Mystery Man by Colin Bateman

Honestly, when I picked up Mystery Man, I was really excited because the blurb described what I imagined my life would be like if I somehow had my dream bookshop and a stronger sense of curiosity that would overpower my inherent laziness. And it had been sitting on my shelf for quite some time, so there seemed no better time for it.

When the private investigator's office next door to the crime-fiction bookshop, No Alibis, closes down, the owner of the bookshop finds himself being approached by the clients of his former neighbour who hope that he might be able to help. Having little better to do, and hoping that the cases will garner the attention of the jewellery shop attendant from across the road that he has a crush on, he decides to look into a few of them.
So I guess 2018 must be the year of DNFs, because I couldn't convince myself to finish this. And this actually shares a similarity with my previous DNF, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I didn't mention this in the body of my review, but in that previous case, I stopped shortly after a section where the narrator is repeatedly calling his younger brother a retard. Quite frankly, I have no time for people who, in trying to be clever, resort to cheap insults against a traditionally subjugated group. I had the same reaction with Mystery Man. In this case, I'd been mildly amused by some of the japes that the narrator had gotten himself into, but hadn't really been hooked yet, when the narrative reached the proper introduction to the narrator's jewellery shop crush. She turns up late to the "how-to-write" course being hosted by a snobbish literary writer who "dabbles" in crime fiction whilst still earning disgustingly high profit margins. He gets her to do a writer's exercise where she creates stories for the passersby that she sees through the shop window, and tells her to stop after she describes one person as a cripple. He states, quite rightly, that cripple is not really appropriate language, at which point she launches into a tirade, in which she defends her choice of the word cripple in favour of disabled or paralysed. And this is treated like it's a good thing. The narrator is sitting in his shop, proudly listening as she vomits out this utter garbage and puts off the guest writer. As I was preparing for writing this review, I did briefly worry about coming across as too sensitive, but fuck it, this is where I draw the line. It wouldn't be acceptable if she were defending the use of a racial epithet, so why should it be acceptable with disabled slurs.

I was briefly enjoying this until the narrator's love interest decided that her pride was more important than accepting that disabled slurs are not acceptable in polite society, and the narration expects me to be perfectly okay with this. I'm not. 1/5

Next review: The Silver Mask by Christian Ellingsen

Signing off,
Nisa.

Balam, Spring by Travis M. Riddle

So Balam, Spring was another book kindly sent to me by the author via TBRindr. While I'd not come across the title before, I liked the premise and thought that the whole Midsomer Murders meets Harvest Moon vibe that it promised had a lot of fun potential.

Balam, Spring focuses on the isolated coastal town of Balam, just as they enter spring. What is normally a joyous time of year when school is out and the landscape starts coming into bloom turns sour when the town's assigned white mage dies suddenly and mysteriously. A new white mage, Aava, is called in to replace her, but it soon becomes clear that other people have the same symptoms and that the town could be in grave danger.
I feel somewhat conflicted by Balam, Spring. I'll start with the good parts of it. The actual mystery is well-constructed and has a decent amount of twists. The characters are engaging and varied, from Aava, the new white mage trying to prove her skills in a bleak situation, to Ryckert, a retired mercenary lured out by the promise of adventure, and Theo, a local schoolteacher who witnessed the original death and was wholly unprepared for the reminders it gave him of his tragic childhood. Overall, there was a lot to enjoy, and I would probably give it a recommendation to those who don't mind a book that needs a bit of fine-tuning.
That leads me to the parts that I had issue with, which is a bit of inconsistency with the writing and world-building. Nothing major that ruined the book for me, but noticeable enough to become niggling. The trouble seems to be that, depending on the subject, the book will furnish either too much information, or not enough. For too much information, the first thing that springs to mind is the descriptions of food and general routine, as while the sections aren't written badly, it's the sort of detail that doesn't add anything meaningful to a scene. I don't need to know the exact dishes that a couple are enjoying at their meal out, I just need to know that the food enhanced the good mood that they already had together, otherwise it becomes kind of distracting and makes me wish I had more time during my lunch break. And with regards to too little information, I point you towards the non-human races introduced, the Jeornish and the Rocyan. The former have white hair and the latter have fur. That was about all that the narrative furnishes the reader with before it continues on its romp, and that really bugged me. If the non-human races had been elves and dwarves, then I could understand not elaborating on their racial features, because they're common enough to not need explanation. With races that Riddle has presumably made wholesale, it is unsatisfying to finish the book with no real clear idea of what they even look like. It's like showing a blind person a poster and expecting them to understand the significance without explanation. As I said though, the actual meat of the narrative is enough to make this a minor problem, but I did finish Balam, Spring thinking that it could have benefited from another round of editing.

Balam, Spring is an entertaining mystery with engaging characters and unexpected twists. It does have some issues that could have been ironed out with some more rigorous editing, but it's by no means a book-ruining fault. 3/5

Next review: Mystery Man by Colin Bateman

Signing off,
Nisa.

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

So I still have a few audiobooks to get to, but I didn't fancy jumping straight back into one after a very long listen with only a short, fluffy comic in between. So it made sense to go back to a series that is kind of guaranteed to make me enjoy myself. So Dresden Files it was. I didn't realise quite how long it had been since I last picked up the series until just now when I was looking through my blog archive. Definitely long overdue for a revisit.

If there is one thing that can spur Harry into action, it's threatening the people he loves. So when Mavra, the Black Court vampire that he tried to kill in Blood Rites, confronts him with incriminating pictures of Murphy that she will send to the authorities unless Dresden gets her what she wants. And what Mavra wants is the Word of Kemmler, by midnight of Halloween. Unfortunately, it looks as though there are several necromancers, apprentices of the eponymous Kemmler, who also want it and are ready and willing to use the most extreme methods available to them to get it.
It's been a while since the bad guys were just other wizards, and not a vampire or Fae of some variety, which is surprisingly refreshing. But despite reverting back to mortal enemies, Butcher manages to bring in a little bit of everything else that has come before. And it makes you realise just how much has been established when little bits of everything is brought in to influence the turn of events. There is the influence of every one of the Vampire Courts, the Fae get involved as they are wont to do, Harry has issues with the Denarian coin that he tried to seal away in his basement, and many other little things that contribute to a surprisingly complex plot.
As always, the characters are the best part, even when working with a much smaller core cast. Sure, lots of characters turn up briefly, like my perennial favourite Johnny Marcone, but they tend to be one-scene wonders. The main cast can pretty much be narrowed down to Harry, Thomas and Butters. And I didn't know how much I would love the character development that they both get.
First there is Thomas. In previous books, he always came across as a feckless, rich playboy with hints of inner depths. Now that he's revealed himself as Harry's half-brother and been cut off from the vast funds that he was used to, he's had a chance to grow into himself a bit. It was really nice to see the parts where he and Harry get a chance to act like brothers: not necessarily always on the same page, but pushing each other to get better and look after themselves.
Second is Butters. When I first mentioned him in my reviews, I said that he was surprisingly calm about being confronted with evidence of the supernatural. Well, it turns out that there's a big difference about recognising a non-human cadaver for what it is, and having the corpse of a former colleague burst into your office and try to kidnap you. There is lots of screaming, hiding and unexpected bravery. He might well count as one of my series favourite characters now, and I can't wait to see him turn up again.

