GreenThunderNS
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As a long time reader and fan of Rick Mofina's I was beyond excited to get my hands on this arc of Last Seen, his latest stand alone crime thriller that goes on sale Feb 27th.
Anyone who knows Rick Mofina's work is familiar with the usual 3 or 4 book series that follows a crime reporter working to solve various cases they become entangled with. In this new stand alone, a crime reporter's family becomes the case instead.
Last Seen follows Chicago reporter Cal Hudson after the disappearance of his son, Gage. Together with his wife, Faith, they work with police against the clock to locate him knowing how crucial the first few hours are in any missing child investigation.
As things wear on, details emerge regarding both Cal and Faith forcing the investigation to take a dark and unexpected turn.
I was super happy to read something a little different from Rick Mofina and, to be perfectly frank, I think this is my new favourite book of his and potentially my favourite book so far of 2018. The year has just gotten started, but it's gonna be hard to beat.
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I'm not normally one for short stories or compilations of short stories. I've never finished one before and, to be perfectly honest, I've never read a Joe Hill book before.
Strange Weather didn't really feel like a bunch of short stories. It felt like there was a theme and as though it was a great place to start to really get a feel for the author.
Snapshot
This was a great little into story at just 90 pages. It follows a privileged 13 year old kid who seems mostly well adjusted. His old nanny / babysitter (who essentially raised him) starts to show signs of what appears to be Alzheimer's until he realizes what's actually happening and that it'll be up to him to stop The Polaroid Man.
Who are we without our memories? Just the old shell of a house with all of the furniture moved out.
Loaded
This was the longest of the short novels included in Strange Weather and also, I think, my favorite. It's an emotional and important story that I am not going to spoil, but it's extremely relevant to the current political climate and something that everyone should read.
Aloft
After the first two novels, this was not at all what I expected to read. A man reluctantly goes sky diving and lands on a cloud that reads his mind and tries to keep him happy and trapped there. Really wild and super fun.
Rain
What if the weather was weaponized to rain razor sharp crystals over the United States? I didn't get as into this novel as I did the other three, but it was still super interesting and a ton of fun to read.
Overall, while never a fan of short novels, I absolutely loved this collection. Each novel was fast paced, you could read it in one or two sittings, and they felt exactly as long as they needed to be. Very satisfying.
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It turns out, of course, that the unseen world has a very twisted dark side controlling it that everyone just chooses to ignore. Jerks.
Our main character Sydney, a previously unknown (and super bad ass) outsider, comes out of the shadows, literally, to reveal the forgotten corruption and set things right in the unseen world.
Also there's a serial killer who steals the bones of dead women to take their magic, and houses that transform themselves and speak to you.
Read this book and then read it one more time. The ending had me torn, but honestly with a title like this, you can't expect everyone to ride off into the sunset.
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It has been a while! A couple of month hiatus for both my book reviews and my podcast, which will also be back in the near future. For the unexpected delay, I apologize, but I'm coming back with an awesome Mystery / Crime / Thriller.
A Map of the Dark is the first book in a new series called The Searchers which follows Elsa, an FBI agent and leading expert on missing children cases.
While dealing with her own personal issues, Elsa is called onto a case because “she's the best in business” and gets drawn into search for a missing teen that soon grows out of control.
I'll admit this sounds like a billion other books I've read in the past, we've definitely all seen this before. Several of the twists I saw coming a mile a way, but it was an effortless read that drew me out of a reading slump, and I could not put it down. It even still managed to surprise me a few times, I did not see the final twist coming.
I think Elsa is a delightful and relatable character (though there is a frozen reference I definitely rolled my eyes at). She's a woman with a lot of depth who I grew to adore and I'm excited to see where her series goes. If you're into crime thrillers, this is a must read with a ton of potential.
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All Those Explosions is the first book published under Tor by Canadian author James Alan Gardner.
I wanna start by saying this book is bizarre, but in the best possible way. It takes place on an alternate earth where superheros or “Sparks” are possible, and the rich can sell their souls to be super-powered demons and ghouls and were-beasts known as Darklings.
