PAGE 4
Tell no one by Harlan Coben
Tell No One is a fast-moving thriller with the kind of set up I’ve come to expect from Coben: lots of threat and mystery at the start which doesn’t appear to have any rational cause, slowly escalating into a maelstrom of violence, punctuated by glimpses of what is happening as the plot slowly unravels. It’s slightly formulaic, but I still enjoyed it. I only had two complaints. First, especially in the first third of the book, there were a number of asides along the lines of ‘Corny, I know’ when the hero describes how he fell in love with his wife. These little asides cropped up in a number of places and began to irritate me. And secondly, I didn’t buy the last twist of the plot. I didn’t think it was necessary, and it rather spoiled the whole thing, coming as it did right at the end. But still, it was a mindless, enjoyable read, so if you get the opportunity to read it, I’d recommend giving it a go.
Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children by Ransom Riggs
I didn’t know until I read some reviews afterwards that Peculiar Children is actually a young adult’s book. I had a think and ‘ well, okay, I suppose it could be. But there’s nothing to stop an adult reading it and enjoying it. Me, for instance. The book is a mix of the effects of a slightly dysfunctional family on a teenager, war, mystery over some strange photographs, and even greater mystery when the photographs are followed up. Pack in some solid action, especially towards the end, and what have you got? A very readable book, which according to other reviewers more knowledgeable than I am, is being haggled over by several film companies. It’s not perfect. There’s at least one glaring inconsistency which is smoothed over and not properly explained towards the end, and I found the mix of adult age with childlike figures and behaviour didn’t quite work for me. But it’s pretty enjoyable for all that ‘ suffice to say that I left it in Malta for a friend to read (something I felt able to do as it isn’t my copy). So buy it or borrow it, read it, and watch out for the film in due course.
Ghost story by Jim Butcher
As I’ve pointed out before in these webpages, I like Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books. They’re fast, imaginative, funny and laconic: typical urban fantasy revved up by a whole world dreamed up by Butcher over the years, and lots of weirdly magical violence. But. Ghost Story picks up the tale after Harry Dresden was shot and supposedly killed at the end of the last book. Oh, right, we all think. No way can he be really dead, or there goes the franchise. So that’s one problem which no amount of obfuscating plot can cover up. And because Harry is now some sort of ghost, he’s got a whole lot of different physical laws to get to grips with, master, and of course eventually use for his own purposes. Given that he’s fighting a whole lot of different magical entities, a whole lot of explanation is needed… and I started to think uh-oh, there’s a lot of information being dumped here. When I started looking for it, it sort of climbed out of the pages at me. And another and. Unlike in most previous Dresden books, in this one I got the distinct impression that Butcher forced his hero into ever more unlikely situations, and then found ‘ bingo ‘ some hitherto unknown magical something to get him out of it. With one mighty spell… Oh, it’s fun. It rattles along and many of the one-liners are great. But at the end of the day it didn’t do for me what the earlier books did. If Ghost Story had been the first Butcher novel I’d picked up, instead of the last, then I might not have picked up any of the others.
Turncoat by Jim Butcher
Son no1nproduced Turncoat from the alternate realm that is his bedroom, telling me that I hadn’t read it. I thought I had, because I thought I’d read all of the Harry Dresden novels ‘ but no, he was right. So, of course, I read it. What I’ve said earlier about these wizardy novels holds true with this one. It’s fast and funny. This one introduces a new evil bad creature, the Skinwalker, which works well except for a magical battle it has late on in the book, where it and another wizard change shapes as they fight. It’s OK, but T.H.White did it better. The plot kept me guessing, and there was a little twist at the end which I didn’t see coming (although I didn’t like it very much). Clearly, this book predates Ghost Story in that Harry Dresden is very much alive and doing his stuff. For that reason, I think it works well and is one of the better Dresden stories. It doesn’t try to invent too much, or take too much on. As usual, I enjoyed it, and wouldn’t prevent anyone from picking it up to read.
