David Gillon

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold.

I'd been looking for my copy of this for months, having worked my way through most a re-read of the Vorkosigan Series. I finally found it in my laptop's Calibre library, so apparently I didn't buy it from Amazon as I'd thought. It's a fun romp. The series has mostly portrayed Captain Ivan Vorpatril, Mile's cousin, as shallow but ornamental, with the occasional hint that Ivan isn't nearly as feckless as he seems. And given by this point Ivan is the senior aide to Barrayar's military commander, he really couldn't be.

Ivan's on Komarr, staying in the local equivalent of an AirBnB, while his boss is running a bunch of inspections on the Barrayaran forces in system, when his dissolute and disreputable cousin Byerly Vorrutyer arrives on his doorstep, the complication being that Ivan knows By is really an agent for Impsec, charged with infiltrating plots involving the Vor. By's on a case, and he knows something is going to happen to a young woman, Maybe he can't save her, but Ivan's available.

Tej is working in a shipping office, quietly desperate about her situation, when Ivan arrives, claiming to want to ship a vase, and then proceeds to try and charm her into going out with him. This fails to impress, Ivan's attempts get increasingly desperate, and Tej's solution is to have him stunned by her fellow fugitive, Rish, who is blue, so they can interrogate him as a presumed kidnapper/assassin/bounty hunter. Then the real kidnappers/assassins/bounty hunters arrive.

Shennanigans ensue.

And with people beating down the door, the immediately obvious way to extract Tej and Rish, at least to Ivan's panicked mind, is for Ivan and Tej to get married.

Then the complications start.

It's a fun romp, but Bujold is possibly having too much fun with some of the sub-plots. At its core it's a rom-com about two people who end up accidentally married and then have to deal with all the complications relatives inflict on them while they try and work out how they really feel about each other, complicated by a double hidden prince gambit, and a strapped-on heist movie.

Silence Fallen, Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson 10)

A re-read of the last book I'd read in the Mercy Thompson series to get me back up to speed. Mercy is kidnapped by the European vampire king Bonarota, causing Adam to assemble his allies (including local vampire boss Marsilia, Bonarota's lost love) and fly off to rescue her from his Renaissance-style court. Of course by the time they get there Mercy has rescued herself and ended up in Prague having encounters with a certain legendary force of order. But then, as Coyote's daughter, Mercy is something of a force of chaos herself.

Storm Cursed, Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson 11)

I had a problem with the structure of this one, because once we start to see the threat driving the plot, it's immediately clear a major series character is at absolute best being put on a bus at the end (though on the clever plotting side, it also becomes clear that their replacement has been hanging over the fireplace for several books without giving the game away).

Briggs has been building up the 'Hardesty Witches' as a threat for a while, mostly in the parallel Alpha and Omega series, but this time they make a move against Mercy and Adams pack.  The Hardesty Witches are sort of a black witchcraft crime-family, so they're never going to get along with the law-and-order oriented werewolves, but it's really not clear to me what their aim was here - and it's a really high-stakes play because they're trying to disrupt a summit between the US government and the fae (who are technically at war) taking place in pack territory. I just wasn't convinced that the risk of sending the US government and its agencies after the witches was worth the potential payoff of keeping things disrupted.

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it, but this is one where you really, really need to have read all the books that go before it to understand the forces in play.

Smoke Bitten, Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson 12)

One of the complications of Mercy and Adam's life is a playdate for their adoptive son Aiden means Underhill is coming to play, That's Underhill as in the personification of Faery, who is having an ongoing tantrum with the fae. Discovering she's installed a gate to Faery in their backyard really isn't the kind of garden feature that adds to your real-estate market value.

Also complicating things is that Adam isn't himself, and won't let Mercy in to find out what's going on. That takes a backseat when two of Mercy's friends turn up dead in an apparent murder-suicide, but Mercy can smell magic all over the supposed murderer, which makes it a matter for the pack. And as other people start to die, or be taken over, including more people Mercy cares for, it becomes clear that something lethal has escaped from Faery, and that Mercy has become the focus of its attention.

