I loved The Consuming Fire! It's the middle book in a trilogy and do read #1 first. Galactic travel through the Flow is breaking down and human civilization is in grave danger. The Emperox of the Interdependency is convinced, but she’s surrounded by a lot of wealthy, powerful people who are actively conspiring against her.
Grayland II is a tough lady. She's convinced her empire is in danger -and it totally is. She's doing everything she can to figure out how to save as many people as possible, but as always there are others who are in denial or simply trying to spin things so they come out on top. There's politics and adventure and even a sweet romance that doesn't take away from the story as a whole.
The Interdependency is full of strong women, royalty, religious women, heads of merchant families, assassins, and everyday women whose common sense and unrestrained-ness make them just as valuable. I like that for the...
After listening to the first Albert Campion mystery I wasn't sure how I felt about the series. Look to the Lady is definitely a funner book. Campion is our main character now, and while he's still an odd duck, he clearly knows a lot about what is going on and has quite a few influential friends.
The chalice is a priceless, ancient relic and a rich collector wants it. This collector is a member of a group that has its own methods and rules, and Campion is quite familiar with their system. Campion is becoming an interesting character. He is not quite a detective, more like a clever, innocuous man for hire. His plan this time is to figure out who the collector's agent is and basically make sure that person ends up dead.
I listened to this one right after the first, so comparisons are inevitable. Allingham took more care of the secondary characters this time around. They were more fully...
I knew going in that The Crime at Black Dudley is not the best of Allingham's Albert Campion series, but it's the first even if he is only a minor character, and if you can start a series at the beginning, why not? Allingham, along with Christie, Sayers, and Marsh, is one of the "Queens of Crime," the only one I hadn't read. I love Christie and Marsh, couldn't care less about Sayers, and am undecided on Allingham.
We've got a country house party with an odd assortment of guests. And then somebody's killed, but then it kind of runs amok and the younger set of guests, in their 20's give or take, are held hostage by a batch of criminals, and they need to escape before they end up dead. I'm not a big fan of the international gang type of mysteries. I want smaller mysteries if that makes sense, not ones that could have CONSEQUENCES. It all...
The Dispatcher was one of the the free Audible Originals this month and since I'm a Scalzi fan of course I picked it up.
At heart it's a mystery. A man is missing, probably kidnapped based on the evidence at his home. One of his co-workers is coerced by the investigator on the case to help her, since he knows the ins and outs of the victim's job better than she does. The kicker is that the man was a dispatcher. In a world where it's almost impossible to be murdered—you can die of natural causes or an accident, but those who are murdered come back 99.9% of the time—dispatchers provide a second chance. They kill you if an operation goes awry, if you're injured beyond hope in a car accident. Then, you wake up at home, naked, but otherwise fine, just like you were in the few hours before the trauma.
Tony is a good guy, at least at the...
I was looking for one last non-fiction book for the year to make it an even 12—a lot for me, and I've been in the mood for Christmas reading, if you haven't noticed from my last few posts. Which led me to The Man Who Invented Christmas. No, Charles Dickens didn't invent Christmas, but he did help re-popularize it and shape it as a holiday about family and charity and giving.
Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at a point where he was almost flat-broke. He self-published the book, supervising everything from the illustrations to the printing. The story provides a lot of information about how books were published and marketed during the Victorian Era, along with how many were pirated and resold under various guises or made into plays without the author/publisher's consent.
While A Christmas Carol didn't make him the money he had hoped, it did become a perennial favorite. It helped shape how we celebrate Christmas and the values we think...
I finished Something Wicked This Way Comes several days ago, but have been putting off writing about it. Usually I put my thoughts down as soon as I can after finishing a book - I'm notoriously forgetful and if I wait too long I lose a lot of most books. It has to make a major impression to stay with me longer than a week or two. But I don't know how I feel about this one.
I listened to Something Wicked This Way Comes for the read along hosted by Michelle at Castle Macabre. It's not something I would have picked up on my own. First, I'm not a huge horror fan. Second, I tend to avoid books that have children/teenagers as the main characters.
The good:
The writing is gorgeous! It makes even the small everyday things seem magical.
The hero is a middle-aged library janitor who loves books.
The carnival and Dark are downright spooky.
The bad:
The writing made everything...
