January Books 1
Feb. 17th, 2010 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienYes, I'm behind again.
Tad Williams, Shadowplay
Actually, just the second half -- I got bogged down half way through this, about two years ago, and it had been hanging around the bedroom ever since. As I commented at the time of the abandonment, it's a Tad Williams middle book. Lots of characters wandering around lost and miserable, with bonus whiny teenagers. (Actually, in the second half one set of characters gets stuck in a dungeon for a few hundred pages.) On the other hand, we do eventually get to find out a bit more about what's really going on with the faery invasion. I gather that the third book will actually be two books, again in classic Tad Williams fashion.
Elizabeth George, A Place of Hiding
This isn't exactly an Inspector Lynley novel; Lynley himself makes a brief appearance, but the main detecting is done by a couple of the secondary characters from the series, trying to help out an old friend accused of the murder of a philandering philanthropist on the island of Guernsey. The theme in this one seems to be damaged people, and how they deal with the damage -- some in surprisingly redemptive ways, in the end, some not; the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation of Guernsey loom large in the background of the story.
Barbara Hamilton, The Ninth Daughter
In a Boston tense with the imminence of the War of Independence, Abigail Adams investigates the murder of a woman in the house of a friend -- and tries to find the friend, who has disappeared. The hunt takes her through the streets of the city and out into the much less developed countryside as well as to the island fort of the occupying British, and her revolutionary friends have their own agendas that aren't necessarily consistent with solving the case. It's fascinating to see the staunchly Calvinist viewpoint character encounter heretical -- downright cultish in modern terms -- variants of her own faith; it reminds me of another author with the same first name and initial who displays similar mastery of tight-third ;).
Tad Williams, Shadowplay
Actually, just the second half -- I got bogged down half way through this, about two years ago, and it had been hanging around the bedroom ever since. As I commented at the time of the abandonment, it's a Tad Williams middle book. Lots of characters wandering around lost and miserable, with bonus whiny teenagers. (Actually, in the second half one set of characters gets stuck in a dungeon for a few hundred pages.) On the other hand, we do eventually get to find out a bit more about what's really going on with the faery invasion. I gather that the third book will actually be two books, again in classic Tad Williams fashion.
Elizabeth George, A Place of Hiding
This isn't exactly an Inspector Lynley novel; Lynley himself makes a brief appearance, but the main detecting is done by a couple of the secondary characters from the series, trying to help out an old friend accused of the murder of a philandering philanthropist on the island of Guernsey. The theme in this one seems to be damaged people, and how they deal with the damage -- some in surprisingly redemptive ways, in the end, some not; the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation of Guernsey loom large in the background of the story.
Barbara Hamilton, The Ninth Daughter
In a Boston tense with the imminence of the War of Independence, Abigail Adams investigates the murder of a woman in the house of a friend -- and tries to find the friend, who has disappeared. The hunt takes her through the streets of the city and out into the much less developed countryside as well as to the island fort of the occupying British, and her revolutionary friends have their own agendas that aren't necessarily consistent with solving the case. It's fascinating to see the staunchly Calvinist viewpoint character encounter heretical -- downright cultish in modern terms -- variants of her own faith; it reminds me of another author with the same first name and initial who displays similar mastery of tight-third ;).