The Hercules text by Jack McDevitt
The Hercules Text won the Philip K Dick Special Award, presumably in 1986 when the book appears to have been published. It’s a first contact novel, dealing with the mayhem that arises when US scientists pick up signals from a distant pulsar which initially just announce their presence, and then subsequently pour out a wealth of data. I quite enjoyed it, because the characters were reasonably well drawn (something which was not usual in 1980’s sf), and the effects that receiving such an advanced text had on scientists, bureaucrats, politicians and on the world in general were well thought out. But it wasn’t a stand-out novel for me, for three reasons: Firstly, I think it over-concentrated on the religious and political effects that receiving such data might have. I think it might have been better to concentrate a little more on the mysteries of the Text itself, and focus a bit less on the non-scientific effects it was having. Secondly, and perhaps as a result of the first issue, I think the pace at which exciting discoveries were made by translating the Text wasn’t quite right. It seemed to take ages to get as far as the Binomial Theorem, but then practically on the next page the ultimate mysteries of the universe were being solved. In reality I think this would have taken months if not years, so squashing the time frame down into a few weeks seemed unrealistic. And thirdly, there was a big to-do about whether or not to retain or destroy the ‘silver discs’ on which the Text was recorded. In the first place, even in the 1980’s, I’m sure multiple back-up copies would have been made and kept very securely. In the book, one person is able to get at the entire collection of the Text, and destroy it by turning on a magnetic device to wipe the disks. This seems unlikely. And in any case, are we suggesting that the distant race sending out the message from the pulsar only did it once? Wouldn’t it be possible to tune in and get the Text on its next iteration? Ths notion wasn’t even mentioned in the book. So in my opinion it isn’t a masterpiece. But I enjoyed it as a bit of a blast from the past and, apart from the ‘silver disks’ it was surprisingly future-proof.
Cloud-cry by Sydney J. van Scyoc
Well, I picked up this 1977 sf novel on my way out to the Writing Circle in Glasgow and I have to say it’s one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. It’s all about an alien world where people who catch the fatal bloodblossom disease are marooned. One human, one almost human and a avian alien are deposited there, and find an even stranger life form is unexpectedly already there. Mayhem ensues, very weirdly described. Eventually more or less all is well - and of course the alien life form inadvertently provides a cure for the disease. All the technology in the book is future-proofed because it is unremittingly alien. I looked this book up on the internet and discovered one final weird thing: Sydney J. van Scyoc is a woman! Why would anyone choose Sydney as a nom de plume? Check it out if you don’t believe me. Nobody is likely to find this book... nearly 40 years old after all... but if you do, you might like to read it to see just how strange it is, rather than because it is an especially good read.
The hypnotist by Lars Kepler
There’s a lot of hype about this novel, even to the extent of comparing it to The Silence of the Lambs and The Shining. Is it in that sort of category? Well, in my opinion, no. Definitely no. And for a rather unusual reason. It reads quite well, divided up into short bite-sized chapters which drip-feed events, information, and ratchet up the tension. The dialogues and the descriptions are pretty good. But... ... you knew there was going to be a ‘but’, didn’t you? Usually with this type of thriller-cum-horror-cum-detective book, you finish it thinking \"wow, that was exciting, neat plot, I just wish the characters had been drawn better.\" At least, I usually do, because the authors put so much into the plot that they neglect the characters. Well, The Hypnotist was the other way around. I thought the characters were pretty well drawn, but you could drive several buses through the plot, plus quite a lot of it just seemed plain impossible to me, or very unlikely. There’s a great deal that remains unexplained. I can see what the authors (yes, Lars is actually two people) have done. If this book was put up on the screen, all the little chapters would work effectively as scenes, and the audience would be so caught up in the horror and action, that they’d not be too critical of the plot. But as a book, I think it’s stand-out that too little is explained, and some of it just doesn’t seem feasible to me. Sorry, Lars x 2. I don’t think I’d really recommend this book, despite all the hype. But I’ll bet a penny to a pound that it ends up on the silver screen in a couple of years, despite its shortcomings.
