Reviews and Comments

When you need a princess guzzled at the Ecclesiastical Council, of course you send a monk and a nun to do the deed.

I didn’t find this as enjoyable as previous Parker novels. It’s still entertaining, with the usual type of shifty narrator both the author, and I, favour, but for some reason it just wasn’t as much fun.

I’d have liked it more if it had concentrated on the fifteenth ecumenical council, lost books, faking antiquities, and Svangerd bossing Desiderius around. I’m just not particularly interested in the way things escalated. While I’ll almost certainly read the sequel at some point, I won’t be holding my breath in anticipation of its publication.

Citizen Gyges has a chat with his city’s foremost scholars. He has a small request. A tiny one, really.

A quintessentially K. J. Parker novella. Wanting a far too clever for his own good narrator, who is a bit shifty but deep-down basically decent? Check. In need of a complicated scheme involving many moving parts? Parker has got your back.

If you generally enjoy Parker’s books, you’ll like this. I was vaguely disappointed by the denouement, but all in all, found it a delight.

Waking up, attached to strange medical equipment, he realises that he doesn’t know where he is, why he’s there, or who he even is.

The concept is fine, interesting even, but I do not enjoy Weir’s writing style. In fact, I’d forgotten just how much I dislike it in the decade since I read “The Martian”.

I find Weir tediously didactic, he over-explains everything, and so many plot points are so blatantly telegraphed, it makes a mockery of his supposedly intelligent characters. Speaking of which, I really don’t like Weir’s characters, particularly the protagonist.

Ryland Grace is a cardboard cut-out who cracks unfunny “jokes”, and tiresomely describes his every move. Grace’s character is just flat, despite him crying constantly (that’s how we know he is sad), or him being the coolest teacher ever.

Weir is not for me, I shall stop reading Weir.

Tova Lir — captain, courier, mentor — has a few mysteries to solve, and she needs to figure out the answers before an assassin can strike.

I found this very light and frothy, and with a much too cutesy vibe for my tastes. It also has no misdirections or explorations of any kind, it’s a simple story told in a straightforward manner. This is not a bad thing, but I like curlicues, details, miscellanea, and complex characters in my fiction. Not bad, but not for me.

A collection of letters about sex from various people of note.

While I really enjoy the Letters of Note blog, I obviously don’t find all letters equally appealing or interesting. This is also true for Letters of Note: Sex. While I found some interesting, some well-written and interesting, the bulk of them weren’t particularly compelling and the book as a whole paled in comparison to the average Letters of Note newsletter.

The letters run the gamut of sweet to quite explicit, and though all were about sex, none were, themselves, sexy. Particularly not the more explicit ones. The language and imagery used in the letters (presumably) intended to entice were hopefully received as alluring or erotic by the recipient, but I found it awkward, risible, and sometimes repellent.

I actually found myself enjoying the introductions to the letters most. They were informative, succinct, and well-written.

Anja drinks poison. A lot.

Healer Anja, the usual competent Kingfisher protagonist, is hired to uncover the mystery of how someone is being poisoned. Cats, bodyguards, some really creepy bits, and a satisfyingly true to life resolution of the final, niggling “plot hole” make this an enjoyable twist on a certain fairytale.

Princess Marra needs to figure out how to rescue not only herself, but her siblings too.

Another enjoyable fantasy from T. Kingfisher. This one feels a little darker in tone than Kingfisher’s non-horror fare, and is very fairytalesque, with godmothers, and princesses, and kings. As usual, Marra the protagonist is satisfyingly down-to-earth, and works with the tools at her disposal to attain her goals. A nice, quick read about comeuppances and chickens.

Kitty has an affair which leads to difficult consequences.

I didn’t care for this. Unlike “Of Human Bondage” in which Maugham mesmerised me with his prose, I found the dialogue stilted, flat and the writing tiresome. When I looked it up, I was stunned to learn “The Painted Veil” was written a decade after “Of Human Bondage”.

Kitty, the rather unpleasant protagonist, is a spoilt, shallow child of a woman who marries a man she barely even likes, on a whim. Her development throughout the novel didn’t ring true, and seemed unlikely, making her character feel flat and unbelievable. I just couldn’t manage to suspend my disbelief of the transformation she undergoes. I found the setting bland, didn’t care for any of the characters, didn’t enjoy the plot, and felt very disappointed by the ending. In short, not for me.

Alice, Charlotte and Maria all hunger for a life different than circumstance has afforded them.

An enjoyable read with a slightly different take on vampires. I love the title, and the twists to classic vampire lore Schwab plays with. Much of the book is historical fiction, and also queer, both of which I find appealing.

While I found the stories of Maria and Charlotte most engaging, Alice’s used a few tropes I am thoroughly tired of. Her chapters were the ones I least enjoyed. I also found the denouement somewhat lacking. Otherwise, a fun read with well-defined characters and interesting storylines.

Check, matriarch and soon-to-be-widow, attempts to keep friends and family safe while living in the Cherokee Nation in 1875.

A fine read, but a little too sprawling and unfocused for my tastes. I found Verble’s “Stealing” a much more intimate and compelling read. Partly because “Cherokee America” isn’t written in first person, but also because its wide-ranging portrayal of a time and place which touches upon many characters and situations lacks the sensitive depiction of a single protagonist I so appreciated in “Stealing”.

A group of retirees get together every Thursday and solve cold cases, but one day a hot one in need of solving shows up.

I wanted to like this more than I actually did. While I understand why people enjoy these books, they just aren’t my kind of thing. I didn’t like the crimes, nor the resolutions, and had issues suspending my disbelief about how much detecting the Murder Club could actually do, and found it all a bit too sappy in the end.