Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: I'm not sure.

I'm reading Castaway Odyssey by Eric Flint and Ryk E Spoor.

Originally Posted by Apache

[...]or starting David Weber's At the Sign of Triumph. (Safehold 9). It was just released today.

What good timing! With my Credit from the Sainsbury transfer and a 50% off code, it's cost me nothing! Bought!

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm reading Castaway Odyssey by Eric Flint and Ryk E Spoor.

Well, what do you know. So am I. Though in my case, it's as an Audible book.

What good timing! With my Credit from the Sainsbury transfer and a 50% off code, it's cost me nothing! Bought!

Sadly, I don't have either and I will NOT spend $14.99 for it, so it will just have to wait. If/when there's an Audible version, I might use a coupon for it. But no way I'm sending $15 to Macmillan for it.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm reading Castaway Odyssey by Eric Flint and Ryk E Spoor.



What good timing! With my Credit from the Sainsbury transfer and a 50% off code, it's cost me nothing! Bought!

You are lucky. I used part of my B&N Credit to buy it.
Apache

[ATDrake]

Finished a few more books, including Claws of the Cat, Blade of the Samurai, and Flask of the Drunken Master, which comprise #1-3 in Susan Spann's Shinobi Mysteries historical series set in 16th century Japan during the height of the Warring States period. These were off the library shelf, which was featuring #3 as part of an October mystery reads display, and for which I picked up the first two during a trip to another branch on impulse to try first, which I'm glad I did.

If you've ever read and/or watched James Clavell's Shōgun and thought “You know what I'd really like to see? This premise done as a mismatched buddy cop murder mystery series, but starring a version of the Jesuit priest that's closer to his original historical inspiration and a secret ninja: together, they fight crime!”, well, this is the series for you.

Actually, I'm being more flippant than these really deserve, since these are reasonably serious historical drama with a decent basis in actual events (set during the last days of the Ashikaga shogunate), but it really does feel like that when reading them, and it's a fun feeling.

Anyway, this series pairs together Hiro, the series-titular secret ninja posing undercover as a samurai bodyguard and occasional translator to Father Mateo, a Jesuit missionary working among the commoners' district in Kyoto rather than at the larger mission that serves the nobility, and together, they do indeed fight crime in the time-honoured manner of first stumbling across random bodies, and then getting noticed for their murder-solving skills and becoming the go-to amateur sleuths when their friends and family get accused.

There's a good amount of historicity and cultural background to these: there's a glossary in the back of each book, the author puts up extra notes for them on her website, and there are even occasional cameos from actual historical personages. Not to mention, the actual events of the time period begin to have a noticeable impact on the characters, as the upcoming political chaos begins to affect their daily lives.

The cultural differences between the Portuguese and the Japanese are nicely portrayed, with the author putting some thought into depicting the historical mindsets of both in a mostly sympathetic and relatable manner, making use of Father Mateo's ignorant foreigner status to let him get away with asking what would otherwise be socially unacceptable questions among the Japanese, and also Hiro's battlefield and medical treatment skills to add a touch of proto-forensic evaluations of the crime scenes.

Not that they work together as a perfectly-oiled amateur sleuthing machine, since there's still plenty of room for them to clash both culturally as well as individual personality-wise, as Hiro frequently thinks that while Father Mateo's tendency to just ask rudely prying questions is useful, he also stumbles by giving away too much in conversation as an unskilled interrogator. And there's a bunch of as-yet unexplained backstory about how Father Mateo came to know that his bodyguard was actually a ninja, considering that they're supposed to be very secretive clans, which gives a feeling of extra depth to their working relationship.

Best out of context quote:

Dying men didn't usually display a functional grasp of irony.

Recommended if you enjoy mismatched buddy cop historical murder mysteries in unusual settings, especially if one of those settings happens to be the brief period of open international trade co-operation before the Tokugawa shogunate mostly closed the islands off until Perry and his ships forced them open again. Despite the ostensibly violent background of the setting, these are mostly light-hearted and rather enjoyable crime-solving adventures and I'm pleased to see that the series is continuing through to at least #5 and from #4 onwards they're out from a couponable publisher and are going on my wishlist for the next good Kobo offer.

[orlok]

Finished Maestra by L.S. Hilton. A lot of reviews of this book seem to focus on the sexual scenes (in a negative way) and ignore the story and the message contained within about a strong, independent woman who decides on her own path through life. Yes, the sex is graphic, but for the most part is making a statement about equality of the sexes.

I very much enjoyed this book, and happily acknowledge the great debt it owes to The Talented Mr. Ripley.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm reading Castaway Odyssey by Eric Flint and Ryk E Spoor

Which was a most enjoyable adventure. And my 175th book for the year! I look forward to the next instalment.

Next up: At the Sign of Triumph by David Weber.

This would be a lot more enjoyable with a global search/replace on the names!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

This would be a lot more enjoyable with a global search/replace on the names!

LOL . Names like "Ahnzhelyk" and "Zhasyn" can get a little wearisome, can't they?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

LOL . Names like "Ahnzhelyk" and "Zhasyn" can get a little wearisome, can't they?

With every volume I get more tempted. If I ever decide to re-read them, I'm definitely doing it!

[ATDrake]

Finished Arnaldur Indriðason's Jar City (aka Tainted Blood, according to the alternate-titling-notice sticker on the front of the library's copy), actually 3rd in his series starring Erlendur Sveinsson, Intrepid World-Weary Middle-Aged Icelandic Detective, but the 1st to become available in English (apparently the first two books remain untranslated because by the author's own admission, they aren't very good).

This is apparently an extremely popular series, both in its native Iceland and abroad (now up to 11 books out of 14 translated, and many English-language award-nominees, according to SYKM), but I initially found it slow-going, what with its obligatory mildly dysfunctional gloomy protagonist with a highly dysfunctional home life, and what seemed to be a somewhat meandering investigation leading to a fairly ordinary wronged-in-the-past revenge killing whodunnit.

It turns out that I was pleasantly mistaken about that, and this actually tied things together in a way that made use of a particular unique feature of modern Iceland to provide the means and motivation in a fairly novel way. It's easy to see how this series could have gone on to win prizes, and while I still think this particular volume takes a while to get into, I can give it a tentative recommend as a solid start, and look forward to trying out the rest.

Also finished Joakim Zander's The Swimmer and The Brother, 1st & 2nd in a series of political thrillers not so much starring as occasionally featuring Klara Walldéen, Intrepid Plucky Orphaned Expat Swedish Political Aide. These are very topical, ripped-from-the-headlines sorts of thrillers which address counter-terrorism and globalization issues such as information leaks and the outsourcing of interrogations to deniable third-parties, the recruitment of disaffected youth into radical movements, the cynical exploitation of manufactured chaos to consolidate control, etc., and how they can wind up affecting people on a very personal level, as well as being matters of policy.

Apparently these are multilingual bestsellers, and it's easy to see why. The author's bio-blurb says that he's lived in Israel and Syria and worked for the European Parliament (as Klara herself does, initially), and he treats the various individuals caught up in the machinery with a great deal of sympathy and a certain amount of nuance in a very shades-of-grey world, where the supposedly good guys sometimes resort to unforgiveable measures with flimsy justification and even the obvious bad guys have their logical-if-mistaken reasons for doing the wrong thing.

Recommended if you're interested in topical political thrillers written from a possibly uncommon perspective. I liked these more than I was expecting to (mind you, I was expecting them to be shallower melodramatic action rides with backstabbing betrayals and long-buried secrets revealed, and they do still have those moments in addition to the unexpected depth) and am interested in seeing where he next goes with the series. I'm also pretty pleased that what I thought would be a one-off character who got written off at the end of the 1st book shows up again to play a supporting role in the 2nd. They were another thing I ended up liking more than I was expecting to based on their initial appearance, with fairly surprising but not unwelcome character growth, and I hope they show up again.

[ATDrake]

Finished Kristina Ohlsson's Hostage, 4th in her Fredrika Bergman, Intrepid Reluctant Swedish Crime Analyst Investigator series of police procedurals that seem to have evolved into intelligence services thrillers. This is actually a pretty drastic shift in tone and setting from the previous books in the series, which I bought long ago on sale and finally got around to reading last week and liked enough to go and get #4 from the library once the weather cleared up enough for a walk.

The premise of this one is that the titular hostage situation occurs on a Swedish plane flying into US airspace, under threat of blowing up due to a planted bomb unless the pilots follow some mysterious plotters' instructions and give in to certain political demands. Accordingly Bergman, newly returned from a hiatus overseas, her former boss in the police special investigative unit Alex Recht, who has since gone to work for the Swedish intelligence services instead, and a new investigative team from said services, must track down means and motivations to try to neutralize and/or find leverage on the culprits before it lands or crashes. And just for added drama, the US alphabet agencies get involved, with the threat of shooting down a plane full of civilians if they don't do it in time, which is actually the hook in the novel's prologue.

There's an afterword in the back of the book which says that Ohlsson, who herself is some kind of counter-terrorism security analyst according to her bio-blurb, wanted to write this in the wake of some terrorist attacks in Stockholm. And it's pretty much Art Imitates Life in that you can see how it was probably cathartic for her to write something where her regular investigative heroes could solve a problem having to do with her day job.

Unfortunately, it seems to suffer a bit from being too close to home, both in terms of the author's apparent closeness to the subject matter, as well as certain characters' supporting cast's overly-coincidental feeling involvement. Admittedly it's been a few years since the 3rd book, but the last time we heard about that particular peripheral character, they were portrayed as an aimless slacker layabout, and now they've suddenly gained purpose and direction enough to become a key player in the unfolding drama. It feels rather contrived, having the effect IMHO of lowering the stakes rather than upping them as was probably intended to by the increased personal connection and incentive to make sure everything comes out alright.

Similarly, another overly-coincidental seeming revelation about the positioning of a different character to tackle certain matters just feels like more contrived writing as extra assurance that things could turn out okay via intervention rather than the main team being able to handle things. Personally, I think it would have been more interesting if the hypothetical worst situation they were trying to avert did play out (or that the save came from another more difficult direction that was hinted at as being possible, rather than the easy one that was set up), but then that would have made it an entirely different sort of series due to the ensuing political fallout.

