Books I acquired (and have reviewed) in 2017
November 2017
The Assassins of Tamurin goodreads
S. D. Tower
MatchUp goodreads
22 authors
Bought for the Virgil Flowers story, of course, which was... not bad, but not Sandford's best. I'll read the others at some point, I assume.
October 2017
The Furthest Station goodreads
Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London #5)
More Peter Grant is always welcome. A nice little ghost story novella.
The Templar Chronicles goodreads
Joseph Nassise (The Templar Chronicles #1)
All the Templar Chronicles stories rather blur into one in my head, but they're a perfectly fine unambitious fairly-generic set of urban fantasies; sort of the UF equivalent of airport novel thrillers called The Omega Sanction or something. I appreciate that this is not praise that the author would much appreciate, but being a book that I don't bounce off from annoyance puts you in the top 30% of the class straight away.
Deep Freeze goodreads
John Sandford (Virgil Flowers #10)
How is Trippton such a hotbed of crime? On the other hand I've just looked it up and it isn't a real place -- I never know with the Sandford books how much of it is actually real Minnesota, but it's compelling enough that I naturally assume that it is because Sandford's good. The usual Virgil blend of folksy charm hiding sharpness, although I don't like Johnson Johnson anywhere near as much as I think I'm supposed to, since he shows up a lot. The Barbie subplot was excellent. And I spotted the Ruger pest-control thing from a previous book right off, and it was nice that that was a plot point and not just "JS knows this thing and has randomly dropped it into two separate stories now".
Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence goodreads
Michael Marshall Smith
September 2017
What Doctor Gottlieb Saw goodreads
Ian Tregillis
August 2017
The Complete Gillian Flynn: Omnibus goodreads
Gillian Flynn
July 2017
A Darker Shade of Magic goodreads
V.E. Schwab (Shades of Magic #1)
June 2017
Gubbins and Soe
Peter Wilkinson & Joan Bright Astley
Got for research on a project not yet finished.
March 2017
Midnight Blue-Light Special goodreads
Seanan McGuire (InCryptid #2)
Discount Armageddon goodreads
Seanan McGuire (InCryptid #1)
January 2017
The Ruling Mask goodreads
Neil McGarry & Daniel Ravipinto (Grey City #3)
The Fall of Ventaris goodreads
Neil McGarry & Daniel Ravipinto (Grey City #2)
The Duchess of the Shallows goodreads
Neil McGarry & Daniel Ravipinto (Grey City #1)
The Long Way Down goodreads
Craig Schaefer (Daniel Faust #1)
Swiss Family Robinson goodreads
Johann David Wyss
Poems Every Child Should Know goodreads
Mary E. Burt
I fancied reading some more poetry, because I'm a bit lacking in some of the classics, and there this was in feedbooks. They do a good job, Feedbooks, in taking Project Gutenberg texts and making them nicely formatted epubs. Anyway, this has a load of terrible old tosh, and a bunch of irritating comments from Burt about some schoolkid who constantly recited one poem or another, marbled throughout with some real marvels which actually have stood the test of time. The Assyrian did indeed come down like a wolf on the fold.
Books I acquired (and have reviewed) in time 2022 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009
Surprisingly intricate little story about a trainee assassin who falls in love with the king she's sent to marry and spy on. Unusually good at romance, unlike most fantasy, and I like that basically all the interesting characters are women. Quite a bit of geopolitics, too. It's never going to be a classic, but worth reading I think.