A really solid entry that manages to pull in elements from every book that has gone before it, and yet manages to not be a confused mess of supernatural mythos. Butters and Thomas get some great character development, elevating Butters in particular to joint favourite alongside Karrin Murphy and Johnny Marcone. Additionally, Harry makes some really big decisions that I think are just going to make the next entries in the series all the more tense. 4.5/5

Next review: Nightblade by Garrett Robinson

Signing off,
Nisa.

Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix

So Found is probably not a book that I would have picked up, had I found it outside of a book bundle. While I don't have any problem reading books aimed at children, I find that my standards for them are tougher than they are for adult books. Maybe because I grew up with things like Pixar films that can be appreciated by all ages, but dumbed down children's fiction does nothing for me. But in this case, the premise seemed interesting enough that I could take more of a chance.

Found follows Jonah Skidmore, an ordinary teenage boy who has never thought anything about his being adopted as a baby. It is only when he and his new friend Chip, who has only just discovered that he was adopted, start getting mysterious letters of warning that he wonders whether he should be concerned about who his birth parents were. When he digs into his origins though, he finds himself entangled in a mystery that involves the FBI, a vast smuggling operation and people who appear and disappear in seemingly impossible ways.
When Found started on a really intriguing scene, that of an aeroplane appearing out of thin air and containing 36 babies and no flight crew, I was really hopeful. It's nothing if not an arresting image, so you can imagine what I hoped that it would turn into. As it turned out, I would be disappointed. Don't get me wrong, the story itself was decent enough, but it just needed to be tighter, go through a few rewrites. As it was, Found was decent enough, but had a few things just annoying enough to ruin the expectations that I'd had for this.
First of all, the characters mostly ended up being generically teenager instead of especially interesting by themselves. They were all kind of dim, overly concerned with what is and is not "cool" for their age group, and seemed to have really spotty memories about a topic that they've been focusing on for several weeks by the end of the book. For instance, there's a bit where they meet a woman who saw the plane that Jonah and Chip were on as babies, and she posits that there was time travel involved. Chip's reaction to this is to mock her relentlessly for her crackpot theories, completely ignoring the fact that one of the documents he has in his possession at that very moment contains information that they had previously established would be impossible to have without something like, oh I don't know, fucking TIME TRAVEL! Like, if you wanted to have him be that sceptical, don't provide him with reason to believe the theories that he mocks. Additionally, it seems at odds with his willingness to believe another character's assertion that she saw a ghost, just because she says so. I just need consistency, please.
Secondly, there seems to be this weirdly specific body language or voice tone going on throughout the book. I can appreciate communicating additional information or context with either body language or tone of voice, because that's a thing that people do, obviously. But in Found this is made into so specific and exact a form of communication that it becomes really distracting.
Lastly, it just started to drag, with little of actual substance happening between Jonah and his family meeting the FBI to discuss his adoption, and the showdown in the latter third. It's the three main characters investigating, poorly, and getting more and more panicky because of the vague and menacing dangers around them. It did pick up at the end, but by then my experience had been tainted by the slog of the beginning and middle thirds. And if I'm bored then I can't imagine a child or young teenager will do much better.

Found ends on a cliff-hanger, but I don't know if I'd deliberately go out of my way to continue reading the series. The characters are pretty much just generic young teens and haven't got much interesting about each of them individually. The writing can be distracting at times, with the sort of annoying writing tics that draw you out of your immersion. And while it did pick up towards the end, the first two thirds seemed to drag interminably through a pretty shabby investigation. Not terrible, but not particularly great either. 3/5

Next review: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

Signing off,
Nisa.

Authority by Jeff VanderMeer

Having finished Annihilation, I was really excited to see where the Southern Reach series would go. From what I could gather from the blurb, Authority would focus more on the actual facility that sent out the expeditions, as they try and wrap their heads around whatever is going on in Area X, which I thought had a lot of potential. As a warning, there will be spoilers for Annihilation in the following review, so if you're still in the middle of it, I would advise skipping this until you're finished.

Authority follows John "Control" Rodriguez, a secret service agent who has taken over as the new director at Southern Reach, following Annihilation's disastrous twelfth expedition. Three of the expedition members have returned home without triggering any alarms at the border of Area X, only the psychologist, now revealed to be the former director, still missing. Having been charged by his mysterious handler, known only as "the Voice", to put Southern Reach back into some kind of order, Control must try and navigate deliberately obstructive staff who are certain that the former director will return, the unnerving and circuitous notes left behind by the former director, and the disturbing notion that his superiors are keeping secrets from him.
When I finish a book, what I usually do is write my review, submit it, and then take a look at other people's reviews to see where we differ. As I wanted to organise my thoughts a little before discussing Authority, I looked at the reviews first. The number of one star reviews that I found in surprisingly quick succession gave me a bit of a shock. But taking a look at the content of those criticisms, I could see where they were all coming from, despite personally quite liking it. So, the main criticisms seemed to be with regards to the comparatively slow pace and more mundane focus on what is essentially office politics, especially after the weirdness that was Annihilation. They seem like decent enough points to discuss, and I can avoid the majority of spoilers. Looking at Authority having finished it, I can say that the slow pace and the focus on office politics, while admittedly frustrating at times, does seem to have its place in the grand scheme of the Southern Reach series. The pace and focus serve to develop what could be considered the status quo of two elements: Control, and the Southern Reach facility.
I'll start with Southern Reach itself. While initially appearing rather normal for a facility dealing with Area X, the mundane routine of a 9-5 working week means that each day reveals layer after layer of weirdness and misdirection between all the different people working there. Control's return to his rented home in the nearby town provides a much more straightforward example of normality, so you can really see how Area X is starting to bleed out and affect its surroundings. And once you get to the part of Authority where the plot goes from 0 to 60, it is way more of a shock to the system. Having created a pocket of comparative normality, the uninhibited weirdness of Area X that turns up in the final third is stark and feels so much more threatening for it.
Then there is Control. He decides at the beginning of his term as the director that he won't let himself get emotionally involved in anything that he finds out, and that he will stay firmly in control of whatever he needs to do in order to clean up after his predecessor, meaning that he sets out with a hyper-vigilant mind-set. The set-backs that he encounters pretty much immediately, like the strange obsession that he has with interviewing the biologist and the deliberate withholding of information from both his employees and superiors, aren't necessarily big when he is first confronted with them. But with his hyper-vigilance, he picks up on every little detail, both legitimate cause for concern and irrelevant tidbit, and soon everything is being seen as part of a mass of competing conspiracies, leading him on a downward spiral to anxiety and paranoia. I think you can probably guess what a mindset that defensive and fragile will do when confronted with anything from Area X, right?

