David Gillon

Hidden Legacy Series, Ilona Andrews

(First trilogy reviewed here. As a quick primer, magic has existed since the mid-1800s, runs in families called Houses, led by the overpowered Primes, and mundane law enforcement mostly refuses to get involved with their feuds).

Diamond Fire

Book 3.5 as it's a novella, and Nevada Baylor, protagonist of the first trilogy, is about to marry billionaire Connor 'Mad' Rogan. But they're two wedding planners down and Nevada's middle sister Catalina has decided she's going to make this wedding work if it kills her, or if she has to kill someone else. The problem is, someone already has killing in mind, a major theft already happened, and prime suspect for that is probably one of Connor's mother's family. So it's shy, brilliant Catalina against a dozen spoiled Spanish aristos.

I like Catalina as protagonist, but I think my favourite character is the utterly irreverent Runa Etterson, a Prime specialising in poisons: "Yes, the frosting is definitely poisoned - everyone grab a spoon and dig in!"

Sapphire Flames

Catalina has now replaced Nevada as head of House Baylor and the Baylor PI agency, on the grounds it's the only way to stop Nevada working herself to death. Summoned on a mission of mercy, to lure a grieving teen off a ledge, Catalina is horrified to discover his sister is Runa Etterson, and that they are the only surviving members of their family after their mother and sister burned to death in a house fire. Runa is convinced it was murder, and as the new head of House Etterson, she wants the Baylor Agency to find out who did it. Meanwhile, her mother had her own safeguard in place, and has hired an assassin to avenge her, an assassin Catalina is horrified to discover is billionaire playboy Count Alessandro Sagredo, subject of her teenage crush. In person Alessandro is arrogant, entitled, and annoyingly, evenly shockingly competent. It's love at first hate. 

Emerald Blaze

"Holster your weapons, and step away from the monkey!"

Nine months on from Sapphire Flames and Catalina is mostly over Alessandro walking out on her in pursuit of his personal obsession. But when both she and her secret boss, the grandfatherly Linus Duncan, aka the scary Warden of Texas, are attacked by summoned creatures, Linus decides that the attacks mean Catalina needs to take point on the investigation of the murder they may relate to. Which is when Alessandro reappears, strangely stripped of his arrogance, humbled even, and swearing to protect her. Which considering the investigation means going face to face with not one, but four combat Primes, the prime suspects in the murder, and a bunch of assassins, might be just as well.

Ruby Fever

A year on from Emerald Blaze and the Speaker of the Texas State Assembly (ruling body of the Houses) has just been assassinated, while someone walked through Linus Duncan's overpowered security to leave him comatose, which means Catalina Baylor, Deputy Warden of the State of Texas at the age of 23, is on her own when it comes to who is running the investigations. But that doesn't mean she's on her own for actually getting stuff done, because she has the full assistance of her family aka House Baylor, and her fiance, Alessandro Sagredo. Plus an annoying Russian prince. And she's going to need all the help she can get, because this time it's war.

Okay, these are David-candy, and I had to ration myself by insisting I read each book twice before moving on to the next, otherwise I'd have blown through the whole double-trilogy in three days. There's a definite pattern to the two trilogies: Book 1, best of frenemies, Book 2, reconciled lovers, Book 3, partners. But Nevada and Catalina are different characters, possibly overly defined by their older sister/middle sister roles, and if their partners are both dangerous billionaire bad boys, they're at least different dangerous billionaire bad boys - Connor as a soldier and Alessandro as, well, Zorro.

They're very much about family - the Baylors start as the three sisters, their mother, their two male cousins, and Grandma Frida, all working together, but also found family, because by the time the second trilogy wraps they are up to somewhere around twenty characters considering themselves to have family ties - and all but a couple of the younger kids with fully developed characters. 

The world-building is equally good, as is the plotting, with underlying arcs binding the trilogies together. I think I caught a couple of things that were raised and not developed, but nothing major. They even covered a point in the Baylor heritage where I initially thought they'd missed the scientific implications.

Impressed.

Burn For Me, Ilona Andrews

Girl meets boy, boy bundles girl in rug, and whips her off to his fortress of solitude where he chains her to the floor and tortures her for information is not the most promising start to a relationship, but they make it work.

