Tip the Wink

Age of War by Michael Sullivan, fantasy. I originally read about this fantasy series, The Legends of the First Empire, in the blog Black Gate, and was sufficiently intrigued to get the first book, The Age of Myth, from the library. At the time it was described as a trilogy. Since Sullivan writes all of the books in a series prior to the publication of any, I thought surely it would be safe to start a series of several books. I didn’t count on the publisher’s plans however, to only publish one book a year. Drat. Still, the first two were at the library, and this, the third, must surely be available soon, and it was. I didn’t count on the long wait for this at the library, but finally it came.

I enjoyed it a lot, perhaps even more than the first two, and am quite satisfied with the series. But there is a hiccup. Sullivan decided he couldn’t cram everything into three books, and has expanded the story to four (or more??). I’ll have to wait until April ’19 for the next, (perhaps) concluding volume. Aaarg. Yet these are very good indeed and I look forward to Spring and the next book.

Trust Me by Hank Phillips Ryan, mystery/thriller. I’ve read the first two in Ryan’s Jane Ryland books, The Other Woman and The Wrong Girl, and liked them, so I thought I’d try the stand-alone mystery-thriller. I thought it was good, but not compelling enough to exclaim “wow!” at the end. Ryan is a solid writer and I look forward to more from her, but this wasn’t my favorite of her books that I’ve read so far.

So how about you?
What have you been reading?

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, non-fiction. I’d heard about and read about this book for years, perhaps decades, so I thought it finally time to read it. I’d read a book or two about the Civil War not long ago, and thought a jump forward to WWI might do.

What I found was an extremely densely packed book so full of dates, facts, names and places that it was nearly overwhelming. It’s hard for me to evaluate Tuckman’s much-praised writing, what there is of it inserted between the avalanche of facts on every page. I suppose this just wasn’t the type of history I wanted, as Guns of August could well be a textbook instead of pleasure reading. I’m glad there wasn’t a test, because I didn’t finish the book.

The Happy Birthday Murder by Lee Harris, mystery. All you need to do is go back a post or two to see my review of this one for Forgotten Books on October 26. I need not say more, except to say again this isn’t an author or series I much cared for.

How about you?
What have you been reading lately?

My reading has been slowing down during the nice Fall weather, we’ve been outside more and getting the garden ready for Winter. So, just one book this time.

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou – non-fiction. In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.

The book tells the story of the rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and aggressive threats by her lawyers.

In Bad Blood, John Carreyrou tells the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley. I enjoyed this a lot, and so did Barbara. Incredible they could have gotten away with this for so long. A nod to George Kelley whose review of this brought it to my attention.

So how about you?
What have you been reading?

Desolation Mountain by William Kent Krueger – mystery. A new Krueger book is always cause for celebration here, as he’s one of my favorite authors. This was, no surprise, a good one, with all of the characters, setting and strong plotting we’re used to in a Krueger novel.

When a liberal Senator’s plane crashes into a swampy area not far from Aurora, home of Cork O’Conner and his family, Cork is called out to help with the search for the plane, any survivors, and possibly the plane’s black box. But before much searching can get underway, the FBI shows up and pushes everyone else away. The plane wreckage is found, no survivors. The black box is missing. Everyone who started the early search is questioned in an extremely accusatory way, and then people begin getting injured and some just disappear. The tension mounts as the locals try to find out what is really going on, why there seem to be government black ops agents in the area, and why everyone is being threatened. Good one.

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne – mystery. This was short-listed for one of the major awards, so I thought I’d try it. A woman and her husband and child are living a peaceful life on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula when word comes of a prison break that changes their lives. Turns out the woman is the daughter of a kidnapped girl decades before who grew up in the marshes, off the grid. The escapee is her father, who killed two guards in his escape. She is determined to find him and bring him to justice, but her emotions are torn as she moves into the area she’s so familiar with from her youth, knowing all the while she doesn’t know what she will do when she finds her father.

Parts of this are atmospheric, the setting, as far as I could tell, well-drawn, the character interesting, but the novel as a whole didn’t click with me. Other readers will probably like it better.

So how about you?
What have you been reading?