Joseph Zizza
This entry in the long-running series features both Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers and involves a plot about a group killing “assholes”. Extremely entertaining, and incorporating some social commentary along with the hunt for the group. I've read every book in this series and it never fails to be an enjoyable experience. Highly recommended.
If you've read the first two in this series, you know what to expect, and Osman doesn't disappoint. A deceptively simple story, as in the first two books, and an ever-growing cast of retirees chasing the solution to a murder. It's fun, and it's undemanding, and so what if the story ends and the book continues for another 15 pages or so? Not sure if this can stretch to a fourth book, but we'll see.
Great world-building, interesting characters, some very unexpected events and a strong story, all undermined slightly by what I thought was a weak ending. But I went through it at a pace, drawn in by all the above positive attributes. Rarely do I find I want to know more about a character, but that applied to a few here. I had previously read the first Mistborn trilogy, which started out brilliantly and faded by the third book, so I did not have high expectations. But I am reconsidering Sanderson, and casting my eye over his considerable ouevre, looking for a likely next choice.
Despite the absurd length of this book (over 1000 pages) I was never bored and kept going back to it with enthusiasm. Galbraith (Rowling) has a talent similar to Stephen King in the ability to make the world of the book so attractive that you can't wait to go back to it. This doesn't mean it's saccharine or falsely positive. Quite the opposite, as some horrible people do horrible things. It's just that a world with Strike and Ellacott seems better than a world without. I recommend this series to everyone with whom I talk about books.
I don't actually know what to say about this book. If you step back, it's a story of someone who falls in love with the wrong person, and how that wrecks both lives. On a different level it's the story of Arkansas meth dealers and the terrible consequences of their crime. On another it's a tale of redemption. An odd, but somehow compelling novel. Not for everyone.
Banville published the first six Quirke novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, but has put his real name to this and its predecessor, Snow. I enjoyed this a lot, largely because it makes no effort to be a typical crime or suspense novel. The vaunted stylist, who won a Booker prize for The Sea, seems unwilling or incapable of organising his story to generate tension, but he does make a slyly compelling narrative out of three threads that finally come together at the end. I will read Snow and maybe even an earlier Banville.
If you see novels as having two aspects, conception and execution, this is one of two very different natures. The concept, a killer haunted (literally) by the people he killed, and seeking redemption, is both familiar and unoriginal. The execution, however, is quite well-handled, and is believable all the way through, even with the slightly bum note towards the end. I will definitely try another Neville book, as this one shows great promise. I'd like to see what he can do with a less familiar situation, especially as he overcame my initial disappointment with the core concept.
This is an entertaining series, and the rating doesn't reflect that. The problem is that with suspense novels working at breakneck speed, there is an issue with length. This story is complicated–or, more accurately, multi-layered– and that works against the sustaining of pace and suspense. Hurwitz juggles these elements well, but the peeling back of the layers erodes the suspense. I was left with an “Oh, c'mon!” reaction. Nevertheless, it was absorbing enough that I just got the next two in the series.
Clearly inspired by Joe Abercrombie's First Law series, this first of a trilogy is relentless in its violence, creative in its magic and strongly implies a far future rather than past in its depiction of the world in which it is set. There is a great deal to like, but its cynicism is total and that eats away at the reader's ability to care about its protagonist and storyteller. But I will read on.
A promising debut with lots of things wrong with it. Sometimes sloppily written–even ungrammatically written–this book features an immature, self-obsessed narrator who stumbles through a series of unconnected episodic adventures while recovering from a miscarriage. She has two therapists and friends with whom she has competitive and mutually un-supportive relationships, a horror show of a “mentor” who is, as the narrator says, the reason she is in therapy, and a boyfriend who is the most undeveloped character imaginable. But hidden in this mis-shapen picaresque mess is a voice that occasionally rises above the quotidian to something resembling Saul Bellow, and that kept me reading. An eight-page episode about karaoke wasn't a strong note at the end, but I'll look out for her next effort.
Unimpressed. Loosely based on Fleetwood Mac, I have read, but it doesn't resonate at all. Told in a set of interview snippets, a device that works well, it describes the rise and fall of a barely credible band and the snorefest of a soap opera that happens within the membership. You would get more of a sense of this from listening to Fleetwood Mac's “Go Your Own Way” and “Dreams” than you do from this book. Daisy occasionally almost seems real, but the others never do. Big disappointment.
