Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[Mike Hobart]

The Sinister Shadow (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 14)
by Kenneth Robeson/Will Murray 2015

If you aren't familiar with the great pulp heroes, you may take a while to get into this one, but I found it an agreeable pastiche in which the Man of Bronze crosses paths with The Shadow. Doc is baffled at first whether the Shadow is a bad guy or a crime-fighter, and even ships one of the Shadow's agents off to be treated at his secret "College" in the mountains.
The plot thickens .....

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Next is Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

Unimpressed. Long slog. Reasons were the amateurish writing, cliches, immature romance scenes, slow plot and callous regard for life. The dragons were interesting, and the ending was unexpected. This may be a case where the TV show is better than the book.

Considering all the best-book-of-the-year awards this title won I expected more ... much much more. Regarding the "romantasy" category, Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education was far superior IMO.

Next, The Inverted World by Christopher Priest, a Hugo nominee 1975.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: A re-read for a book group: The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. The first in her Dr Ruth Galloway series.

Which was better than I remembered. Although a few oddities with the police procedure!

After that I raced through several books by Seanan McGuire in her October Daye and Incryptid series: The Brightest Fell, Night and Silence, and Chaos Choreography. All good fun.

Then a recent buy: The Death of Nnanji. A very good late fourth book for his Seventh Sword trilogy. Enjoyable, and didn't mess up the earlier books.

Most recently finished was A Desperate Undertaking by Lindsey Davis. The tenth in her Flavia Albia series. It starts off with an unnecessary first chapter which is then recapitulated in correct choronological order later. There's a very odd reference to golden age detective story tropes. On the whole, a bit odd, and too many of Albia's internal musings are anachronistic.

I also thought that given the common spectacles in Rome, her squeamishness and that of some of the other characters in here was overplayed.

Next up: The Wages of Sin by Harry Turtledove. A near-past (for Harry) alternate history in the 19th Century. A freebie from Phoenix Pick.