Month: May 2014


May
2014

Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells

categories: Review

FANTASY/MYSTERY

Title: Dirty Magic
Author: Jaye Wells
Publisher: Orbit, January 2014
Series: Prospero’s War, book 1

THE BOOK: Kate Prospero is a cop in the Babylon Police Department (Babylon appears to be a stand-in for a rust belt city like Detroit or Pittsburgh). At the beginning of the novel she interrupts a crime in progress, chases the suspect, and is forced to kill him in self-defence. This was not a normal mugging, however. The dead perp has been deformed into a werewolf like monster, presumably by some new potion on the streets. (more…)


May
2014

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

categories: Review

SF/THRILLER/HORROR
Title: The Shining Girls
Author: Lauren Beukes
Publisher: Mulholland Books, 2013

THE BOOK: Harper Curtis is a time traveling serial killer.  How about that for a one-sentence pitch? Harper discovers purely by chance a key to a very creepy house whose doors open on different times.  The catch is that the house wants Harper to find and kill certain girls —  girls that shine. (more…)


May
2014

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

categories: Review

FANTASY/MYSTERY

Title: Rosemary and Rue
Author: McGuire, Seanan
Pub.: DAW, 2009
Series: October Daye, Book 1

THE BOOK: At the start of this first book in the October Daye series, Toby is struggling at a minimum wage job, trying to hide amongst the mortals.  She is a changeling: part human, part fae. Once she was an honored member of the fae courts, knighted for her service to her liege lord, Duke Sylvester Torquill. (more…)


May
2014

Lexicon by Max Barry

categories: Review

SCIENCE FICTION/THRILLER

Title: Lexicon
Author: Barry, Max
Pub.: Penguin, 2013
Series: Standalone

THE BOOK: Car chases, kidnappings, blowing stuff up — all these elements are most often found in your bog standard thriller and yet they all can be found in the first 50 pages of Max Barry’s latest SF book Lexicon.  There are two storylines in Lexicon which playfully obscure and reveal truths about each other as they race to a action-packed convergence in the end of the book.   (more…)