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Indexing by Seanan Macguire
Amazon/Kindle has a program where they do serial novelizations where chapters are released periodically. Indexing was Macguire's stab at a serial novel. From the blurb it sounded pretty interesting. The Fairytales of lore are trying to change our reality to fit the fairytale tropes. There is a special government agency trying to keep that from happening. The main character is Harriet who if she is not careful will be changed into Snow White. She runs the team that fights the changes the fairytale narrative is trying to make happen. She's joined by Sloane, a wicked step-sister: Jeff, an elf who makes shoes; Demi, Pied Piper in training; and Alan, the human. The whole novel is the fight against Mother Goose's attempt to make the world's reality a fairy tale.
The book is better in thought than in execution. Since it was a serial, every new chapter has to go back and reintroduce what has gone before and who the players are. Plus, the whole fairytale narrative impinging on our narrative was never well executed. And a lot of the characters just seem like characters from other Macguire novels.
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Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell
Despite how much I disliked Mankell's first Wallender book, I decided to read the second book in the series. I didn't want to judge him on his first book. Now, that I've read the second book, I can be really judgy.
Although, better than the first book, it's still not very good. Or at least it doesn't suit what I want in my detective fiction. Wallander is a wimp and he can barely solve the crimes before him. He's always whining about something whether it's the food or how tired he is or the weather. At least there weren't weather reports at the start of every chapter like there was in the last book.
These books are not for me.
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The Last Voice you Hear by Mick Herron
Another non-Slough house book from Herron. It's part of his Oxford series. It's his second book. It's well written but the plot is kind of meh but it has a better plot than the first book in the series. This one focuses on Zoe rather than Sarah. Zoe is hired to find someone and things take strange turns.
This book like the last one has a problem with the ending as it seems to go on and on and on.
I have the third book in this series as well but I think I'm over-served on Herron at the moment so I will wait a bit to read it.
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The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey
These books make me sad because ultimately humanity loses. Although not so much as they do in 'The Girl with All the Gifts'. Boy on the Bridge is kind of an adjacent novel to Girl with the Gifts. In this book they go off on a mission to find samples of the fungus and to see if there is a core. The Boy on the Bridge is Steve Greaves. He's on the spectrum. He's a savant It's all about the interplay between the science faction of the expedition and the military faction. There is also bad things going on at the home base of Beacon, which precipitated the need to send this particular group out on the expedition.
Lots of good action. Lots of zombies. But ultimately sad. I think if I remembered The Girl with All the Gifts better there might be more echoes in this book. But it is still good by itself.
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The Trials of Koli by M. R. Carey
This is the second book of the Rampart Trilogy. The first is the Book of Koli which I finished as well. I'm currently chomping my way through Carey's works. His most famous would be The Girl with All the Gifts.
This is another post apocalyptic world dealing with the people living in the ashes of an advanced technological society. Koli is our guide through England after the Unending world, where the environment around Koli is trying to kill him and his fellow citizens. His town of Mythron woods lives like a medieval village with just a few pieces of lost technology still in use. The people who can use the tech get to to tell everyone else what to do. Meanwhile the trees around the town are trying to kill the town. Koli runs afoul of the Rampart, as the users of the tech are called when he finds out that lies about the tech have been told. Koli is forced from the city to start his own adventures.
In the Trials of Koli, we get another narrator as well who is the girl Koli wanted to marry, Spinner. But from Spinner's narration of the events, that was mostly in Koli's mind. Spinner always wanted to marry into the Rampart clan. Koli recounts his story of his quest to get to London to find more tech which doesn't go smoothly. Spinner tells her tale of being in Mythron Rood which also doesn't go smoothly
There is subplot with a trans girl named Cup and how she deals with society. Koli meanwhile has a big relationship with an AI music player that has become more sentient in the process of getting downloads. Both Spinner and Koli meet all sorts of people during their journeys.
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I enjoyed both of the Koli books.
In the Tudor Period, Fencing Masters were classified in the Vagrancy Laws along with Actors, Gypsys, Vagabonds, Sturdy Rogues, and the owners of performing bears.
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I just finished the Fall of Koli, the final book in the trilogy. A good strong ending. Much more hopeful than Carey's post-apocalyptic outings.
