Pirate King by Laurie R King

This is the promo poster, isn't it divine?

I bought this bad boy in hardcover the week it came out. I'm a library girl, so the fact that I just went and bought it without reading it is high praise, indeed. 

It is the latest installment of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series and I enjoyed every second. King has taken a slight turn with this one - it's almost a comedy. It's certainly humorous (even when the suspense is ratcheting up, the situation is still amusing) and still a page-turner.

I suspect that King has introduced a character we'll see again - one of the actresses in the movie Russell has sought employment with gets a lot of play.

Yes, you read that right. The premise here is that an assistant to a rather popular production company has gone missing and Scotland Yard (via Holmes) would like Russell to investigate - under cover, of course. So she buy fashionable shoes and boards a steamer to suss out what's happened. And it's not quite a comedy of errors from then on out. More like...a comedy of coincidences? A comedy of ironies? At any rate - it's many chapters of suspenseful fun.

This series just keeps getting better and better - after the last pair of novels (one ending with a cliff-hanger and the next wrapping up that adventure) it was nice to read a lighter tale about my favorite sleuthing duo.

The biggest downside that I could see arrived on the very last printed page of the book - the part where it talk about the author. I'll just quote it for you: "She lives in Northern California, where she is at work on her next novel of historical suspense, Garment of Shadows, to be published by Bantam in 2013." I will be quite miffed if this bruhaha about the Mayan calendar winds up being correct and I don't get a chance to read Garment of Shadows. I'll just have to stalk King in the afterlife to find out what happens.


If you haven't read this series, do start at the beginning, with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. It helps to read in order of publication.

Dark Goddess by Sarwat Chadda

This was amazing. You absolutely have to read the first one first - it's referred to often in this book, part of Billi's personal growth depends on events in the first book. It's nicely done, but you may find yourself thinking "what the heck...?" if you haven't read Devil's Kiss.

Consider yourself warned.

I love this series (so glad it's a series!) Chadda makes Joss Whedon look like he's telling campfire stories to ten year olds, if that makes sense. Don't get me wrong - I drink the Joss Whedon Kool-Aide and watch anything that bears his name. But his darkest moments are nothing compared to what Sarwat Chadda throws at Billi.

To wit: Billi is the only female member of the (still active, if lacking in funds and numbers) Knights Templar. To add a twist that keeps things interesting - in Chadda's version, after the Pope turned his back on the Templars, they turned to fighting the beasts of hell: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, fallen angels, etc. Chadda's done his research - a tiny bit of googling adds credence to his plot lines and characters.

And then his methods of destruction are just this side of "never gonna happen" to keep me up at night.

So it's a great read for this time of year, but reading at Halloween might be a little cliche'd.

I fully recognize that this genre isn't for everything, but if it teenage girls fighting the supernatural is your cup of tea, you'd be remiss not to give these a shot. Trust me.



Book trailer for the first book:

One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde

Read by Emily Gray

I love this series. I know that people don't get it, or get bored halfway through (I don't recommend reading them all together, you will suffer brain fatigue.) But I have read them as they've been released and they remain new and fresh and delightful to me.

This one is different, as it's told from the perspective of the Written Thursday. Of course all of the prior books were written by ghostwriters and there was a sex-and-violence Thursday playing the part before the current Written Thursday, whose job is to be "more true to the way Thursday wants it."

If that didn't make any sense to you - you should go and read The Eyre Affair. Go ahead. I can wait.

So, now that you've read that, and this all makes sense to you...the 6th installment of the Thursday Next series is set mainly in the Book World. It undergoes a remaking at the beginning, to make the landscape a little less clunky, and we get to see what happens with the characters when the book isn't being read. A lot, actually.

Since I was listening to this in the car at the same time I've been reading other books, it is always in the back of my head and it is effecting the way I read. I feel that, somewhere in another dimension is a person who is acting out what I am reading. A full cast, actually. And with the FeedBack Loop...well, let's just say I'm paying more attention to what I read these days.

One of the biggest perks here is that Fforde is clearly a book lover. A literary fan. He would wipe the table and floors with all of us at Trivial Pursuit: Book Lovers Edition. His books are rife with references to scenes, characters, and situations from the classics - all of which inform the narrative.

A bit of a spoiler: in this book, we get to witness a Written character going into the Outland (our Real World) for the first time. It's a fairly unique experience, and there are quite a lot of math jokes. (Only, they're British, so they say "maths.")

All in all, a fun read. I do very much enjoy this series (although I haven't been able to get into anything else he's written) and will likely revisit it someday...the details of the early books are already a little hazy...

Two thumbs way up. If surrealist speculation/speculative fantasy are your thing, you can't go wrong.

Artemis Fowl: the Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer

I love these books. I love that they're written for teenage boys. I love that he took the idea of fairies living "in the hills" literally and I love that he made them so technologically advanced that Steve Jobs would be speechless were he to encounter them.

I love that Artemis is basically a sociopath. I love that he's a genius. I love that Butler has tunnel vision and questionable morals. I love that Holly is the toughest member of the bunch and that the tech genius (Q, if you will) is a centaur with a potty mouth.

I love that the world is always in peril and that it's mostly Artemis's doing. Love. Love. Love. Love this series.

This is the first that I've listened to, and I very much enjoyed it. Hearing it with the accents really does make all the difference.

Now, if they'd just make these into movies already!

UPDATE::: hello, movie! http://www.artemis-fowl.com/movie_1.php

Click: One Novel Ten Authors

I missed this when it was released, but that's ok. I still enjoyed it. An interesting approach: a novel written by ten authors...some of whom I read just because their name is on it (Colfer, Hornby.) It switched points of view, but it didn't bother me at all. It also jumps in time a bit, which was also not bothersome.

It opens with the death of a grandfather, and his grieving grandchildren. Being that he was a prize-winning photojournalist, it only makes sense that his photos would help structure the narrative. Fortunately, this potentially hokey plot device was not hokey at all, and felt less like a device than a signpost, guiding us through history and geography smoothly. The narrative spans a full century - sometimes after World War Two until sometime after 2030...it's full of interesting characters and a good deal of "what if...?" Which we all know I like.

All in all, I enjoyed it enough that I'll be gifting it to some people in the future...and paying full price, as all proceeds go to Amnesty International.