Reading

3July E Savage City**** – Sophia McDougall. The final part of the Romanitas trilogy. Excellent and gripping writing but… During the first two books I got incredibly attached to some of the core characters. Now that I know their fates and futures (some dead, some on unexpected  paths) I don’t think I will ever be able to re-read the first two parts. That saddens me in some ways because I adored those books. The third – well, clever and satisfactory but not quite as special.

4July E Beneath the Neon Moon** – Theda Black. I usually like werewolf stories but this was strange. Two guys, strangers to each other, are kidnapped and chained together in a cellar. One is bitten and will soon ‘change’; the other is intended as his first prey. They have to trust each other in order to escape though the bitten one will still be a werewolf. Unsatisfactory.
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5July E Blind Items*** – Kate McMurray. Forgettable, though well written, m/m romance between a left-wing journalist and the son of a conservative senator.

6July E Blind Space*** – Marie Sexton. Space pirates. Some rather dubious non-consensual sex, fetishes, justifications of piracy, and insufficiently developed characters. I was sufficiently interested to read to the end, and the actual writing was quite good but I wouldn’t recommend it wholeheartedly.

7July E Human for a Day**** – edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jennifer Brozek. An intriguing anthology of stories where something or someone becomes human for twenty four hours. There are swords, cities and statues as well as robots and zombies. As usual in an anthology the quality was varied but there were more memorable stories than poor ones.

7July E Are You There, Blog?*** – Kristen Lamb. This was an attempt to show authors how to use social media to sell themselves and their books. Despite the blurb, I learnt nothing new, and found the style (and humour) too American to read happily. I’m sure I probably ought to be on Facebook and Twitter but for now I won’t be following the advice. But it might inspire me to post about it…

8July E Forgotten Soul*** – Natasha Duncan Drake. Another story by this author who is a friend. I can admire the writing and plotting but as I am less than enamoured of most vampire stories I am unlikely to read the sequels.

9July E The Only Gold***** – Tamara Allen. Unusual thriller with an m/m sub-plot, set in nineteenth century New York banking circles. Pinkerton’s agents end up chasing bank robbers through one of the worst ever snow storms which paralyses the city. Interesting and well written.

10July E City Falcon***** – Feliz Faber. Intriguing m/m romance based around the research into using birds of prey to control bird strikes at airports.

11July E The Book of Dragons* – E. Nesbit. Collection of Nesbit’s short stories about dragons. I vaguely remembered enjoying her children’s books but this irritated me. The narrator voice was omnipresent and alternated between condescending and coy. Even at the time these were written this must have grated on a large part of the readership.

12July E Floaters** – Joe Konrath and Henry Perez. A short and competent thriller. Konrath is a good writer but in his attempts to have lots and lots of ebooks available I feel he has lost the interest of this reader at least. This story, co-written with Perez and involving both writers’ detectives, never really gets into the character of either.

13July E Hammer and Air** – Amy Lane. This was intended as an m/m fairy tale but I thought it was heavy handed and had far too much explicit sex for the genre.

14July E A devil’s own luck**** – Rowan McAllister. Competent and entertaining m/m version of a typical Georgette Heyer style Regency novel.

15July E The Song of Achilles** – Madeline Miller. A disappointing retelling of the Trojan Wars which got rave reviews (which was why I bought it). Unlike other modern versions of old legends and ancient history this was too short, and it was impossible for me to become sufficiently involved in the story to forget the ending. The narrator was Patroclus and he was an interesting character but Achilles never really became three dimensional.

17July E His Hearth** – Mary Calmes. Forgettable story of a demon hunter who needs a ‘hearth’ or human to ground him.

19July E Enlightened* – J.P.Barnaby. An unlikely tale of teenage m/m romance. Very American and very annoying as it turned out to be the first part of a serial, not a series as the title page suggested. I won’t be reading the rest.

21July E Kill for me***** – Karen Rose. The third part of a story started in Die for me, though the books can be read alone. Excellent convoluted thriller, which, as usual for this author, has the reader on edge until the last minute.

26July E Stolen Moments** – Ariel Tachna. Long and boring story detailing the difficulties of a gay relationship in the southern states of America. I felt sympathy for the characters but kept wanting to yell at them to emigrate to Europe. The writing was good and I’m sure the author had the best of intentions. Maybe the book just wasn’t directed at me.

I read more original fiction than usual this month, perhaps because I was in Portugal with no TV, magazines, etc.  Unfortunately, the books I had loaded on my Kindle didn’t include many ‘keepers’.