In a world where mage families are almost immune to the law, Nevada Baylor is a PI, well, the PI, for her small family-owned firm. The Baylor agency sticks with the safe stuff: cheating husbands, insurance fraud, and the like and steers clear of the Primes who run the mage familes. But they're mortgaged to the much larger, and Prime-run, Montgomery agency, and Augustine Montgomery has few qualms about blackmailing Nevada into taking on a job that isn't so much career suicide, as suicide suicide. Spoiled wild-boy Adam Pierce just burnt down a bank in central Houston, killing an off-duty cop, and his mother, Prime of her House, wants him found and returned to her before the cops can shoot him for resisting arrest. The problem for Nevada being that Adam Pierce isn't just a pyromaniac, he's a prime pyromancer, quite capable of burning her to death with just the power of his mind.

Nevada has a secret ace up her sleeve - she knows when people are lying. And a few questions in the right places get her a fleeting meeting with Adam, who turns out to have all the emotional maturity of a toddler on a sugar high. And it's in the immediate aftermath that Nevada runs into the other bad boy in the case, Connor 'Mad' Rogan, Prime of his House and one time weapon of mass destruction for the United States government, who isn't after Pierce, but his sidekick in the arson, Mad Rogan's 16yo cousin, and who'll take whatever measures are necessary to find him.

Shenanigans ensue.

White Hot, Ilona Andrews 

Nevada Baylor is just getting used to the idea that her truthseeker magic may be as strong as any Prime's when another Prime-related case drops into her lap. The lawyer wife of animal mage Cornelius Harrison was just murdered, along with three other lawyers and their security team. Their employer is giving him the cold shoulder, and no one else will take the case. If the Pierce case skirted the mage Houses, this one is going to take Nevada straight to their heart, and her secret may be at risk. And then she discovers that the security team worked for Connor, and he's out for revenge.

Come for the shenanigans, stay for a Mission Impossible heist played out with two ferrets and a Chinese ferret-badger.

Wild Fire, Ilona Andrews

Nevada's secret is out, everyone knows there's a new Prime truthseeker on the scene. And that includes Victoria Tremaine, scariest truthseeker in the country, a woman for whom ethics are things that happen to other people, now revealed as Nevada's grandmother, and scary-granny wants her granddaughters back in House Tremaine. That's bad for Nevada, worse for her teenage sisters, because Nevada's the one who got the least scary talent. But now she has Connor to back her up, if she can just get him to understand the difference between backing her up, and taking over. As if that wasn't problem enough she also has another case, and this time it's for Connor's ex-fiancee.

Houston may not survive the shenanigans. 

*****

Girl meets scarred, brooding, billionaire veteran isn't exactly an unknown trope in romance, and this series - there's another three books involving middle-sister Catalina - is definitely in the romantasy end of the genre paddling pool. But it's well imagined, the world-building and magic systems are solid, and it also stands up a fine urban fantasy, while each case is a perfectly presentable mystery. I bought them because they were cheap (£2 each on Amazon), but I was pleasantly surprised by how good they are, particularly the characterisation - there's a bait and switch with Nevada's attitudes in the first book that is pure delight.

Wicching Hour, Sea Wicche 3, Seanna Kelly

It's the grand opening of Arwyn Corey's gallery, and all her dreams have come true. But you can't have dreams without nightmares, and it's time to run down the sorcerer responsible for so much death and despair. But before that there's another serial killer to be hunted down, and a betrayal that will destroy the foundations of Arwyn's life.

I was a bit annoyed about that betrayal, because it's thrown in, and then any chance of resolving it, or even understanding it, is whipped away. But otherwise a nice addition to the series.

Night Owl Books, Seana Kelly

A spin-off novella from the Sea Wicche books, and actually a re-read from earlier in the year, but I'm pretty certain I never reviewed it.

Orla is a literal night owl, proprietor of Night Owl Books, hidden up a lane in rural Monterey, opening hours 8PM til 6AM, and an Eagle-Owl shifter. When a woman runs into the bookstore after a terrifying encounter with a man on the road, Orla finds herself drawn into the activities of the unofficial local magical law enforcers - though a couple of them do have actual badges, and one is a very attractive bear shifter. They're quickly sure that the man is a werewolf, and that Orla is precisely his type, which raises one possible, if dangerous, method of catching him.

Orla's an interesting character, the writing is 1st Person, and the fourth wall appears to be something she has no truck with. She says teachers kept assuming she was autistic, but it's just part of being an owl shifter, but I'm really not certain that makes any difference. Understanding other people and social interactions are definitely works in progress for her, which makes for an interesting viewpoint character.

It's a shortish read, and having a quarter of the Kindle page count turn out to be a preview of Wicching Hour struck me as a bit naughty.

