used to describe the books: “outstanding characterization,” “fascinating and compelling story,” “can’t stop reading” (how true this is — she struggles to stop reading when the clock chimes 1:30 a.m.), “can’t wait to find out what happens,” “mesmerizing,” “compelling.”

Why is this important, this exuberance for these ebooks? Because it proves that self-published, independent authors can produce high-quality literature, that not all self-published authors are simply trainwrecks in disguise. But it takes care and effort, both of which are evident in this quartet. (I asked Carolyn how many errors she has noticed in the books she has read so far. She answered 2 or 3 in total over the first 3 books, none of which were major or distracting.)

My questions are these: If Shayne Parkinson can maintain such quality over 4 books, why can’t most authors maintain it over 1 book? What is Parkinson’s secret? Isn’t the lack of quality evidenced in many self-published ebooks what causes self-publishing to have such a poor reputation? Why are the problems outlined in articles such as I Published My Book But Readers Keep Finding Errors, Question of the Day: Investing in eBooks by Authors & Readers, On Words: Is the Correct Word Important?, and On Words & eBooks: Give Me a Brake! unresolved?

In Promises to Keep, the promises are kept! Here are exceptional books that are well edited, well written, and well produced. So, again, I encourage you to give the Promises to Keep quartet a try. By reading and buying books of this quality, and by mentioning them repeatedly when we like them, we encourage other authors to reach for the stars, too. (And for those of you who love fantasy, I recommend Celina Summers’ The Asphodel Cycle, also a quartet, reviewed in L.E. Modesitt, Jr. & Celina Summers: Fantasy in Contrast and mentioned in Finding the Needle in a Haystack of Needles (I): Reader Reviews. Summers’ quartet is of similar quality as Parkinson’s quartet and also an excellent read.)

On Books: The Promises to Keep Quartet

As I have stated several times previously, most of my reading is nonfiction and when I do read fiction, it is generally scifi/fantasy, not the bestseller list types. The last James Patterson I read was 10+ years ago; the last Stephen King was the original publication of The Stand. But occasionally I do come across fiction outside the scifi/fantasy genre that simply captivates me.

In my fiction reading, I find that I classify a novel that I have actually read as either OK/good, very good, or fantastic. It is only novels in the last category that I consider worthy of recommending to anyone. What makes a novel fantastic? For me, such a novel has these characteristics, among others: believable characters, a good story/plot that holds my interest, tight dialogue, few errors (e.g., spelling, grammar, syntax), evokes an emotional response (e.g., laughter, concern for a character, tears), and imbues in me a strong desire to immediately purchase more books written by the author. The Promises to Keep quartet by Shayne Parkinson fall into this category.

In the Age of eBooks and self-publishing, an age when most self-published ebooks can best be described as mediocre and more often as significantly worse than mediocre, Shayne Parkinson’s Promises to Keep quartet stand out for the excellence of the writing and the storytelling. The quartet well deserves, in my opinion, being characterized as fantastic!

To be correct, Promises to Keep is a trilogy — Sentence of Marriage, Mud and Gold, and Settling the Account — followed by a sequel, A Second Chance. Because they deal with the same characters and actually follow one on the other, I refer to them as the Promises to Keep quartet.

The quartet is the story of Amy Leith, her trials and tribulations, beginning with her adolescence in the 1880s in New Zealand — the Victorian Age. It is historical fiction, a genre I haven’t read in years, that is well researched and woven into a tight story as Amy grows from youth to grandmotherhood. It is a story of misfortune and fortune; it is a story of a difficult life brought about by Victorian morality and acquiescence to Victorian norms on the frontier. It is a grandiloquent look at New Zealand’s coming of age.

It is also more than the story of Amy Leith — it is the concurrent story of her family and her cousins and how they struggle to adapt by imitation as well as by innovation. Amy is the quiet one who puts everyone else first; her cousin Lizzie is the dominant one with a heart of gold who holds much of the family — immediate and related — together by sheer force of her will.

Amy, a farm girl with dreams of becoming a teacher and seeing more of the world (or at least Auckland), is a victim of Victorian morality but a fighter; she accepts her fate but doesn’t let it destroy her essence. And her rock is Lizzie whose expansive heart embraces Amy throughout all that befalls her.

Shayne Parkinson’s books are worthy of publishing by a major house; alas, they are not. I stumbled on them by her offering Sentence of Marriage as a free ebook. The title intrigued me. Once I started it, I immediately purchased the remaining 3 books ($1.99 each at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and other ebooksellers) — the story was captivating, the characters real, the dialogue crisp. I admit to having cried and laughed and even having wanted to murder a character and beat another one within an inch of his life — which is simply a testament to how well written these books are.

Normally I read a novel then delete it from my ereading device — not these. I have marked them to be reread (something I very, very, very rarely ever do with any book) and for my wife to read them. I also marked them to recommend to you. The quality of these books is the quality that every author should strive to meet and represents the best of the self-publishing world that ebooks and the Internet have brought to the reading public.

You might disagree with me about these books, but you cannot go wrong giving them a try. Sentence of Marriage is free as an ebook at Smashwords and Barnes & Noble. It is also available from Amazon as a paperback, albeit a high-priced one. I eagerly await the next volume in the series.