Tag Archives: Kate Shugak

Thursday Quotables: Killing Grounds

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

8Killing Grounds

Killing Grounds (Kate Shugak, #8) by Dana Stabenow
(published 1999)

I know it must seem like all I do is read Kate Shugak books, but honestly, I do read other things as well! However… the Kate books always have terrific descriptions that I can’t resist quoting.

“Quiet!” Chopper Jim bellowed out the command with all the authority of twenty-five years of experience.

It didn’t silence the Amartuq Creek Debating Society, but it woke up a peacefully slumbering grizzly male in a clump of diamond willow across the creek, who had been sleeping off the stupefying effect of a dozen early silvers gulped for brunch. Jim’s bellow startled him to his feet, where he tripped over a branch, somersaulted down the bank and into the creek with a tremendous splash, followed by an even more tremendous bawl of outrage that flushed birds from every tree in sight, startled a yearling moose out of a thicket and caused a family of otters to vacate their fishing hole for less boisterous habitation downstream.

There’s always some clever or quippy dialogue to entertain me too:

His eyes lifted quickly to hers, and his slow smile told her exactly what he was thinking. Still, he hesitated. “How are your various aches and pains?”

“Variously achy and painy,” she said, “but don’t let that stop you.”

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Breakup

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Breakup

Breakup by Dana Stabenow
Kate Shugak series, #7
(published 1997)

Clearly, I’m on a role with this series! I just can’t get enough of the characters, the setting, or the tone that keeps veering between sarcastic and serious. In terms of context, the term “breakup” here refers to the the time of year, roughly March and April, when the snow in Alaska melts, winter ends, but everything is slushy and people and animals get a little cranky and a little crazy.

What with one thing and another, it had been a very long twenty-four hours, even for breakup. Not one but two close encounters of the ursine kind, a jet engine falling out of the sky to smash flat her primary means of summer transportation, a hole in the roof and, oh yes, let us not forget, income tax.

And now, on top of everything else, a body.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

On Mercy Thompson and Kate Shugak

Posted in Bookish Thoughts by

I’m having the somewhat mind-warping experience of reading two amazing books about two of my favorite characters right at the same time — and it struck me that despite seemingly huge differences, Mercy Thompson and Kate Shugak have a lot in common.

First, a bit about both.

Frost BurnedMercy Thompson, the heroine of Patricia Briggs’s popular urban fantasy series, is a VW mechanic living in the Tri-Cities area of the state of Washington. Mercy is a coyote shapeshifter who seems to always find herself at the center of trouble. Over the course of nine novels so far, Mercy has become more and more involved with the local werewolf pack, first as a neighbor and a nuisance, but eventually as the Alpha’s mate and wife. Along the way, Mercy has taken on a whole host of bad guys, from demonic vampires to volcano gods, and has lived to tell the tale, sometimes only by the skin of her teeth.

15998421And Kate Shugak? Kate is the heroine of a mystery series by Dana Stabenow. Kate is a former investigator for the Anchorage DA’s office who lives on a homestead in the wilds of Alaska and would love to be left alone — except she keeps getting called back into the life of investigating crime and corruption. The bad guys here aren’t supernatural. So far, I’ve read six of the Kate books (out of 20 currently published), and I’ve seen Kate take on oilmen, drug dealers, sleazy businessmen looking to worm their way into exploiting natural resources, and smugglers of native artifacts.

So why do I equate the two? Let’s see:

Kate and Mercy are both outsiders. Kate grew up surrounded by family and tribe, but has spent most of her life wanting to distance herself from her grandmother’s manipulations and native politics. Mercy spent most of her life believing herself to be the only coyote shapeshifter in existence, never quite fitting in among the werewolves who’ve always been around her. Additionally, Kate and Mercy both were raised by foster parents, and seem to both carry scars from the absence of their own parents in their lives.

Kate is an Aleut. Mercy is of Native American heritage. Both have to deal with the blatant and implicit biases and injustices that come their way as women of color.

Kate is a kick-butt investigator who isn’t afraid to fight, is amazing with firearms, and can defend herself and anyone around her when things get dangerous. Mercy is a highly trained martial arts expert, who throws herself into a fight when needed, and will always do whatever she can to protect anyone who needs her.

Kate and Mercy have relationships that matter to them, but they’re also strong women who would never take orders or be less than 100% themselves just because of a man.

Kate and Mercy are survivors. They’ve been through hell. They’re scarred. They’ve risked themselves time and time again to do the right thing and protect those weaker than themselves.

Kate never goes anywhere without her huge dog Mutt, half-Husky, half-wolf. And Mercy seems to always be surrounded by her very own pack of wolves, most especially her beloved Alpha wolf Adam.