 Re-reads

The Taellaneth, Vanessa Nelson

Five book series: Arrow is the much-abused half-human gofer for the elf-adjacent Erith and their government, the Taellaneth. Sent to aid the werewolf-adjacent Shifkin investigate the murder of their leader's mate, she's about to find out that the demon-adjacent Usurji have returned, and the Taellaneth are about to find out that abusing Arrow may not have been their brightest idea.

The world-building is a bit shaky in places - we never really get a good explanation for how the humans, and their technology, ended up squeezed in between the Erith and the Shifkin, but the characterisation is fine and Arrow may be one of my all-time favourite characters.

Outcast, Grey Gates 1, Vanessa Nelson

Max Ortis is a Marshal, one of the handful of people charged with protecting the city from the monsters that regularly emerge from the mists and jungle that surround it. In theory the marshals don't get involved in law enforcement, but someone is killing mages, and Max has a horrible feeling that the serial killer is trying to reopen the gates to the demon realms. And seeing as Max was the person who had to shut them again last time, even if no one believes her, she's really not eager for a repeat performance. Meanwhile, reminders of her previous life as an apprentice of the Order of the Lady of Light keep cropping up in the shape of Bryce, tall, brooding enforcer for the Order.

The worldbuilding here is decidedly shaky, there is no way that the city has a functional economy, it doesn't even have an agricultural sector as far as I can see. But I like the characterisation, and the mystery is serviceable.

Called, Grey Gates 2, Vanessa Nelson

The Huntsman Clan are up to something, and Max is worried that abducting and killing young people may be the least of it. Meanwhile the city is running out of fuel, so the Marshals, police, and the Order are going to have to run a convoy through to the refinery that used to be part of the city before the jungle claimed it.

The plotting's as shaky as the world-building in this one, but I still like the writing and characterisation.

Bewicched, Sea Wicche 1, Seana Kelly

Arwyn Corey is a multi-talented artist, working in both paint and glass, and she's about to make her dream come true by opening her gallery in an old cannery on Monterey's sea shore. But Arwyn is also a witch (well, half-witch, half-sea fae) and her mother and grandmother are insistent she join the family council, because they think there's an evil sorcerer out there. Not to mention there's a detective she went to school with who has heard that Arwyn is a psychic and is desperate enough to ask for her help in a child-abduction case. And to make matters worse the hot werewolf building her deck is really distracting.

I still think the title should be punished for crimes against spelling, but these are a fun read.

Wicche Hunt, Sea Wicche 2, Seana Kelly

The Biergarten of the Damned, Seana Kelly

Sam and Clive are back from their honeymoon/search and destroy mission in The Hob and Hound Pub and trying to squeeze Clive's extensive wardrobe into Sam's small flat at the back of the her pub/bookshop. Only a demon seems to be attacking Clive in his sleep and half-demon cook Dave just quit. Could the two things be linked?

This seemed rushed to me, and I'm not convinced the two halves of the plot meshed together seamlessly, or at all. OTOH it's interesting for incorporating Christian demonology pretty much straight on, including sinners being dumped into lakes of lava, rather than trying to produce some bowdlerized version. Still it's definitely the weakest of the series so far. And I'm pretty much convinced naming an orc Fangorn is a crime against Tolkien,

Bewicched*, Seana Kelly

Casey's new, linked series in the same universe as the Sam Quinn series. Artist/witch Arwyn Corey just wants to concentrate on getting her gallery ready for opening day and hanging out with her friends the starfish, the octopus and the harbour seal (not making this up). But there's an annoying werewolf working on her deck and family pressure from her mother and grandmother to take up her position as the junior member in the triumvirate Corey Council, which is a tremendous vote in her sheer power, but a potential nightmare. Arwyn's a clairvoyant/seer, something the Corey family turns out every couple of hundred years or so. She's also the first of those not to kill herself before reaching 14, because every person she touches, she reads their innermost secrets, making gloves top of her don't leave the house without 'em items of clothing. Even with that precaution she still regularly gets hit with random visions intense enough to knock her to the floor. Taking up her mantle will mean actively using her powers, something she mostly tries to avoid.

But then a police detective comes knocking on her door because there's a kid missing**, and the cop's not taking no for an answer. And then someone else tries to kill her aunt. Arwyn might not want to use her powers, but the choice may no longer be hers.

In contrast to Biergarten, this doesn't feel rushed. There's a really, really good evocation of just how nightmarish Arwyn's life can be. And some really good supporting characters. The main weak point is the link back into the Sam novels, which bears a little too heavily on being familiar with their backstory.