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This is What Happened by Mick Herron
What happened was I knew where the story was going as soon as the man told the woman that he worked for MI-5 and he needed the woman to do a mission for him. They did this story in True Lies, for Pete's sake. And later on when they introduced a second female character, I knew exactly what her role was as well. Not a lot of surprises in this book, although more of a Novella in length than a Novel.
I'm glad I read these early works after I started reading the Slough House series or I might never continued with Herron.
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White Tears by Hari Kunzru
Literature with a strong dash of mystery. I think. It's kind of an odd duck of a book. It starts of as a tale of two friends, one rich and one poor and they bond over old Jazz and blue records. One day the poor records the snippet of an old blues song while recording ambient noise in Washington Square Park in NYC. It becomes a quest to find the man who sang the song. Which becomes sort of a ghost story. Then it all ends tragically.
It was well written but a lot of the story, especially towards the end, is eluded to, rather than actually described so you need to put the ending together for yourself in order to figure out what actually happened. I feel I didn't get all the author was trying to say but I will seek out more of his books. It probably would have helped more if I had been a serious Jazz and blues aficionado.
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Why We Die by Mick Herron
The best of the Zoe Bohm trilogy. There was an actual mystery/suspense thriller in the book instead of just Bohm sort of of moping through the story. There's a robbery as a suspect jewelry store and Zoe is tasked with finding out who the robbers were so they can be dealt with. Naturally complications arise.
I'm done with pre Slough house novels save 1 and then I'll be happy just to read the Slough House novels from now on.
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Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
A horror novel. I haven't read one of these in a while.
It's the intersection of an exorcism and reality TV. It's also a big question of what is actually real and who is the villain. At the end of the book you get to decide what actually happened. But in the whole two sisters, Meredith and Marjorie and their parents are going through some stuff. Dad has lost his job and turns to Catholicism for solace. Mom is the bread winner. Merry is an eight year old and Meredith is hearing voices. It's soon decided that she is possessed and needs an exorcism. And if you are going to have an exorcism, you might as well make a reality TV show about it.
It's a fun read. The narration jumps around from the past to the present and to a blog that examines the Reality TV show. It's doesn't get very scary but there are a few bits. And there is a bit of a twist at the end. I'm still unsure of what exactly happened. It's kind of unsettling. Expect more Tremblay books in the future.
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Reconstruction by Mick Herron
And Mick Herron returns to form. It probably helps that one of the main characters Bad Sam Chapman appears in the Slough House novels as well. It's a tightly plotted story. The whole book takes course over one day with a few flashbacks to flesh out the story. Basically, there is a hostage situation at the Oxford Nursery School and one of the accountants from the Security Services is who the hostage wants to talk to. It has a good twist. It's got some humor. Herron does give free reign to some of his more poetic inclinations in some of the novels but he keeps it in tight check here.
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Survivor's Song by Paul Tremblay
Over the course of a very long day, Ramda tries to get her pregnant friend Natalie to the hospital. The only problem is there is a virulent Rabies pandemic going on. Even better, Natalie is infected. The race is to get the baby out of Natalie before she succumbs to the infection. Adventure awaits!
It's a novel about the pandemic and the our reaction to it. Lots of parallels to our world. The President is dumb. There is no clear plan of what to do. And it's hard to get PPE. You could argue that Tremblay used our Covid pandemic as a template for his Zombie/Rabies pandemic but Tremblay's book came out in 2020.
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A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone
A good solid Scottish murder mystery set in Edinburgh. The Scelfs, mother, daughter and granddaughter are dealing with the death of their husband and father. All together they run the family mortuary and detective agency. But mysteries come to light after Jim Scelf's death. There's is the matter of why he was paying money into a woman's bank account for the last ten years. The granddaughter also has a missing roommate who needs to be found. Plus people are hiring them to solve other cases like following a cheating husband finding or finding out who might be stealing from an elderly man's house.
Lots of stories going on in this book.
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Tis Herself by Maureen O'Hara
A Hollywood memoir by Maureen O'Hara. I know her best from The Quiet Man but her other big films include Miracle on 47th St and The Parent Trap. She came out of retirement in the 1980s to be in Uncle Buck.
This film slings a lot of inside information. I especially like that she gave props to all her stuntmen over the years. The film starts with her early days in Ireland and charts her journey all the way to the time of the writing of the book in 2010. It was filled with great anecdotes. Lots of stories about the films she was supposed to be in and wasn't like Rebecca and The King and I. You would probably have to be really interested in Golden Age Hollywood to want to read the book.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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