Kate and Mercy are both highly self-sufficient. Kate lives alone (with Mutt) at her homestead, miles from the nearest town, where she single-handedly hunts, chops wood, fetches what she needs, repairs building and vehicles, and keeps herself alive throughout Alaskan winters. Mercy is a talented mechanic who can fix anything with a motor, skilled with her hands and making a go of being a woman in a man’s world, defying gender roles on a daily basis.

Above all, they’re both smart, strong women who love deeply, cherish their independence, champion those who can’t stand up for themselves, fight for justice, and take no bull from anyone.

So despite the vast differences in their worlds — one full of the supernatural, the other a mundane world full of complicated people and politics — both Mercy and Kate are stand-out heroines who deal with tough surroundings and dangerous threats, but always remain true to themselves.

See, this is what I get for reading the new Mercy novel while in the middle of a Kate audiobook! I find the two running together in my mind, and can’t help thinking that it’s too bad that they belong to different worlds. They’d make an awesome team.

In any case, I absolutely love the world of Mercy Thompson, and I’m falling more and more under the spell of Kate Shugak. I hope to have many more books about both in my future!

 

Thursday Quotables: A Cold-Blooded Business

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Cold-Blooded Business

A Cold-Blooded Business by Dana Stabenow
(published 1994)

I just can’t get enough of Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak series! I’m slowly working my way through the audiobooks. A Cold-Blooded Business, #4 in the series, sees Kate going undercover to investigate drug-dealing at the Prudhoe Bay oilfields, and is full of the same sense of danger and adventure as the earlier books. Kate is an amazingly brave, smart, and strong lead character, and her devotion to her people and the land is part of what makes her so special.

The author has a knack for capturing the beauty of a scene:

A lump of snow dissolved and coalesced with other drops and ran to the end of a branch. With a soft plop it dropped to the ground. It had snowed while they had been gone, but it had thawed again, too, and the shallow drifts were melting like powdered sugar in the spring sun. The smell of wet earth filled her nostrils. The air was soft on her cheek. In the distance she heard the anticipatory chuckle of water over stone. An eagle screamed a taunting challenge far away, receiving only the low, roguish croak of a raven in reply.

Peace.

Makes me long for another trip to Alaska!

Alaska 058

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Dead in the Water

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Dead in the Water

Dead in the Water by Dana Stabenow
(published 1993)

I’m three books into the Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow, and I’m completely hooked! These mysteries, set in Alaska, have a terrific main character, and always manage to evoke the essence of life in the bush or wherever Kate may roam. In Dead in the Water, she’s working on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea while investigating a suspicious disappearance. The writing makes me damned sure that I never, ever, ever want to experience life on a boat like that!

The temperature had dropped as the weather worsened, and in the time it took the salt spray to fly through the air and hit the deck it had frozen into a multitude of tiny pellets that skipped and crackled across the deck, sounding like Rice Krispies after pouring the milk in. The spray froze to everything it touched, to the deck itself, to the pots stacked on that deck, to the mast and boom, to the rigging attached to the mast and boom, to the superstructure of the Avilda’s cabin. Every inch of the surface of the boat that was above water was encased in a sheet of ice. It was already inches thick on the bow and mast, and thickening rapidly everywhere else.

Brrrrrr. And to keep from freezing so much that the boat either capsizes or sinks from the weight of the accumulating ice, the crew has to get out on deck and attack it:

The bat rose and fell, rose and fell. Ice shattered and broke and as quickly froze over again. The Avilda groaned through the waves, creaking all the way down her hull under the strain. Kate groaned through the swing of the bat, her shoulders creaking beneath the weight, the strain. This wasn’t work, this wasn’t making a buck, this was survival, plain and simple.

I just finished this audiobook a couple of days ago, and I’m already dying for the next one in the series!

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: A Cold Day for Murder

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Cold Day 2

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow
(published 1992 )

This is a long passage, but it says a lot about some of the characters and conflicts in this award-winning mystery set in Alaska. (To find out more, check out my review, here.)

Kate kept talking, compulsively, the words spilling out of her as if he had not spoken. “Every time she says it, ‘Katya’, she says it in that voice of doom. I see fifty generations of Aleuts lined up behind her, glaring at me. Every time she says it, she’s telling me I betrayed her and my family and the village and my culture and my entire race by running away.” She gave a thin smile. “And now, she’s believes I’ve betrayed myself by running back. I’ve been preaching, and I quote, ‘assimilation into the prevailing culture for the survival of my people.’ Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Sounds like I’ve had seven or eight sociology classes. Sounds like I know what I’m talking about.” Kate smiled, and Jack winced away from the sight of it. “And I live in a log cabin five miles from the closest neighbor and twenty-five miles from the nearest village. I’m shipping Xenia off to town, but I can’t bear to go in myself.”