The Banshee and the Blade, Seana Kelly

This is a really slight short story, following on from Biergarten, with Dave trying to find his wife, said banshee. As far as I can tell, it exists solely to bring Dave into contact with Arwyn, so that she will know how to contact him during Bewicched. Why it couldn't be incorporated into either book, or both, I really don't see. It's one saving grace is it only cost 79p, and even that may be a bit much.     

* Ick on the cutesy spelling.

** Content warnings for fairly detailed child abuse and animal harm

The day after I got to my mother's my laptop started sending out distress signals about imminent hard-drive failure, so all the hobby projects I'd planned for filling in time while away went out of the window. (I snagged a back-up copy of all of my personal files before shutting it down and leaving it that way, I'm planning to see if my neighbour is interested in cloning the hard-drive and replacing it for me - I'd rather pay him than some stranger - but he's on holiday right now).

Which means I just spent four weeks without a laptop or other computer, which is unprecedented.

Which means I did a lot of reading, but mostly of stuff that was already on my Kindle.

Seanan McGuire books:

Toby Daye series 1-10, plus all the short stories from the web site

Incryptid series 1-4, plus all the short stories from the web site.

Indexing series 1 and 2

Velveteen series 1 and 3 (book 2 remains annoyingly out of print on Kindle)

I like them all, a lot, but I think my preferences run Toby-Indexing-Velveteen-Incryptid.

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day : Short standalone novel, which I recall reading in one sitting first time through and two this time, I really, really like this, but the ending doesn't quite work for me even if it is arguably the protagonist getting to where she's meant to be.

Any Way The Wind Blows: Standalone short story, apparently a tribute to Tor's old offices. Amusing, but slight.

By People Who Aren't Seanan McGuire

Goblin Fruit, Magicians Horde : Celia Lake

I'm not the target audience for these, not being a romance fan, but curiousity from all the stuff Jennett writes about writing them led me to read Outcrossing a few months ago and I picked up these two when I was able to get online at my sister's. The series elevator pitch would be something like romances in an alternative post-Great War Britain with a cosy magical mystery being the lever to force two apparently mismatched and slightly damaged people together.

Goblin Fruit has series focal character Carillon and slightly impoverished gentlewoman Lizzie Penhallow being set at the same problem - a mysterious and addictive new drink  - from different directions and literally falling for over each other mid-investigation. It's pretty good for filling in a lot of the background about the magical sub-culture in the UK and how it functions that were only hinted at in Outcrossing.

Magician's Horde has bookseller/rearcher Pross Gates, a secondary character in Outcrossing, heading to London to ask for help from the 'Research Society' into a possible historical treasure she's been hired to help track down. The society seems to have gone notably downhill since her deceased husband was a Fellow, but it does assign her its apparently least favoured researcher, the (entirely justifiably) prickly Anglo-Egyptian Isis Ward (that's a male Isis, not female). Shenanigans ensue. I didn't feel this was entirely successful in establishing its bad guys' motivations, but they're really not the point here, and the handling of Pross's almost-a-teen daughter Cammie and Isis's mid-teen sister Hypatia's reactions to their elders getting it on together more than made up for it. This is also the first time we've had a reasonably upclose view of Hogwarts Schola, the wizarding school most of the characters attended.

Deadly Vows, Keri Arthur

Lizzie Grace has been hiding from her father and her husband since she was 18 and the day when her friend and familiar Belle rescued her from rape at her new husband's hands (it wasn't just an arranged marriage, it was a forced marriage) and emasculated him in the progress.

But now defending the magical wellspring on the Faelan Werewolf Reservation has blown Lizzie's cover and daddy and hubby are coming for the inevitable showdown. On top of which there's a wierd and unidentified supernatural predator killing newly weds (though not so wierd that I didn't immediately identify it from the description - and ironically ran into another one in the Incryptid stuff a week later).

My prime criticism of these is still that it's a very white version of Australia, even with non-white characters like Belle. Six books in and I don't think we've had a single aboriginal character yet. The murder monster was probably slightly superfluous this time around given it's very obviously going to be shunted off-stage at the earliest opportunity in order to clear the decks for the confrontation with daddy dearest, which I felt was itself undermined by turning hubby-dearest into a slavering rage-monster. There's also a deal-with-the-devil decision that's probably going to be terminal for a series regular at some point in the future.

Currently Reading

The Hound and Hob Pub, Seana Kelly

I liked the Paris segment, unfortunately they've now arrived in the UK and while it's mostly minor stuff - the barman yelling 'last call' instead of 'last orders' - the author appears to believe there are wolves on the Yorkshire moors. Plus it's doing the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves thing with UK geography, apparently Whitby Abbey is close enough to Rievaulx Abbey you can jog over in time to intervene when someone's being chased by wolves (actual distance 30-odd miles).