Viewing

24July The Prestige**** Interesting film, with some good acting by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bayle. The story concerns the deadly rivalry between two stage magicians at the end of the nineteenth century and moves between England and America. The insights into stage magic were fascinating. The plot was occasionally impenetrable.

25July The Bridge***** Final part of the Swedish/Danish TV thriller based around police co-operation between the two countries after a body is discovered on the centre of the bridge between them. Some excellent acting and suspense – this was a ten part story with each part taking an hour. Subtitles.

31July Mirror Mirror**** An interesting take on the story of Snow White. The plot is tweaked slightly to good (and feminist) effect. Some lovely special effects and clever fight scenes. I adored the monster. Some of the humour was rather heavy handed. Altogether a pleasant experience but not a film that I would bother rewatching.

Fewer films etc. than usual, because in Portugal we can only get news channels on TV and I hadn’t taken DVDs.

For anyone who’s wondering, the photograph is of a wall of cut plaster work in Alsfeld, Germany.

We’re in Portugal, with erratic internet access, hence the lack of posts in the last couple of weeks. This little wasp in building a nest on a pile of coffee-table books in my study. The nest will probably have to go, but meanwhile, I am fascinated.

Reading and Viewing

Reading

4 June E With a twist*** – Jack Kilborn and JA Konrath. Clever ‘locked room’ mystery but not very memorable.

8 June E Westward Weird***** –  an anthology edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes. The stories, a really odd mixture of sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal and horror, are of a uniformly high quality and I thoroughly enjoyed the collection. The factor than ties them together is the ‘Wild West’ setting, though the connection is not always as it seems and one or two of the stories take place on other planets or in alternate histories. I bought this because it contains a short story by Seanan McGuire that ties in with one of her urban fantasy series, but I loved all the other contributions too.

14 June P Discount Armageddon***** – Seanan McGuire. The author had a short story in the Westward Weird anthology, set in her new ‘world’ of cryptozoologists (monster hunters) and I had read some snippets on her blog. So I bought the first novel in the the series and it was excellent: exciting, well-written and fun, with lots of well-imagined non-humans including a dragon under Manhattan. But although I admire it, it didn’t really hook me the way the October Daye series does. I wait impatiently for the next October Daye novel; I think the cryptozoologists will be more of an occasional read.

14 June P The Ice Dragon** – George R. R. Martin. I assume this was intended as a children’s book; it is short, fully illustrated and simply told. However, it’s a very melancholy story and I’m not at all sure it would be popular with the age range it seems to be directed at. I’m also not sure Martin has really got inside the head of a small child. Disappointing.

15 June E All Roads Lead to You***** – Harper Fox. I love Harper Fox’s m/m romances and after reading about this one on her blog, and the ‘competition’ to name it (no, I didn’t win), I had to buy it. A very romantic and satisfying story of an ex-model who is seeking the boy he thought was a just pizza waiter in Rome.

17June E Against the Light*** – Dave Duncan. The author takes the idea of the Gunpowder Plot and transforms it into a fantasy with magic instead of Catholicism. The story is exciting and the characters are well drawn but the world building fails. References to police officers and people being ‘dorky’ in an essentially historical story simply don’t work. There is also too much explicit description of tortures and punishments.

17June E Lonely*** – Scarlet Blackwell. Sweet but unmemorable m/m romance about a lonely vet who bonds with a client over a dog.

18June E A Solid Core of Alpha***** – Amy Lane. Gripping sci-fi m/m romance. A twelve year old boy, sole survivor of a planetary catastrophe, creates a family of holograms to sustain his ten year journey through space. Then, grown up, he has to face reality. I loved this book.

20June E Sister of the Hedge and other stories**** – Jim Hines. Interesting and very different take on a number of fairy stories and myths. Good writing.

21June E Perfect Day***** – Josh Lanyon. Bittersweet and ultimately satisfying m/m romance short story in which everything hinges on a bee sting.

24June E Close Enough to Kill** – Beverly Barton. Boring and banal serial-killer ‘thriller’. The plot was poor and there was far too much explicit sex between various characters, including the lead detectives, and far too much detail about the killer’s torture programme.

27June E The Quiche of Death** – M.C.Beaton. Boring ‘whodunnit’ with and unpleasant ‘heroine’. The first story in the Agatha Raisin Omnibus. I won’t be reading the other three.

28June E Rome Burning***** – Sophia McDougall. Second book in the Romanitas trilogy, set in a word where the Roman Empire never fell. Exciting, fascinating, romantic, tragic… I enjoyed Romanitas, the first book, and I shall be buying the sequel, Savage City.

