• Nothing to Lose by Lee Child – 3 stars

  Though this latest Jack Reacher novel is leaps and bounds beyond the decidedly underwhelming Bad Luck and Trouble—it was, typically of Child, engaging and well-written, and thankfully suffered from none of its predecessor’s plot discrepancies—I just couldn’t get into it. I think my problem is that I am starting to feel a real lack of credible motivation from Reacher himself. I’m tired of reading Reacher books where he involves himself in something because they messed with the wrong guy, or that the organizing principle of his life is relentless forward motion. When does it become personal? When does it become difficult for him? Where’s the challenge?

  The last few books have followed the same formula: someone pisses him off and he goes in and cleans the floor with the villain(s). Not since One Shot, in fact, and probably actually not since The Enemy, has Reacher seemed fully, emotionally engaged in the book’s conflict. Really, he’s lost his humanity, or is near it, and I’m near to never picking up another Reacher book.

• Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs – 4 stars

  The beginning of a new series set in the same world as Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books, Cry Wolf is another strong offering from a very talented author. It was very good, but not quite as good as the Mercy books, and I think it’s because of the character development. Each of the two main characters is still a bit of a cipher, though I hope and expect that will change as the series progresses—it is admittedly a bit unfair of me to compare this single novel to a series that has 3 whole books out, and which is therefore guaranteed to have better fleshed-out characters.

  Again, I have to say that Briggs is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors, and Cry Wolf is only strengthening her position. If you haven’t read her excellent, excellent urban fantasy books, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.

I mean when I read a truly great book, I am pulled in two directions. On the one hand, I feel humbled and grateful for the opportunity to spend a few hours or days or weeks in the author’s world. On the other, my own small pretensions at the craft mire me in petty jealousy.

Being possessed of just enough skill to recognize it in others, to know mastery when I see it, is a bittersweet experience indeed. And rarely have I felt so humbled and jealous as when I finished reading Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora (5 stars, and more, if it was possible).

It is grand, ambitious, clever, funny, brilliant—and all this from a debut novel. I am unutterably jealous of Lynch’s accomplishment, and equally happy that I was able to spend a few weeks with Locke and Jean and the Gentlemen Bastards.

By turns ruthless^* and hilarious, Lynch could teach the Byzantines a thing or two about the complex scheme, the roundabout intrigue; his plotting is as graceful and labyrinthine as the concrete curves of highway interchanges.

But the best thing of all? This is book one of a planned seven, and the second is already out. But the pit in this cherry, the fly doing the backstroke in this bisque, is that the third book doesn’t come out until early next year. And so I find myself torn again. Do I begin Red Seas Under Red Skies right away? Or do I torture myself and wait so that the wait afterwards won’t be so unbearable?

^* Ruthless enough, like George R.R. Martin, to be truly unpredictable.

The Secret History of the English Language by M.J. Harper – 4 stars

The jacket copy of this book reads as follows:

The story goes like this:

The Anglo-Saxons, a small, uncultured group of people from a place no longer identifiable, went to Britain, replaced the existing population, and, within 300 years, gave us the English language.

This gives rise to three possibilities:

1. These “Anglo-Saxons” are a very remarkable people.
2. History is full of surprises.
3. Historians have got it completely wrong.

This book advances the third possibility.

As delightfully snarky as this suggests, the book is learned, well-written, and quietly revolutionary. As much a manifesto urging us to overthrow our academic oppressors as a refutation of some downright silly conventional wisdom, this book asks some hard questions about academia and education today. Harper gleefully picks apart the foundation of much of what we think we know, with the eventual goal of making the whole house of cards collapse in on itself.

He is an applied epistemologist, or a member of the school of thought that “believes that everybody gets everything wrong.” From the afterword of the book:

Anybody who finds the material in The Secret History of the English Language interesting enough to wish to follow things up should head for

www.applied-epistemology.org

where they will find a whole bunch of people following up this and various other strands of organized human thought that require radical revision. However, you are strongly advised not to Google “Applied Epistemology”, because there you will be greeted by thousands of entries from and about people who claim to be involved in Applied Epistemology but who in fact have hijacked this very useful term to open yet another interminable branch in that utterly useless area of academic endeavor, Philosophy. Real Applied Epistemology deals with real trees in real forests that exist, so far as we know, whether we are observing them or not. Yes, yes, you believe that “so far as we know” is a frightfully important qualification. On second thoughts, don’t bother to join us.

Read this book. You won’t regret it.

• Heroes Adrift by Moira J. Moore – 4 stars

  This book is a strong follow-up to the previous two novels in this series (Resenting the Hero and The Hero Strikes Back), as engaging and unpretentious as its predecessors, though not, in the end, as good as either. I have to say, though, now that we’ve hit the third novel in the series, that it feels like the story is floundering a bit. Or maybe that’s my frustration talking.

  I say that because the author is letting several tantalizing hints of a potential overarching plot slip in every novel, and it feels like they’re either coming to nothing, or she’s just teasing us in preparation for a big reveal later on. I sincerely hope it’s the latter.

• Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs – 5 stars

  If it was possible to give Iron Kissed higher than the highest rating, I would have. I loved this book. As one reviewer said, this series just keeps getting better and better. Before reading this series, I wouldn’t have counted Briggs among my favorite authors, but her masterful execution of this novel has ensconced her firmly within the upper echelons of my personal hall of fame.