If you've started reading Authority with the intent of getting concrete answers for questions you had from Annihilation, then you will be disappointed. It does give some more details about the Southern Reach facility though, so while I won't admit to knowing much more than I did at the end of the last book, I think I have a firmer feel on how the world works. I have seen some criticism that Authority focuses too much on the office politics, but I think that the slow pace and (comparatively) mundane setting are very cleverly pulled off. The focus on seemingly unimportant details both develops how the normal world is affected by Area X even with containment, and allows Control to move from being stoic and hyper-vigilant to someone who is barely coping with his own anxiety and paranoia. You just have to be patient with it. 4.5/5

Next review: Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

Signing off,
Nisa.

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

It's been a while since I read a classic, but of the many classics out there, why pick up Lady Audley's Secret, a book by an author that I had never heard of in my life? Well, the blurb promised all sorts of scandalous acts that shouldn't come anywhere near the neutered Victorian ideal, so of course my interest was peaked.

After three years spent gold prospecting in Australia, George Talboys is keen to return home to his beautiful wife and young child. Upon his return, he finds that she has just died and, utterly bereft at this turn of events, he stays with an old friend to try and recover. His friend, Robert Audley, suggests a visit to his wealthy uncle in the Essex countryside as a form of distraction and as an excuse to meet his new aunt, a woman renowned in the local area as a great beauty. When the trip ends with George's disappearance, Robert finds himself driven to discovering what happened. The more he investigates though, the more suspicious his new aunt becomes, and he risks miring his family in scandal.
You probably noticed that I didn't mention any of the scandalous things that the blurb tempted me in with. Because knowing them in advance kind of ruins any surprise that Lady Audley's Secret has. Lady Audley, in my read-through, had no real secrets because with a couple of exceptions the twists are pretty clearly signposted if you've already been told the spoilers. Despite this though, I found this thoroughly enjoyable. The writing is a bit on the flowery side, but considering the focus on Victorian domestic arrangements it does work quite well. The only thing that truly bothered me was the ending. If you're interested in actually reading Lady Audley's Secret, which I really would recommend, then you might want to skip the next paragraph.
So, the ending. Lady Audley has been revealed to be a murderous bigamist who pushed her first husband, George Talboys, down a well after he discovered that she wasn't dead as he had first believed. In order to save his family's honour, Robert Audley spirits her away to a madhouse to quietly expire at a safe distance, but can never honour his departed friend by giving him a proper burial for fear that it would go to a criminal court. All well and good so far, and I could have accepted that as an ending. Then it turned out that George Talboys was alive all this time and just doesn't have any understanding of how this "keeping in contact" thing works. And everyone who isn't the eponymous Lady Audley has a happy ending. The book ends with a reference to a Bible quote where the righteous shall not be forsaken, and honestly it's so bloody saccharine after a plot that has been gratifyingly scandalous and treacherous. It was such a disappointment. Not enough to entirely ruin the book, but enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Even having had the majority of the secrets spoiled by the blurb of my edition, I found myself really enjoying myself. That's probably why I was so disappointed by the abrupt turn into happy ending territory in the last couple of chapters. Still worth a read though. 4/5

Next review: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Signing off,
Nisa.

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

If feels like forever since the last Dresden Files book that I read, and as the last few books that I've read have left me feeling somewhat wanting, I figured going back to a series that I've had great luck with to get me back in a more positive reading groove.

Blood Rites follows Dresden as he looks into an unusual series of deaths occurring on the set of an adult film, as a favour to his White Court vampire acquaintance Thomas Raith. The director is convinced that he is cursed, as the women around him keep dying in unusual and ridiculously over-the-top fashion. It soon transpires that other members of the Raith family may be involved in some way. On top of that, Mavra, a powerful Black Court vampire, has returned to Chicago, and Dresden needs to find a trustworthy crew to help him clear out her lair before she can spread further chaos.
I definitely needed a break, and the return to the Dresden Files was just what I needed. While I didn't love Blood Rites as much as Death Masks, it was definitely still a great entry in the series. For one thing, it delves into a group that hasn't really had much time for development, the White Court vampires. Thomas has appeared a couple of times now, and there's been a bit of explanation that White vampires feed on emotional energy, but not much beyond that. Now that the main plot is centred around someone that Thomas has a need to protect, there's a lot more focus on how he and his family manage to hold their own against stronger types of vampire.
Blood Rites also provides an intriguing hint about Kincaid's true nature. While I figured that he probably wasn't human, considering that his day job seems to be looking after the living Archive of all human knowledge, this book seems to hint that he may be far more powerful than the audience had been led to believe. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for him, as there's currently not enough information given for me to try and make an educated guess.

Overall, this feels like Blood Rites is the Dresden Files book of small progressions. While it's very well-written and entertaining, it doesn't feel like this is quite the same level of challenge as previous installments. While admittedly there's a lot in the way of character progression for Harry, but after the threat of the Denarians, vampires are starting to feel a bit less scary. 4/5

Next review: A Dance of Cloaks by David Dalglish

Signing off,
Nisa.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

The Shining Girls was a book that I stole from my mum after she had finished reading it, although she seems to have forgotten it entirely by the time that I actually got round to reading it. I took it partly because I was intrigued by the premise, and partly because I had heard good things about the author Lauren Beukes.