Spell Hound, Lindsay Buroker (A Witch in Wolf Wood Book 2)

I was a bit equivocal about continuing the series after reading book 1, but the offer of the whole five book series for £0.79 persuaded me. Newbie witch Morgen remains clueless, brooding werewolf Amar remains darkly broody, every other male character is both a werewolf and a pig and every other female character is a witch out to exploit Morgen, the werewolves, or, mostly, both.

Samples Sampled

Winter's Gifts, Ben Aaronovitch

The new Rivers of London novella, though in this case it's more snowy Great Lakes of America, featuring Special Agent Kimberly Reynolds responding to a distress call from a retired FBI agent for "whoever's in charge of the basement nowadays".  Bonus points for the X-Files reference. I may well pick this up as soon as I've cleared the books I'm currently reading.

Dying With Her Cheer Pants On, Seanan McGuire.

Fix-up novel, imagine BtvS, but with Buffy replaced by the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad. I do want to read this, but might wait and see if it pops up on offer.

Feed, Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire)

It's a couple of decades since the zombies rose and George and her brother Shaun are intent on succeeding as celebrity bloggers, whether as a serious reporter (Georgia) or by poking zombies with a hockey stick (Shaun). Being selected to report on the presidential campaign from the inside can only help. I've been meaning to try the series for years, but never really got around to it before now. I suspect the idea of influencing people by blogging/vlogging probably had slightly more impact when these first came out.

 

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

I'm headed up to see my folks at the end of the month (Easter trip postponed to Whit given a poorly timed bout of Covid on my brother-in-law's part), so went onto LNER's website to book the ticket on Monday night, at which point I was slightly disconcerted to be see:

1) in the left-hand column a confirmation that I'm a wheelchair-using passenger intending to stay in their chair throughout the journey,

and

2) in the right-hand column, almost exactly opposite, a warning that I may have to 'stand' on the connecting services*.

Slight lack of joined-up thinking in the website design there, I feel! **

* The connecting services don't do reservations, and one is a London commuter line, so the warnings aren't unreasonable for actual ambulant passengers, but we wheelchair-users have spaces all of our own.

** It's not the only issue, the time it allows to walk between stations if your journey needs that (St Pancras to Kings Cross in my case) doesn't allow for the extra 5-10 minutes needed to get off the incoming train if you need the ramp and the 20 minutes you're supposed to allow for passenger assistance at your outgoing station. But the standing thing is new.

Recent Reading

What Abigail Did That Summer, Ben Aaronovitch

This is a Rivers of London novella*, but from the point of view of Peter Grant's 13yo cousin Abigail, who makes up the youth wing of the Folly (aka Falcon, aka the Met Police's tame wizards - though Abigail has to pass her Latin GCSE before she gets to learn any spells). It's the summer holidays, and Peter's out of town helping on a missing persons case (and having encounters with homicidal unicorns - see Foxglove Summer), while Abigail's mother has a full-time job looking after her disabled brother, so Abigail is pretty much being left to her own devices. Until, that is, the espionage-obsessed talking foxes seek her out to tell her that something's amiss on Hampstead Heath (a large London park)**. And Abigail quickly figures out that whatever it is has already tried to suck her in, and, separately, her new friend Simon. So it's up to Abigail, Simon, and Indigo the fox to figure out what's going on.

Abigail's a pretty compelling, and convincingly written, character (there are footnotes to explain the slang, framed as for the Folly's tame FBI agent). It's very easy to accept that a streetwise, very intelligent, 13yo, mixed-race Londoner is going to give most police a very wide berth, or the minimum of (false) information necessary to get away, which makes Abigail taking on the problem herself convincing enough. There's only a brief appearance by Nightingale and not a lot of the Rivers here, bar a short audience with Fleet, but the covert female strand of wizardry does show up. Overall it's a strong addition to the series, though I foresee future issues between Nightingale and Simon's mum.

* At 175 pages short novel may be a better description.

