David Woodger
After zipping through the first two Murderbot books, I went to this one, the first of a five-book series about a shapeshifting creature named Moon who becomes a winged creature when he shifts. His life among other humans gets disrupted and he learns of others like him. And there's some evil creatures known as the Fell that are menacing all on his world. The worldbuilding is top notch, the story moves along at a clip, and the characters are engaging. There's some cool details about the creatures of this world and several neat surprises. Super exciting too. I'll be continuing with this series too.
These Killing Eve novels are super-fast reads. They're like going through candy. The author has a way of propelling the story along without any boring parts. Just zips along. And this book concludes the crazy character arcs of both Eve Polastri (the MI-6 agent) and Villanelle (the psychopath assassin). Each book moves the story along in ways you wouldn't expect. It's all kinda nuts, really. And exciting. I've only seen the first two episodes of the TV show, that's what got me into this trilogy. I've read the whole thing this year. Maybe at some point I'll finish watching the show.
This is an unusual tale told by a pet crow named S.T. He and his fellow house pet, a bloodhound named Dennis, get out of the house shortly after noticing something very wrong with their human owner, Big Jim. The eyeball falling out of Big Jim's head was their first clue something wasn't right. What follows is S.T.'s view of the zombie apocalypse currently happening in Seattle. It's only affecting the humans, or Mofo's as S.T. calls them. And although S.T. describes Dennis's intellect to be on par with boiled pudding, the two of them stick together because they are family (or as S.T. puts it: murder). It can get pretty funny and pretty weird. I thought the story was fairly interesting although it tended to go on a bit in places. S.T. is quite a character, though.
This is a mystery. It features the most helpless and stupid protagonist I've ever come across. Lo Blacklock suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. Also, she's a bit of a drunk. She works for a travel magazine. When her boss becomes too ill, Lo gets a break and joins a little over a dozen others for the maiden voyage of a smallish luxury cruiseship that has ten guest cabins. Then something sinister happens, Lo is stirred from her drunken stupor, eventually tells people what she thinks. They don't believe her. She sucks at her job too. She doesn't really have much going for her. I stuck around to see how the central mystery wraps up. I had guessed right a little past the halfway mark. I might've muttered “Just die already” to the main character at one point. No luck.
This is the second in the Murderbot Diaries. All Systems Red is the first one and on the strength of that one, I decided I needed to read the whole series. (So far they're pretty short, about 150 pages each, but I understand the fifth one will be full length.) In this one, Murderbot takes on a consulting job as a way to view the scene where the original atrocity happened that inspired it to name itself Murderbot. Zipped through this in two days.
This is the second of the Killing Eve trilogy (the books that inspired the AMC show). Eve Pilastri is working for MI6 trying to track down a female assassin whose codename is Villanelle. Both characters are very fun. The story moves very quickly and ends up in some surprising places. Lots of killing and kinky sex hijinks. I devoured it like candy.
I probably first caught wind of this book via the New York Times Book Review and then bought it for my daughter. Then it was languishing unread on her own bookshelf mostly because of “ooh look, the internet!” But then I wanted a change of pace and plucked it from her shelf. Yeah, whatever, Dad. I quickly got sucked in. The writing has that effortless feel and the characters were very engaging. I really enjoyed getting to know out protagonist, Alice and her school friend, Ellery Finch. But it seems that Alice has been having an exceeding odd life and has been constantly on the move with her mother. Her grandmother, Althea, is a reclusive author of a book of strange dark fairy tales, Tales From the Hinterland. It's out of print and very hard to find. But then strange characters that could be from this Hinterland start popping up. Then Alice's mom goes missing. So Alice and Finch decide to try to find this Hinterland. It's cool and dark and weird and I zipped through this book. It even made me ignore my phone more. That's a good thing.
I've read a couple other books by Martinez and wasn't disappointed. He writes a fun, fast-moving story and likes to tweak genres in a playful manner. With this one, it's a marriage of science fiction (robots, mutations) and crime noir (our hero, Mack Megaton is a robot cab-driver turned detective). Here, he's on the hunt for some missing neighbors and there's more than meets the eye. It's a good story and light reading which suited my mood.