The Shining Girls focuses on two main characters, Kirby and Harper. Kirby is a young woman who is trying to put her life back together after a brutal attack that nearly killed her. Attempting to track down the man who tried to kill her, she starts finding evidence that she isn't the first woman who he has attacked, but some of the evidence is just impossible. Meanwhile Harper, having found a house that inexplicably allows him to travel anywhere within the years 1929 and 1993, is compelled to kill a set of girls whose names he has found written on the walls of one of the rooms upstairs, leaving a memento from one of his other kills at the scene of her death.
So I really wanted the whole time travelling serial killer premise to work for me, but it just doesn't. It's quite disappointing, especially as the writing itself is solid and engaging. But for me, the time travel just wasn't implemented well, leading to two main problems.
Firstly, it's really tough to make a thriller tense when you know that most of the awful stuff that the serial killer is going to do has, in another character's timeline, already happened. Sure, the murder scenes are really well-written and horrifying in and of themselves, but it's tough to maintain the tension when the reaction to each new female perspective chapter is "well, here's the next sacrificial lamb". The time and attention spent fleshing them out and giving them engaging problems seems kind of wasted since the reader knows that the next time their name crops up, they'll be dead by the end of the chapter.
Secondly, it uses my most despised type of time travel, the ontological paradox, also known as a causal loop. If you're not familiar with that, essentially it's if person A is given an item by the elderly person B, then goes back in time to give that item to a younger version of person B. At which point you sit there and wonder how the item came into being in the first place if it's constantly looping between two points in time. It drives me up the wall, and the aggravating part is that Beukes spends so much time setting up this closed loop. Spoiler alert, it turns out at the end that the reason the House makes Harper want to kill people is because the House is Harper's spirit. Which is just infuriating, because it wants to be so clever and thematic, but it just brings up questions. How are the girls picked out as victims? Harper keeps mentioning that they shine, but the narrative never elaborates on what that is exactly. The only way that Harper knows about who he needs to kill and when he needs to go to kill them is via the House, so there's never any thought process about why or how his victims are selected. It unwittingly leads to Harper being a more or less flat character, as he has no real motivations other than follow the House's lead, for reasons that are never explained.

The Shining Girls is a prime example of an interesting premise that is its own worst enemy. What interest there could be from the impossible serial killer storyline is sabotaged by its own use of dated time travel tropes. There's little tension because all the killings have already happened in one timeline or another, and the painstakingly constructed causal loop only brings up questions of how this all comes about as well as depriving the main villain of any meaningful motivation. The only saving grace is the writing itself, but there's only so much that can be saved from this plot. 2.5/5

Next review: Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

Signing off,
Nisa.

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

As some of you may have noticed, I have something of a tendency to group my Discworld and Dresden Files reads together. In this case, I am following Reaper Man with Death Masks, which felt kind of thematically appropriate somehow. And honestly, I was looking forward to the next Dresden Files so much after the series had its ante upped during Summer Knight that I couldn't have resisted for long.

By the time Death Masks starts, the war with the Red Court of Vampires has been going on for a couple of years, with progress on either side more or less grinding to a halt. With this in mind, Dresden is approached by Count Ortega, who puts forward the following offer: agree to a fair one-on-one fight with him and potentially end the war for good, or he'll send hired guns after Harry's friends and former clients. On top of that, he is hired to find the Shroud of Turin after it has been stolen. While what seems like a comparatively mundane case soon proves to be anything but when demonic beings known as the Denarians show up, with Michael and his fellow Knights of the Cross determined to keep Harry out of harm's way.
I don't really know how Butcher intends to top Death Masks, because I loved this from start to finish. First, the reader is introduced to new characters that I can't wait to see more of. There's Butters, the night-shift mortician blaring out polka, who is surprisingly calm about the fact that the supernatural is real now. There is Ivy, a little girl who contains the entirety of written knowledge but still insists on sticking to an appropriate bedtime. And, my favourite, there is Sanya, the newest Knight of the Cross, one of God's chosen few, who still maintains a position as an agnostic and has little time for the old fashioned trappings of the Order.
Second, it develops some of the existing side cast nicely. Michael doesn't come across nearly as sanctimoniously as he does in Grave Peril, as he is balanced out by the other Knights of the Cross. Susan, while still far from my favourite character, doesn't feel like dead weight anymore; turns out she just needed to be turned into the undead to contribute something to the series beyond a target for Harry's emotional pining. And, be still my beating heart, I get to see more Johnny Marcone being more than capable of standing toe-to-toe with supernatural foes, as well as an unexpected emotional side.
Third, it introduces some great villains in the Denarians. They are seriously scary already, and I doubt that I've seen even a fraction of what they're capable of. The idea of an entity that takes over people through their own temptation is really unnerving, as is the fact that they're at such an obviously higher power scale than anyone Harry's had to fight before, with the exception of the Fae. Count Ortega is also an interesting villain, but he does kind of pale in comparison to the Denarians.

I really have no complaints with Death Masks. The pre-existing characters have been well-developed, a terrifying new enemy is introduced and it sets up so many cool plot threads to expand on. My favourite Dresden Files so far, and I'm really excited to see where the series goes from here. 5/5

Next review: Fashion Beast by Alan Moore, Malcolm McLaren, Antony Johnston & Facundo Percio

Signing off,
Nisa.

The Fires by Rene Steinke

The reason for me picking The Fires to read is going to sound really stupid and dull. For my birthday one year, I received a load of ebooks on a USB stick, some of which were some series that I had been very keen to get. But I'd also never transferred anything like that onto my tablet, so I picked a book at random to test out the process. That book was The Fires and since I never got round to removing it from said tablet, I figured that I might as well give it a whirl.

The Fires follows a young woman called Ella in the aftermath of her grandfather's suicide. She finds herself struggling with her grief, which is only compounded by her mother and grandmother's refusal to acknowledge that the cause of death was anything but natural causes. To try and cope, she tries to find her estranged aunt to pass on the news of his passing, and when that isn't enough to quiet her state of mind, she sets things on fire.
This is something of an odd novel. Its most obvious strength is the writing style, which is very lyrical and vivid. The problem arises because instead of accentuating intriguing characters and a dark, tormented family drama, it accentuates just how much the characters and plot lack in depth. With regards to character development, Steinke seems to have gone to the school of characterisation that dictates that the key to good characterisation involves mounting dysfunction on dysfunction like you're playing a particularly poor taste bingo game. Ella is a particularly egregious example. She sets fires, then she's an insomniac, then she has alcohol dependency issues from her attempts to medicate her insomnia, then she has body confidence issues stemming from burn scars from a childhood accident. And all of that is before you begin to touch the myriad of tedious micro-traumas that she has heaped on with her family members. What could be interesting character flaws individually becomes a featureless mass of depression. None of her flaws are aggravating, but neither can I really think of any positive qualities. She's not a racist, so there's that.
As for the plot, it seemed like it was going somewhere interesting, but then Steinke drops the biggest plot bombshell right in the middle. After that, nothing really tops that shock and the further revelations are a bit weak and predictable in comparison. If they'd been paced in a different order, then it would probably have worked out better, but as it is it's strong until the mid-point then an exercise in stretching out time and patience.

