SO FAR GONE by Jess Walter

Rhys Kinnick has been living off the grid for seven years and doesn’t recognize his grandchildren when they come knocking on his door.  Their mom, Bethany, has taken off and left a note for a neighbor to deliver the kids to Rhys, despite his self-imposed exile from the family.  However, Bethany’s husband, Shane, has sent goons from his right-wing militia to move the kids to Rampart, a vigilante training facility masquerading as a church, more or less.  Rhys decides to be proactive for a change, and his ex-girlfriend suggests he team up with another of her ex-boyfriends, Chuck, who happens to be an ex-cop.  Chuck is a trip, as is Rhys’s inquisitive nine-year-old grandson, Asher, who loves to do things that he is not good at, such as jump over creeks and compete in chess tournaments.  This novel, a combination of family drama and adventure, is a pleasure to read from start to finish, with the exception of a chunk in the middle that recounts Bethany’s counseling session with her therapist, who suggests that Bethany’s choices in men stem from her fraught relationship with her father.  Daddy issues?  Really?  Fortunately, this section is just a minor blip as the plot moves on to Bethany’s whereabouts and altercations with the Rampart crazies.  The family drama angle has Rhys wondering why he isolated himself in the first place and what he needs to do to get back into Bethany’s good graces.  Witty dialog provides an element of humor to a story of regret and reunion, peppered with a fair amount of gunplay.

ONYX STORM by Rebecca Yarros

The series stagnates with this book, which just does not pack as much of a punch as the first two—Fourth Wing and Iron Flame.  It is pleasurable enough to read, but nothing noteworthy happens, although Violet does start to settle into her role as a leader.  Perhaps the author intended this book to serve as a transitional story, since it is supposed to be the middle book in a series of five.  However, I think the middle book should be more of a peak than a valley.  We have the usual dragons, battles, rescues, deaths, and, of course, sex, but I’m not as anxious to read the next book as I was to read this one.  Two quests dominate the plot, and one of those is successful but somehow a letdown.  Also, it starts just where Iron Flame left off, and in the year since I read that one I’ve forgotten a lot of the details.  The author does not really make an effort to remind the reader of the roles these many characters play.  I hope she reiterates some background in the next novel, because apparently it will not be coming out for a while.  There is a page in this one that lists the royal leaders and some of the main characters, their bonded dragons, and their magical signets.  However, the relationships among the characters are not shown, and some characters are missing from the list.  For sure this book does not make sense unless you have read the other two, but I suspect you could jump from book two to book four without missing a beat.

THEO OF GOLDEN by Allen Levi

A mysterious 86-year-old Portuguese man named Theo moves from New York to Golden, Georgia (fictional town), for reasons unknown.  A coffee shop in Golden called the Chalice has a wall displaying 92 well-drawn portraits of Golden residents, and Theo decides to buy them, one by one, and bestow them upon the person depicted.  When I saw where this was going, I was glad this book was only 400 pages, as I figured the author could not include all 92 of these denizens’ backstories.  Our title do-gooder gains some beloved friends in the process of presenting these gifts, including a CPA, a homeless woman, a street musician, a one-armed bartender, and a cellist.  Theo remains a man of mystery until the very end, but, other than that, suspense is severely lacking, as is any serious conflict.  Both the writing and the subject matter are pablum suitable for a sixth grader.  I felt that the book was making a point about empathy and human kindness, but if I wanted to hear a sermon, I would go to church.  On that note, Theo speaks often of heaven and is a regular church service attendee.  Ultimately, his main motivation seems to be atonement, but the eventual revelation of Theo’s history does not provide the jolt I was hoping for.  All in all, this book is so sweet that it made my teeth hurt.