Coming Up

 Again, this is what happens if I make eye contact with other shelves when I'm only in the library to return books. I've been trying to limit my library allowance so I can get around to reading the huge stack of books that I bought last year. However, I have no will power and some books are just too darn pretty to be left on a shelf.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

In The Gunslinger, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger.  He is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own.
  In hi first step towards the powerful and mysterious Dark Tower, Roland encounters an alluring woman named Alice, begins a friendship with Jake, a kid from New York, and faces an agonising choice between damnation and salvation as he pursues the Man in Black.


I had heard great things about The Dark Tower series, and I have liked previous books from Stephen King (even if I didn't realise it until 20 chapters in) so I thought, why not?  I had been meaning to order the first book of the series, The Gunslinger, for a while and about four Saturdays back it just happened to be waiting for me on the Science Fiction shelf in the library.

  Now, I don't know if this was because I'd been having a funny week and couldn't concentrate but I could not latch on to this book mentally.  I enjoyed the introduction and foreword by King, I think he has such a clear voice when he is talking about his work, but then when I got to the actual story I had no clue what was going on.  This usually happens with me and new books, so I was expecting to start retaining some information about a third of the way in but this never happened.  I finished the last few pages last night and I don't think I could tell you what happened apart from that Roland had a conversation with the Man in Black.

I'm not giving up on my attempt to read this series, but, I'm not in a rush to order or read the next instalment.  However, if like this one, it magically appears on the library shelf in the new year, then I'm most probably going to check it out and see if it was a first book fluke or if I really do have a problem with rambling fantasies.

The Killing Place/The Silent Girl

A couple of weeks back I was rummaging through the library shelves and stumbled upon the two Rizzoli and Isles books (I've been slowly going in the right order when the library has them rather than ordering them) that I hadn't read yet.  This has been a great series so far, and Gerritsen's books are never a chore to read so I looked forward to a thrilling double feature.

 

The Killing Place

He Watches.
Something terrible has happened in the snowbound village of Kingdom Come, Wyoming.  Twelve eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned.  The people who lived in them appear to have vanished, seemingly into thin air.
He Waits.
Maura Isles is driving through the area with a group of friends when they find themselves trapped in  snowstorm.   They stumble into the abandoned village to take shelter.  Their nightmare has only just begun.
They Disappear
Days later, Jane Rizzoli flies to Wyoming to search for her missing friend.  A crashed vehicle has been found with four badly burned bodies still inside.  Can one of the corpses be Maura's? 
Jane's hunt for the truth leads her to Kingdom Come.  Where the person who was watching Maura now lies waiting for her...


The Killing Place was superb, and is joint first with Body Double as the best entry in Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles series. The dialogue may be a bit shoddy, and very cheesy, but the plot was fantastic. Gerritsen sets it up as horror story and I was genuinely getting a bit creeped out. The Killing Place captivated my attention for a whole train journey, and would probably fare well for a long-haul plane ride as I wanted to find out what was going to happen to Maura. The only fault was that the ending was a bit of a let down, but it was an enjoyable ride nonetheless.



The Silent Girl

Every crime scene tells a story. Some keep you awake at night. Others haunt your dreams. The grisly display homicide cop Jane Rizzoli finds in Boston’s Chinatown will do both.
  In the murky shadows of an alley lies a female’s severed hand. On the tenement rooftop above is the corpse belonging to that hand, a red-haired woman dressed all in black, her head nearly severed. Two strands of silver hair—not human—cling to her body. They are Rizzoli’s only clues, but they’re enough for her and medical examiner Maura Isles to make the startling discovery: that this violent death had a chilling prequel.
  Nineteen years earlier, a horrifying murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant left five people dead. But one woman connected to that massacre is still alive: a mysterious martial arts master who knows a secret she dares not tell, a secret that lives and breathes in the shadows of Chinatown. A secret that may not even be human. Now she’s the target of someone, or something, deeply and relentlessly evil.
  Cracking a crime resonating with bone-chilling echoes of an ancient Chinese legend, Rizzoli and Isles must outwit an unseen enemy with centuries of cunning—and a swift, avenging blade.


I didn't enjoy The Silent Girl as much.  I found it hard to keep reading, and guessed who the culprit was about half way through, which is unusual for a Gerritsen book where she normally keeps the identity of her killers hidden until the last few pages.  However, this was still an enjoyable read as I liked the cast character development that wasn't related to the case; like Maura testifying against a cop; and Jane trying to navigate her new family unit. 
  Not every entry in a series can be excellent (apart from the Dresden Files...), so I'm hoping that the next book will go back to combining a great murder mystery with personal development for both Rizzoli and Isles.   

Cool Covers of the Future

Just spotted this on the Angry Robot blog for the third book in Matthew Hughes To Hell and Back series. 

How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

 

 

 

My name is Charles Yu.  I'm a time machine repairman.  In one minute, I'm going to murder myself.  Again.

 

I have one sentence for How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu:

A whole bunch of this went over my head.

That is all.

The Uninvited Guests

One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honor of Emerald Torrington's twentieth birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savory survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor—and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief.

The cook toils over mock turtle soup and a chocolate cake covered with green sugar roses, which the hungry band of visitors is not invited to taste. But nothing, it seems, will go according to plan. As the passengers wearily search for rest, the house undergoes a strange transformation. One of their number (who is most definitely not a gentleman) makes it his business to join the birthday revels.

Evening turns to stormy night, and a most unpleasant parlor game threatens to blow respectability to smithereens: Smudge Torrington, the wayward youngest daughter of the house, decides that this is the perfect moment for her Great Undertaking.

The Uninvited Guests was a good read to pass the time, and also to just stare at that beautiful cover, but Sadie Jones' supernatural tale just didn't fulfil all the possible potential it had to be an exceptional piece of ghostly fiction. 

The best part about The Uninvited Guests was that there was heaps of atmosphere and all the required ingredients for a great spooky chiller: the fractured family; the large stately home in disrepair; the party where important impressions must be made; and finally the mysterious accident that causes the majority of the family's staff to leave in order to aid those injured and leaving the Torrington family exposed to sinister forces.  However, Jones' story is far too polite and restrained to be anything more than a gentle moral story.  By the end, all I could think of was this was a shoddy remake of J. B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls, the action now supplanted to the country. 
 
While I agree that the best spooky tales withold full explantions as to the why and how, I didn't find this approach appropriate for the story.  The Uninvited Guests could have been longer, and the superb enviroment and characters that Jones created could withstand stronger supernatural elements.
  A pleasant read, but I won't be rushing to read it again.

Apocalypse Cow

The title alone made me order this crazily brilliant debut and joint winner of the inaugural Terry Pratchett Prize.  There are echoes of the movie Black Sheep and while there's nothing totally original about Apocalypse Cow, it's a fun ride nonetheless.  The characters are all literary/film cliches but they are well written cliches that made me laugh with their sometimes absurd actions and thoughts.  Logan holds nothing back, as there is plenty of gore,Apocalypse Cow has a somewhat creepy ending implying that while this could remain a standalone book, this strange world in which animals become zombie-esque could spawn a sequel.