Kaleidoscope

Rating:
Summary: Sequel to Clairvoyant Countessa - AT LONG LAST!
Review: Been waiting a long time for the sequel. It's finally here, and it doesn't disappoint. Much like the first, the Countessa is involved with many different people - and their stories always converge at some point.

If you loved the Mrs. Pollifax books, you will also fall in love with the Countessa.

I gave it a four because my personal favorites, Incident at Badamya and Caravan are the two that rate fives.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable fluff
Review: Fun and undemanding, this sequel to the Clarivoyant Countess is definitely "lite" reading, but enjoyable if you disengage your sense of disbelief before starting. Some inconsistencies with the first story annoyed me, (in Kaleidoscope Madam Karitska explains why she does not have and will not get a phone, yet in the first book she does have a phone. And how does one make appointments in this day and age without one?)

Don't expect a great literary experience, but it's not an unpleasant way to spend some time. I recommend it for "waiting reading": suitable for airports, doctors' offices, etc.

Rating:
Summary: So Pleased to See the Countess Again
Review: I actually bought this book new in a hardcover. Dorothy Gilman is one of my favorite authors. Aside from the fact that it just wasn't long enough, I enjoyed dipping into the life of Countess Karitska again. I loved the format of many little stories tucked into the main tale.

I had written to Dorothy Gilman years ago asking for another countess story. She replied that she had been working on one. The wait (25 years) was almost worth it. My preference would have been 25 stories about the countess but it was a delightful story. I devoured it in one sitting. I've loaned it out already but will read it again when it is returned.

Rating:
Summary: Reading for Pleasure
Review: I don't need 1000 words. Dorothy Gilman- Emily Pollifax and Madame Karitska are really great fun and still warm and interesting at the same time. Can't wait for the video. I have all of them. Thanks and I do wish she would write more often.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Visit with An Old Friend
Review: I found this sequel to the Clairvoyant Countess rather grim and lacking in the charm of the original. Although set in present-day, the novel is written as though the events of the older book happened within the past year or so. The characters are much less engaging than in the original, pale imitations of themselves, and although most of the original cast appear, there are also new characters who are seem significant but are lacking depth or explanation--Mme. Karitska appears to have some history with Daniel but he hadn't been mentioned at all in the first book, set just a year or so earlier.
What I miss most in this book is Mme. Karitska's spiritual perspective. She seems too much of this world, too grounded in the reality of the daily grind, with a background of cults and terrorism. Where is the Mme. Karitska who said a lost kitten can have cosmic significance?
I assume the title is taken from a comment she made to Pruden in the original novel, about how your perspective would change like a kaleidoscope picture if only you would let it. I didn't like the perspective this kaleidoscope offers.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment...
Review: I have been a big fan of the Mrs. Pollifax books since Ms. Gilman first started writing them and have loved most of her non-series books, especially Incident at Badamya, as well. With the Mrs. Karitska novels, though, Ms. Gilman has a couple of obstacles which she cannot overcome.

The first is that Mrs. Karitska and all her friends and associates are simply too good to be true. While her customers are in trouble when she first meets them, she always solves their problems and if needed introduces them to just the people that will make their lives and happiness complete. The only bad people are the ones she judges almost instantly to be bad. Although the chief of police admits to some suspicions of her and her methods, in his first meeting with her he is completely won over and thereafter does whatever she suggests.

The second big problem is that this isn't really a novel but a collection of very short stories that are half-heartedly interwoven if at all. The initial plot, about a jewel transporter tossing his briefcase full of diamonds to his old acquaintance Mrs. Karitska because a bad person is following him, is barely resolved at all. Why give us such a splendid start and then finish it up with just the police saying that after such and such amount of time he's probably dead? Mrs. Karitska gives it a passing thought and it's over with.

I can just imagine Ms. Gilman over the years having ideas for Mrs. Karitska, jotting them down, and then years later trying to cobble everything together. It doesn't work.