The book takes place in Waterloo around the University of Waterloo campus and some other familiar locations in the region. It's very unusual for a book to take place here and was very surreal to read considering I live in Waterloo. It's like seeing a movie that was filmed in your city except it also takes place in your city, and it's filled with demons and superheroes and destruction.
The way the book is formatted is super (no pun intended) unique and really gives it a comic book feel while still remaining a fun novel.
ATEWSEF follows a very diverse and well represented group of 4 UW students who accidentally become sparks and set out to protect Waterloo Region. Which by itself is hilarious to type. This is a hell of an origin story.
I really enjoyed the book, it's totally worth a read, and I can't wait to hear what other people have to say about it.
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What a trip. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the new Andy Weir (which my computer refuses to stop auto-correcting to “Weird”) book is awesome. It's fun, exciting, and f*cking hilarious.
Artemis follows our main character, a bad ass Arab woman named Jazz. who grew up in Artemis- the first city on the moon. She moved to Artemis with her family when she was 6, and is now the moon's number 1 smuggler.
As the novel unfolds, a new gig gets Jazz dragged into a governmental conspiracy involving organized crime and Big Aluminum. With nowhere else to turn, she's forced to enlist the help of a few friends to try and save the city itself and it's entire population of Artemisians.
Not only is the story awesome, but the characters and the science are equally incredible and fascinating. The city feels like a main character. Not only can I visualize it, I feel like I know my way around it and could navigate the city without the help of the map we get at the front of the book.
There were definitely a few loose ends at the end of Artemis, and I hope there's a reason they weren't tied up. I'd love another book in this series! There's a lot of potential and a lot of places this could go in future novels. No pun intended.
This is easily one of the best books of the year, and could make an amazing movie if Artemis goes the way of The Marian.
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The Last Mrs. Parrish is the debut psychological thriller by Liv Constantine, a writing duo consisting of sisters Lynne and Valerie Constantine, and what a debut it is!
The novel switches perspective between Amber Patterson, an unlikable and terrifying woman who's tired of being a nobody, and Daphne Parrish, wife to multi-millionaire Jackson Parrish, and mother to a couple of pretty awesome kids.
The story kicks off with Amber putting a plan in place to insert herself into the lives of Daphne and Jackson to get what she thinks she's entitled to and, in the end, most certainly gets what she deserves. No spoilers.
I'm not sure if Amber should be classified as a Narcissist, a Sociopath, a Psychopath, or some combination of the three, but she's certainly unnerving. This is a very real look into what manipulation and gaslighting can do to a person.
What makes this books so incredibly terrifying, is that I think we all know an Amber or two. This could actually happen, and does happen, all the time. People like this are very real. I've certainly met my fair share of them. They're emotionless, ruthless people, who will stop at nothing to get what they think they deserve.
I have absolutely no complaints about The Last Mrs. Parrish except that I didn't want the book to end. I really of hope it get's picked up for a film, it would make an amazing movie.
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Two Kinds of Truth is the 22nd book in the Harry Bosch series and the 27th in the Bosch Universe. Between the books and the Amazon show, it seems Bosch is still going strong after 25 years.
While I have read some Michael Connelly in the past (I loved The Poet) this is my first Bosch novel. A fact I'm not proud of, but I will say it won't be my last.
In this installment, Bosch is working on two cases, a recent double murder, and a case from more than 2 decades prior that's been reopened due to new evidence and the advancement of DNA analysis. As the new case threatens to directly effect Bosch and potentially jeopardize his career, he has to work fast to ensure justice is both served and re-served.
What I loved most about this book is how fleshed out the characters are. Each has an individual personality, and even after 25 years, you can still see character development over the course of the novel.
You can tell just how comfortable Connelly has become with the characters and how much he enjoys writing them, they feel like real people. The book knows exactly what it is and does it extremely well. There's a level of writing here you only get from someone who's been writing and developing these characters as long as Michael has.