There's the basis of what could have been a really good novel in the mess that is The Fires, but it's just put together all wrong. The main character Ella is more an amalgamation of dysfunctions that probably aimed at making someone intriguing and tortured, but only leaves a confused impression of a person where her sole good quality is that she isn't a racist. The plot has a lot of revelations about Ella's family that are good on paper, but presented in the wrong order so that the tension leeches out almost immediately after the first big plot twist at the plot's mid-point. I wanted to care, but couldn't in the end. 2.5/5

Next review: Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Signing off,
Nisa.

Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

Once again, I return to the Dresden Files. While I was a bit disappointed in the previous installment, Grave Peril did set up a massive conflict between the wizards' White Council and the Red Court of vampires that I was interested in seeing play out. Which is why I was a little confused to see it take something of a back seat.

In Summer Knight, the reader returns to find Harry Dresden a mere shadow of his former self. Obsessed with finding a cure for the vampirism that has infected his girlfriend, he has completely withdrawn from friends, is struggling to keep up with rent and has even fallen behind on basic hygiene. When he is at what is arguably his lowest ebb, he finds himself drawn into a murder mystery that could cause an Armageddon-level war between the Summer and Winter courts of the Sidhe (Faeries to you and me, but don't let them hear you call them that). Worse than that, if he doesn't solve the mystery and somehow lives, then the White Council will call for his execution for his part in starting the war with the Red Court.
Whatever issues Grave Peril had, it would appear that it was only a temporary blip in the quality of the Dresden Files. Summer Knight is everything that I love about the series in one spot. There's all sorts of dangerous politics, both from the White Council's willingness to throw one of their own under the bus, and from the seductive and pernicious deals of the Faeries. There's an unwelcome face from the past in the form of Elaine, the ex-girlfriend who teamed up with his former teacher to try and bring him over to the dark side. Apparently she wasn't acting under her own power, but as she is acting as an emissary to the opposing Faerie court that has hired Harry, how much of her word can he believe? There's the introduction of changelings, half-mortal and half-Faerie and not really at home in either world. And, best of all, there is my absolute favourite cop, Karrin Murphy, being a complete badass even when she's having to work through the magic equivalent of PTSD. What more could I ask for?
If there was something that did bother me, it was that for a conflict that wiped out one of the White Council's most senior wizards, the war with the vampires only seemed to get the most cursory of nods right at the beginning and again a little before the final conflict. It would have been nice to see a bit more direct conflict with the Red Court, because what we do get seems to be a bit throwaway and nonsensical.

Summer Knight is probably my favourite so far of the Dresden Files, and a welcome return to form. I loved the politics of the Faerie courts as well as the sheer scale of their power. And honestly, it was just so damn good seeing Karrin Murphy back on her feet and being badass again. I look forward to the next installment, where hopefully we'll get to see more of the conflict between the White Council and the Red Court. 4.5/5

Next review: Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

Signing off,
Nisa.

Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

And now to return to the Dresden Files, partially because I'm going on holiday soon and my husband's threatened to bring the official board game with him, so I wanted to be at least a little further in the series. Also because I like what I've read so far and want to see how the series progresses.

Grave Peril follows Dresden as he teams up with one of God's chosen warriors to try and quell a sudden uprising from the spirit world. While ghosts are normally harmless with the occasional poltergeist making a nuisance of itself, Chicago's dead are now anything but quiet and unusually powerful to boot. On top of that, Harry soon finds himself having to contend with tracking down a vulnerable young wizard and a party where he has to play nice with Bianca and the vampires of the Red Court.
I personally found Grave Peril to be kind of a stumble in the series thus far. While I still enjoyed the overall experience of reading it, after the first two installments this one was kind of disappointing.
So, let's start with the positive. I really liked the ghost stuff. The confrontation at the beginning in particular was really harrowing and so well-written. If there had been way more of that, then I think I would have been able to forgive some of the mis-steps a bit more.
So, the first thing that bothered was the introduction of Michael. While I don't have a problem with practising Christian characters in the books I read, I kind of found him to be a sanctimonious bore. At first I thought he'd be a fun addition, considering how much he seems to enjoy winding Harry up, but he didn't really go much beyond that. And it's unexpectedly annoying to have a character telling someone off for language that wouldn't even get a PG rating.
Second, it either doesn't feature or actively incapacitates my favourite characters, instead choosing to focus large parts of the narrative on Susan. This is more a personal gripe, but it really hinders a story when I don't care if one of the main characters dies or not.
Third, there's a big chunk of plot that occurs because of a case that Dresden helps close involving a sorcerer that summons a demon. All of which happened before any of the novel's events and isn't actually shown properly during the entirety of the narrative. Now, it might just be me, but if an event had tantamount importance to why Dresden is having problems now, then I'd be tempted to include it somewhere. Not just a nightmarish "what-if" version where everything goes wrong. Because as it is, it feels like cheating when Butcher reveals "oh yeah, it's part of that case that I keep alluding to, but will never disclose in full".
Finally, after the initial encounter with the Red Court at the party, the story starts to drag a bit. It stops being tense and suspenseful, and starts being various repetitions of "Oh no! The last of my reserves! Wait, wait... never mind, found some more. Carry on." It stops being tense once Dresden uses up his last ounce of strength more than once, and starts feeling a bit cheap. I will admit, the wrapping up chapter makes up for it a little by introducing a bigger conflict that I hope to really sink my teeth into.

Overall, it's decently written, and if I could have had more sections focusing on the ghosts, that would have been brilliant. As it was, Grave Peril focuses too much on characters that really aren't that interesting out of the side cast he's made thus far, has a big chunk of plot rely on events that the reader never gets to see and the climax drags where it should be tense. I still enjoyed reading it, I just feel that compared to previous installments this felt thoroughly average. 3.5/5

Next review: Eric by Terry Pratchett

Signing off,
Nisa.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

So it's been a while since I last read anything from Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. Having spent some time reading other material, I was really looking forward to finding out how the series would progress. That and I could see my husband positively twitching as I read anything but Dresden Files or Discworld. Be aware that there may be spoilers for Storm Front below.

