The Lord-Protector’s Daughter is the title of L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s latest paperback release, a singleton novel set midway between the two trilogies of his Corean Chronicles. And it’s a sufficiently odd duck that I have to wonder whether something happened during its composition, or perhaps whether Modesitt suddenly needed money really fast.

At first glance, Modesitt’s following his usual formula: individual discovers magical powers, and uses them lethally to resolve the problems facing them/their family/their society. We’re definitely on familiar ground, here. But the pacing of the book is just…weird.

Mykella, a descendant of Mykel of Alector’s Choice and its sequels, is the daughter of the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona. We know from the back cover that her father and other family members are doomed to be short-lived, and that only her magical powers will save her. My presumption going into it was they’d die pretty quickly, and the rest of the book would be Mykella trying to work her way out of the resulting bad situation using her newfound powers. Not so.

Spoilers lurk below, if anyone cares.

Instead, the entire book is build-up. There are financial irregularities, and the possibility of an arranged marriage, and plots against her father that her father refuses to see. Throughout the entire book, Mykella simply learns how to use her powers, continues to investigate the plots, and copes with the details of marriage negotiations. And then, in the last tenth of the book, the plots come to fruition, her father is buried, the usurper is about to be crowned, and in a dramatic climax Mykella reveals her powers, kills all of the conspirators, and claims the throne as her father’s eldest surviving child. The end.

Seriously, that’s it. The only real action is over in a few minutes. Oh, she has some run-ins with an Ifrit while learning to use the Table under the palace, but even those aren’t particularly suspenseful.

Modesitt is often formulaic, but his characters usually go through some fairly harrowing experiences and reversals during the course of a book. This book is simply far too many repetitions of “Oh, dear, this is happening, oh, dear, that might happen, Oh, wow, I can do this,” followed by Mykella pulling her own deus ex machina. It’s also much shorter than most of his books, which is OK; given what it is, I’d scarcely want it to be longer. Crisis in the family? Contractual obligation? I dunno, but I was disappointed.

Ralph McInerny is a Thomist philosopher of some note; and he also writes thrillers. I’ve not read any of his works of philosophy—I know his name primarily from an introduction he wrote to a new edition of Jacques Maritain’s Introduction to Philosophy—but given that I’m aware of him as a philosopher, I picked up his book Relic of Time when I found it at B&N the other day.

As the book begins, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is stolen from the basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico. For the non-Catholics in the audience, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to have appeared miraculously on the cloak of an Aztec peasant, a Christian convert named Juan Diego, in 1531, when very few natives were Christians. It is a particularly sacred relic to the people of Mexico, and indeed to Latin Americans in general, and when the leader of an American militia group claims to have stolen it, the fecal matter hits the proverbial fan. Vincent Traeger, retired CIA agent, is called out of retirement and given the job of finding the image and getting it back to its home, as the border between Mexico and the United States goes up in flames.

First, the good. The book held my attention; I wanted to know what was going to happen, and stayed up too late at night finishing it.

Next, the odd. This is a very Catholic book. Most of the characters are either present or former Catholics, and many of them take the Catholic faith very seriously indeed. Note that this is a book I’d expect to find with the thrillers, and not in the Christian fiction section; but nevertheless, it’s unusual to find a thriller that takes religion seriously. In fact, I don’t think I’ve read anything that compares.

Next, the ugly. There were some weird errors of fact. Some of the characters fly into San Francisco International Airport in a private jet, for a hand-off taking place in the long-term parking lot. McInerny has them fly over Dodger Stadium. Now, it’s quite likely that they’d have flown over Candlestick Park, where the Giants play; and getting the Dodgers and the Giants confused is just too funny. Another character is the Bishop of the Diocese of Orange in Orange County, who refers to himself as the Bishop of Disneyland and Busch Gardens. Now, there used to be a Busch Gardens amusement park in Southern California…at the Anheuser-Busch plant in the middle of the San Fernando Valley, in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. It closed decades ago. I’m at a loss for why McInerny would have thought that there’s a Busch Gardens in Orange County.

But those errors are just silly. The truly bad part is that the action sequence at the end baffled me. There were a lot of people running around and shouting and shooting, and I knew why some of them were there, but not others, and I was really unclear as to why they were doing what they were doing. That might be realistic, I suppose, but it wasn’t all that satisfying. And a number of plot points seemed highly unlikely, even at the time.

I dunno. I enjoyed parts of the book quite a bit, but it just doesn’t quite hang together.