The tattooed detective by David Craig
Just before jetting off to Malta for a summer holiday I popped into a charity shop and bought a handful of books. I read them roughly in the order that I thought I would enjoy them, and I chose to read The Tattooed Detective last. In retrospect that was a mistake. The Tattooed detective is one of the best humorous detective books I’ve ever read. It’s set in Wales and features a host of memorable characters who wisecrack their way through grimy deals and dangerous situations. It comes almost as a shock when somebody does get injured or killed. Some of the characters are prostitutes and their pimps who have, let us say, a cosy relationship with at least one of the detectives. How can you not enjoy a book which contains the following gem:’Dave, why I rang, she didn’t just knock the door, but was moving about in the yard.’’I was ‘ hesitant,’ Mrs Rice said.’She thought I might have a client in.’’In the house,’ Mrs Rice explained.’That as well,’ Erica said. Apart from thinking the ending was a bit overdone and overly complex, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I shall probably look out some more David Craig efforts in the future. In the meantime, if you should run across a copy of The Tattooed Detective(which is perhaps unlikely as it was published way back in 1998), I recommend that you grab it.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
So, as noted on my blog, I have started my mammoth re-read of the Wheel of Time series. I have got through volume 1 (Eye of the World), volume 2 (The Great Hunt) and volume 3 (The Dragon Reborn) already. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed them, although I also have to confess there were some places I skip-read because I remembered it too well. Particularly for the first volume, it felt like meeting old friends, Rand, Perrin, Mat, Moraine and Lan... and the gradual build-up from being insignificant villagers to powerful ta’veren worked just as well the second time around. Of course, there were lots of occasions when I picked up foreshadowing which probably meant nothing to me twenty years ago on the first read, and of course there were lots of occasions when I though ‘aha, you say that now, but I know what’s going to happen to you.’ But overall, I enjoyed rereading these three volumes. The pace was quicker than I remembered, and there was plenty of detail that I had forgotten. Onto volume 4!.
The brethren by John Grisham
I have never been a great fan of John Grisham, though I’m not sure why. I read a few of his books many years ago and decided they weren’t for me, so although I watched his status and popularity grow, I never felt inclined to read any of his novels. Then I popped into a second hand bookshop the other day and had just got in the door when somebody shouted ‘We’re closing in two minutes.’ That didn’t leave me much time, so I grabbed practically the first book that looked vaguely readable. And that’s how John Grisham has come to have a second chance. I don’t feel over-inclined to change my original opinion. The Brethren is mildly amusing in places and the premise for the story is quite good, but I never felt really involved. I didn’t care whether The Brethren (a group of crooked judges in jail) got what they wanted or whether the CIA stopped them cold. I didn’t really care whether the politician the CIA are secretly sponsoring made it to the White House, or got denounced for being gay. The whole thing was more of an intellectual exercise than anything else. I didn’t find myself on the edge of my chair wondering what was going to happen. So, I guess if you are a John Grisham fan this is standard fare which you’ll want to read, if you haven’t already. Otherwise, you might want to steer clear.