Fool Moon sees Harry about 6 months after the end of the previous book, and he is still feeling the negative consequences of it. Murphy doesn't trust him after he went after her suspect alone and withheld information about the case from her. As such, the work that he's gotten from the police has slowly been dwindling over the months. But when Murphy comes to him with what looks like werewolf attacks, it soon becomes clear that there is a lot more at stake than just his next paycheck.
This is a pretty entertaining continuation of the series, and a far more entertaining subject. Much as werewolves have been overdone before, it's much more of a tangible threat than magical drug dealers and amps up the tension more than a human enemy would. With regards to the werewolves, it does take a fun turn and introduces several different types to worry about, from wizards who transform their bodies with magic, to humans empowering themselves with demonic items, to those unfortunate people possessed by a demon. The benefit of having all the different types be relevant at some point means that there is variation in strengths and weaknesses that accordingly varies up the action.
Additionally, it was nice to see the consequences of Harry's actions coming back to bite him. Because, much as I like him as a character, he does have an annoying tendency to try and play protector, especially with the women in his life. And that most often means withholding information that he thinks would be dangerous for them to know. Honestly, that would be so much more irritating if it weren't obvious that the people he's denying information to didn't completely ignore his attempts to push them out of danger. I hope it doesn't go much further in the series though, because although I do relish seeing how it all backfires, I can see it getting really old really fast.
Lastly, I liked seeing more of the human characters previously introduced. While I'm still a bit lukewarm towards Susan, I was more than happy to see more of Murphy and Johnny Marcone. I probably shouldn't, but there's a big part of me that adores the gentleman gangster. I look forward to seeing more of the police and Chicago's criminal underworld a lot more in further installments.

An excellent continuation of the series. There are a few issues that aren't big enough to cause concern here, but I would be disappointed to see them continue in the series as a whole. Overall, it's a fun and at times terrifying romp with werewolves. There's some good expansion on the human characters already introduced, and more hints of a larger conspiracy in the background. 4.5/5

Next review: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Signing off,
Nisa.

An Arsene Lupin Omnibus by Maurice LeBlanc

I first heard about the character Arsene Lupin when I was reading the manga detective series Case Closed. Included in the back of each volume was a recommendation from the author of other detectives that readers might be interested in. And amongst some of the first to be recommended was Arsene Lupin, a charismatic master thief and sometime detective, created in response to the success of Sherlock Holmes. Suitably intrigued, I tried finding whatever had been translated from the original French, only to discover that there doesn't seem to be much available regardless of what Wikipedia says has been translated. As such, I've been rather looking forward to reading something complete, beyond the few scattered stories that I've managed to find previously.

An Arsene Lupin Omnibus collects four of the volumes written by LeBlanc. Instead of going over plot and character aspects as I would normally would, I will instead focus on each volume individually.
First up is Arsene Lupin versus Holmlock Shears. This is the weakest of the four for me, for one reason that is perhaps more personal to me. As you can probably tell, this is a short novel detailing the intellectual battle between Lupin and a poorly disguised version of Sherlock Holmes, whose name couldn't be used at the time of writing due to copyright infringement. The mystery is actually fairly solid, I didn't really manage to guess anything before the big finales. My problem is that this is such a mean-spirited rendition of Holmes, and let's not pretend that this Holmlock Shears is meant to be a character in his own right. While I have loved books with one abhorrent character, rarely was the narrative from their perspective and never was it using the character that I will probably always carry closest to my heart. To see him treating his Watson substitute with such callousness is galling. As I said though, the mystery is good enough and Lupin charming enough that I could tough it through.
The second volume in the omnibus is The Confessions of Arsene Lupin, a collection of short stories mostly focusing on Lupin as a master thief. This is one of the stronger collections in my opinion, because Lupin's adventures are not long enough that they have time to grow old. An issue that the previous volume had as well was that as two longer cases, it does start to feel a bit like a waiting game as Lupin sets more and more obstacles in an investigation's way until no more avenues of pursuit are available. With the short stories, it's more succinct and punchy. They feel more fun when there isn't the knowledge that your main character is running in circles. It's much more interesting to see how carefully laid defences are circumvented when it isn't the point of view character's defences.
The third volume is another novel-length adventure, The Golden Triangle. In this volume, a dashing injured army captain and the beautiful nurse who tended to his injuries must defend against an unknown assailant whilst trying to figure out both where the nurse's evil husband hid several tons of gold bullion and who has been aiming to bring the two of them together in matrimony since early childhood. This one works significantly better than the first of the long-form adventures, as it provides more meat with regards to its adventure. I won't say mystery, because there's one rather big spoiler, only revealed in the penultimate chapter, that I managed to guess by the halfway point. Hint, characters don't do a 180 turn in allegiance during the course of a day, so it's not hard to surmise from there. Aside from that, it's great fun, with a lot of "lovers in peril" moments that I probably like a bit too much.
Last of all is The Eight Strokes of the Clock. This is kind of an interesting volume, as it's in some ways both a novel and a collection of short stories. Posing as a gentleman by the name of Prince Serge Renine, Lupin approaches a woman by the name of Hortense Daniel, and manages to restore her financial independence. As payment, he offers that she become his companion in seven further adventures, thus providing the reader with a series of interlinked short stories. I had actually read a couple of the chapters before getting the omnibus, as a part of a "best of" collection, and I must say that their inclusion was spot on. While the introduction essentially asks the reader to think of Lupin as a French equivalent to Sherlock Holmes, nowhere in this omnibus does it fit as well as The Eight Strokes of the Clock, as here we have the consistency of an established partnership combined with the stand-alone nature of the short stories themselves. Honestly, it's the best part of the omnibus, and had everything been of this standard I would have been supremely happy to give this a perfect score.

A thoroughly enjoyable collection, worth a look for The Eight Strokes of the Clock alone. As a Holmes fan I can't quite bring myself to like Arsene Lupin versus Holmlock Shears, but I can appreciate a decent mystery when I see one; not necessarily enough to recommend it by itself though. The Golden Triangle is where long-form starts to suit Lupin, though it works more as an adventure than as a particularly airtight mystery. And The Confessions of Arsene Lupin are a decent starting point for some of the character's less law-abiding adventures, with a lot of charm and action. 4.5/5

Next review: The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Signing off,
Nisa.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Along with Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, my fiance has been rather forcefully recommending that I get around to reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. Fond as I am of him and willing as I would have been to take a look because of that, I had already been intending to read the Dresden Files as I had tried and failed to read Storm Front at least three times before I got to it this time. Nothing was going to stop me this time.

