This is my first Evanovich novel. I usually avoid this kind of book because I don’t usually like first-person narratives, and I find that the notion of high volume = lower quality is often correct (except for Terry Pratchett). The writing quality isn’t great, but I gotta say, I enjoyed this. The basic story is pretty simple. Lizzy, our cupcake-baking heroine, is getting comfortable in her new job in Salem, Massachusetts after some rough personal times. Cue disruption in the form of two men. Diesel, […]
Bad Harry Potter goes to Narnia Hell Makes for Creepy Dirty Bad Reading
I was intrigued by the first third of The Magicians, hated the second third, and the final third was weird and I’m not sure it was enough to redeem the book from the middle part. The first part is dark Harry Potter, the second is existential and dirty in a creepy-bad way, and the last is Narnia gone to hell. Overall, The Magicians reminded me of The Secret History (which I liked parts of but overall didn’t like for many of the same reasons I […]
Scary Picklemen Want Robots to be Evil
Manners & Mutiny is the fourth and final installment of The Finishing School series. The school in question is Madame Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Yong Ladies of Quality, a flying dirigible where the young lady students study manners and spycraft. The heroine is Sophronia Temminick who, along with her friends Agatha and Dimity, must save the school, London, and probably England from the evil pickle-themed villains, the Picklemen. Much of the action concentrates on discovering and thwarting the Picklemen. There is much less classroom time […]
How Many Wizards Does it Take to Beat an Evil Forest?
In some ways, Uprooted is a very typical fantasy novel. The heroine lives in a village where every 10 years the local wizard Dragon takes a village girl, and keeps her for 10 years. The wizards protects the village from The Woods which is full of evil spirits and general badness. The girls are allowed to leave after 10 years with enough money to support herself for a long time, and always say he never laid a hand on them. When the girl leaves though, […]
Captain Jack Sparrow’s World of Pirates
The Republic of Pirates explores the early 18th century of the American colonies and the Caribbean, which was the era of pirates like Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy, Charles Vane, and Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch. Although told in narrative style, most of the information comes from newspapers, letters, journals, etc. from the time, place, and people presented. According to a note on the cover of my edition, this book was the inspiration for the NBC mini-series “Crossbones”. I liked the tv show, so I picked up the […]
The Girl Genius works in a machine shop in her underthings
The tag line for the book Agatha H and the Airship City is “Adventure! Romance! Science!” In this steam-punk twist, there are people who are Sparks, meaning individuals with the talent of a mad-scientist. Sparks of the past and some of the present are of the deranged evil scientist variety, and they tend to rule the world or at least part of it. Almost 20 years before the current story, a pair of Spark brothers from one of the most notorious Spark families, the Heterodynes, […]
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