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#24: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. I should have read these books in order; or if not in order, by sub-topic. Within the Discworld series, there are a few uncategorized, standalone books, but several that each belong to a subtopic.There are the books focusing in the wizards, another series related to witches, another about the City Watch, several about Death, and two others I haven’t run into yet. It’s almost like watching a multi-year series with different seasons and watching them out of order.
This one was the first in the City Watch series, explains the Patrician, the origin of Captain Vimes and how he met his wife, and introduces Nobby and Colon who I’ve met in subsequent City Watch books. Nice to now understand the background, and it certainly would have enriched by experience of Men At Arms and Jingo.
Ah well, whatever. My brain will unscramble it all eventually.
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#24: Eric by Terry Pratchett. Eric is a rich man’s spoiled son, playing around with summoning demon the way a modern nerd might play around with hacking networks, because he’s bored and wants to live forever, world domination and a gorgeous chick with boobs. Eric somehow manages to summon Rincewind, a wizard who was trapped in an adjacent dimension (and who featured in earlier Discworld books as the wizard famed for his practical cowardice, and whose lack of talents and desire to be happily bored was thwarted by being adopted by sentient luggage and accidentally falling in with companions who led “interesting” lives). Rincewind is very surprised to be trapped in a magical circle and even more surprised when, having agreed to attempt to fulfill the brat’s wishes, snaps his fingers and finds they’ve traveled to the beginning of Time (because if you’re going to live forever, you have to start from the moment the world was created). Yes, there are two more finger snaps, and two more worlds and no, Rincewind didn’t suddenly become magically powerful, he’s just being used by a demon with an ulterior motive.
On the whole, it was a satisfying short story, but not enough Luggage in the story.
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#25 Platform Decay by Martha Wells. Our favorite Murderbot rescues Mensah’s wife Farai, and daughter, Sofi, as well as the children of a Barish-Estranza employee, with a pocketful of drones and some help from Three. This is the first Murderbot book I’ve read since seeing the Apple TV version with Alexander Skarsgard. I was very clearly seeing and hearing Alexander Skarsgard in my head while reading the book. Can’t wait for more, either in print or on TV.
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#26: Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett. Another in the Death subtopic. In this one, Azrael agrees with some nebulous auditors that Death has a bit too much personality and needs to be replaced. When Death discovers he’s about to die, he decides to use the time he has left to experience a bit of life. He learns the value of work, sleep, dreams, interaction with others, and why efficient threshing machines are not necessarily better than a good scythe in the hands of one who knows how to use it well.
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05-16-2026, 09:50 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-16-2026, 09:51 AM by The Queen.)
#27: Archangel’s Eternity by Nalini Singh. Per DM, as this is a romance novel, there is no need for me to review it.
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#28: Keeper by Tana French. As someone else here is about to start reading this, I won’t include any hints or spoilers. All I’ll say is that it was good. A little slow, but the pace of the story and the detail seemed appropriate for the story. Having read the previous two books in this trilogy, it was enjoyable to fall back into the familiar characters and watch them evolve.
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05-21-2026, 08:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-24-2026, 09:43 PM by The Queen.
Edit Reason: Bad paragraphing
)
#29: Marsh Mystics by Jana DeLeon. This is the latest in the “Miss Fortune” cozy mystery series (the violence and sex occur “off the page”). Fortune Redding, (a former CIA assassin who relocated to Sinful, Louisiana to start a new life as a private detective), and her two senior citizen friends, Ida Belle and Gertie (who served in the military in Vietnam) investigate the unsavory financial circumstances surrounding a suspicious suicide at a spa. I find Fortune to be an interesting character because of her very flexible moral boundaries. She thinks it would be wrong to fail to help an ailing neighbor clean a house, and is the first to volunteer to redistribute an overabundance of donated food less fortunate, but is happy to lie to her fiancee (the local police chief) about where she’s been or what she’s done whenever she knows she’s bent or broken a law he might have to enforce. (And I’m not sure why he’s content with being lied to, but that’s a choice the author the made.) In this story, the victim (of course it wasn’t really suicide) is a fairly nasty woman who victimized several relatives, and Fortune has no problem helping the killer get away with the murder.
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#30: Cat on a Hot Tin Woof by Spencer Quinn. Latest release in the Chet and Bernie series. Bernie is hired by a rich teen influencer to find Miss Kitty, her stolen cat (the co-star in her on-line videos). The case rapidly expands into a double-murder investigation, with the killer & cat kidnapper trying to set up Bernie as the fall guy. If that weren’t enough, the ex-wife is having trouble with her current marriage and demands Bernie’s help. As always, Chet provides back up to all hijinks (and creates some of his own).
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#31: Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber by Andy Borowitz. Although certainly amusing, this book was also terribly depressing. Although I’ve lived through most the misery he covers in this book, I’d mercifully forgotten some, and hadn’t run into others, so it just made the manure pile just a little bit deeper than I’d realized. But perhaps the hardest part of getting through this book was the conclusion; that what I’ve been doing about the horrible state of this country isn’t enough. It’s not enough to be an educated voter, to donate to worthy candidates, to stay informed and to scream about what’s wrong… especially when what’s wrong is us. Not “us” the people reading this post, necessarily, but “us” the political spectators. We root for the right team, but we’re not actively *doing* anything other than voting, and that’s no longer enough. We have to actively participate in getting the people doing even less than us to vote, to organize, to register people to vote, to attend town halls, and find opportunities to change the minds of people not helping the educated candidates to defeat the morons. I’ve been through a “being involved” phase of life and it was tiring. I don’t know if I’ve got any gas in the tank for this stuff any more. But I certainly understand the point he’s making.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
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