This has been a good reading month for me (a sure sign I’ve not been doing things around the house I should have done…) with 14 novels finished so far, including (finally!) Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham which has been hanging around, half-read, since November. A slow beginning chock-full of worldbuilding I didn’t much care about, and two main characters I definitely didn’t care about, meant it was a struggle to stay interested, but whether I was in a different frame of mind, or Abraham finally kicked things up a gear, I read the second half in a matter of days. It’s the first of a trilogy, but I understand the plot doesn’t progress, and the sequels are basically the same events seen through other POVs, so I can’t see me buying them.
I also returned to the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, with three books I’d not previously read (The Mortal World, The Dark Archive and The Untold Story) then a re-read of book one (The Invisible Library itself) to see how much it foreshadowed what was to come. I also read the first book of her new trilogy, Scarlet, her take on the Scarlet Pimpernel, only with vampires and, far more dangerous, a working class woman, but I'm not enthused and shan’t bother with the sequels.
Other SFF novels I’ve speeded through were Legion, Lies of the Beholder a novella by Brandon Sanderson, the last in a series about a man with multiple personalities who investigates mysteries (very clever and well written but somewhat anti-climactic for a final outing, I’d have thought); Winter Warriors by David Gemmell, a Drenai book (lots of fighting, naturally, but some interesting and psychologically true characters); Piranesi by Susanna Clarke about a man trapped in a world of countless Halls and Vestibules filled with statuary (magical, beautifully written, reminding me of Flowers for Algernon in the writing of an innocent, but I have reservations about its internal logic); and another Brandon Sanderson, Shadows of Self, the second in his Mistborn Wax and Wayne series set in an analogue of a c1900 US city (confusing for me as it relies heavily on understanding the characters and events in the original Mistborn series which I’ve not read).
Also, as ever, I’ve read a clutch of historical murder mysteries: Suffer Little Children by Peter Tremayne, set in the Ireland of 665 (interesting for aspects of ancient Irish law); The Queen’s Man by Rory Clements, another in his John Shakespeare series set in Elizabethan England with conspiracies for and against Mary Stuart (cleverly plotted but rather nasty violence); The Traitor’s Mark by DK Wilson set in Henrician England, concerning the death of Hans Holbein and a plot against Archbishop Cranmer (a lot of rushing around, male characters just above cardboard, female characters simply unbelievable); and The Dead of Winter by SJ Parris, three novellas about the early career of her medieval ‘detective’ Giordano Bruno (history and characters authentic, plots not terribly good).
And two fantasy novels got started then dumped – The Black Guard by AJ Smith (gave up after 44 pages – badly written, with uninteresting characters and info-dumps galore) and Dance of Thieves by Mary A Pearson, a YA enemies-to-lovers fantasy (gave this one 50 pages out of 500, but just couldn’t take any more).
