Die Farbe der Rache Cornelia Funke I first listened to  Cornelia Funke 's  Inkworld  trilogy (as it then was) beginning in 2004, and then as the audiobooks became available. They were among the very first audiobooks I ever listened to, and they were VERY good. The premise of the series is that some especially good narrators can, by reading a book aloud, read characters from the fictional world of the book into our own, and likewise read people from our world into the fictional world of the book. Versions of this idea are fairly common in fantasy fiction, and it's not hard to see why. If you are an avid reader, you feel that something like this happens when you read a good book: you enter into the book, and for a while you dwell in that fictional world. Aside from our own, the world in which most of the action of the  Inkworld  trilogy takes place is one created by a writer named Fenoglio in a fantasy novel called  Inkheart . Although the series begins in ou...

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death M.C. Beaton Now, let's be clear about one thing: we are not MEANT to like Agatha Raisin. She's not very smart, she doesn't think through the consequences of her actions, she has the social maturity of a junior-high-school student, and her first impulse (an impulse to which she always gives way) in any contest is to cheat. And of course she gets caught, and because she has the author on her side, she gets away with it. Now, to be sure -- it is not necessarily a problem that the protagonist of a novel is a jerk. Lots of novels are fronted by antiheroes who manage to be fun characters, despite being awful people. Agatha Raisin is not one of those, in my opinion. (As always, Your Mileage May Vary.) I will not be reading any more of the series. Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death  on Amazon Goodreads review  

The Tea Master and the Detective Aliette de Bodard Aliette de Bodard 's  The Tea Master and the Detective  is a novella/novelette (it took me about two hours to read) set in  de Bodard 's  Xuya Universe . In my opinion, a reader will benefit from a little background reading on Xuya before attempting any Xuya stories. Of the three I have read so far, which are  The Citadel of Weeping Pearls ,  Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight , and  The Tea Master and the Detective , this is the only one that is really comprehensible without a prior introduction to the world. The main innovation in this story, and one of the principle features of  de Bodard 's Xuya, is the existence of spaceships who are persons. Science Fiction fans will have encountered the idea of conscious spaceships before this. The earliest example of it that I know was  Anne McCaffrey 's  The Ship Who Sang , and a more recent example is  Ann Leckie 's  Imperial Radch ...

All for the Union: The Civil War Diary & Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes Elisha Hunt Rhodes, Robert Hunt Rhodes (editor) In 1861 at the age of nineteen,  Elisha Hunt Rhodes  enlisted in the second Rhode Island volunteers (which he abbreviates 2nd RI Vols) as a private. He was barely able even to do that. He was the oldest son of a widow, and his mother was reluctant to see him go. Furthermore, when he tried to enlist, the doctor told him: “Young man, you cannot go. You are not fit to be a soldier.” When the Colonel said to sign him up, anyway, the doctor responded, “Why Colonel, he will be in the hospital in a week, and we shall have to send him home.” Four years later, at the age of 23,  Rhodes  was himself the colonel in command of the 2nd RI Vols, until the regiment was mustered out of service after the end of the Civil War. In those four years  Rhodes  and the 2nd RI Vols fought in every major battle of the Army of the Potomac. This includes many of t...

The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman Strangely, considering that I don't think myself a fan of mystery novels, I've been reading a lot of them lately. Right now, aside from  Richard Osman 's  Thursday Murder Club , which I have just finished, I am listening to  Agatha Rasin and the Quiche of Death  and reading  The Tea Master and the Detective The reason is that mysteries are allowed to be pure fun. They are what, in my youth, people with literary pretensions condemned Science Fiction as being: escapism. I haven't heard that line much recently, because since the 1970s "escapist" has transitioned from being a bad thing to a neutral description. Apparently over the course of the last five decades reading for fun has become a thing no one needs to be ashamed of. Who says that there is no such thing as progress! The Thursday Murder Club  is that kind of mystery. It doesn't pretend to be Great Literature, or even marginally plausible. The Thursday Murder Club...