Wheel of Time revisited
I have waded my way through what are currently the last three volumes of the Wheel of Time (11: Knife of Dreams; 12:The Gathering Storm; 13:Towers of Midnight). Knife of Dreams was written by Robert Jordan, and the last two volumes by Brandon Sanderson after RJ’s death. I say ‘the last two volumes’, but of course there is to be a final volume 14: A Memory of Light, which is dues out near the start of 2013.So these three volumes span the departure of Robert Jordan and the taking over of Brandon Sanderson. I have to say that, stylistically, I barely noticed the difference. BS has done a great job of writing in the same style as all the previous volumes. He has obviously got into the heads of all the main characters, because I wouldn’t have known that 12 and 13 hadn’t been written by Robert Jordan if someone hadn’t told me. If you see what I mean.What I did notice was that the pace picked up. Several subplots got resolved and the old heave-ho. The various forces are coming together. Nearly everyone knows about nearly everything now: there is much less of the forced misunderstandings and general lack of knowledge by key players as to what other key players were up to, and why.In short, the last two volumes have reversed the trend that I had noticed developing in volumes 8’10. There is much less introspection, and less self-indulgence when it comes to describing what the characters get up to. In the middle volumes, RJ seemed to spend ages describing every minute shift in female clothing, and explaining how each one somehow linked with a change in thought processes, emotions, or character generally. It got awfully tedious at times. But BS has done away with much of that, and we now focus on the key aspects of what the characters do, and how it all bears on the basic plot, which is now speeding full steam ahead.So I say well done Brandon Sanderson, and I’m looking forward to A Memory of Light next year.
Name the dead by Ian Rankin
As usual, I enjoyed the antics of Rebus and Siobhan as they tracked down a serial killer, annoyed their bosses and the security forces, solved a couple of other cases, and generally got on with their lives in between. I enjoyed it in an escapist way: I would be appalled to think that our police really acted in this haphazard and uncontrolled manner.This particular novel is stuffed with period pieces, ranging from the music the characters listen to, to their fledgling knowledge of computers and the internet. You could argue either that this dates the novel, or that it turns it into a period piece.Personally, I didn’t find it much of a problem, so I suppose I lean towards the period piece description.It’s a solid, reliable Rebus novel. By all means buy it if you see on a shelf of second hand books somewhere.
The quantum thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
The Quantum Thief is a solid hard SF novel which throws new concepts at you every . . . well, it seems like every line, never mind every paragraph or page. It is set several centuries in the future, and the new technologies and the new ways in which humans (and others) interact with each other are quite different from now. Time has become a currency, solitude an enforceable privilege.I won’t try to describe the plot, as it would take forever and I might not get in right anyway. Suffice it to say that it is complex, just as all the new ideas and new technologies are complex. The characters are well drawn, the whole thing flies along at a tremendous rate, and yet . . . . . .and yet I can’t get away from the fact that I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I thought I was going to. I think this is because there were too many factions in the story, too many different groups interacting in too many different ways. I got the impression that the author, if he ever wrote himself into a corner, would simply invent another group with a different agenda from those already described, to get himself back out again.Maybe that’s unkind, but that’s how I feel. Well written; lots and lots of great new ideas; good characters; but too many factions unnecessarily over-complicates the whole thing. If you are an SF fan, I’d recommend it despite this niggle. If you aren’t an SF fan, stay well clear!.
The left hand of god by Paul Hoffman
I quite enjoyed The Left Hand of God, partly because it’s a well-written fantasy tale, and partly because it jogs along at a good pace and doesn’t leave you wondering for 300 pages whether or not a particular hook is actually going to bear any fruit (if I may mix my metaphors). Yes, I have just finished what there is to read of The Wheel of Time, so yes, you can sense some relief.I think my only criticism is that the whole thing was a bit simplistic and the ‘hero’ moved through an arc well-worn by many other heroes of similar ilk. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that I enjoyed it. I expect Hoffman will bring out something else quite soon. And I expect I’ll buy it.
The name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss
By rights I should have read this a long time ago, but I got it muddled up with another book which I didn’t like, and so I never got round to reading it.Then I was given the second book in the series for Christmas, started reading it, and quite enjoyed it. But I was a bit puzzled by some of its references, until one of my children inquired whether I had read the first in the series. Which, of course, I hadn’t.Now I have, and I enjoyed it. It’s a great take on the fantasy theme, with plenty of humour thrown in. I’m actually quite pleased I missed it first time around, becauyse lo and behold I had the next in the series awaiting me...If you are an enthusiast for the fantasy genre, I think it’s fair to say you shouldn’t miss out on the Name of the Wind.