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The Language of Secrets - Ausma Zehanat Khan
Angelmaker - Nick Harkaway
Birthdays for the Dead - Stuart MacBride
The Witches: Salem, 1692 - Stacy Schiff
Stiletto - Daniel O'Malley
The Language of Secrets is the second book in a series about two Canadian detectives who investigate 'minority crimes.' The first book, The Unquiet Dead, was brilliant; it was about a Bosnian war criminal, and the author is apparently an international lawyer whose area of expertise is the atrocities of the Bosnian war, and that knowledge, that care shone through. This one was about Islamic extremism and felt much more by-the-numbers and cardboard. It was still a perfectly serviceable crime novel, but.
Oh, Angelmaker was this close to being something that I'd adore. It's got that off-beat magical realism thing that I just eat up. And one of the protagonists, Edie Bannister, is my new favourite character. The narrative skips between WWII when she's a bisexual, cross-dressing, snarky, steampunk spy, and the modern day where she's a spry little old lay spy with a stinky blind pug she carries around in her handbag. She's awesome. But then she dies one hundred pages from the end and the narrative is taken over by the other main character, Joe Spork, an everyman who saves the day by embracing the legacy of his gentleman gangster father.... yawn. I think the bait-and-switch would have annoyed me less if the first, like, five hundred pages hadn't catered to my id so perfectly, only to finish up catering to, er, someone else's id.
Stuart MacBride was recced to me on the grounds that I like Chris Brookmyre, but I think it was maybe just that they're both Scottish crime guys rather than them actually having all that much in common. To be fair I prefer Bookmyre's more satirical books, but even in his more straight crime novels Brookmyre has a lightness of touch and humour that Birthdays for the Dead lacks. I feel like there should be some sort of rule in crime thrillers that if your detective has two daughters and the first daughter has been murdered by a serial killer before the novel begins, then the third act should not be the younger daughter being killed by a copycat. That's not trope subversion, that's just grim for grim's sake.
I had really liked Stacy Schiff's book about Cleopatra, so I was surprised that I found The Witches such hard going. If I had a criticism of the Cleopatra book (which was, at least, an excellent read) it was that Schiff was writing about this really sympathetic version of the Egyptian Queen and then couldn't really reconcile her version with Cleopatra's eventual downfall. The Witches really could have used some of that instinct for extrapolation, as it was it just read like a fairly dry recitation of famously scant sources. Plus there's a cast of, like, five hundred puritans who have about three family names between them.
Stiletto is the first book in ages that's made me do that running in circles, flappy hands of incoherent glee thing. It arrived unexpectedly on my kindle (I'd loved The Rook years ago and had pre-ordered the sequel, but the publication date got pushed back and back; also, I don't think you have to have read The Rook to enjoy this.) Basically it's about a corporate merger between the secret supernatural department of the British government, who are all products of a posho magical boarding school, and a centuries old order of Eurotrash mad scientists. It's hilarious and awesome and femslashy as fuck; if there was one thing, one thing, that I could have changed I would have taken the relationship between Felicity and Odette all the way through enemies to reluctant allies to friends to actually becoming lovers, but that's what yuletide is for. A++, highly recommended.
Angelmaker - Nick Harkaway
Birthdays for the Dead - Stuart MacBride
The Witches: Salem, 1692 - Stacy Schiff
Stiletto - Daniel O'Malley
The Language of Secrets is the second book in a series about two Canadian detectives who investigate 'minority crimes.' The first book, The Unquiet Dead, was brilliant; it was about a Bosnian war criminal, and the author is apparently an international lawyer whose area of expertise is the atrocities of the Bosnian war, and that knowledge, that care shone through. This one was about Islamic extremism and felt much more by-the-numbers and cardboard. It was still a perfectly serviceable crime novel, but.
Oh, Angelmaker was this close to being something that I'd adore. It's got that off-beat magical realism thing that I just eat up. And one of the protagonists, Edie Bannister, is my new favourite character. The narrative skips between WWII when she's a bisexual, cross-dressing, snarky, steampunk spy, and the modern day where she's a spry little old lay spy with a stinky blind pug she carries around in her handbag. She's awesome. But then she dies one hundred pages from the end and the narrative is taken over by the other main character, Joe Spork, an everyman who saves the day by embracing the legacy of his gentleman gangster father.... yawn. I think the bait-and-switch would have annoyed me less if the first, like, five hundred pages hadn't catered to my id so perfectly, only to finish up catering to, er, someone else's id.
Stuart MacBride was recced to me on the grounds that I like Chris Brookmyre, but I think it was maybe just that they're both Scottish crime guys rather than them actually having all that much in common. To be fair I prefer Bookmyre's more satirical books, but even in his more straight crime novels Brookmyre has a lightness of touch and humour that Birthdays for the Dead lacks. I feel like there should be some sort of rule in crime thrillers that if your detective has two daughters and the first daughter has been murdered by a serial killer before the novel begins, then the third act should not be the younger daughter being killed by a copycat. That's not trope subversion, that's just grim for grim's sake.
I had really liked Stacy Schiff's book about Cleopatra, so I was surprised that I found The Witches such hard going. If I had a criticism of the Cleopatra book (which was, at least, an excellent read) it was that Schiff was writing about this really sympathetic version of the Egyptian Queen and then couldn't really reconcile her version with Cleopatra's eventual downfall. The Witches really could have used some of that instinct for extrapolation, as it was it just read like a fairly dry recitation of famously scant sources. Plus there's a cast of, like, five hundred puritans who have about three family names between them.
Stiletto is the first book in ages that's made me do that running in circles, flappy hands of incoherent glee thing. It arrived unexpectedly on my kindle (I'd loved The Rook years ago and had pre-ordered the sequel, but the publication date got pushed back and back; also, I don't think you have to have read The Rook to enjoy this.) Basically it's about a corporate merger between the secret supernatural department of the British government, who are all products of a posho magical boarding school, and a centuries old order of Eurotrash mad scientists. It's hilarious and awesome and femslashy as fuck; if there was one thing, one thing, that I could have changed I would have taken the relationship between Felicity and Odette all the way through enemies to reluctant allies to friends to actually becoming lovers, but that's what yuletide is for. A++, highly recommended.