Amongst Our Weapons Ben Aaronovitch,  Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (narrator) The truth is, I have very little to say about the audiobook of  Amongst Our Weapons  that I haven't already said in  my review of the kindle edition . Often one sees new things the second time one reads a book, but that didn't really happen with  Amongst Our Weapons . Furthermore, narrator  Kobna Holdbrook-Smith  is familiar from most of the earlier  Rivers of London  audiobooks, and he puts in his usual excellent performance. Thus, I have nothing more to add about the audiobook. Amongst Our Weapons  on Amazon Goodreads review  

Winter's Gifts Ben Aaronovitch, Penelope Rawlins (Narrator) This audiobook was my first experience of  Ben Aaronovitch 's  Winter's Gifts  in English, for reasons I explained in  my review  of  Die schlafenden Geister des Lake Superior . Even now, the English edition of  Winter's Gifts  is not available on kindle. So, I learned a few new things. For instance,  Aaronovitch  is pronounced with the accent on the second 'o', and Kim uses the euphemism "fudge" for the popular cussword beginning with 'f'. My main new impression, however, was of the narration by  Penelope Rawlins .  Kobna Holdbrook-Smith  is a tough act to follow.  Rawlins  does manage convincing American accents, a challenge  Kobna  struggles with. But she often fails at Job #1 of an audiobook narrator, making distinct characters sound distinct.  Rawlins  speaks adult male voices in an odd breathy manner. All of them. As a result, t...

Of Wars, Memories, and Starlight Aliette de Bodard When I call  Aliette de Bodard 's  Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight  "dense", what I mean is that there is a lot of stuff packed into a small space. I picked it up because  de Bodard 's Xuya Universe is a finalist for the 2024 Best Series Hugo, and this collection of stories seemed the easiest way to ease into Xuya.  De Bodard  is one of those authors who makes her readers work. The detail of the world-building recalls  Tolkien , but  Tolkien 's Middle-Earth was built of elements familiar (to me) from European folklore.  De Bodard 's heritage is Vietnamese, with which I (like, I suspect, most English-speaking readers) am unfamiliar. Furthermore, it is science fiction, meaning that even Vietnamese culture will only get you so far. I suggest having a look through  de Bodard 's  Universe of Xuya  page before reading the stories. It helped me a lot. The Story Notes at the end o...

Burning Chrome William Gibson It was around 1986 when I picked up  William Gibson 's  Count Zero  in an airport bookstore. After gobbling it down on the flight, I grabbed everything by  Gibson  I could get my hands on. There wasn't much. Of course  Neuromancer  was next.  Mona Lisa Overdrive  would not come out for another two years, thus the small collection  Burning Chrome  was my third  Gibson  book.  Burning Chrome  contains ten stories, seven by  Gibson  and three collaborations with other cyperpunk authors. I remember finding the collabs inferior. At this remove I really only remember two of the ten stories: "Johnny Mnemonic" and the title story "Burning Chrome". These two stories are the clearest precursors of the  Cyberspace  trilogy. "Johnny Mnemonic" is my favorite, because it introduces razorgirl Molly Millions (AKA Sally Shears), my favorite character from the  Cyberspace ...

The Creeps John Connolly The Creeps  is the third and last book of  John Connolly 's  Samuel Johnson  series. You should read the first two books before this one. If you don't, prepare to be scolded at length in detailed footnotes by  Connolly . Actually, it's fun to be scolded by  Connolly . You will want to to read all the footnotes, anyway. They are literally the best part of the series. By now, book 3,  Connolly  has assembled a large cast of characters: Samuel Johnson himself, his dachshund Boswell, his human friends Maria and Tom, assorted clueless physicists, his demon friends Nurd and Wormwood, Dan, Dan, the Ice-Cream Man and his Dwarfs, officers Rowan and Peel. and a new one: the monster Crudford, a small behatted gelatinous blob. Also, of course we have The Great Malevolence and Mrs Abernathy, who was once the GM's left-hand demon Baal, but has now become a sort of vaguely humanoid essence of pure hatred for Samuel. So, really, all ...

