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books

What I’m Reading Now

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The Painted Queen by Elizabeth Peters and Joan Hess

I’ve started this series about a 19th century Egyptologist and her family many times, but this is the first time I’ve actually read it the entire way through. This is the 20th and final book in the series, though it takes place earlier chronologically. (The last chronological book, Tomb of the Golden Bird, culminated with the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, a fitting end to the family’s adventures.) Peters, the pen name of real-life Egyptologist Barbara Mertz, passed away before she could finish this last book, so her friend and fellow mystery novelist Joan Hess finished it, though it seems like she wrote the bulk of it and used Mertz’s notes as a guide.

It’s a fun read so far, concerning the theft of a bust of Nefertiti as well as an attempted assassination of Amelia herself, though other readers’ comments that it seems more like fanfiction than the real thing are accurate. Hess can’t quite nail the characters, and some details are off. It helps that Barbara Rosenblat narrates this one as she does all the others, providing continuity in sound if not always in word. Both Hess and Egyptologist Salima Ikram wrote forewords, and they help illuminate Peters/Mertz a bit more, including both her personality and her research methods for the books. They also note that Mertz had already written the last chapter and it is reproduced unchanged in the book; I look forward to finishing the book if only to read that particular section. While far from one of the best in the series, this is a curious and necessary book for completists.

The Future is Yours by Dan Frey

Much like my quest to find an end-of-the-world book as good as Station Eleven, I’m on a quest to find a book about time travel/time manipulation as good as Recursion. Alas, this is not it (in both pursuits I feel I will always come up short, but at least most of the books I find are good, even if they are not as top-notch as the aforementioned exemplars).

Frey’s book is about two men – Ben and Adhi – who invent a way for a computer to predict the future, precisely one year in advance. It’s told entirely in emails, text messages, and other recordings, framed by transcripts of a congressional hearing into the potential danger of the tech. While it certainly touches upon the potential for cataclysmic consequences from a machine that tells the future, the book mostly focuses on Ben and Adhi’s friendship, which is interesting and well executed but makes the story feel curiously narrow. The most interesting thing Frey does with his story is initially present the future as immutable – everything Ben and Adhi do to try to prevent something bad from happening in a year only ends up causing it – and then complicate that idea with an interesting twist to the plot partway through, setting the stage for a great ending that genuinely surprised and satisfied me.

Mystery & Thriller Round-Up (Part II)

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Here are brief reviews of a few more mysteries and thrillers I’ve read recently.

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

This book was a trip. It’s about a woman whose father wrote a supposedly true story about a haunted house they lived in when she was a kid. The book became a bestseller, and as a result, Maggie’s whole life has been colored by this horror story, which all happened when she was too young to even remember. She believes her father (along with her mother) made it all up for money. Now her father has died, and she learns he left the house to her in his will. Against her mother’s concerns, Maggie returns to the house to fix it up and sell it and along the way, learn what really happened in that house, thereby disproving any supernatural explanation.

The narrative alternates between snippets of Maggie’s father’s book and Maggie’s adventures in the house, It’s interesting to read about how Maggie’s father wrote about the events and how Maggie and the others involved remember them, if at all. There are a ton of secrets to be unearthed in the present day, a decades-old disappearance that might be a murder chief among them. Maggie also has to contend with hostile neighbors who resent the notoriety her father’s book brought to the neighborhood as well as strange goings-on in the house, like things disappearing or moving, a record player that seems to play itself, lights going on when no one is home, and so on. The major reveal is a great one, a fantastic payoff with many layers that caps off a truly entertaining tale.

An Unwanted Guest and A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena

I read Lapena’s first novel, The Couple Next Door, and thought it was fine. Nothing special, but worth a read. These other two were significant disappointments. One is about a murder in a remote hotel that loses power (this is a common setup in my recent reads!), and the other about a woman who experiences amnesia after a car crash and may have killed someone. Lapena writes in third person, but shifts the perspective frequently back and forth, often within the same page, giving the books a jumpy feel and really limiting the reader’s ability to know or understand any of the characters well. The explanations for the murders seem to come out of left field with little or no actual clues pointing to the solution. Lapena provides a twist at the end of each book, but in one case, it was completely unnecessary and left a bad taste in my mouth (it was presented almost as a triumph when it was decidedly not), and in the other, it revealed the murderer’s motive in a couple of minutes with no lead-up and certainly no reference to actual clues that would have allowed the reader to deduce it themselves. Better books exist.

 

Mystery & Thriller Round-Up (Part I)

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The past few weeks, I’ve mainly been reading mysteries and thrillers. Here are a few short reviews of some recent ones.