  This book has it all: fiercely engaging characters, tight, tight plotting, and a breakneck, hold-your-breath-till-the-last-page pace. What I love best of all is the way she is weaving the complicated tapestry of a bigger story from seemingly disparate threads without ever letting up on the tension of the immediate narrative (something the Heroes series does not do nearly as well, though it has the potential to). This kind of skill is something I had previously only associated with epic fantasy, with authors like Michelle West and Guy Gavriel Kay and George R.R. Martin, and this series of books is not only the best example of urban fantasy I’ve ever read, it’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite series ever. It’s that good.

• Half the Blood of Brooklyn by Charlie Huston – 5 stars

  Yeah, yeah, I know. Big surprise here. But what can I say? Huston is scarily perfect and delivers again. He aims for the jugular and never misses.

  Had I ever harbored any doubt that the Joe Pitt casebooks were horror stories, those doubts have been laid to rest: Half the Blood of Brooklyn is violent, bloody and glorious. Huston ratchets the tension impossibly higher—never forgetting to give the story as much heart as it has pyrotechnics—and by the end of the book you’re all wound up waiting for the shitstorm that will descend in the next installment. So good!

Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series:

• Ill Wind – 4 stars
• Heat Stroke – 4 stars
• Chill Factor – 4 stars
• Windfall – 5 stars
• Firestorm – 5 stars
• Thin Air – 5 stars

I first learned about these books from one of those if-you-liked-this-you-might-also-like-these promotions from Amazon, with regard to Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series, which as you know I love. I picked up the first one, read a few pages, thought it would be amusing, and bought it. One near-sleepless week later, I closed the back cover on the 6th of I don’t know how many books. I got sucked in in a way I haven’t been in a while. Fast paced, ferociously entertaining, though at times a bit fluffy, the Weather Warden series is skillfully-written, innovative, and simply unputdownable. The series gets better as it goes on (with Windfall being the best of the series so far, I think), though I confess I am becoming a bit tired of the dun-dun-DUN! surprises—to be fair, this may also be a function of me reading all of these too close to one another.

I like Caine’s way of getting her characters out of one bad situation only to dump them into a worse one, but as I said, it does become a bit wearying after a while. That said, these books are supremely enjoyable, and a worthy addition to one of my (surprisingly) new favorite subgenres: the urban fantasy.

It’s strange; though these books aren’t as well written as Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books, nor (and this is the important thing) as well plotted, I gave them an average rating higher than the Briggs books. The 4 and 5-star ratings for me are largely emotional, and though technical excellence will usually net a book a 4, I’ve really got to have an emotional connection with the book to push it up to that 5. Now that I think about it, though, the Briggs books really are better than these, as well as emotionally engaging, so I think I’ll have to revise their ratings up to 5.

Cast in Secret by Michelle Sagara – 4 stars

The third book in The Elantra Chronicles, while displaying Sagara’s usual mastery, just wasn’t as engaging for me as the first two books in this series. Beautifully written and fast-paced, as usual, but somehow not as epic, or as awe-inspiring as Cast in Courtlight, which I just loved. Sagara reports on her LiveJournal site that she’s just finished the first draft of Cast in Fury, the 4th Elantra book, and I can’t help but be excited by that.

Hunter’s Oath by Michelle West – 4 stars

The first in a fantasy duology set in the same world as the Sun Sword series, but a few years previous to the events thereof, it’s as good as I expected, though not, in the end, quite as good as its follow-up. Surprisingly, it’s a bit more accessible than the Sun Sword books, a bit more informal, more in the vein of the recent Elantra books. A promising beginning to a good series (whose second book I’m reading now). Recommended.

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child – 2 stars

I know: this is shocking. A 2 star book from Lee Child? Never say. Sadly, it’s true. Child was just going through the motions here, churning out another book on a tight schedule, and it showed. It felt forced; for one thing, if Reacher is so smart, why would he bullheadedly go down a wrong path without thinking twice about it? Completely disregarding, mind, a very reasonable possibility any reasonably intelligent person would have come up with in 5 minutes? So that Child could drag out the story for another 100 pages, that’s why.

This book was a huge disappointment, and simply does not compare with the rest of his work. 2 stars for being well-written enough—for all the flaws this book has, that wasn’t one of them—for me to make it the whole way through without too much complaint.

Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono

I first learned about this book, the first in a series of Japanese fantasy novels, by watching the anime series based on it a couple of years ago. I loved the series, especially because of its complex plot. Upon learning that it was based on a series of fantasy novels, I immediately became intrigued, but was destined to be frustrated, as there was no information at that time about a possible translation of the original books into English.

Now, though, Tokyopop has translated the first book into English and is selling a beautiful hardcover edition of it; I received my copy today. I’m very much looking forward to it. Stay tuned for my review!

A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett – 5 stars

This second book in Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series got a poor review from The Washington Post (read the review on Amazon), but I liked it better than the first. All the sharpness and, well, darkness that the first novel lacked are present in this one, and I found it a bit more engaging than its predecessor, more in the vein of the Pratchett I’ve come to expect in recent years. Excellent.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett – 4 stars

This is the first of Terry Pratchett’s children’s books I’ve read, and I liked it, as I expected it to. It’s a quick, charming read—a little less dark, and a little more silly, than his recent Discworld novels for older readers. Which for the most part works to great effect. The only complaint I have is that it as a result lacks some of the sharpness and subtlety of his recent Discworld novels. So while I really liked it, it wasn’t enough to get that 5 star rating. Highly recommended, of course.

Next up: A Hat Full of Sky, the second in this trilogy, which is to end with Wintersmith later this year.