“Kate,” he said.

“Don’t you understand, we’re not all like this,” she said fiercely. “We’re not even mostly like this. We’re not all drunks and adulterers and murderers. We’re just people, like anybody else trying to get along in this goddam world. We’re starting from behind and we’re just trying to catch up.”

 

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Audiobook Review: A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

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Cold Day 2This review refers to the audiobook edition of A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow, book #1 in the Kate Shugak mystery series.

In A Cold Day for Murder, author Dana Stabenow gives us a chilly introduction to life in the Alaska Bush… and I mean that in the best way possible.

The book opens with a wonderful set piece — two men on a snowmobile crossing miles of undeveloped, snow-covered land on their way to a remote homestead, so cold that ice cracks off their faces as they talk. Their destination is the home of Kate Shugak, a former investigator for the Anchorage DA’s office, now living in self-imposed isolation way out in the middle of nowhere. The men are Kate’s former boss and lover, Jack Morgan, and an ill-prepared FBI man, dressed in a fancy suit and dress shoes under his snowsuit. Their goal? To convince Kate to resume her crazy talent for investigating and help them look into the case of a missing park ranger and the agent who went looking for him, now also missing.

Kate is 30-years-old, an Alaska native with strong family ties to the nearby Niniltna Park region and its tiny settlements. She’s also emotionally and physically damaged, having suffered a major injury on her last case in Anchorage. Kate is reluctant and hostile, but ultimately agrees to help out when she hears that the missing agent is someone she dated on and off and whom she first introduced to the park. She feels responsible, so she embarks (with her enormous dog Mutt) to visit the neighboring homesteads, the town of Niniltna, the local roadhouse — only place to get a drink in the area short of flying to Anchorage — and various relatives and townsfolk, most of whom she’s known all her life.

I sometimes struggle to keep my attention in focus when I listen to audiobooks, but in this case, no struggle was required. I quickly became fascinated by the characters, the mystery, the setting, and the amazing descriptions. Kate is a terrific heroine — talented, sharp, tough as nails, but with a vulnerability stemming from both her own wounds and from her deep connections to every single person whom she faces as she attempts to collect clues.

The townsfolk are exactly what you’d hope for: Quirky and odd, devoted to their little patch of land, fiercely proud, gruff and lovable. They’re an interesting mix of natives, immigrants from “Outside” who came and never left, government officials, and tribal elders. Beneath the frontier attitudes, there’s passion and politics, which prove to be quite a volatile mix.

The issues in the missing persons case involve more conflicts than you might think possible — the conflict between developers, miners, and “greenies”, the urge to open the Park to all versus the locals’ desire to preserve things as they are, the demands of the tribal elders trying to maintain their community versus the aimlessness of the young who desperately seek a way out. With a deft touch, the author introduces us to all of these elements through the people Kate encounters, but it’s never heavy-handed.

The mystery itself is multi-layered, and Kate’s investigation turns up all sorts of bad apples and surprise twists before it’s all sorted out.

As you can see, I enjoyed A Cold Day for Murder very much. I’m not generally much of a mystery reader, but the plot and the characters really grabbed me from the very beginning and kept me hooked.

Will I continue with the series? There are 20 Kate Shugak novels published so far, and that seems like an awful lot to bite off. I don’t feel the need to consume them all at once in a massive binge… but I do think I’ll dip back into this series in between other books and slowly work my way forward.

Teeny confession: I’m more than a little bit in love with Alaska, so reading a book series centered on Alaskan lives and highlighting the gorgeous natural terrain and animals of Alaska is a big thrill for me.

Fun fact: Dana Stabenow won the 1993 Edgar Award for best paperback original for A Cold Day for Murder. And in the Kindle version, at least, she tells a very amusing story of herself as a young author flying from Alaska to New York City for the award ceremony. Read it, if you get a chance!

And a final note on the audiobook: Two thumbs up for narrator Marguerite Gavin! She does a remarkable job of giving the various characters distinct voices that absolutely suit them. Truly a very fun and engaging listening experience — you can hear a sample here via Audible.

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: A Cold Day for Murder
Author: Dana Stabenow
Narrator: Marguerite Gavin
Publisher: Various print editions available
Publication date: 1992
Length: 212 pages (print edition); 5 hours 31 minutes (audiobook)
Genre: Mystery
Source: Download via Audible