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Princess of Wands | 
 enlarge | Author: John Ringo
Publisher: Baen
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $0.98
You Save: $24.02 (96%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 790844
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1416509232
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781416509233
ASIN: 1416509232
Publication Date: January 3, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Special: distinguished by some unusual quality . . . Circumstances: a piece of evidence that indicates the probability or improbability of an event . . . Barbara Everette, homemaker living in a small town in Mississippi, had the perfect life. Perfect husband, perfect children, perfect house, perfect Christian Faith. She cooked and cleaned perfectly and managed all of the chores of the modern suburbanite, toting the kids, running the PTA, teaching kung-fu in the local dojo . . . Perfectly. But perfection has a price and the day came when Barbara snapped. She simply had to have "one weekend off." God had to grant her that much. It said no where that she was a slave. Waving goodbye to her hapless, entirely undomestic husband, she set out on the quest for a weekend of peace and maybe some authentic Cajun food. Detective Sergeant Kelly Lockhart, New Orleans Homicide, had a perfect record on his latest case: not a single suspect. And there should be at least five or six, given the DNA traces on the many bodies. Furthermore, his sole really outstanding clue, a mysterious fish scale, had disappeared into the recesses of the FBI Crime Lab. But the old fortune-teller was sending him into the bayou, down in the land of authentic Cajun food, on the track of a mysterious pimp with the admonition to "watch for the Princess." Or die. Barbara and Kelly were heading to a rendezvous that might be fate and might reveal the hand of God. There was more cooking in the swamps than jambalaya. Unknown to either, the mystery of the Bayou Ripper had Special Circumstances.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
In which a "Soccer Mom" takes on the powers of evil June 2, 2008
I nearly titled this review "And now for something completely different" because whatever you may think about John Ringo his worst enemies could not accuse him of rehashing the same plots and characters. This one is very different indeed from the rest of his books.
"Princess of Wands" is a story of battles against evil magicians, demons and dark gods which is rather like a 21st century version of Dennis Wheatley's "Black Magic" horror thrillers.
The heroine is an irritatingly perfect, God-fearing, tolerant, chaste (yes, chaste!), superhumanly patient "soccer mom" who is about as different from most of Ringo's previous male or female central characters as it is possible to get. This lady doesn't even swear!
The majority of John Ringo's work is military Science Fiction, the core of his novels usually being either conventional warfare or anti-terrorist action against human "bad guys" or invading aliens. Most of his heroes and anti-heroes are soldiers or veterans, sometimes with a very dark side to their characters - for example the "hero" of the "Ghost/Kildar/Paladin of Shadows" series is always telling people that he's not a good guy but a bad guy who is fighting on the side of good, and he proves it at one point by raping and brutalising a teenage prostitute; the heroes of "Watch on the Rhine" are semi-reformed former Waffen SS men.
By contrast this novel is an unusual mix of fantasy, horror, and comedy, and is based on the premise that there is a secret US government agency working with the FBI called "Special Circumstances" which is called in to deal with crimes which turn out to have a supernatural element.
Barbara Everette is a 33-year old "soccer mom", the very patient mother of three ordinary (e.g. occasionally naughty and always demanding) children aged between seven and thirteen, a very devout Episcopalian churchgoer, pillar of the PTA, and devoted to her ordinary husband. About her only human flaw is vanity - although completely faithful to a spouse who doesn't remotely deserve her, Barbara is used to men paying attention to her attractive face and figure and is horrified to find herself becoming very jealous at one point in the book when another attractive woman who dresses much less modestly grabs all the male attention. To give you an idea what a superhumanly good person she is, she responds to this vanity by praying for forgiveness rather than bitching at her scantily-clad colleague. (Yeah, right!)
The only thing which distinguishes Barbara from a typical if too-good-to-be-true home-maker is that her air force officer turned diplomat father has encouraged her to learn various types of self-defence skills: she is a crack shot and is so good at unarmed combat that she can often defeat one of the town's two martial arts instructors. Various bad guys in the book get a nasty shock when they discover just how dangerous this harmless looking attractive woman becomes when attacked - and at this point you realise yes, this is a John Ringo book after all!
On first reading "Princess of Wands" my wife put the book down in disgust after about five pages because she found Barbara disgustingly perfect. Trust me, there is a very good reason in the story why Barbara has to be a complete goody-two-shoes for the plot to work, which I won't explain further in this review so as to avoid spoiling the story.
