The Book Count 2022

[Drunk Monk]

Still…

Fun concept.

[Greg]

Stranger Times by Caimh McDonnell

Caimh McDonnell is better known for his mystery stories set on the rainy streets of Dublin. But he switches it up with a new series set in Manchester. The Stranger Times of the title is a newspaper dealing with stories about the occult and is probably the oddest run newspaper ever. The staff of the paper is a collection of oddballs from the unhinged editor to the Rastafarian Nudist printer. In to this maelstrom comes Hannah recently divorced and desperate for a new job.

Meanwhile strange things are happening in Manchester. People are turning up dead and they may have a supernatural background. The Stranger Times crew investigates.

McDonnell is right on the edge of farce which I usually disdain, but he pulls it off. The book is funny and the characters are all unique. It is quite an interesting story and reimagines a lot of longstanding urban fantasy tropes.

[Greg]

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

The sequel to the Hugo Award winning A Memory of Empire, A Desolation Called Peace is a really solid follow up. I remember bits and pieces of AMOE but I do remember I liked it. This book picks shortly after the events in that book with the Empire heading to war with a fearsome enemy off Lisl Station. The big story is big old Space Opera with weird aliens and strange battles and space stations with odd politics. there are just a lot of interesting things happening with regards to culture and people. And there is a lot going on.

The names for the Empire are bit trippy and takes some time to get used to the nomenclature. I might have to go back and read Empire again. I say read both. 

[Greg]

This Charming Man by C.K. McDonnell

More fun in the world of the newspaper Stranger Times. It was a fun read but not quite as good as the first book. Still dealing with two arcs. One is confined to this book and deals with a sudden rise in vampires in lovely Manchester. The second arc spans the series of the books and involves the Founders and the Folk. There are few chapters devoted to the big arc but by the end of the book still a lot of questions on where that story is going.

I do like the characters and the story comes across as riffs of characters from other novels particularly the editor and chief who reminds me of Lamb from the Slough House series. But the story is diverting and funny so I will continue to read them. Next book is due in 2023.

[Greg]

Camera Man by Dana Stevens

Camera Man is a Buster Keaton biography in which Dana Stevens tries to place Buster in the context of his times. In some cases, it was interesting to learn what was going on around Keaton. But most of the time I just wish Stevens would tell more about Keaton. In a lot of cases descriptions and stories about the films Keaton made were cursory and I don't feel I received a lot of insight about the man that I didn't already know.

If you don't much about the life of Keaton, it is a pretty good primer. But you have to go through a lot of extraneous information to get it.

[Greg]

The Last Exit by Max Gladstone

I was halfway through this book when I just wish it was over with. But I plowed through it hoping it would come around, but no. The book felt really well written. The depictions and characterizations were thorough, but I didn't care what he was describing. I could care less about the characters and what they were doing. All of them were miserable. But they loved each other when they didn't hate each other. Ugh.

Five college students learn about magic and that there are alternative worlds out there. But each one is worse than ours. And the root cause is something called the rot. The students tried ten years ago to solve the problem and failed. Now, they have one last chance to try again. So, they do. There's a lot of driving through desolate lands and fighting horrible creatures when they aren't busy having long diatribes about what life means  or having flashbacks to what screwed them up in the first place.

There is a strong Stephen King vibe to the book. In many places it feels like a missing novel in The Dark Tower sequence. There is a mysterious figure in a cowboy hat and no face who dogs them at every step.

Hard pass. And I like Gladstone. His god sequence is phenomenal. But these last two books have made me want to reassess.

[Greg]

Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

Ooh, a new fantasy by one half of the writing team that brought you the Expanse. I've always liked Daniel Abraham's writing particularly his series The Dagger and The Coin. He always does an excellent job at world building and such is the case in Age of Ash. The story takes place in the city of Kithamar and focuses on Alys and Sammis, two street thieves struggling to get buy until they both bump into the war of succession for the control of the city. And Abraham does a nice fake out by making you think the hero of the story is going to be one person but it turns out to be another. The mystery at the heart of the story was interesting as well.

Very enjoyable.

[Greg]

My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni

A new murder mystery author who has written a lot of books and thankfully this first book in the series starring Tracy Crosswhite is solid. It's your basic solid mystery novel. Crosswhite is a detective who became a detective to finally solve the disappearance of her sister 20 years ago. When Sarah's body is finally found, the mystery starts to unravel. Tracy has to return to her small town of Cedar Grove from Seattle to put the clues together.