And in our heroes' copious spare time there's the cabal of outsider werewolves plotting a coup.

I read it in one sitting, so clearly I liked it, but given the number of times it's happened to date, Mercy really should be slightly more alert to people manipulating the Mercy-Adam relationship. OTOH what's going on with Adam is a piece of gorgeously evil plotting digging into his characterisation right back to day one. And the denouement does bring the return of an old friend.

Amongst Our Weapons, Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London 9)

I really wasn't expecting that title to be a quotation, so the plot direction surprised me in a way that might not be the case for other people.

Bev is imminently due to deliver twins, so as the expectant father of two baby river goddesses the last thing Peter needs is a major murder investigation being dumped in his lap. But that's what he gets when the death of a man who was apparently in the process of robbing the London Silver Vaults turns out to have a significant magical component (him being missing half his chest is a major clue). So Peter and new Folly trainee Dannii find themselves back on DCI Seawoll's Belgravia Murder Investigation Team. Things get even more complicated when they turn up a second body, and a connection back to a small group of Charismatic Catholics* at Manchester University in the 80s. And to make matters worse, Lesley is back, and apparently involved.

When Peter goes to interview one of the other group members, now the force behind a Bodyshop expy, he really isn't expecting to find himself facing off against an apparent Angel of Death, complete with wings, halo and burning spear. The outcome is a draw, but that religious link is getting compelling.

Drastic measures are called for, which means Peter and Dannii catching the train to Manchester, with Seawoll along as local guide. Things take several unexpected turns, but we meet a familiar face, and get an insight into another aspect of the Folly's post-WWII disintegration.

But in the end this is the Rivers of London, not Manchester, so it's back to the Smoke for the final showdown with the forces of erm....

Enjoyable, even if I failed the pop-culture test. There are a couple of points about the ending that make me wonder if we won't see a time skip before the next book in the series (which is currently in 2013 if memory serves).

Plus points to Aaronovitch from me for introducing a deaf-without-speech character (and for feeling no need whatsoever to point out her partner is trans) , and for this line: "Whoever had converted the warehouse into offices and flats had clearly done it in the carefree 60s, when lifts were for wimps and people with disabilities hadn't been invented."

* The Catholic church's version of evangelicals, my old physics teacher was one.

Demon's Dance, Keri Arthur (Lizzie Grace 4)

The good news for Lizzie, Belle and hot werewolf cop Aiden is that the new reservation witch has arrived, so Lizzie and Belle can go back to being coffee shop owners, not untrained stand-ins. The bad news is that there's a skin-stealing demon on the loose, and the worse news is the new reservation witch doesn't just recognise on-the-run-from-her-family Lizzie, he's her cousin Monty. Which brings a bunch of revelations about what happened between Lizzie and her father, and forced marriage is only the start of it. It's significantly heavier on the abuse side of things than I'd anticipated from earlier books.

Telling the real story buys Lizzie time with Monty, and lances some of the tension between her and Aiden. But that demon's still out there, and it's starting to look like not just one demon, but two.

This took a darker turn than I anticipated, and I'm not talking about the demons. On the negative side I don't feel I was ever quite clear on precisely what was going on with the second demon. And Arthur definitely has a thing for putting her characters through the mangle, as of the close of this book we're now up to at least two concussions, four broken limbs and sundry burns and shrapnel injuries (plus a couple of deaths of secondary characters).

Rebuilding the Royal Navy: Warship Design Since 1945, David K Brown and George Moore

Re-read, a history of warship design 1945 to 2002, from one of the people involved.
 

Currently Playing:

7 Days to Die: Definitely getting the hang of things. The last building I raided turned out to have an underground drugs lab, and hearing zombies banging about when I couldn't see them had me seriously freaked out.

Wordle: I finally completed my 100th Wordle - I've been playing intermittently since January.

Overall stats:

Failed: 1