Jack Wolfe, Paranormal Investigator

by Craig Lunnon

Picked up in an Amazon 99p sale, if memory serves, last year. I was in the mood for something light-hearted and this didn’t disappoint. Its certainly coming from a different angle than the usual urban fantasy genre. It cracked along at a fair pace, with some excellent wise cracking asides. I felt the author was channeling the likes of Robert Rankin, Tom Holt and the like, with aspirations to Kadrey and Aaronovitch.

Nothing from him since, so I wondered if it was self published via Amazon, but it appears not.

Ashes of Honour

By Seanan McGuire

The last (apart from a short story in a anthology I’ve been lent and a couple on her website) in the current series of the Toby Daye novels. I hear from her blog she’s been commissioned for more and is part way through the next one, so now she’s post Mira Grant/Newsflesh, at least temporarily, its likely to appear soon.

As always, it was an enjoyable read. I did find the ending, and the way Ettienes(sp?) problem was dealt with a bit dues ex machina – its not been mentioned to my knowledge before in the series, and didn’t seem to come with any drawbacks (in fact I thought I remembered a previous book stating the other parent was usually killed, but I may be mistaken).

Otherwise, internally consistent as always, and plenty of hooks for the following books, which after borrowing all of the Toby series, I will buy, given mrs kript and myself both read them…

Comments test

Enabling comments on this post to try out the capatcha and commenting systems.
Please try and post a comment if you’re a regular reader, and let me know how you get on..

Oh, I;d be really interested in people’s opinions on if they would be more or less inclined to comment if they had an account..

Update: comments now turned back on again, not sure how they got turned off, TBH..

The House of Silk

By Anthony Horrowitz

I was lent this, completely out of the blue, by Nicky, and it was a while before I was in the mood for it, but I finished it in about three nights (Yes! A three night problem!), with much enjoyment.
This is an excellent and faithful Holmes novel, that has worked hard to capture both Doyle voice and the type of plot.

Highly recommended!

Widowmaker

By Peter Morwood

The second of the prequels to the Horse Lord series (it turns out he’s aiming for three), I bought it when they were having a sale, well before the embargo, I think. I was looking forward to it, in part because I was hoping that Morwood would spend more time on Sorcery and The Art Magic – in fact, this is left to the last third, if not quarter, of the book, before things start hotting up, which left me a little frustrated.
No reflection on the author, after all, he’s not to blame for my expectations, but its an area that’s only hinted at, and I’d much enjoy a book in that world, set from the perspective of an practitioner of The Art Magic, as not much more of made of Bayard’s Talent, which I also found frustrating.

I think what fascinates the author is the interplay of honour and tradition in such a setting, which while it informs it, is not the draw for me.

I’ll purchase the last one of course, and the next in the Horse Lord series, should he actually write it (as mentioned on his books page).

One Salt Sea

By Seanan McGuire

The penultimate one so far! Having to resist immediately moving on to ‘Ashes of Honour‘ immediately..

Lot of respect for McGuire as an author for this one; I’m not sure, chronologically, if it was written between the Newsflesh books (her best works, IMHO), but I suspect so. The writing has jumped another notch here, both in terms of plot and characterisation. As I’ve mentioned in previous book reviews, I do get the sense that a lot of the backstory and plot has been worked out beforehand, and is coming through in a way that just appears to have been well worked out just for this book.. I particularly like the way she dealt with Connor’s character, and with Tybalt.

Really hitting its stride this series, although I do wish that she’d lay off the involvement of children in the books. I know its an emotional trigger, and that faerie is of course tied in literature with childhood, but there have been several of the stories that dealt with children as the main victims and I’d prefer fewer in the future (doesn’t look likely given the plot synopsis of ‘Ashes’ though..), simply speaking as a parent and an over-emoter… ;-)

Pirate Cinema

By Cory Doctorow

I bought this as part of the Humble eBook Bundle; it was one of the bundle that I’d been meaning to get round to reading. It took me some time because its YA; which Doctorow seems to be writing more and more of (can’t blame him; I hear its the most lucrative market, which makes sense). The problem is, I have a low embarrassment threshold, and as I identify/emote easily with the protagonists, being reminded of teenage years is never a good thing!