If you're into detective thrillers, this is an obvious choice, it doesn't get any better than Michael Connelly. The series being 22 books in already sounds daunting, but each is also written to stand alone, so it's never too late to jump in!
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Turtles All The Way Down is the latest YA Contemporary from best selling author, John Green. While John has written many critically acclaimed books, from Paper Towns to The Fault in Our Stars, this is the first opportunity I've personally had to dive into one, and wasn't totally sure what to expect.
All I knew going into Turtles was that it followed a young girl and her friend pursuing the mystery of a fugitive billionaire. While that is a subplot of the book, a more accurate description would be a young girl pursuing the mystery of herself.
Turtles All the Way Down is the story of Aza, a sixteen year old girl struggling to cope with her anxiety and learning to live with mental illness. It's a very real depiction of what it's like to live with anxiety, or at least, I imagine it's a very real depiction. While I'm fortunate enough to not have anxiety or mental illness, I'm happy that this representation exists for those that do, and am also happy that it will help many others like myself, to understand it better.
I'm glad I was able to experience this book, it's something I'll take with me through life and learn from. It was incredibly eye opening to see into the mind of someone living with anxiety and the daily struggles they face while trying to live a “normal” life, do “normal people” things and just be happy.
I may give out a lot of 5 star reviews, but never as there been an easier book to rate.
Turtles All The Way Down should be mandatory reading for anyone dealing with mental illness themselves, who may have a loved one who's struggling, or are just human being. Buy this book.
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Sometimes you pick up a book to read, it's well written, it's a fun concept, you enjoy the book, but you're always aware of the fact that you're reading. You check the page numbers to see how far you've read and how far you have to go. How far will you be until you're halfway? 172 pages, you can knock that out before bed!
Then there are the books where reading feels effortless, the words are like butter, and you completely lose track of time. The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld falls into the latter category.
The writing, story, and characters are all impeccable. There isn't an emotion I didn't feel while reading this book. It's beautiful, tragic, and dark at times, but even the hardest to read parts are tasteful. It makes you angry at the kinds of people who exist in this world, and then a couple of pages later, it makes you smile with joy at all the good.
The Child Finder follows Naomi, a former child abductee-turned-investigator who specializes in locating missing children while also searching for her own answers. The narration of the story effortlessly switches back and forth between Naomi's perspective and that of one of the children she's trying to locate.
While I received an advanced copy of this book for review, after putting it down, I went out and bought a copy just to support the author. That copy will be given away on my Twitter account in the near future as more people need to read it.
If that doesn't sum up my feelings on this book, I don't know what will. I think this is an amazing idea for a series of novels and hope this isn't the last we've seen of Naomi.
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For starters, I'm most certainly reading Mira Grant's work out of order. I just recently completed Into the Drowning Deep, the review of which you can find on In The Sheets or the Goodreads page for the book. I adored it and wanted to read more by her, so went out and grabbed the Newsflesh trilogy.
I absolutely loved this concept, but I did not get into it the way I got into Drowning Deep, though they're totally different ideas and cannot be compared.
Feed takes place 25 years after a Zombie outbreak. Everyone is infected and will turn eventually, but society has learned to live with it. It's a day and age where the most trusted journalists are bloggers, and we're following a couple of them from a site selected to get exclusive access to the latest presidential campaign.
This is not your typical zombie horror book and you'll be disappointed if you go into it with that expectation. What Mira Grant has done here is imagined, in a very realistic way, what the world would like like decades after an outbreak and how humanity would cope with it. There's a tremendous amount of world building that's done incredibly well and the technologies she's imagined are just advanced enough and subtle enough to feel entirely plausible and believable.
While the writing is impeccable, I had just recently read some of her latest work and could tell that her writing, and dialogue especially, had grown a lot since Feed. I also had some problems with the narration of the first 90% of the book that would give major spoilers away if I said any more, but it was otherwise a lot of fun with some really cool characters. I honestly had a blast reading it.