At the start of the book, Barbara has taken a weekend break away from her family, and arrives in a small town in the deep south at the same time as Detective Sergeant Kelly Lockheart of the New Orleans Police Department. Lockheart is looking for a possible witness who might have information about a particularly nasty group of serial killers. What neither of them know and only the secret "Special Circumstances" group are beginning to suspect is that the perpetrators of the serial killings are even more wicked and far more powerful than any normal person could possibly anticipate ...
The picture presented in this novel is a little weird but it is reasonably internally consistent. It doesn't work for me that in the universe of this story, the Christian/Jewish/Muslim god would allow good people to end up in hell because they lost a battle with demons, but apart from that it was not too difficult to suspend disbelief in the story. Most of the characters are plausible and entertaining, and there are some flashes of very good humour in the book. Apart from Denis Wheatley's Black Magic novels, this reminded me of Robert Weinberg's books "A calculated magic" and "A logical magician."
The ending suggests that there will be a sequel and I'm looking forward to it.
Not for everyone, it is quite dark in places, but I enjoyed "Princess of Wands" and can recommend it to those who enjoy fast moving stories of the battle between good and evil.
Postscript September 2008
After the political events of the last week I'm almost inclined to wonder whether the sequel will have Barb running for Vice President of the USA on the republican ticket. I doubt if Governor Palin, let alone Senator McCain, are quite as right wing as John Ringo would like, but if you can imagine someone of whom everything that the more enthusiastic cheerleaders for Sarah Palin say about her were true, she would be Barb Everette come to life.
 Best of Ringo March 10, 2008
Probably the best Ringo has every written. The character is interesting and lives in a real world with problems and responsibilities outside of the adventure including a husband, children, siblings, and a father who fill out the background. She appears headed for a divorce by the end of the book, and I wish Ringo would move the story along to resolve or develop those tensions that he developed.
This is another great book by Ringo!!! "David Grake..."LMAO! January 29, 2008
I agree with the other reviewers. It's John Ringo- read it! Definitely the other side of the coin from Ghost, but no less fun to read! The lighter side of fantasy, but with a NEW sort of plot! A Christian Soccer Mom Hero! I LOVE IT!
Underneath all the humor and the light-heartedness is an important message for believers (and good people in general)- We ARE in a spiritual war against evil, but we certainly won't win anyone to our cause by cramming our beliefs down the throat of others by being obnoxious to people of different faiths. Win people over by setting a good example. Good advice for everyone. Don't pre-judge people. Just because I'm a Christian, or just because you are not, doesn't mean we shouldn't try and get along and do good things- which we can do without being uptight and stuck on being PC all the time. Some of my best friends have been wiccan, and we got along just fine because of that understanding and because of our beliefs, not in spite of them.
Mr. Ringo certainly wins people over by being such a versatile writer.
 This could have been so good....... November 10, 2007
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
The author took these episodes as his podium to lift up cults and bash Christianity. The husband is a flat, stereotypical character that has nothing in common with what is expected of a Christian husband and father. The main character, Barbara, is portrayed as having a strong Christian faith but very conflicted. Numerous occultic religions are portrayed in very positive lights with great detail provided for the Wiccan cult. Christianity is poorly portrayed with many misperceptions and out right errors listed as fact.
The author deals somewhat well with the sad reality that many people misquote Christianity in order to 'justify' actions that are very non-Christian. He does note that Barbara is very strong based on her relationship with the Lord. Sadly, he also portrays the Lord as capricious, undependable, and that many times Barbara must lean on her strength vice the Lord. Again, he apparently is largely ignorant of Christianity or deliberately choses to misrepresent it.
This is rather sad. John Ringo is a very talented author. The parts of this book where he gets away from sly Christian bashing are very well done and entertaining. The concept of the book - Buffy like homemaker suddenly drawn into fighting for the side of good against evil - has much potential. It is a pity that the author makes this a forum for his anti-Christian bigotry.
In summary good action book. If you do can handle outright bashing of Christianity and lifting up of cults, this is a good read. But if the bashing of Christianity and lifting up of cultic practices and beliefs is not a good thing for you, skip this one.
Great March 8, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Good work of present day good vs. evil sorcery. Better written and with more interesting characters than most in this field!
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