Several years ago, I moved to a new state far from home, and started the arduous process of attempting to make friends. I met someone, I’ll call her Gertrude, who seemed great at first. She was nice and friendly and chatty, and we started grabbing lunch every once in a while. Unfortunately, by the time I spent enough time with her to figure out that Gertrude was smug and narrow-minded and relentlessly negative, those lunches and texts and hangouts were routine, and I was stuck. […]
A paint-by-numbers entry in a long-running mystery series (#25!)
I used to really enjoy the Gregor Demarkian books, but I think they might have hit the Eve Dallas/Stephanie Plum stage of their run. I understand an author wanting to stick to a working formula, but when you get too checklisty (“page 84…time for a breakfast scene with quirky best friend”), it isn’t as fun for a reader. Gregor Demarkian is a retired FBI agent. He lives in Philadelphia, in his old Armenian neighborhood, with his friend/girlfriend/wife (depending on the book) and a cast of […]
Grim, with a side of bleak
Unfortunately, I think I might be changing my mind about Tana French. I loved The Secret Place, but nothing since then has held up. I know my literary tastes tend to be a little on the pedestrian side, but I would like a few more loose ends tied up, and a little bit more of a happy ending. Detective Kennedy and his newbie partner Detective Curran (I listened to the audio book, sorry if I’m misspelling things) are assigned a case, the brutal slaying […]
Questing with snakes
Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
This one was recommended by fellow Cannonballers/Pajibans when I requested help finding women sci-fi writers, and I am so glad! It was post-apocalyptic and interesting and original. I had read some McIntyre before, but not this one. Snake is a healer, traveling around and helping people in villages that are too small to have their own resident healer. She works with three snakes, using their poison to combat cancers or other diseases, and using the ultra-rare dreamsnake to ease pain until the end in the […]
Totally biased, totally proud
Full disclosure: my dad (fellow Cannonballer sabian30) wrote this book! I’m so excited. He’s had so many short stories published I’ve lost count and has his very own Amazon author page, but now he’s got an officially official book! So I’m aware that I’m completely biased, but I thought the book was great. Dad grew up reading all the science fiction he could find, and he’s always been fond of Andre Norton. Sara’s Station is his take on a Norton-style story. I’ve read a few […]
Haven’t read the original being spoofed, so I missed a lot of jokes
This was a good book that I would have liked an abridged copy of. I read Doomsday Book last year for #CannonBookClub, but this was a slightly different flavor, although set in the same universe of Oxford using time travel for history-studying purposes. Through a series of convolutions, Ned ends up in the Victorian era (not his specialty) trying to help fix a timeline incongruity. He’s working with a classmate, Verity Kindle (excellent name), who has already been back and forth to the era multiple […]
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