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The “Killer mermaids” concept of Into the Drowning Deep immediately caught my attention and, while I'd never read anything by Mira Grant prior to this, I'd only ever heard good things and wanted to give her writing a shot.
For starters, I honestly never thought I'd get into this sort of book, nor is it something I'd have normally sought out. Unexpectedly Into the Drowning Deep made me a fan of not only Mira Grant but also mermaids? Though, it also made me terrified of mermaids, so thanks for that.
The premise here is that the crew of a television network had been sent into the ocean to film a cryptid mockumentary about mermaids, but were instead lost at sea. Footage recovered showed the crew being eaten alive by mer-creatures and, of course, everyone chalked it up as a publicity stunt and hoax. Now, seven years later, they're sending out a new crew consisting of scientists, experts, and hunters, armed with advanced technology and equipment, to find out what happened once and for all.
A couple things here are super obvious after reading Into the Drowning Deep. The first is that Mira Grant (Seanan Mcguire) loves mermaids and she'll make you love them too. The second is that she did a hell of a lot of scientific research, because I found myself convinced during multiple points of the story that mermaids could be real. Which is ridiculous. There were at least 2 nights this week where I found myself Googling them and their feasibility at three o'clock in the morning. Nonsense.
Mira Grant didn't just create an awesome new mermaid book though, she created an awesome new mermaid. She straight up reinvents them and reimagines their entire biology, culture, intelligence, personality, ecosystem, and motivations. It's honestly brilliant. A full redesign. Mira Grant has done for mermaids, what George A. Romero did for Zombies. Sure, scary killer mermaids have always existed, but this is some next level stuff. It's super unexpected and brilliant. Did I say brilliant already? I don't care, I'm sticking with it.
There's no question in my mind that this is 5 Star read, you will not be disappointed. At no point is the story ever slow, the characters are diverse and delightful, with a wide variety of representation. It's all handled expertly and developed perfectly over the course of the story.
I'm gonna have to stop myself here because I'm swooning, but trust me, it's a treat. Pick it up.
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This is the debut novel of author Melissa Caruso and, while considered “adult” fantasy, I feel it could easily fall under YA as well.
Right out of the gates I was extremely impressed with this book. The Tethered Mage starts off quick with a premise that is extremely unique and original. With it, Melissa poses the question, “What if the government rounded people up with magical abilities at a young in order to control and potentially abuse their power?”. Great question. Totally sounds like something that would happen if magic actually existed.
In the case of The Tethered Mage , they're identified and tethered to a caretaker or “Falconer” who can ensure the power is contained and only unleashed when necessary. Hence the title, “The Tethered Mage”.
Given the premise of the government controlling mages and others with unique abilities, a very large section of the book is dedicated to politics, threats of war, and relationships between different powers. While I found these areas a bit slow, I never once lost interest. As it's a very unique premise and universe, there's a lot of world-building to be done. I think we'll find less of this, and more action/adventure, as the series progresses and all of the world building is out of the way.
Something I really enjoyed about this book, was the character diversity. Our two leads are female powerhouses with very different personalities, there are multiple PoC in a variety of roles throughout the story, we come across a male same-sex couple that's handled quite well, and one of the two female leads is bisexual,.
While I enjoyed the diversity, the lack of using correct terms annoyed me. The words “gay” and “bisexual” do not appear in the book, as is the case with many fantasy books unfortunately. I don't know if it's because in these worlds there are just no words for various sexualities, but I fail to see why magic is more believable than characters knowing or using these specific terms. Representation is important, and I know people appreciate it regardless, but seeing those words in print can do a lot for people struggling with their identity and helping to validate them.
The last third of the book was phenomenal, right back to the pace and action we started the book with. The characters really grow over the course of the story and it made me super excited to see what she has in store for us in book 2.
All in all, I did think it was a great read and I will most definitely be reading the rest of the series. Melissa has developed an incredibly fun, unique and original world, and I can't wait to see what she does with it.