While writing this review and remembering all the problems with it, I actually had to downgrade my rating from 3 stars to 2 stars. Being such a big fan it hurts me to do that but the same thing happened to Alistair MacLean and is gradually happening to Anne McCaffrey. As authors get more and more popular, they get more control over the editing and their books definitely suffer for it. I doubt if this book would ever have been published without Ms. Gilman's success with Mrs. Pollifax.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment...
Review: I have been a big fan of the Mrs. Pollifax books since Ms. Gilman first started writing them and have loved most of her non-series books, especially Incident at Badamya, as well. With the Mrs. Karitska novels, though, Ms. Gilman has a couple of obstacles which she cannot overcome.

The first is that Mrs. Karitska and all her friends and associates are simply too good to be true. While her customers are in trouble when she first meets them, she always solves their problems and if needed introduces them to just the people that will make their lives and happiness complete. The only bad people are the ones she judges almost instantly to be bad. Although the chief of police admits to some suspicions of her and her methods, in his first meeting with her he is completely won over and thereafter does whatever she suggests.

The second big problem is that this isn't really a novel but a collection of very short stories that are half-heartedly interwoven if at all. The initial plot, about a jewel transporter tossing his briefcase full of diamonds to his old acquaintance Mrs. Karitska because a bad person is following him, is barely resolved at all. Why give us such a splendid start and then finish it up with just the police saying that after such and such amount of time he's probably dead? Mrs. Karitska gives it a passing thought and it's over with.

I can just imagine Ms. Gilman over the years having ideas for Mrs. Karitska, jotting them down, and then years later trying to cobble everything together. It doesn't work.

While writing this review and remembering all the problems with it, I actually had to downgrade my rating from 3 stars to 2 stars. Being such a big fan it hurts me to do that but the same thing happened to Alistair MacLean and is gradually happening to Anne McCaffrey. As authors get more and more popular, they get more control over the editing and their books definitely suffer for it. I doubt if this book would ever have been published without Ms. Gilman's success with Mrs. Pollifax.

Rating:
Summary: Another great Madame Karitska book...
Review: I have long awaited the next book about Madame Karitska. Although this book is not as in-depth into the Spiritual world and psychic powers as The Clairvoyant Countess, it still rates a four.

The book introduces many new and interesting characters that could possibly lead into several more books, hopefully, in the series.

Please write another very soon, Ms. Gilman - your fans anxiously await the next Madame Karitska novel.

Rating:
Summary: A less than half-hearted effort
Review: I loved Clairvoyant Countess, but in this sequel, Ms. Gilman isn't even trying to tell a good story. It's a jumble of quick pyschic fixes, with no emotion or even characterization. Consider this exchange:
Madame Karitska: "His letter has made me very sad for him, it touched me deeply."
Detective Lieutenent Pruden: "It affected me as well, and if this is true, and I feel it true, there will be two people who don't think ill of him."
Is that the way you'd expect a detective to talk? Ugh. Everybody speaks in the same voice.

And supsense? Forget it. Everything is cut and dried. Even in a climactic scene where a bad guy pulls his gun, there is no suspense whatsoever. Madame Karitska just "sighed," and promptly bonked him on the head.
The biggest events happen behind-the-scenes and are only mentioned vaguely and without any excitement. The novel includes big things - evil scientist plots, brainwashing cults, long-held secrets, love and romance, and somehow manages to paint them all as dull as dull and to solve them all as easy as pie.

I am a big fan of Ms. Gilman's earlier work - the original Pollifax novels, Clairvoyant Countess, the Nun in the Closet, the Tightrope Walker (she should reread this to remember how she used to write suspense and emotion), but at this point she's barely trying.

Rating:
Summary: Kaleidoscope: A Countess Karitska Novel
Review: I loved it! I am so glad that after all the years, a sequel was written to the Clairvoyant Countess. It is so nice to read a book with warm, loving characters overcoming evil in a terrible world. I just desperately hope that Dorothy Gilman will write a sequel NOW!!! (Pretty please Dorothy?)