Inkdeath Cornelia Funke, Allan Corduner (narrator) I discovered audible in 2004 and began listening to audiobooks while driving and working out. Among the very first I listened to were the  Inkworld  trilogy. They were great! Recently I learned that the  Inkworld  trilogy is no longer a trilogy, as  Cornelia Funke  has published a fourth novel,  Die Farbe der Rache . In English that's  The Color of Revenge , to be released 12-Nov-2024. But the original German is available already, und zwar, it is sitting on my bookshelf right now. Since I first listened to the original trilogy twenty years ago, I decided to listen to it once again before tackling  Die Farbe der Rache . And I have now done that. I can confirm that the trilogy is as good as I remembered. The premise of  Inkworld  is that certain particularly skilled readers can, by reading aloud, bring characters from works of fiction into our world, and also the reverse, read charact...

Shards of Earth Adrian Tchaikovsky I am not a worshipper of  Adrian Tchaikovsky , but I respect him enough to give almost any new thing he writes a chance. He's writing some of the best hard science fiction being published today, for instance  Children of Time . He also writes some of the best thoughtful fantasy being published, like  And Put Away Childish Things . He has, in my opinion, one major fault, and that is his tendency to degenerate into juvenile dorm-room philosophizing, for instance  Children of Memory  and  Service Model .  Shards of Earth  is none of those things. I give  Tchaikovsky  credit for one major thing: he keeps experimenting, he keeps trying new stuff.  Shards of Earth  is, in my opinion, an experiment that didn't work out well. I picked up  Shards of Earth  because  The Final Architecture  is a finalist for a 2024 Best Series Hugo Award. I will not be reading any more of the series. ...

Mona Lisa Overdrive William Gibson Mona Lisa Overdrive  is the third and final novel in  William Gibson 's  Cyberspace  trilogy, To me, this one felt different from the first two, in that it feels more happy, and not everyone in it is a petty criminal down on his/her luck. The main point-of-view characters are Mona, Angie, Kumiko, and Slick Henry. Mona and Slick Henry fit the character types of  Neuromancer  and  Count Zero  -- Mona is a cheap drug-addicted prostitute and Slick Henry an ex-con with brain damage. They live in or near the Sprawl -- the vast conurbation on the Eastern seaboard of what used to be the USA. Angie and Kumiko, however are rich and lawful. Angie (whom we first met in  Count Zero ) is the biggest of simstim stars. Kumiko is the daughter of a wealthy Yakuza boss, visiting London while her father tries to survive a gang war. While her father is the leader of a criminal gang, Kumiko herself is not a criminal. While undoub...

Neuromancer William Gibson I discovered  William Gibson 's  Cyberspace  trilogy by finding  Count Zero  in an airport bookstore. Consequently I read the series out of order,  beginning with Count Zero . Each book rotates point-of-view among four or five characters, but just as  Count Zero  seemed to me to be mainly the story of cyberspace cowboy Bobby,  Neuromancer  is the story of former cyberspace cowboy Case. (That's Henry Dorsett Case, a series of names he never uses.) Some years before the start of the book Case made the disastrous mistake of trying to roll a business partner, who retaliated by poisoning him with a toxin that destroyed his ability to surf cyberspace. When we first meet Case, he's in someplace that used to be Japan, and he is circling the drain. He's very obviously trying to commit suicide-by-failed-deal, a talent in which he of course has form. He is approached by Molly/Sally -- the one major character who runs thro...

Count Zero William Gibson Count Zero  was the first book in  William Gibson 's  Cyberspace  trilogy I read. I picked it up in an airport bookstore, where it was on display, so it was probably pretty newly published -- let's say 1984. The Internet existed -- I had been using it to send email, although that was still pretty difficult and took some figgerin. It would be another ten years before  Tim Berners-Lee 's World-Wide Web got off the ground as a thing that any academic could use, and thus a version of  Gibson 's cyberspace became real. There were no eBooks back them (not really), which meant that a person like me, who must ALWAYS have a book to read, had to carry a backpack full of heavy paper books when I traveled. A quick glance in the bookstore made it clear that  Count Zero  was my kind of book. And it was. As it happens, the series works almost equally well in the order  Count Zero ,  Neuromancer ,  Mona Lisa Overdrive ...