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This is a book I have been waiting an eternity for (I'm not even sorry for that pun). I've been a supporter of Caitlin's since she had just a few hundred subscribers (now 200,000+ and growing) on her YouTube channel, Ask a Mortician, and am so lucky to have been able to read this a bit early.
Upon the release of her debut novel, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Stories from the Crematory, I immediately purchased it and read it in a single sitting, this book was no different. Caitlin is the only person I've ever been a patron of on Patreon and this is the first book I had ever pre-ordered (though W.W. Norton was nice enough to send me an advanced copy for review, I still wanted to support the book).
Given all of those things and my history with Caitlin's work, I had a lot of expectations for this new book. I was overjoyed when it was announced on her channel and have patiently awaiting it ever since. That being said, it was approximately 1.5 Billion times better than I had expected it to be (the illustrations alone are jaw-dropping).
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death is exactly what it sounds like. It chronicles Caitlin traveling the world and exploring the death rituals of various cultures across it. She does an amazing job through her writing of balancing a heavy topic like death with her brilliant sense of humor. The humor is never distasteful in anyway, it works quite well. The serious moments are serious, and the rest is just fun and educational.
This book is, inside and out, indisputable proof that death can be beautiful. Caitlin observes and describes many death rituals in the most respective way possible, contrasts them with the death industry in North America, and showcases the ways people here are trying to improve death culture, our relationship with death, and the way we interact with our own dead.
While reading this book, I had many conversations with friends and loved ones about death and, while some found a few of the stories in this book to be “creepy” (they're not, they're beautiful), they all seemed to agree that the way we handle death, by not handling it at all, leaves something to be desired.
I think reading books like Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity should be mandatory. Caitlin is on a very difficult journey of changing the way a lot of stubborn people view death, and these books are a massive step in the right direction. For that, I thank her.
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Prior to Neverwhere I'd not read a Neil Gaiman book, mostly because I'm a terrible person. I figured it was about time and this was a great place to start.
Neil Gaiman is a weird dude. Also, I might be in love with him and this bizarre, anything-goes, world he created in London Below. This was so much fun to read and Neil's writing style is hilarious.
The premise of the story is essentially, “what happens if you take an every day office worker, strip him of his entire life, and throw him into an adventure in a a magical underground fantasy world with people who talk to rats and Kings who live in subway cars?” and that is a great question to ask.
The cast of characters in this book is so well rounded, I got attached to them all very quickly. Croup and Vandemar are by far my new favourite villains of all time and Richard Mayhew is my new favourite lovable, oblivious, dork.
The ending of the book, which I never wanted to come, leaves so many options open to future stories, and yet, it's been 20 years since it was written. Upon finishing the book, I Googled around to see if there was a sequel and, while there's not one, it does sound like he's writing another book in the same universe. Neil Gaiman doesn't write sequels.
The edition I read was the “Author's Preferred Text”, there are multiple versions of the book, but I thought I should start with this one. I can't wait to go back and listen to the radio show and watch the television series. The additional prologue and short story at the end of this edition were a delight and added a little something extra to the reading experience and universe.
I feel like I've been typing forever and haven't said a quarter of the things I want to say about this book. I'll end my review by saying that everyone should read this book at least once, and if you need me I'll be busy reading everything else this man has ever written.
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The Punch Escrow is a Hard Sci-fi novel that takes place in the year 2147 when teleportation is a common means of transportation and totally, definitely safe! Don't even worry about it.
Written by Tal M. Klein, The Punch Escrow is his very first novel as well as the first novel under Geek and Sundry. As a nerd, as well as a Geek And Sundry fan, I was very pleasantly surprised to hear it was under their stamp and that they were doing books now. This one in particular was a great first choice and I can see why it won it's Ink Shares contest.
The Punch Escrow made me question who I was and what makes me the person that I think I am. Is it your physical body that makes you you or is it the combination of your brain, your memories and your experiences? I think the question of whether or not your body or your brain makes you who you are is an important question in today's political climate and one I didn't have a hard time answering for myself.