The book kept me guessing as to the who done it. There was plenty of action. The writing was crisp. And there are a couple of dogs in there. I could live without these perfect romances in novels these days but there is one in this book.

All in all good solid book and I look forward to reading more. I did have a bunch waiting for me at the library but I took too long to pick them up.

[Greg]

Her Final Breath by Robert Dugoni

Tracy Crosswhite has to hunt a serial killer targeting exotic dancers while fighting with her boss. Lots of twists and turns. Set in Seattle. It's good slid writing and a good solid mystery. It's a nice break from reading about the intricacies of the East India Company which I'm also reading.

[Greg]

In the Clearing by Robert Dugoni

These books go down easy. Tracey Crosswhite is tasked to help with the cold case of a dead Native American girl. Supposedly she committed suicide by the recently deceased Sheriff kept her file for forty years. The sheriff's daughter wants Tracey to look into it. Not as much mortal danger for Tracey in this one. She is also working on a homicide in Seattle where the wife or the son shot the husband. Lots of plot twists in this one which is good. It's good escapist fair where people get brutally murdered.

I might have to venture into some of Dugoni's other series.

[Greg]

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

The history of the East India Company from when it started in 1750ish to about 1815. I'm glad I read this book because it cleared up misconceptions I had about the EIC. For one, I thought it was more of a Victorian England thing rather than concurrent with with the American Revolution. For instance the tea thrown into Boston Harbor was tea from the EIC. Another fun fact, the Duke of Wellington, of Waterloo Fame, worked for the EIC and was responsible for subjugating the country. Before the Duke, Lord Cornwallis was also there fighting wars after his defeat at Yorktown.

It's an amazingly ghastly story of what happens when a corporation takes over a country. I was confused by a lot of the economics of the story. I had a hard time keeping straight the various Indian factions. Although the book did a lot to show what a strong role Islam played in ruling the country. My understanding of the story would probably help with a re-read of the novel, but that's not going to happen. I got enough out of it to answer a few more Jeopardy questions.

[Greg]

The Gray Man by Mark Greaney

Greaney spent time writing books in the Tom Clancy universe before branching out. The men in this book are all manly men who know deeply about the hard business of killing, especially Courtland Gentry, the much feared Gray Man. Yes, his name shortens to Court Gentry. He's an assassin. A paladin. But he only kills the bad people. And he is hard to kill. But the most recent man he killed has a brother and that brother now needs him killed. The brother is powerful and he gets a powerful corporation to pull out all the stops in order to kill Gentry. Government Kill squads from around the globe track him across Europe trying to kill in an attempt to win the 20 million dollar bounty.

It's pretty trashy. It has a strong Lee Child vibe to it. I sense a lot of square jawed hunks in the telling.

I read this to prep for the Netflix movie based on this book directed by the Russo Brothers. It's Netflix's biggest budget movie ever. The Russo brothers brought us the last two Avernger's movies. Reading the book, I could see how it would make a big action movie. Lots of gun fights and chases and explosions. Hopefully the movie will be better than the book.

[Greg]

The Island by Adrian McKinty

McKinty takes another break, after The Chain, from his Northern Ireland set police stories to tell a family drama on a small island off the Australian Coast. Tom and Heather are on a business trip with their kids when bad things happened, compounded by more bad things. The Island has a lot of the elements of the short story The Most Dangerous Game. Lots of running around to avoid capture.

The thing that took me out of the story or at least I had zero sympathy for the main characters was they did the bad thing and tried to cover it up. So, they get everything coming to them. But no, they are the heroes and I'm supposed to have sympathy for them. There is a lot backstory that comes back to haunt them. And there are kids who are just atrocious to their new step mom Heather.

It's very high concept. It can come across as a the treatment for the movie. And there are enough twists to keep you interested but the initial bad thing kept me from being invested in the characters. The current world situation makes me have a low opinion of people who get away with crimes.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Pity; I've read a lot of McKinty and like his stuff a lot. Modern Noir is his thing.

[Greg]

I could be an outlier (shocker) in my opinion. The book has been getting lots of good buzz from others.