Anyway, it took me some time to get into, mostly because of the YA and the fairly gut wrenching start of the protagonist ruining his family’s life by getting them cut off the internet.
Actually, even though this is the main point of the book, this law has never made much sense to me – there are just so many ways round it these days – but I’m probably missing stuff Doctorow’s seen, since he’s a smart cookie and no mistake. However, I pretty much tore through the last third

This is less of a pean to technology than, say, Little Brother (and I’m pleased to have finished this just in time for Homeland, the sequel to that, to be released), as its more about civil rights, but there is some of Doctorow’s signature technical fetishism as well, which I always enjoy. Few people write about technologies potential to do cool stuff as well or with such passion as Doctorow, and its why I always come back to his work.

On that note, I would be remiss to remind people that Cory makes his works available free to download under a creative commons license, so go and read it, as well as all his other works here, and then take advantage of the network he’s setup, to buy a copy for a library, or school or so forth that has asked for one – this is a great idea that more eBook pundits should consider!

I will add ‘For The Win’ to my to-read list, as I’d been holding off reading another YA, and am not wildly interested in MMORPG’s, both of which this features, even though it also features the economics of the same and China, both of which I *am* interested in..

Environmental Monitoring with Arduino: Building Simple Devices to Collect Data About the World Around Us

by Emily Gertz, Patrick DiJusto, Patrick Di Justo

I bought this when OReilly had a one of their 50% off sales on Ardiono books. Since then I’ve bought a Rasberry Pi and have been trying to work out which project to do with it, so I wanted to read up on the assorted microelectronics sensor and communications books I’d accrued.

This nicely summed up a number of different projects, all of which you could approach after just reading ‘Getting Started with Arduino” also from OReilly. I found, though, after reading it, that I was a bit puzzled. The circuits were a bit simple, which was reassuring for a novice like myself, but there was little about how the authors knew to put them together in this way, so I couldn’t do anything other than replicate. Likewise a lot of the value is in things like working out atmospheric pressure, or seiverts, or such like, and while the code was there, and commented, some notes on the approach and some background reading would have been nice. This is especially noticeably in the last project, the Geiger counter, since most of the code is taken up with posting to Pachube rather than the sensor itself, something even the authors admit will be obsolete very quickly (the instructions, hopefully not the site!).

Still, I’ll probably build at least a couple of the projects, and its given me the confidence to try, so hurrah!

Late Eclipses

By Seanan McGuire

I interleave the Toby Daye books by McGuire with the other fiction to both stop myself chunking through them too fast and to stop myself overdosing on Urban Fantasy too quickly. They’re also quite grim in places, so too much would be just that.

I wondered how McGuire would deal with the inevitable power creep of the protagonist in a series like this; whether she’d stay at the same abilities, or accrue powers and powerful friends. Its safe to say, without spoilers, that McGuire has managed to do that in such a way that feels engineered in, rather than responding to the Inevitable Bigger Baddies of the week syndrome that UF can be prey to.

I like the fact that I can never quite see where the book – or series – is going next. I think I can see some metaplot, but less than I’m used to, and McGuire’s faerie is always at a half turn from what I’m expecting. Which makes it good fay writing, of course. Also, since I read most of this while under the effects of a nasty flu bug, some of that could be my reduced mental capacity..

Two left to go…

The Throne Of The Crescent Moon

By Saladin Ahmed

I plain loved this book. The characters weren’t stereotypes, the plot wasn’t a pean to the authority of the Khalif, and the bad guy was suitably evil. It has such verisimilitude in the phrases used, the descriptions of the city and the desert, that I was immersed in the world immediately.

I love Arabic world stories, evoking the little travel I’ve done there, but most that I’ve read have been written by westerners, so its a refreshing change to read one from an Arabic American author.

I’ve blogged before on Ahmed’s works, and this is of no lesser quality – and has enough hooks left over that the end for more than one sequel, I hope.

I do prefer the US cover, though.

Bought on pre-order before my self imposed curfew, delivered after. I don’t think this voilates the letter, but it somewhat bends the spirit.. ;-)