Tal does a phenomenal job at building this future earth in a way that seems accurate and entirely plausible. There's a lot of scientific jargon and theories, but it's broken down for you with simple explanations in these cool footnotes, which is a neat idea I hadn't seen before. There's a number of them throughout the book and, while I enjoyed most, I found a number of times that I'd stop, read them, get taken out of the story a bit, jump back in, and the story would just explain it again but in fewer words. I liked them over all, but some felt redundant.
The story for me drew a lot of comparisons to Blake Crouch's Dark Matter which I'm sure gets tossed around a lot. This isn't a complaint, but rather something to note. Fans of Dark Matter will thoroughly enjoy this book. While The Punch Escrow deals with teleportation doppelgangers instead of parallel earths, there's definitely some interesting crossover in ideas.
Overall I thought this story was super fun, extremely well researched and I enjoyed the bit at the end where we got to hear from the physicist who helped create this future earth. Definitely a book I recommend checking out.
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Whimsically Wonderus.
Where to being with Nevermoor? So often we hear books being compared to other series as “the next big thing. No, really! It's just like “. We then nod politely, roll our eyes, think nothing could ever be the next and continue about our day.
I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that Nevermoor is the next Harry Potter, or Hunger Games, or whatever Divergent was, but I am gonna tell you that there will be movies, there will be hype, it will be successful, and one day someone will tell you that the book they just read is definitely the next Nevermoor and you'll nod politely, roll your eyes, and continue about your day.
Nevermoor doesn't try to be anything else. It's perfectly written, it never slows down, nor do you ever lose interest. You forget you're even reading and it's suddenly 2am.
There are certainly tropes used in Nevermoor, but they feel less overdone or like stealing from other series, and more like subtle nods to the people and series who inspired the author. It's confidant. It knows what it is and what's it doing, and it knows it can hold it's own while still including those nods. It's written in such a way that you recognize the nods and you laugh and you can just tell that Jessica had a blast writing this book. Her personality and humor comes through in her writing and it only adds to story. You can tell she just loves the universe and all of the characters living in it.
You can compare parts Morrigan Crow to a bunch of different characters from other series we love, as you can with Jupiter, but you can't compare them to any one character because there are no other characters exactly like them. They're charming, you care about them. They grow and evolve throughout the book, and it's just such a treat.
What surprised me and delighted me the most about Nevermoor was the subcontext throughout it, little life lessons if you will. The book refers to politics, immigration laws, gender roles, and misogyny, and handles those many difficult topics, with elegance and grace. They're like little seeds of thought subtly planted throughout the book. I'm just smitten. Never have I read a book, especially a “children's fantasy” book, that felt so exactly right to the times. These are the seeds of thought that the world needs right now, and it's just done so well.
I know I'm on this long tangent, I haven't even talked about the plot of the book and, honestly, I sort of don't want to. Every other review and the synopsis will do that for me.
I'm rating this book an easy 5 stars. It's one of those reads where you put the book down and you question every other 5 star rating you've ever given. This is truly a 5 star read.
Happy Hallowmas! (God, I love Halloween! This book is so good. It may have just been secretly written for me, I can't say for sure.)
P.S. I think I may have caught subtle nods to Monty Python and Star Wars? I could be crazy, they may not have been on purpose, but if they were, I see what you did there, Jessica! Even if they weren't on purpose they still made me laugh.
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Right out of the gate, let me say that this book was a blast. I'd walked past it on several different trips to chapters and the cover / title really caught my eye. I finally picked it up and could not have been more pleased.