29June E Necessity’s Door*** – Fiona Glass. A novella in which a cop goes undercover as a rentboy and is tempted both by the money and by one of his customers. I felt the format was too short to explore the issues properly.

Viewing
1June Star Trek 9: Insurrection.**  Boring. Maybe when it was first made the special effects would have saved it. (I understand it was the first of the Star Trek films to be made with CGI effects.) Watched today it just seemed like an over-long version of a TV episode.

2June Garrow’s Law Season 2***** Fascinating series that mixes fact with fiction to create drama from the life and career of William Garrow, the barrister who is regarded as the ‘father’ of the English adversarial courtroom system. I will definitely buy Season 3.

6June Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ****  Much better than  part 1, with some excellent special effects, but I wonder if anyone who hadn’t read the books had the faintest idea what was going on? Of course, the majority of viewers would have read the books, but still…

9June The Colour of Magic***** Two linked films on one disc – the made-for-TV versions of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, overseen and introduced by Terry Pratchett. Excellent sets, special effects and acting – and of course I love the books anyway.

11June Desperate Housewives *****  Season 8 (final season). I’ve followed this series all the way through and loved it. It was quite sad to watch the final finale and I will always remember the inhabitants of Wisteria Lane. Great scripts that combined humour, excitement and tragedy, great acting that made the people seem completely real, and an interesting look at a small part of a very foreign culture.

12June How to Train your Dragon**** Beautifully made ‘cartoon’ (Dreamworks) film about ‘Vikings’ and dragons.  Exquisite artwork and quirky plot. My daughter recommended it and I enjoyed it very much but wouldn’t watch it again now that I know the outcome.

15June Eragon** A rather trite story with very unrealistic sets and some stilted script. I liked the dragon but the rest was disappointing.

Reading
2May E Scrap Metal***** – Harper Fox. This is a beautiful m/m romance set on the Scottish island of Arran. I love Harper Fox’s writing style which is very lyrical but at the same time detailed and earthy, and I love the UK settings for her stories, especially the northern ones. She describes landscapes well and her characters, even the minor ones, are very real.  Her romances usually have an element of suspense and violence and this one is no different, but as usual, the story ends on a note of hope for the future.

7May E Cat’s Creation**** – Natasha Duncan-Drake. A competent sequel to Cat’s Call (with the same proofreading flaws). The team have an interesting assignment which takes up most of the book. Probably a very appealing book for YA readers wanting excitement with plenty of character development and coming-of-age plotlines. Now that I have gained some insight into the ‘world’ of Charlie and his cat spirit I am less interested but can still admire the story structure.

9May P The Church of Dead Girls** – Stephen Dobyns. A very unpleasant story about how a serial abduction case (later known to be a murder one) creates suspicion and havoc in a small American town. I was intrigued by rave reviews by writers I respect (e.g. Stephen King) but found myself disliking almost all the characters, including the narrator and the victims, and skimming the detailed descriptions of  society to find out who was the villain. Not an author I would try again.

11May P Treasure Islands***** – Nicholas Shaxson. Subtitle: Tax havens and the men who stole the world. This was a very readable and gripping acount of offshore banking and the effects it has on global finance in general, and the current banking crisis in particular. I kept feeling that I was being told something I ought to have known – and yet the details are carefully brushed under the carpet by politicians and journalists alike, and the ordinary citizen is kept in ignorance. A fascinating book and one that has opened my eyes to the way finance works. Highly recommended.

14May P Piece of my heart** – Peter Robinson. Thriller set in a semi-fictitious Yorkshire Dales which threw me because of my own connections with the area. I kept trying to fit the made-up names and descriptions to real places. The story dealt with a case in 1969 and one today. Eventually, the two turn out to be linked. The modern case concerns DI Banks, a detective I enjoyed in the TV series but found slightly boring in novel form.

15May P Kingdoms of Elfin** – Sylvia Townsend Warner. A few people had recommended this and other books by the same author, presumably because I have written about ‘fairies’. I managed to buy a second hand copy of this one (supposedly her best) which is currently out of print. I was terribly disappointed. Ms Warner’s fairies are arbitrary, cruel and amoral but that wasn’t the problem;  my own fae don’t always adhere to human rules of conduct. The trouble is that the fairies in Elfin (and the mortals, for that matter) are never developed into fully three-dimensional characters. We learn what they do, but not really how they feel about it. I really didn’t care about anyone in the stories and whilst their antics were intriguing it was almost like watching flocks of birds or clouds of insects. Some of the societies and events were brilliantly depicted and the descriptions showed unusual imagination but there was no attempt to develop any empathy or sympathy. I had to struggle to read to the end and only did so to be able to discuss the book with the people who recommended it in such glowing terms.

