 |
| 4 out of 5 stars |
Nevada Baylor is faced
with the most challenging case of her detective career—a suicide mission
to bring in a suspect in a volatile case. Nevada isn’t sure she has the
chops. Her quarry is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, who can
set anyone and anything on fire.
Then she’s kidnapped by Connor
“Mad” Rogan—a darkly tempting billionaire with equally devastating
powers. Torn between wanting to run or surrender to their overwhelming
attraction, Nevada must join forces with Rogan to stay alive.
Rogan’s
after the same target, so he needs Nevada. But she’s getting under his
skin, making him care about someone other than himself for a change.
And, as Rogan has learned, love can be as perilous as death, especially
in the magic world.
I
enjoyed this first book of a new series by the Ilona Andrews writing
team and I’ll definitely be waiting impatiently for the second volume to
be published this year.
That said, I can objectively see where a
lot of this is simply a re-write of the Kate Daniels series. Nevada is
the Kate clone—a tough, independent young woman with hidden talents
waiting to be revealed and protective instincts that guide her
behaviour. Connor “Mad” Rogan is the Curran substitute—the overpowering
and arrogant alpha male. He’s pretty cliché, actually, being all the
things that we women are supposed to desire, sexy, rich, and powerful.
Switch out the Pack from the Kate Daniels series and put in Nevada’s
family, including a heavy-duty-mechanic grandmother, a magical
sharpshooter mother, and variously talented siblings.
The thing
is, I like these people. I like Nevada. I love her grandma. I appreciate
Nevada’s moral outlook on the world, i.e. everyone is someone’s child,
parent, sibling, or loved one and deserves to be protected. I will wait
to see how Rogan will be converted into someone less self-involved, less
cold & calculating. The Andrews have set him up as rather
psychopathic—a condition which has no cure in the real world, especially
as psychopaths see absolutely nothing wrong with their state.
(Actually, he’s maybe closer to Hugh D’Ambray than to Curran, which may
make for some interesting plot points).
Obviously, this is a
winning formula for the Andrews. I can’t blame them for re-constituting
it, giving it a somewhat different spin, and getting some more mileage
from it. And they have given us a differently magical world in this
series—so far, no vampires or were-animals. The Primes are magic users
with semi-god-like powers, reminiscent of Kate’s father and/or Hugh
D’Ambray, but they are far more human in their outlooks.
Now, I must settle in to wait until the end of May for the next installment.
 |
| 3 out of 5 stars |
Dark Horse's
republication of Fritz Leiber's immortal tales of Fafhrd and the Gray
Mouser reach a turning point with this new edition of Leiber's final
stories of the two intrepid adventurers. Their journeys have taken them
from one side of Nehwon to the other, facing life-risking peril at every
turn. Now, in a set of stories that show us Fafhrd and the Mouser both
on their own and together, they will face some of their most challenging
obstacles, and - against assassins, angry gods, and even Death himself -
the duo must battle for their very lives. With a mixture of high
adventure, moving drama, and broad comedy, The Knight and Knave of
Swords is a perfect endpiece to Leiber's stories of the stalwart
comrades.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Cranky Old Men edition
We’re old, we’re gray, get off our lawn.
A
somewhat unfair assessment of the last FatGM book by Fritz Leiber, who
died 4 years after it was copyrighted, at age 81. A few statements
within the first few pages seemed to indicate that he was writing to
placate fans of the series—you know us fans, we are always clamouring
for more adventures of our favourites! I imagine that it’s hard to
scrape up enthusiasm for a project that feels rather forced on the
writer, especially after 50 years of writing these adventures.
Fafhrd
and Mouser are reluctant adventurers in this installment. They would
far rather settle down with their current lady-loves, go on the odd
commercial venture, and live comfortably for the rest of their lives,
but when your life is entwined with nosy gods there are bound to be
interruptions.
Leiber was obviously concerned with issues of
mortality while writing this, as Fafhrd and Mouser end up with a spell
on them, making them elderly in outlook before their time. His earlier
beautiful vocabulary gets much coarser in Knight and Knave and I don’t think he got the same delight out of writing about these two rascals anymore.
It
was rather sad to watch the decline of the barbarian and the cut-purse,
just as it is sad to watch the subtle decline in an elderly relative.
Book 238 of my science fiction and fantasy reading project.
 |
| 3.5 out of 5 stars |
Victorian London is a
cesspool of crime, and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives—known as
“The Murder Squad”—to investigate countless murders every month.
Created after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure to capture
Jack the Ripper, The Murder Squad suffers rampant public contempt. They
have failed their citizens. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder
of one of their own . . . one of the twelve . . .When Walter Day, the
squad’s newest hire, is assigned the case of the murdered detective, he
finds a strange ally in the Yard’s first forensic pathologist, Dr.
Bernard Kingsley. Together they track the killer, who clearly is not
finished with The Murder Squad . . . but why?
I liked The Yard.
I really wanted to love it, but a couple of things stood in my way. I
really felt like it was a modern forensic mystery being forced into a
Victorian corset—and details were frequently straining to escape.
A
little research has helped me like it more. This really was the time
period during which fingerprinting became a thing that police forces did
and autopsies were practiced. I found the resistance of some members of
the police force to these procedures to be believable—perhaps more
believable than the easy acceptance of them by the main characters.
I probably would have been more enamoured by this novel had I not been reading some of Ben Aaronovitch’s excellent Rivers of London
series recently. Aaronovitch, as a Londoner, has such an advantage with
the dialog—his sounds authentic, he uses slang expertly, his dialog
sounds natural. This is a difficult task for a North American author to
duplicate. Grecian’s characters inevitably end up sounding somewhat
American. A couple of references to the modern myth of families needing
"closure" especially rubbed me the wrong way, particularly since I
really don't believe that there's any such thing! Having lost family
traumatically in a car accident, I can tell you that there is never
closure, just the careful construction of a new reality.
I didn’t get a strong sense of place in The Yard either. London is such a wonderful, rich location for a story--Rivers of London or the Slough House series by Mick Herron make the city an integral part of the action.
Still,
this was an interesting first book in the series and I wouldn’t be
surprised if I read at least the second book at some point to see if the
author finds his footing. There are a number of interesting people who
seem poised to become regulars and the possibilities are intriguing. If
you enjoyed this book, I would also recommend Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye, a book which I feel captures the flavor of the period a little better.
