The year is 1018. King Cnut of Denmark is ruling England. He’s in Oxford to collect payment and to try to unite the various groups living in England. This means there’s hundreds of people living in tents. People who were recently at war with each other. People not necessarily happy with their new king. And then there’s a murder. The king is accused by the victim’s wife. Winston, an illuminator/painter and his companion former nobleman Halfdan, accidentally find themselves investigating the murder. They need to […]
Death would be preferable to reading this again
Since I don’t want to be a total Debbie Downer about this book, I’m going to start with a positive. Ten years after first attempting to do so, I have finally ploughed my way through all 13 books on the Man Booker Prize Longlist. Some years I didn’t bother to try (mostly years when Hilary Mantel was on the list) and other years I’ve lost interest or had such a bad book experience with one of the novels that I’ve abandoned it. But, spurred on […]
I Like You Very Much. Just As You Are
Falling in love with a work of fiction or a fictional character can be a tricky business, and in many ways it resembles and reflects the experience of falling in love with a so called real person. Which is why Dustin Rowles comparing the Veronica Mars movie experience to briefly reuniting with an old lover was so apt, and also why I’m going to shamelessly steal that analogue for the purposes of writing a review for The Thousand Dollar Tan Line, the first in the […]
A member of the senior council of wizards is murdered. Harry has to clear the name of his nemesis.
This is the eleventh book in the Dresden Files. You don’t want to start with this one, there’s far too much in the book building on stuff already established. I’d recommend anyone new to the books to start with book 4. The first three were a complete slog to get through for me. The audio book versions, read by James Marsters, are all highly recommended. Harry Dresden is extremely surprised when Morgan, the wizard whose probably shown the most animosity towards Harry in the past, shows […]
Find the Seventh
If the seven stones dishonored be, And slain the noble willow tree, Revenge will come each thirty year Til seven infant deaths bring fear. These lines are from the Prophecy of Blind Meg. So far six Minerva children have died, all on Solstice Eve, and now Jim, who has just moved onto the Minerva Estate with this father and sister, is hearing a ghostly voice telling him to “Find the Seventh”. Jim begins getting ghostly visions of how each of the six previous children died, […]
There are all kind of ghosts in this life, and this book has most of them.
Nothing about this is the way I thought it was going to be. I really, really liked it. I think the main reason I’m always so surprised when I enjoy Stephen King novels is that the very first book of his I ever read was Cell, which I didn’t like, and which I now know is considered to be one of his inferior offerings. This is an especially dumb mindset to have now as I’ve read quite a few since then and enjoyed all of them […]