** We're actually dropped into the story in media res, but loop back to the start almost immediately.

Werehunter, Mercedes Lackey

I actually pulled this off the shelf while I was winnowing a few books to go to the charity shop, but ended up reading it instead. It's a collection of short stories and I wasn't really taken by the title story, which may be why I didn't remember it favourably. There are a handful of other stories I was a bit meh! about, but another nine I did like, which is a reasonable ratio. Four of those revolve around S'Kitty, a telepathic ship's cat, and her handler as they deal with a bunch of aliens who have a vermin problem. They're not going to win any prizes, but they are enjoyable. The one Valdemar story deals with how Alberich, the Herald's Karsite weaponsmaster, was Chosen. There are two Diana Tregarde stories, one fairly slight encounter that's really, really not kind to the (thinly disguised) Romance Writers of America. I suspect revenge fiction. The other is reasonable, and went on to be the basis for her novel Children of the Night, but some of the language has not aged well. And the last two are a sort of junior Victorian paranormal investigator series with two girls (one an ex-streetkid) and a parrot at a school for the children of those working in the colonies, whose principal is an acknowledged Diana Tregarde expy. Again there are some language aging poorly issues, but they're otherwise sound enough. Their main issue is an egregious outbreak of Dick Van Dyke Cockney.

Hells Bell, Keri Arthur

Book 2 of the Lizzy Grace series and runaway-witch Lizzy and werewolf cop Aiden are fairly desperate to have sex, but ghostly bells summoning Lizzy to find a dead body with its soul ripped from it throw a major spanner in their plans. So Lizzy and her partner/familiar Belle have to step in again given the werewolf reservation's lack of a resident witch to protect its magical wellspring. It possibly plays the "Oh, bugger, we can't have sex, they just found another body" gambit once too often, but otherwise it's an enjoyable outing and the addition of grump witch troubleshooter Ashworth to the cast is a positive step.

Hunter Hunted, Keri Arthur

Book 3, and Lizzy stumbles onto someone conducting blood magic of the worst kind, the kind that leaves a body behind. The witch hierarchy that practically runs Australia call blood-magic using witches heretics, and has an agency to hunt them down, which is just as well as the wellspring decides Lizzie is just the person to turn to when someone starts hunting and skinning werewolves. On the positive side there's just time between the two crimes for Aiden to finally get her into bed. But when the heretic starts hunting the hunters, it turns out Lizzie really isn't going to get away with concentrating on the less dangerous threat.

Another competent episode, and after the previous book's addition of grumpy Ashworth I really liked the addition of his (non-grumpy) husband Eli.

Recent Gaming

I've been playing a fairly ridiculous amount of 7 Days to Die and my adventures in zombie AI wrangling continue. Over the past three horde nights:

Day 77: This week's preparatory changes were stringing a couple of rows of barbed wire down the sides of my base, and fortifying the stairwell up to the ground floor proper/mezzanine should they manage to beat their way into the cellar. Rather than attack me at the (almost) open front door all the zombies still charged up to the sides of my base, into the barbed wire and set about trying to beat their way through the fencing at the side (5000 damage points per block) that keeps them out from under the balcony. I had great fun when I discovered that they would come to stand below wherever I was standing on the balcony, wading through the barbed wide to get there, so I spent horde night running from front to back and vice versa, and taking potshots at the zombies as they tried to keep up with me and the barbed wire slowly whittled them down from below.

Day 84: I doubled up the side fencing to two layers. And this time I got the zombies to the front of the house, where they promptly tried to beat their way through the fencing under the balcony, which was still single layer there. *Headdesk* 

On top of that the World War Z style zombie pile-on at that corner was reaching the point that it was threatening to overtop the fence on top of the balcony, even though that's the in-game equivalent of four metres off the ground. So I rushed out to the projecting bastion and started shooting out the bottom of the pile, which was the moment I glitched through the balcony, down onto ground level with the zombies.

I'd hosed off three full magazines from my AK-47 in a panic before I realised they couldn't get to me, that I was still safely inside the double layered fencing under the bastion and they couldn't reach through to me. Which let me finish horde-night in a much more leisurely fashion. On the gripping hand it took me 5 minutes to beat my way out with an axe in the morning.

Day 91: This time I upgraded the fencing to two layers all around the base, and three in places (and put escape hatches in the floor/roof of all of the bastions in case of another glitch). I think that makes a minimum of 15,000 points of damage to beat their way into the base at ground level (and zombies mostly do 10-20 points per hit). And it worked, they finally came for me at the front door.

Gulp.

They still didn't come quite the way I'd expected. They came up a couple of side staircases that need an awkward jump, rather than up the nice simple ramp they were supposed to use (and I'd forgotten to pull up the temporary planking over the pit of barbed wire that was supposed to force them onto awkward balance poles that they will fall off half the time). And for the fifteen minutes of horde night I was firing pretty much continuously trying to keep them back. Of five layers of barricade they'd beaten their way through two and were regularly hurdling the third, simply because I couldn't fire fast enough to kill them to give me time to repair the barricades. At one point they actually got all the way in and almost killed me before I managed to hose them down with the AK-47. I ended the night with 6 rounds of rifle ammunition left out of just shy of 200, and had also used about a hundred each of pistol and shotgun ammunition. Eeep!