18May P You Belong To Me***** – Karen Rose. Karen Rose’s thrillers are over the top and somewhat formulaic. They shouldn’t fascinate  me but they do. She creates characters I care about from the first chapter, in some cases from the first page, and the action is always intensely gripping. I put off meals and bedtime to read just one more chapter… So her writing is extremely good, to have such an effect. I think the appealing characters are the key. Other thrillers have fast-paced and exciting plots but don’t hook me. In this story, from the moment when Lucy stumbled across a corpse and met JD, the homicide detective, I wanted them to be together so I read on through 547 pages of angst. It was worth it.

19May E Human Tales**** – ed. Jennifer Brozek. An anthology of ‘fairy tales’ told from fairy and other supernatural points of view. The humans of the title come across as difficult – and sometimes wicked – but always interesting. As with any anthology the quality varied but every story drew me in and made me care about the main characters. Much more to my taste than The Kingdoms of Elfin, read earlier in the month.

23May P Edge***** – Jeffery Deaver. I bought this at a charity shop because I’ve enjoyed his detective novels and because I was interested to see what the author given the task of writing a new James Bond novel could do in a slightly different type of thriller. Edge follows four days in a case of protecting a family who are the targets of a ‘lifter’, someone paid, not initially to kill, but to get information by any means possible. It’s all told in the first person by the main protector and is quite gripping. There’s a great deal of discussion about game theory which is interesting, and the plot has numerous twists and turns. Not my usual choice of fiction but very good, all the same.

25May P Wink**** – Leyton Attens. This is a volume of One Short Story to be Told and I was the latest recipient of the single copy that is travelling around the world. The story was readable and competently written but the main intrigue is in following the story of the stories.

31May P Everything is Obvious (once you know the answer)**** – Duncan J. Watts. Subtitle: How common sense fails. An interesting book about sociology and recent research in the field. The author does indeed manage to get the reader to question their common sense assumptions. The experiments, particularly the ones carried out on huge samples via the internet, were fascinating. The explanations became somewhat repetitive on occasion.

31May P The Rook Trilogy (The Edge Chronicles)**** – Paul Stewart and Chris Ridddell. This is a children’s book – a long saga of war and friendship in a world of humans, goblins and gnomes and stranger monsters, some good and some evil. The descriptions and world building are richly detailed as are the black and white illustrations. I found it interesting and will definitely keep it for my grandson, but I did find myself skimming a lot of the battle scenes. I would probably recommend it for reading aloud to seven year olds upwards and for slightly older children (or maybe just more able readers) for reading to themselves, but the reviews at the back suggest that younger teenagers love the series and are thrilled by the associated website at http://www.edgechronicles.co.uk. There are apparently three trilogies, to date, and a book of oddments.

Watching

3May Ratatouille*** – Disney cartoon film about a rat who wants to be the best chef in Paris. Quite a sweet story but it dragged a little.

16May The Golden Compass** – Gorgeous special effects but if I hadn’t read the book I would be very confused. I assume they are going to make films of the other two parts of the trilogy otherwise there really doesn’t seem much point to the story.

20May Misfits**** – Season 1. Clever dark comedy about a gang of young offenders who get superpowers during a freak storm.

22May The Lakehouse** – I rented this because I’d read an intriguing fanfic based on the premise in the story. Well made but disappointing with an ending that didn’t make sense. The couple in the film are living in different times, roughly two years apart, and though they meet it is never ‘right’. It’s a romance, but a strange one and it never explained how they got together at the end.

24May The Brothers Grimm***** – A gorgeous mix of fantasy, folk tale, horror and humour, with excellent acting and special effects. Slight echoes of Tim Burton and of Pan’s Labyrinth, and all the unusual detail you can expect from Terry Gilliam and Czech film making. I don’t know why this didn’t attract greater critical acclaim.  Highly recommended.

25May Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1* – I thought this was a deeply flawed film. I enjoy the Harry Potter world – books and films – but this was far too dependent on knowledge of the book, to make sense, too slow to retain interest, too visually dark and too unfinished. OK, they made Part 2 (and I have yet to watch that) but although the first part of the final book drags in much the same way as the film the slowness is in keeping with the context and the reader is able to go straight on into the rest of the story.  As a piece of cinema, I think this film fails. I think it was made purely with the profits of the series in mind, and not with any artistic vision.

An interesting month with some highs and unexpected lows. What have you been reading and watching?