I finished book 2 of this trilogy at the beginning of last June and on the strength of that book, this final book was moved up in my TBR list. And, wow, it was a very cool finish to a very cool fantasy trilogy. First of all, if you're not familiar with it, it's not set in a faux medieval world. It's set in a world of major cities, building, increasing technology, and some left over bits of magical occurrences from some not quite dead gods. This book begins with the deadly operative Sigrud beginning on a mission of revenge. There are some scenes in this book that are so cool, it makes you wish you could see it transformed into a movie. Some seriously exciting stuff.
This is a brutal, epic story of the drug war mostly south of the border in Mexico. Art Keller is a driven DEA agent, Nora Hayden is a high-end call girl, and Callan is an Irish hitman. Then there's the cartel characters. Every time I picked this up I had to read more and more. There's really no winners in the drug war and this book isn't shy about showing that. There's some seriously nail-biting scenes too. It's an intense book.
Some weeks back I happened to catch the first two episodes of Killing Eve. But I did not want to shell out money to see the next episodes. Then I decided to track down the book the show is based on. (Turns out there are three books of which this is the first). Naturally it's a bit different than the show but this was serious fun. I zipped through it. There's multiple assassinations, a bunch of kinky sex, and two excellent characters in Villanelle and Eve. I want more.
This book crossed my radar due to its popularity. I waited until my local library re-opened for business and then snagged it with greedy hands. I zipped through the story, gobbling it up ravenously, often snickering. Heh-heh-heh. Wow, this was good. I not only have to read this whole series, I now need to read more by this author. And soon!
I was taken in by all the positive blurbs on this one. And I've read this author before (Angelmaker) and enjoyed the book. But I maybe should have paid attention to what 2-star reviewers were saying about this book. Ten-dollar vocabulary words don't faze me, but the long stream-of-consciousness type chapters where you don't really know how they tie in to the story are a slog. Apparently that type of thing is a big part of the book. This is a science fiction near future kind of thing with an emphasis on a surveillance state and a way to get into peoples heads (almost quite literally). But oof! What a slog. I gave up on page 166 (of 660).
Begins quickly with big sister Korede (the narrator) helping her little sister Ayoola deal with a dead body. Ayoola says her boyfriend attacked her although Ayoola has no marks or bruises and her boyfriend has her knife in his back. And, as Korede notes, he's the third one. Told in simple language and set in Nigeria (where the author is from) this story zips along super fast and it's a fun read.
After reading the excellent Foundryside, the start of a new trilogy the author has started, I decided I needed to read more by this author. I had read the first book in the Divine Cities, City of Stairs back in 2015, and it was good, so I decided to continue with that one first.
This one begins with the one-handed semi-retired General Turyin Mulaghesh. She's a tough one and an interesting character to follow. Shara Komayd (the main character from the first book) sends her to the city of Voortyashtan to investigate the disappearance of a ministry operative. Let's just say she finds out some exceedingly strange things. And we'll eventually reconnect with Sigrud, a Dreyling northerner who played a big part in the first book. He is also a very fun character, i.e. exceedingly dangerous. This well-written story held my interest during the set-up and then starts ramping up big developments about halfway through. I'm moving book three up a bit in my TBR pile.
Found this book while browsing abroad last year. The title had caught my eye. As a blurb mentioned, it's sortuva cross between an Agatha Christie whodunit and Groundhog Day. But so much more than that. A man is reliving the same day in which Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. To end the cycle, he must discover the murderer and prove it. But each day he's in the body of one of the houseguests at the crumbling old Blackheath mansion. And there are others racing to discover the murderer too. And another character who's busy killing off other guests. Twisty and very cool. This was a fun ride.
Although set in the same world as his First Law trilogy, it's not important to have read the trilogy first. (Though, I have – years ago – and Best Served Cold as well). Abercrombie always writes a good story. As I started this one, though, I had my doubts. It's essentially the tale of a battle that rages for a little over three days in some unremarkable area of the world near a walled town called Osrung. The Union forces are led by Marshal Kroy and the Northmen are led by Black Dow. There are dozens of characters we follow on both sides. Several of them will die. One of my favorite characters was Bremer dan Gorst, a huge hulking swordmaster with an unnaturally high squeaky voice. Another was Calder, a noted coward among the Northmen, but also a son of a deceased former king of the North. By the time I got to the last third of the book, I kept turning pages to see what would happen. Who would die? It was a very good ending too.