The main protagonist of Storm Front, Harry Dresden, is something of an oddity in his home city of Chicago. He is an openly practicing wizard, even going so far as to advertise his services in the local phone directories. While most of the people who call his office do so to find out if he's serious or not, he does indeed have some magical skill. So when he is called in by the police to consult on a grisly double murder, it means that something is profoundly unnatural about the whole situation. Having started investigating the crime, he finds that whoever is behind the crime doesn't want him to get any further, and they won't pull any punches in trying to impede his search.
I honestly have no idea why I couldn't previously finish Storm Front. There wasn't a single thing about this book that I disliked.
First, the main protagonist. Harry seems quite the likeable main lead, with an unusually grim backstory that we have only so far gotten hints of. He's very much an old fashioned gentleman type of character, willing to let his adversaries play fair before going in seriously, which is nice if occasionally frustrating. There are a few side characters introduced that I could see being quite important later on in the series, Karrin Murphy, Gentleman Johnny Marcone and Susan Rodriguez in particular, but because of the way that the plot proceeds it does become something of a one-man show. As such, I suppose it's a good thing that his character is so strongly written. Admittedly, I will say that his bad luck with women seems to be a bit arbitrary considering that from what the reader is shown, there isn't really anything that strikes me as obviously repelling about his personality. As such the vaguely romantic stuff does seem a bit out of place and not as confident really. I hope that he stays single for the rest of the series, because romance does not at the moment appear to be Butcher's forte.
As for the plot, it's a pretty solid crime story with a fantasy twist. While I wish that I could have learnt a bit more about where the magic in this universe stems from, so that I could get a better picture of what is and isn't possible for one wizard to achieve, I thought that what was included was pretty solid. Mostly it was stuff fairly familiar from European ideas of magic throughout history, things like the power of true names and casting spells using a person's hair or blood, but then the whole thing seemed to come together well enough that there wasn't much that needed reinventing. In particular I liked the potion-making scene, where the ingredients are more vehicles for symbols of what the potion should do than a specific recipe. I thought that was a nice touch. Additionally, I liked the hints of things that have yet to become important in the series. I'm told that some of these things get extra explanation and context, so I'll be looking forward to that.

A great start to a series, all things considered. Storm Front does well by creating a likeable protagonist and loading his world with all kinds of interesting magic that I am keen to learn more about. The writing does get a little clunky with regards to Harry's relationship to women and romance, so I'm hoping that further into the series Butcher either gets better at it or just abandons the romantic angle altogether. More than happy to recommend the series to fantasy readers or crime fans willing to suspend their disbelief a little further. 4.5/5

Next review: The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Signing off,
Nisa.

Stalkers by Paul Finch

It's been a while since I've read any police procedural novels, mostly because my tendency when buying is to drift towards cosy or historical mysteries first. My mum, on the other hand, is very much a fan of police procedurals, so I ended up stealing this book off of her once she'd finished reading it. Which raises the question, have I been missing much in the genre?

The last thing that Mark Heckenberg needs to hear from his superiors at work is that the case that he has spent years building is to be shut down. When said case could potentially find almost 40 missing women who had no reason to disappear, he is even more unwilling to just let this lie. So he ventures out on his own, soon attracting the attention of Lauren Wraxford, the ex-army sister of one of the missing women, who forces herself into his investigation. Unfortunately, his investigations also attract the attention of the dangerous group responsible for these disappearances.
Right, so I have some mixed feelings about this. On the surface, Stalkers is a very competent thriller. It has a tense premise, with some very intimidating villains and the tension is kept high throughout. I guess the thing that kind of bothers me about Stalkers is the way that the subject matter is handled. You find out pretty quickly that the women abducted by the main villains are targeted to be raped and murdered, after being picked out by a rich man close to them. Considering how sensitive a subject rape is, and how often it involves specifically female victims, it has a weirdly "she had it coming" vibe at times. While the rapists involved are rightfully depicted as the scum that they are, the victim that the narrative follows at first has a line of thought that is distinctly male. She's going through her daily routine and thinking to herself how fortunate she is that she can rely on her looks to put her above women who are just as qualified as she is. Speaking from my experience, that does not sound believable. Women don't really think in that way, and honestly, if a woman is attractive enough to garner sexual attentions from their boss or coworkers, that shit is often entirely unwelcome. For the victim to be portrayed even slightly okay with her male coworkers leering at her invites the reader to think that she unwittingly encouraged her attacker. That will never be an acceptable attitude for me. So while Stalkers does get a lot right, I can't wholeheartedly recommend it, because it introduces an element of grey into rape, which should be as black and white as it gets.

While technically a good thriller, it portrays the victim as "encouraging" her attacker, and for me that just isn't acceptable. Maybe you might be able to overlook that, but it just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that ruins what would have been an otherwise tense thriller. 2.5/5

Next review: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce

Signing off,
Nisa.

Weekend by Christopher Pike

When I was a teenager, I used to stay around my grandparents' house a lot over the school holidays, and they would always allow me to use their library card. Whilst exploring the library there, I first discovered Christopher Pike, whose books I would have a love-hate relationship with from that day. I have previously read Weekend, but it has been a while and I wanted to see how it held up.

In Weekend we follow a group of friends who are spending their last days before graduation on holiday in Mexico. But what should be a dream holiday is made tense by memories of an unexplained accident that left one of their party severely ill. These tensions are ramped up as things go wrong one by one, starting with the phone lines going dead.
I'd forgotten just how 80s this novel feels at times. These days you'd have to write in why no-one is using a mobile phone for one thing. But mainly, the characters feel very reminiscent of the kind of teenagers that you got in films from that generation, both in teen dramas and slasher films. None of them are really all that likeable, but they're entertaining enough that you want them to stay alive. While that can be really cheesy here, it does feel kind of comfortable. Like nothing new has been made here, but the stuff that does come up is handled at least competently. After the irritation that was The Benson Murder Case, I think I needed a bit of comfort reading.
Admittedly, I'm not sure why Weekend is labelled as horror, considering that it only barely flirts with the genre in the most minimal way possible. And of Christopher Pike's work, it is also one of the least scary. If you start reading it expecting scares, then you'd be disappointed. If you're looking for a pretty decent thriller and mystery, then you're probably on safer territory.