Exodus, Steve White and Shirley Meier

I've been re-reading odd bits of the David Weber and Steve White Starfire series while thinking about the associated game rules (the game came first, with Weber honchoing the third edition before he made it big as an author). And I came across a reference to White having published further books in the series. It turns out there are actually four more, apparently two linked duologies, one book with Meier and three with Charles Gannon. So I decided I'd pick up the first one for my Kindle.

And it would have to be the Kindle, because that cover is so bad I would have been embarrassed to buy it in store, or have it on my bookshelves. The book introduces a new species, the Arduin, who are basically humanoid, but specified as having three eyes, one large above two small, no nose, and with limbs that are somewhat tentacular and hands that are very tentacular. They're also bald, and are called "Baldies" by the humans throughout the book. So our artist interpreted this as an extremely well-endowed woman, wearing strategically-draped minimal clothing, with conventionally jointed limbs, though they do have the tentacular hands. And if you look closely you find that there is actually a third eye squeezed in at the bridge of the nose, which is covered in Star Trek Klingon brow-ridges. And god knows if she'd bald or not, because she's wearing an extremely ornate headdress, and I can't swear that part of it isn't supposed to be antennae. About the only thing the artist got right is that she has gold skin, And the '50s era looking blocky starships visible over her shoulder have tentacles extending out of their bottoms. ?!?

It is just so obvious the artist has taken a pre-existing image of a half-dressed woman and painted over it. *headdesk*

Unfortunately the writing also leaves something to be desired. It's basically the plot of the first Weber/White Starfire novel, Crusade, all over again - unknown species appears, decides they have a religious casus belli against all humans and launches a genocidal war egged on by corrupt churchmen while one alien leader wonders 'Are we the baddies?' And I was just complaining last month about Weber having used this plot three times already. There's actually some reasonably decent writing and characterisation, which is probably helped by most of the human characters being retreads from Insurrection, the last novel in the Weber-White timeline (though written second), even if they are, mostly, 80 years older. But some of the writing is just plain bad. One of the established major civilisations appears to have been put on a bus, while there's a supposedly important sub-plot about human resistance on an occupied planet that gets precisely three scenes, and if you are having two of your military characters lament about no one studying military history any more, do not mis-spell the name of Erwin Rommel. And for experienced military SF writers, the authors seem remarkably hazy about the appropriate ranks for characters.

But "Irwin Rommel" is not the only spelling or layout error, this is a book that literally talks about "armerments", and where every scene break indicator has gone AWOL, so you suddenly find yourself out of one character's POV and in that of someone on the other side, on a different planet, and months later.

It's just plain bad. The only way I could recommend it is if you were looking for additional background for the game, which basically I was, but still. (Though I did finally work out whether it was Weber or White who has a thing for short women, it's White.)

I also downloaded the Kindle sample for the next book, Extremis, with Gannon replacing Meier*. Which opens with a stirring speech with the (extremely short) resistance leader telling people "You're all marines now, and you'll use marine rank whatever service you came from". Which might have been more impressive if she wasn't a character whose rank was, and is confirmed immediately post-speech to remain, the naval rank of Commander. (Also, no civilians in the resistance?) *le sigh*

* Changing co-authors mid-duology is probably never a good sign.

This is the first in Stross''s new sub-series in his Laundry Files universe (the second is now out, so the first dropped to a price I'm prepared to pay).

It's Christmas and four Alfar warriors are crucifying a Santa on Regent Street - or in other words Case Nightmare Green is in effect and the stars haven't just come right, Nyar Lat Hotep is now PM, there's a skull rack decorating Marble Arch and the old judicial code, the one Hanging Judge Jeffries was so fond of, is back in effect. Which makes blaggng the day's pre-Christmas takings from Hamleys while dressed as the Joker, Batman, Robin and Princess Shuri somewhat risky, but it helps when you are a transhuman and really do have superpowers (courtesy of said stars coming right). Which is our introduction to the Lost Boys, Imp, who wants enough money to film a cyberpunk Peter Pan, Doc Despair, Becca the Deliverator and Game Boy, whose panic disorder is perhaps less than ideal for being part of Imp's plan, but whose physical timing is flawless.

