February Reading Thread

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Elentarri said:
The second novel was published last year (The Olympian Affair) and there is a short story that fits just before the second novel (Warriorborn). But I agree, the Harry Dresden series is getting boring and I wish he would write the rest of the Cinder Spires.
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Thank you! I‘d already given up on the series, although I really liked the first book.
 
I just finished Donna Leon's Death At La Fenice, a murder mystery set in Venice. I have to say I found it rather frustrating because a lot of it was very dry and slow, but every now and again she'd throw an absolute pearl of a line or detail that demanded I continued. I don't think I'll be returning to this series very often, but I might well keep it in mind.
 
The Big Peat said:
I just finished Donna Leon's Death At La Fenice, a murder mystery set in Venice. I have to say I found it rather frustrating because a lot of it was very dry and slow, but every now and again she'd throw an absolute pearl of a line or detail that demanded I continued. I don't think I'll be returning to this series very often, but I might well keep it in mind.
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Leon's writing is low-key. Each mystery may be intriguing, but a lot of what I like comes from the interactions between the Inspector and his family, his co-workers and the witnesses and suspects.
 
Finished: Church of the Old Mermaids by Kim Antieau GR LINK
This is a very different type of mermaid book than the usual. For one thing, it's set in desert, which became home to the Old Mermaids when the Old Sea dried up. But it's more than just a mermaid fantasy tale. Wonderful characters and an interesting concept.​
 
Currently an unusual crime thriller, generations of vigilantes who hunt and kill child abusers -
Blood Line by Andrew Vachss
 
Randy M. said:
Leon's writing is low-key. Each mystery may be intriguing, but a lot of what I like comes from the interactions between the Inspector and his family, his co-workers and the witnesses and suspects.
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I think my favourite scene was the family playing Monopoly together.
 
Finished the Up and Under series. Now re-reading the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks. It's been a while, and while I can remember the gist of the story, many of the details have been forgotten in the time since I read it the first time.
 
THE PLANT TEACHERS,2021,About tobacco.

THE HONORABLE SCHOOLBOY,John Le
Carre.1977 ,Espionage,cold war.novel.
 
A re-read of Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes - an orc mercenary retires and opens the first ever coffee shop in a town. A novel of friendship and building things with some trouble. Also a few nice recipees.
Currently on Travis Baldree's Bookshop and Bonedust - the same orc at the start of her mercenary career does something stupid and is injured, and left to recover in a seaside town and becomes friends with the bookshop owner and the town baker. Then things get more complicated. Part way through.
Both are good for details, a nice variety of fantasy races and a decent sense of place.
 
2 Shakespeare plays: The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (should have been titled the Tragedy of Brutus), and Anthony & Cleopatra.
 
From Sixteen Short Novels:

"My Mortal Enemy" by Willa Cather

The narrator relates her encounters with a woman somewhat older than herself, first reasonably well off but not as rich as she'd like, and in a fairly happy marriage with stormy moments, then years later, terminally ill, in poverty, and given to sudden rages against her husband. Pretty much an extended character study, and a pessimistic one.
 
I did better this month than January, with some seven novels finished, including Lyonesse by Jack Vance which was carried over from last month, which I enjoyed in parts but it was padded beyond belief and those parts were few and far between, so I won't bother tracking down the sequels.

The other SFF novels were The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman (one of her Invisible Library series -- entertaining, but not terribly memorable); Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days by Alistair Reynolds (two novellas set in the Revelation Space universe -- the first an uncomfortable story about a man's obsession with challenges, the second easier to read but nearly as nihilistic); and The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (a murder mystery with the main character stuck in a timeloop while jumping into other characters' bodies every morning -- very clever, very gripping, with a thought-provoking take on atonement and redemption, but the rationale behind the whole exercise as disclosed at the end was a weakness as far as I was concerned).

The other three novels were historical murder mysteries: Revenger by Rory Clements set in Elizabethan England with John Shakespeare (brother of Will, naturally) involving the Earl of Essex, the Roanoake mystery, and Arbella Stuart (well-written but rather too violent for my taste); Shroud for the Archbishop by Peter Tremayne, set in Rome in 664 with an Irish religieuse (badly written but interesting for a period about which I know little); and The Third Nero by Lindsey Davis, fifth in her Flavia Albia series set in Imperial Rome (fine, but I much prefer her Falco novels).

I also started another two novels which got dumped -- one children's fantasy that was OK but after a third of the novel it just wasn't gripping me enough so I gave up; the other a murder mystery supposedly set in 1789 which lacked all credibility and was poorly written to boot, so I threw it out after a couple of chapters.
 
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