Overall, pretty cheesy and very 80s in feel, but quite good if you're looking for something comforting and easy on the brain. One of Pike's less tense books, but still one of the most tonally consistent of his works. 3.5/5

Next review: Batman: The Dark Knight: Golden Dawn by David Finch & Jason Fabok

Signing off,
Nisa.

The Benson Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine

Having done a bit of research into the Golden Era of detective fiction, I primarily knew S. S. Van Dine from his article "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories". Since the rules seemed sensible enough, when I came across some of his writing I thought that I'd check out how well he could put his teachings into practice.

When playboy stockbroker Alvin Benson is killed, his social circle are in a furore trying to figure out who could have murdered him. Enter art enthusiast and amateur detective Philo Vance, who immediately notices some interesting features of the crime scene that the police seem to be overlooking. But will he be able to convince the police of the right culprit before an innocent citizen is arrested first?
This could have been a decent enough detective story, if it weren't for the detective. There is nothing even remotely likeable or interesting about Philo Vance. Admittedly, the fact that the first chapter does nothing but sing his praises and talk about his art collection didn't incline me positively towards him, and I found that further reading only confirmed my worst fears. Philo Vance is the snob that is quite happy to watch you work through a problem slowly and steadily, only to trash your work and declare that they knew from the start what the solution was. He bases his workings entirely on psychological profiling, despite appearing to be entirely alien to actual human emotions and drives. His singular emotion appears to be smugness, perhaps cynicism if I'm generous. I couldn't hate him more if I tried.
Additionally, the author-named character, Van Dine, is entirely pointless. He makes a big deal about his experience as a lawyer, and then does nothing with it. In fact, I forgot that he was even a character until right at the end, because he contributes absolutely nothing to the storyline. His entire purpose is to follow Vance around like an obedient puppy with a notebook and an obsession with noting down every possible detail about an encounter.

What could have been at least an average murder mystery is completely ruined by having the detective be an odious snob with no redeeming qualities, joined by a chronicler who might as well not be there. Don't bother with it. 1/5

Next review: Weekend by Christopher Pike

Signing off,
Nisa.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

As is my wont, I have left reading one of the most touted books of 2012 until now, long after any kind of hype has died down. I even put off seeing Gone Girl in the cinema because I don't like seeing the film adaptation before the original book. So after all that, was it worth the staunch praise, and can I say that suffering through Mr Turner was worth not having it spoiled? 

Gone Girl follows Nick Dunne, a former writer and current bar owner, on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary to Amy. He hasn't been looking forward to the day due to their marriage hitting a few bumps, but things look to get a lot worse when he goes home after work to find the door to his house wide open, signs of a struggle in the living room and Amy nowhere to be found. The police are soon involved and quickly find that maybe Nick and Amy's marriage isn't as rosy as he would like to present it as. 

This book is messed up in so many ways and I absolutely loved it. There isn't much I can really say plot-wise beyond the summary provided above for risk of spoilers, but I will say that it is really worth going into Gone Girl without any prior knowledge of the plot. The twists and turns are spoon-fed to the reader over the course of the narrative, so while there were several parts that I hadn't expected, it never felt like the revelation was unnatural or forced. 

The character development is similarly solid. Flynn has a real talent for balancing positive and negative qualities in characters, then bringing out certain elements in order to create a certain caricature depending on what the narrative needs. Only towards the end do you get a real grasp on what makes certain central characters tick. And it really explores just how far you can stretch a husband-wife dynamic before it stops being real. 

A very short review this time, but only because there's only so much that I can say without spoilers and you really need to read this with a fresh perspective. If you like thrillers in any way, then you need to read this if you haven't already. The plot and character building are pulled off masterfully. 5/5 

Next review: Sourcery by Terry Pratchett 

Signing off, 

Nisa. 

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

There are two main reasons that I can think of why I picked up Perfume. Firstly, the idea of a man who kills in order to preserve the scent of a young virgin is kind of fascinating in a sickening way, and there is a part of me that does relish narratives like that every once in a while. Secondly, I have very little sense of smell myself and I was curious to see what a novel with smell as its primary sense would read like. I guess I wanted to see if it could be conveyed clearly even to someone with my dulled olfactory sense.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer follows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an intensely strange and disturbing man throughout his equally disturbing life. From the moment that he is abandoned by his mother to die beneath her fish stall, he is seen as different by those who meet him, though they couldn't necessarily be able to explain why. Whilst growing up, he realises that he has an unusually heightened sense of smell, and he develops a desire to become the world's greatest perfumer and to recreate the particularly exquisite scent of a young virgin girl. And he will do anything in order to possess that scent.
Perfume is an odd book to try and review, because while there is nothing that I can point to within the novel and say that this part is badly written or included unwisely, there is something about the work as a whole that left me a bit cold.
I suppose that I can start with what definitely did work, which was the writing itself. It is kind of unusual for me, most of the time I can point at characters, scenes or even themes that endeared me most to the book. But here, it was the style itself that really caught me. In some ways, it reminds me a little of The Child of Pleasure by Gabriele d'Annunzio, because the two have a similar way of enriching their comparatively simple narratives with grandiose sensory accompaniment. Where d'Annunzio focuses on visuals, Suskind brings this world to life through a cavalcade of different scents. I keep trying to think how to describe it and the word lush always seems to come to mind: rich and abundant, if not always (or indeed often) pleasant. It is an enthralling experience to imagine that crush of scents and definitely makes up for some of the lesser elements of the book.
I suppose that my main issue is with the main character, Grenouille. Don't misunderstand me, in his own way he is an interesting and well-written character. It was certainly refreshing to have a villain protagonist at least. I suppose my issue with him is that he is more or less a static character. While he creates conflict and has epiphanies about himself throughout the novel, I didn't feel that there was much real change in him at all. At various points in the narrative, he is compared to a tick, parasitic and infinitely patient. Neither of those key personality traits change at all, and considering that his is the perspective that the narrator sticks to for long chunks of the novel it does start to feel a little flat and one-note at times. It's not a huge issue, but I found it noticeable enough to bother me.

I found Perfume an odd book, but a mostly satisfying read. I would give it a shot simply for the lush sensory element of the writing style, although I did find myself a bit bothered by the static characterisation of the villain protagonist Grenouille. A book that I would recommend maybe reading once, but I can't see myself re-reading it any time soon. 3.5/5

Next review: Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

Signing off,
Nisa.