Spoonbenders is a super fun story about a family with special powers. They were The Partridge Family but with talents that didn't make you want to nap, until they have a bad experience on live TV (with a character who is essentially The Amazing Randi whom I adore)>/i> and their showbiz career instantly dies. Fast forward a couple dozen years to the 90's (the nostalgia is real). The Mom has passed away, the Dad is an old fraud, the kids are leading mundane complicated lives, the grandkids are now in the mix, and the government would really like to speak with them.Each chapter switches back and forth between family members and perspectives. It's expertly done. Buddy's abilities make his PoV delightful. It also has just the right amount of references to the decade to set the tone and make it feel right without shoving references and nostalgia down your throat like it's bragging about the 90's instead of telling a story (Which happens a lot in other books).Unexpectedly, and not at all related to story, I think Spoonbenders has also made me wanna paint my living room that shade of blue? So thanks for that.The Telemachus family is awesome and quirky and Daryl's writing is on point. He's hilarious and the characters are all unique and expertly developed. I have zero complaints. What a treat, honestly.
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The Fallen is the the 2nd book in The Darkest Hand Trilogy by Tarn Richardson.
While the first book was phenomenal, it mainly serves as an introduction to the series and characters. There's a lot of development and flashbacks, which in no way takes away from the story. You can read my full review of The Damned here, I loved every single minute of it.
The Fallen however, is where the story really kicks off. You already know the universe and the cast of characters, now they've to come together for a battle not even Tacit could have been fully prepared for.
Given how much I thoroughly enjoyed The Damned, I was afraid the series would suffer in a way many trilogies do - middle book syndrome. More often than not, the second book in a trilogy feels like a lot of filler. Just a bridge to the next book. That's definitely not the case here. The Fallen feels like The Damned woke up, had it's morning coffee (read “bourbon”), and is more ready to kick ass than it already was.
Werewolves? Check.
Scary Demon Babies with Hooves? Check
I'm gonna have to stop it there because if I don't I know I'll ramble and spoil something, but if you loved The Damned, I promise that you'll love The Fallen even more.
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The Word is Murder is the first book in a new murder mystery series staring Anthony Horowitz as himself alongside Detective Hawthorne who has tasked “Tony” with writing a true crime detective series about his case(s).
It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does and it's awesome. After reading Magpie Murders which was another really meta take on murder mystery (as it's a book within a book that references the other book as well as itself) I didn't expect anything less than brilliance and ordered this the day it was released in the UK.
Horowitz writes and organizes the book in such a way that his real characters and events combine effortlessly with his fictional characters and events to make the story seem that much more real and compelling. You know you're reading fiction, but the fictional characters seem so real and developed that you often find yourself questioning whether or not they exist and if the events actually happened. For example, there's an actor who appears throughout the novel whose IMDB page I looked for on more than one occasion. It doesn't exist. I saved you a Google search.
I can't stress enough how good this book is. Anthony's work on the Sherlock Holmes series and Trigger Mortis were good, but his original murder mysteries and characters are some next level shit, for lack of a better term.
I was elated when I got to the back of the book and realized this was the start of a series and there was more to come. I was then immediately depressed because I likely have to wait a year for more.
For the record, while I loved this book immensely, I'm still not a fan of the detective as a human being (at least what I know about him which, oddly, isn't a lot), but he's a phenomenal detective which just speaks volumes to Anthony's writing
Buy the book, ‘nuff said.
This is a spoiler-free review
Read on In The Sheets
The Impossible Fortress is a book I'd seen around online and decided to pick up on a whim while at Chapters. All I knew going in was that this was a love story to the 80's and, while at 27 I just missed the 80's, I was still really into the idea.
The book is a super cute coming of age story about a couple of young high school nerds (I could relate) that gets complicated real fast. Jason manages to capture the vibe and nostalgia of the decade, without shoving references down your throat for the sake of it and interrupting the narrative, in the way I felt Ready Player One did. While there are plenty of references throughout, they all feel exactly relevant to the story.
I loved every single character in this book and every turn the story took. After the first couple of chapters I figured I knew what I was in for, I was totally wrong and pleasantly surprised. The Impossible Fortress takes multiple turns that I didn't see coming and each one added an unexpected depth to the narrative.
Overall, I highly recommend The Impossible Fortress. Jason has done a phenomenal job for his first novel, it's an incredibly fun ride and a super quick read at just under 300 pages.
Do recommend. Would read again.