Pretty sure I came across this title in the New York Times Book Review. I've been getting more interested in graphic novels lately and this one piqued my interest. It's been described as a cross between Nancy Drew and David Lynch, but I'd say it's more of a cross between a non-goofy Scooby Doo gang and Twin Peaks. Four high school friends are joined by a fifth also their age, named Sam Finch. Sam's looking for his missing father in a town called Hobtown in Nova Scotia. There's other missing people in Hobtown, and this gang who are members of a school-sanctioned Detective Club investigate. And it gets weirder and weirder (which I love). It's set in 1996 (so no smart phones) but it also has that innocent quality mixed with the weird that David Lynch is well known for. And at 300 pages, it's a decent length. Enjoyed this very much.
The “tyrant” magus Edrin Walker is back leading his coterie of the doomed into near certain death against a mind-controlling adversary up in the frozen rocky lands of the Clandholds. Being a “tyrant” means Walker is gifted with the ability to get into people's heads and alter their thoughts, read them, even control them if necessary. It's a skill that means he is feared and distrusted by many and doesn't have a lot of friends. He's a bit arrogant and crude to boot. But deep down you know he's not a complete tool. The parasitic adversary has marshalled altered clanfolk, magi, and daemons against Walker's coterie – (“coterie” is a word the author uses a LOT) – and it all makes for a fun, bloody, magic-infused battle. It's got a few surprises in it too.
Think Scooby-Doo kids, grown-up, in their mid-twenties, reuniting to revisit a past summer adventure that was really more than what was reported. And they know it. But this is much darker than that because there's some Lovecraftian craziness in this story. Enjoyed this one thoroughly. The characters are all well delineated and fun. There's even a dog, Tim. Also, one of the characters keeps hallucinating a dead friend who used to be part of their gang, the Blyton Summer Detective Club. Lots of humor, and when things start getting weird, lots of action and mayhem too. Wicked fun. Gotta read more by this author.
This is a physically large graphic novel, and it's only Book 1! But it's pretty amazing. The art is all done with pens and as if on a series of lined notebooks. The results are just fantastic. But of course what really makes this graphic novel work is the story. The characters and story are great. It just sucks you in and I read it in about five or six sessions. I couldn't really read this one in bed because it's just so large and heavy. The main character is a girl named Karen Reyes in late 60s Chicago. She's obsessed with monster magazines and many covers are in the pages here. And when an upstairs neighbor dies under mysterious circumstances, Karen investigates. Really looking forward to Book 2.
I gave this a good shot; read half of it. It was an interesting start. The title character is a Nigerian demi-god based in Lagos. An event known as the Falling has resulted in an infestation of gods wreaking havoc over the populace. And David Mogo, as a Godhunter, has the skills to deal with them. The pacing flags in several areas and there's several instances when local slang or patois is written in and I have no idea what people are talking about, or I can't understand what they're saying even given the context. That was annoying. It appears as though the book is also three consecutive novellas, though they're obviously linked. After the first ended, I was left thinking, okay, what's going on? In short, I decided to move on.
Sancia is a thief in a city run by four powerful merchant fiefdoms. There's a form of industrialized magic being used to varying degree called scriving. This is the art of using coded sigils to imbue objects with commands that can override reality. Things get a bit nutty when Sancia steals an artifact of huge power – an artifact that speaks to her! This story was full of cool ideas, great action scenes, and fun characters. Just really well done. I'll be looking forward to the rest of this trilogy.
Since I've returned from my self-imposed Science Book Club exile, I've been reading this book which I was planning on owning and reading anyway since Bill Bryson is awesome. I will read pretty much anything he has written and will be entertained. The human body is a great subject! So much fun stuff to learn about here. Here's one bit:
For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere–on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot.