It’s still too hot to do anything but read or buy books, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Most of the week was spent with me listening to Faith Hunter’s latest book and buying up SF books from new authors and books that might work for this year’s Halloween Bingo.
Anyway, here’s what I read and bought in this hot week and what I’m planning to read next week.
My week didn’t start well. I set aside a time travel book that wasn’t holding me. After that, it got much better. S.A. Barnes kept me engaged with a Gothic Horror In Space story with some great twists, Faith Hunter bedazzled me with her new book and I found a gem of a short story by Elizabeth Bear.
Rule One: Travel can only occur to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.
This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.
I set this book aside at 36%. I was in the mood for a clever, exciting, time-travel-as-a-puzzle novel. I was assuming that this would be a riff on Asimov’s three rules of robotics, with a mystery built around manipulating those rules in surprising ways. It turned out that the book is part techno-thriller and part psychological thriller, with a big dose of trauma and grief thrown in. Which wasn’t what I was expecting and which didn’t end up holding my attention.
My review is HERE
Halley Zwick is on the run.
Exposing an interplanetary conspiracy should have brought justice. Instead, it’s brought Halley a target on her back. With nowhere left to turn, she boards a relic of the past: Elysian Fields, a drifting crypt in deep space.
Once hailed as humanity’s answer to death itself, Elysian Fields was trillionaire Zale Winfield’s promise to Earth’s elite — cryo-sleep until medicine caught up with mortality. But that future never came, and the barge has floated dark and silent for over a century.
Or so Halley thought.
Shadows fall across corridors. Scratching claws echo in the vents. Something is crawling, slithering, waking. As Halley descends into the heart of the ship, paranoia blurs into terror. The Elysian dead may not be sleeping—and what woke them is hungry.
The spaceship Elysium Fields was a great Gothic Horror setting, a science fiction version of Castle Dracula. There was a rich mix of big ideas produced by a cross-fertilisation between Science Fiction and Horror. The last 20% of the book was tense and exciting. The ending was excellent and unexpected. The first-person point of view was hard to sustain in a novel of this length. There were some problems with pacing and the book probably could have been shorter, but it was a solid SF Horror novel.
Angelina Everhart-Trueblood and her brother Evan run Everhart Investigations, a PI firm in Chattanooga that solves paranormal crimes committed by supernatural beings. When their new client wants help finding her friend, who supposedly disappeared during a reception at Angie’s aunt Jane’s winter residence, things get . . . complicated.
The client is not who she appears to be, and demons strike the city for the first time since the Witch War. On top of that, evidence is pointing toward the involvement of an overly ambitious vampire—who just happens to be Angie’s ex-husband.
As Angie and Evan team up with CPD, they will have to dig deep into their magical reserves—and rely on some friends in high places—to rid Chattanooga of the danger creeping into their city.
This audiobook was a little over eighteen hours long. I spent most of the week listening to it, and I don’t regret a moment of it.
I had so much fun with this that I’m still at that gushing stage of enthusiasm when it’s hard for me to put a review together that goes further than: YAY! A NEW SERIES – KINDA JANE YELLOWROCK TNG. EVERY FAN MUST READ THIS.
I’ll put a more considered review together when the glamour cast by Faith Hunter’s storytelling has worn off a bit.
In the meantime, if you enjoyed the Yellowrock books and you have access to ‘Unpredictable Magic’, clear your schedule, steal time from other things and settle in for a satisfying read.
Auga, a wandering sorcerer, follows his brother’s fate-thread into the village of Ormsfjoll, where he expects to deliver good news and continue his travels. What he doesn’t anticipate is that to meet his brother he must first contend with the truth at the heart of the volcano that wreaks havoc on Ormsfjoll.
I admire the range of Elizabeth Bear’s storytelling. I was browsing her back catalogue with a view to picking up a sequel to either ‘Karen Memory’ (steampunk in 19th Century Seatle) or ‘Dust’ ( a Generation Spaceship gone wrong) when I came across this Norse-themed short story. It was great fun. If you have an hour or so to spare and you’d like to escape into a Norse quest that feels real and is also amusing, then get yourself a copy of ‘The Red Mother’.
My review is HERE
This week, I bought eight books. I know that’s more than one a day but buying them made me feel better, like booking a holiday you can’t go on yet but which makes you smile because it’s in your diary.
I bought:
‘No Country For Old Men’ – it was on sale, and it’s been a long time since I read Cormac McCarthy;
A bundle of two Weird West Vampire novels from Robert McCammon that I’m hoping to use in Halloween Bingo;
Edward Ashton’s zany SF debut novel, ’Three Days In April‘. He wrote the book the movie ‘Mickey17’ was based on;
‘Chilling Effect ’, the first book in a cosy SF series featuring a strong female lead and psychic cats in space;
’No One Was Supposed To Die At This Wedding ’, which is the sequel to ‘Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies’;
‘Once There Were Wolves’, a slightly darker mainstream novel that’s as much about male predators as wolves:
’The Killing Spell’, a fantasy novel that calls to me because it treats language as a magic system;
and ‘Dogged ’, an Indie fantasy that I’ve been hearing good things about and which has finally been released as an audiobook.
Llewelyn Moss is hunting antelope near the Texas-Mexico border when he stumbles upon several dead men, a big stash of heroin, and more than two million dollars in cash. He takes off with the money, and the hunter becomes the haunted.
A drug cartel hires a former Special Forces agent to track down the loot, and a ruthless killer joins the chase as well.
Also looking for Moss is the aging Sheriff Bell, a World War II veteran who may be Moss’ only hope for survival.
He was once a husband, father, lawyer, and Civil War soldier. Now he is a vampire struggling to hold onto his last thread of humanity—and to destroy the one who made him.
In I Travel by Night, Trevor Lawson handles matters from his lair at the Hotel Sanctuaire in New Orleans. When a prominent lumber man comes to him for help—to find and free his kidnapped daughter—Trevor senses a trap, for the man who signed the ransom note is one he knows too well. Traveling towards a ghost town in the dark of the swamps, Trevor soon finds himself preparing for a final showdown against the purest form of evil in existence: the Dark Society and its bloodthirsty queen.
With his new sidekick, Ann Kingsley, Trevor travels to Montana in Last Train from Perdition. When they try to free a young man from an outlaw gang, an innocent woman is caught in the crossfire. To save her life—and bring their captured fugitives to justice—Trevor and Ann take the train to Helena, never expecting the ambush that awaits them. For an army of the undead has gathered in the snowy darkness with a very special surprise for Ann: a reunion with her father and sister, who no longer resemble the humans she once loved.
Anders Jensen is having a bad month. His roommate is a data thief, his girlfriend picks fights in bars, and his best friend is a cyborg…and a lousy tipper. When everything is spiraling out of control, though, maybe those are exactly the kind of friends you need.
In a world divided between the genetically engineered elite and the unmodified masses, Anders is an anomaly: engineered, but still broke and living next to a crack house. All he wants is to land a tenure-track faculty position, and maybe meet someone who’s not technically a criminal-but when a nightmare plague rips through Hagerstown, Anders finds himself dodging kinetic energy weapons and government assassins as Baltimore slips into chaos. His friends aren’t as helpless as they seem, though, and his girlfriend’s street-magician brother-in-law might be a pretentious hipster – or might hold the secret to saving them all.
Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister is kidnapped, Eva must undergo a series of dangerous missions to pay the ransom. But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead, and her engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.
To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.
Eleanor’s best friend, Emma, is starring in a movie alongside her co-star and fiancé, Fred. As filming wraps, they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island.
There may be a storm headed their way – because of course there is – but nothing will stop their nuptials. That is until Emma receives a note that says: Someone is going to die at the wedding.
Eleanor is a professional at this point and she’ll do everything she can to uncover the murderer so true love can prevail. But will this be a destination wedding to die for in more ways than one?
Inti Flynn arrives in the Scottish Highlands with fourteen grey wolves, a traumatised sister and fierce tenacity.
As a biologist, she knows the animals are the best hope for rewilding the ruined landscape and she cares little for local opposition. As a sister, she hopes the remote project will offer her twin, Aggie, a chance to heal after the horrific events that drove them both out of Alaska.
But violence dogs their footsteps and one night Inti stumbles over the body of a farmer. Unable to accept that her wolves could be responsible, she makes a reckless decision to protect them.
But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And can she trust the man she is beginning to love when he becomes the main suspect?
Kea Petrova is dealing with more than her fair share of trouble.
At just twenty-five years old, she’s the youngest of five Hawaiian clan leaders living on the Homestead in outer Los Angeles. Nearly 200 years ago, when a catastrophic flood submerged the Hawaiian islands and unleashed magic into the world, these clans forged a treaty with the city, establishing a new Hawaiian homeland. But that treaty is about to expire.
Kea struggles to keep her small clan afloat, scraping together rent each month through odd jobs and selling her own crafted Hawaiian language spells. While her talent for language magic is her saving grace, she feels like a shadow of those who came before her. Just when she thinks things can’t get any more complicated, the murder of Angelo Reyes—LA’s most prominent Filipino activist—turns her world upside-down.
Angelo was killed by a death spell—something that, due to the properties of each school of language magic, can only exist in Hawaiian. With independent spellsmithing being technically illegal, Kea quickly becomes the prime suspect, known for her spellwork on the Homestead. To clear her name, she must unravel the mystery behind Angelo’s murder and confront LA’s most powerful (and dangerous) players, each wielding their own type of magic. The clock is ticking—can Kea save herself, her clan, and the Homestead before it’s too late?y so.
In the final days of the Demon Empire a lone wardog goes in search of the answer to the only question she cares about: Who murdered her mate?
Utterly unqualified to solve a mystery, Dogged Determination has but one advantage: She never, ever gives up.
From the heart of a massive empire to the deepest foreboding jungles, Dogged is an unstoppable force of will.. .
I want to be entertained this week. It’s hot, and I’m going to have to do some travelling, so I want books that I can relax into. I’d picked a quirky murder mystery, the second book in a slightly off-centre Space Opera series, and the first book in a cosy mystery series with supernatural twists.
Eighty-one-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick lives a quiet life in the suburbs. Few would guess that Elsie, aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else’s business, harbours a secret she’s worked hard to bury.
Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick – once a little girl and now an old lady – has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.
When an elderly neighbour is found dead, no one suspects a thing – until they uncover Elsie’s true identity: Mad Mabel, the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder, more than sixty years ago.
The police are asking questions. The media is circling. Has the past finally caught up with Mad Mabel? Or is it time for her to set the record straight?
I had this book on pre-order. It seems to hit some of my favourite themes: women who kill, books about old people, and books about people who think differently from everyone else and feel no need to change that, although they may hide it from time to time to reduce the hassle factor from all the ‘proud to be normal’ types out there.
Having escaped the dangers of the Nameless with the Philosopher Stone data, Sean thought his troubles were over. Until he gets a call for help from his sister Brigid–his long-dead sister.
Brigid is sparse on the details, but she needs Sean to go to the Republican city of Illin to retrieve something called a “Purifier” for her. Reeling from the desperate hope that his sister is alive, Sean aims for Illin, dragging his new companions, Tamara Gupta formerly a Republican soldier, and Indigo, the Minister responsible for the destruction of Sean’s home, into the fray.
But as usual, Sean hasn’t quite thought this through. The three of them are all wanted by Republican authorities, and Illin happens to be on the same planet as Sean’s old friend Senator Ketel. Y’know, the one who blackmailed and nearly murdered Sean. With every move Sean makes he discovers more intrigue, more people on his tail, and more ways that his little adventure could be the spark for war between the Republic and the Ministers. And to what end? Is it really his sister, a chance for family, and safety, on the other side?
This is the sequel to ‘The Immortality Thief’. I’m looking forward to seeing how this unlikely trio functions when the their not trapped and under attack in dead ship.
At a crossroads between a cringe-worthy past (Todd the Toad) and an uncertain future (she’s not exactly homeless, but it’s close), Lucy Swift travels to Oxford to visit her grandmother. With Gran’s undying love to count on and Cardinal Woolsey’s, Gran’s knitting shop, to keep her busy, Lucy can catch her breath and figure out what she’s going to do.
Except it turns out that Gran is the undying. Or at least, the undead. But there’s a death certificate. And a will, leaving the knitting shop to Lucy. And a lot of people going in and out who never use the door – including Gran, who is just as loving as ever, and prone to knitting sweaters at warp speed, late at night. What exactly is going on?
When Lucy discovers that Gran did not die peacefully in her sleep, but was murdered, she has to bring the killer to justice without tipping off the law that there’s no body in the grave. Between a hot 500-year-old vampire and a dishy detective inspector, both of whom always seem to be there for her, Lucy finds her life getting more complicated than a triple cable cardigan. The only one who seems to know what’s going on is her cat…or is it…her familiar?
This is ear-candy to help us relax through a couple of long drives we’re doing this week. I enjoyed Nancy Warren’s ‘Peony Dreadful’, the first book of another cosy paranormal mystery series of hers, so I’m hoping this will be equally entertaining, especially as I picked up a bundle of the first three books for one credit on Audible.
Mike Finn's Fiction 