Even allowing for the fact that I'm not really into thrillers (the more pulse-pounding they try to present themselves, the more of a snoozefest I seem to find them; I stayed up to finish reading the 2nd novel in this series, but took a nap break in the middle of this one because I'd just stopped caring what happens since I was pretty sure it was going to turn out okay, maybe less a dramatic death or two), this was kind of disappointing compared to the other books in the series. That said, it did introduce some new career possibilities for characters whom I'd grown to like, whom it was nice to see more of, and introduce some interesting new potential recurring cast members. Interestingly enough, it rather deglamourizes Säpo by making Swedish intelligence seem a lot more boring and somewhat less competent than the other Swedish espionage-adjacent thrillers I've read, which may or may not be a case of Writing What You Know.

Medium recommendation for the other books in the series. #1 is a pretty standard psycho abductor sort of case (though I give props for the novelty value of providing certain suspects with alibis for one crime by the dubious virtue of their having been too busy committing another crime to do the first crime), but the next couple of books are actually pretty good with interesting cases (and won one Swedish crime award each), with #2 weaving bits about refugee smuggling and Swedish anti-immigrant sentiments into a very twisty and challenging investigation, and #3 upping the challenge with a mystery in the past having bearing on a revisited recent unsolved disappearance in the present day, in a fairly novel fashion.

I rather liked the second 2 books, although the author does suffer from an annoying tendency to regularly add fake-out emotional relationship drama twists to the already on-going investigative twists, in way that feels a lot like crying wolf. Which is something which IMHO works a lot better when it at least looks whatever it was could have been reasonably mistaken for a vaguely wolf-shaped shadow puppet if you tilted your head and squinted a bit, rather than what amounts to a presentation of “ahahaha… oops, that was Deformed Rabbit all along, sorry not sorry for the scare (again)”. Especially if you do it more than once per novel.

[MickeyC]

Just finished Escape Clause by John Sandford and, predictably, it was a very good read.

Next up the new Connelly book, The Wrong Side of Goodbye

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by Luffy

As of now my to be read list has grown. I'm reading John Adams by David McCullough, two cozies (Vanilla Vices (Donut Shop Mystery #22) by Jessica Beck, Raspberry Revenge by Beck again, and the Thomas Hardy novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. At the same time I'm continuing my reading of Candy Corn Murder. Also I'm re reading A Dance with Dragons.

I'm yet to read John Adams, Vanilla Vices, and Raspberry Revenge. I'm slowly nearing the end with Madding Crowd. But I did finish Candy Corn Murder. Below is the review I wrote on Goodreads :-

Candy Corn murder brings a revival of the Lucy Stone series with it. It centers around Halloween. The only person going to collect candy is Patrick, the grandson of Lucy. But, rest assured, nothing harmful befalls him. He doesn't experience anything uncomfortable until he sees his grandfather Bill Stone get arrested by the local cops.

Bill is my favorite character in this series. He features prominently. He was supposed to build a catapult for a pumpkin throwing contest. Helping him is Ev Wickes. The latter makes an unflattering impression to Lucy. Alas, it's him who is the feature victim in the book.

To confuse the readers' senses, the author has two murders running parallel to each other. the motives get entangled, and hence we cannot solve the case.

I liked this book partly because of the interaction between Lucy and her family. Also, I was able to keep track of the new characters of this adventure. There must always be new characters living in Tinker's Cove. There must be fresh suspects, you see. There must have been about 100 suspects ever since the book started on its long running stories. Bill has been a suspect here, but also a couple of times in the past.

What I want to tell you is that there is nothing really, REALLY new here. But I went along with it gleefully enough because Leslie Meier knows how to write a book. It's very difficult to write a book that even a handful of people will like. I tried writing one and I'm still stuck in chapter one. So, kudos to the author for having enough creativity to craft a new book that I gave 4 stars to.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Now starting Brom's Lost Gods.

Wonderfully weird as always (and creepy), but I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as his previous novels. A little too travelogue-y in the early- and middle-going for my tastes.

I just now cracked Senlin Ascends. First in the "Books of Babel" series by Josiah Bancroft. A self-pubbed venture (two books released so far) that seems to be making a bit of a splash here and there.

[HarryT]

Just finished "Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red", by Harry Kemelman. The fifth book in the "Rabbi Small" series. In this one, the Rabbi teaches a "Jewish Thought" class at a local college and gets involved when the English professor he shares an office with is murdered. Enjoyable, although perhaps not quite as good as the earlier books in the series. An interesting mirror on how things have changed since the early 1970s when this book was written: it's considered merely a minor matter that a college professor carries on a sexual relationship with one of his students!

[Dngrsone]

I started a memoir by Carrie Brownstein, but it wasn't working well with my current quantum state, so I switched over to some science fiction, namely The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict by Stephen R. Donaldson. First of a series of I think five books which I pull out every decade or so to read again.

I may continue Brownstein for a bit, but I have plenty other shinies in my TBR, so I may back it for a while.