Meanwhile Eve Starkey is deliberating on the alternative uses of kitchen utensils and stuck being sexually abused by her boss, billionaire hedge-fund owner Rupert Bigge, who I rapidly started picturing as Boris Johnson. While across town ex Detective Constable Wendy Deere is getting an unexpected promotion off her zero-hours contract doing security in order to become Able Archer*, Hiveco's first transhuman thieftaker, and Hamleys have thieves they want taking.

It's rapidly clear that pretty much everyone but Rupert is being exploited and/or double crossed in one way or another, with the Lost Boys at the bottom of the pyramid. But there's a book Rupert wants, no matter who he has to kill for it, a reputed concordance to the Necronomicon that could be really useful to a cult high priest like him, particularly one who backed the wrong deity to manifest first, And what Rupe wants, Eve needs to get, and it just so happens she knows an Imp of a thief.

I don't think you need to have read Stross's Laundry Files books to know how we got to Case Nightmare Green and how the book's universe works, but it certainly won't hurt. I liked this a lot, but more the set-up than the denouement. The denoument has no less than six separate factions, seven if you count Tinkerbell (because the Peter Pan references extend significantly beyond the Lost Boys and Wendy Deere), and I definitely lost track of people,

(And on top of that I had definite suspension of disbelief issues that no one in a genre-savvy team like the Lost Boys protested when they decide to split the party!).

With that caveat, I think Stross deserves credit for some of the characterisation work, I didn't expect to end up caring for Eve and I think he does a particularly good job with Game Boy as an abused trans kid. (It's noticeable that all the unambiguously not-evil characters are LGBT**),

* That name is not reassuring, It's appropriate for reasons that become clear, but Able Archer 83 was the NATO exercise that nearly caused the Politburo to launch a preemptive nuclear strike in the belief NATO was about to storm across the Intra-German Border

** I suppose Rupert could be called bi, but I think it would be more accurate to record his sexual identity as abuser.

British Secret Projects: Fighters 1935-1950, 2nd Edition, Tony Buttler

I bought the first edition of this 15 years ago, and have probably read it a dozen times since. It's the story of all the planes we didn't build in WWII, but that first edition was Fighter and Bombers 1935-1950, and for the second edition they've split the book in two and doubled the page count of each half. There's a lot of unchanged text, and quite a lot that's new, but mostly there's a lot of new pictures and diagrams, mostly excellent, though a few are in terrible condition, but worth a place as the only known illustrations of their types, Overall there's more than enough here to leave me thinking I got my money's worth even with everything I've seen before. I'm not surprised that quite a few more projects have been dug out of the archives over the course of the last 15 years, but I am surprised that several of them are previously completely unknown Spitfire projects. I will be picking up the Bomber 2nd edition, but probably not immediately as I'll definitely be dipping back into this for a while yet.
 

Given ongoing computer shenanigans I finally dug out my old laptop and powered it up earlier, and it's actually working better than it was when I stopped using it in early pandemic. It still needs a new keyboard, but it has at least stopped sending out spurious characters at random and a plug in keyboard works fine. As my plan if it was still imitating an infinite number of monkeys was to unscrew everything in sight and physically disconnect the keyboard, this is a bit of a relief (of course sod's law says that I happen to have the version with the most complicated disassembly in the whole range).

I've also relocated it to my computer desk as sitting cross-legged on my bed all afternoon has not done my hips any favours. Ow.

So hopefully I'm now safe (I'll give this one a day or two just to confirm it's working reliably) to sort out the profile issue on the other laptop, and then use one or the other to get back to the disc recovery for the desktop I was trying to do way back in October.

In other news, I finished Katherine Addison's Witness for the Dead last nigtht (which I picked up for a ridiculous £0.99 during Black Friday), and OMG, so good! Celehar, the Witness Vel Ama who had a minor but vital role in The Goblin Emperor is now back out among the people and doing the job he trained for as a priest and witness for the dead, but has two thorny problems, a burial a family member thinks might have been a murder, but he where can't find the grave, and the second a body pulled from the river, which his ability to witness tells him was definitely a murder. The two cases intertwine through the book, as does a messy case of 'but papa said I was to inherit' among one of the wealthier families of the city. I was a bit worried the story was flying off at a tangent mid-book, but Addison wove that thread neatly back into the main story.

I just ordered a book for my mother she wants as a present for my sister. I wasn't sure what it was about, some piece of local history and my mother apparently knows the author, but having now seen the tag line I'd definitely have given it a second look "Shabby Wedding : the true story of Mary Jane Dodds, married twice, buried twice, and both her husbands hung". That's definitely an interesting opening!