The Hunting Party and The Guest List by Lucy Foley

I’m happy to have learned about Lucy Foley, but sad that she only has two thrillers out so far. Both are solid suspense novels, the first set at a remote Scottish cabin during a New Year’s Eve party attended by a group of old college friends, and the second on an island during the wedding of a reality tv star and a social media influencer. Foley gives me some Ruth Ware vibes in her depictions of places and creation of interesting, complicated characters with secrets (though Ware remains my favorite current thriller writer). She’s especially good at plotting; everything a character reveals to the reader matters. I love a mystery novel that rewards that kind of close reading.

One By One by Ruth Ware

This is Ware’s take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, though only in the most basic plot sense: a group of people are murdered one by one in a remote location (in Ware’s case, a ski retreat attended by a tech start-up’s staff during a winter storm). Though more than one person does survive in Ware’s book, it’s not a whole lot more. This kind of storytelling helps the reader to narrow down the suspect list rather quickly! Ware is great at creating atmosphere, and while some readers have complained that she revealed the murderer too soon in the novel (it’s maybe an hour before the end, if you’re listening), I felt it happened at just the right point, and what followed was super suspenseful and completely riveting. With the exception of one character, Ware’s cast is maybe a bit more irritating in personality than those in her other books, but (unusually for a lot of thrillers), they do experience some personal growth, which was a nice surprise. And as is always the case in my favorite thrillers, the revelation of the murderer is only one of many secrets revealed throughout the course of the story.

Bring Me Back by B. A. Paris

I’ve read two of Paris’ other books – Behind Closed Doors and The Breakdown – and remember very little of either of them, even after re-reading their synopses and my very brief Goodreads reviews of each. I expect Bring Me Back won’t stick with me for very long either, though I did enjoy it. It’s about a man whose girlfriend Layla disappeared many years ago and was accused of her murder. When no body appeared – much less any other evidence – he was released, though the mark of suspicion has plagued him ever since. Since then, he and his girlfriend’s sister have gotten together, bonded by their mutual grief. But just after they get engaged, signs begin to appear that Layla isn’t dead at all – and she’s returned to plague her sister and former boyfriend.

I saw the end coming from a mile away here (perhaps because at this point I’ve read too many thrillers). The final resolution may rub some readers the wrong way, for reasons I won’t go into too much because of spoilers, but if you also are a frequent reader of thrillers like these, you probably know what many readers’ issue was. All the same, it’s not the worst example of the genre; nor is it the best.

 

A Couple of Unfinished Reads

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The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The premise of this book – a historical mystery where one man relives each day in the body of a different person, with no memory of who he actually is, and must solve a murder before all of his “bodies” are expended – is fascinating. I love a good locked room mystery, which this one is, and I love it even more when it’s set in the past. The time repeating and body swapping conceits add interest, and Turton develops intriguing rules for both as the story progresses.

Unfortunately, the book fell short for me in two primary ways. First, the audiobook narrator simply cannot do female voices. This is a common pitfall for male narrators, and like many of his fellow men, narrator Jot Davies pitches the female characters’ voices unnaturally high and shrill in this book. Any sort of inflection indicating emotion or meaning is completely obscured to the point of not really even being attempted; the only feature of women’s voices as done by Davies is “high.” There’s only one main female character in the book, but as she’s the titular character and her relationships with the protagonist in all of his guises are of paramount importance, it makes for a very difficult listen.

Secondly, one of the people the protagonist inhabits is fat. Turton, through his protagonist, makes much mention of this fact. No one seems to much like this person when the protagonist isn’t controlling him, and his fatness seems to be the reason. Everyone around him (and within him) sees his fatness as a personal failure, something that goes hand in hand with – is both the cause and effect of – his laziness, rudeness, arrogance, and overall unlikability. This is no passing characterization; it’s brought up over and over, the protagonist’s disgust at inhabiting a fat body made apparent repeatedly. While I may have been able to get past the annoying female voicing, I stopped enjoying the book completely at this point and decided to give up.

 

The Witch Elm by Tana French

This is a book that I think is actually objectively pretty good but I just didn’t particularly enjoy. It is S L O W. It took eight hours to get to the actual mystery; everything before that read like a slice of life novel about a generic Irish man named Toby who is not particularly likeable but also not particularly terrible either. He gets involved in an unethical thing at work, he’s in love with his girlfriend who is clearly too good for him, he argues about privilege with his friends at a bar, and he experiences a break-in at his home where he’s brutally beaten. He survives, but he has a long road to recovery ahead of him. After that, he decides to visit his dying uncle at the home he and his cousins visited during summers when they were kids, needing some time to get accustomed to the ways his life has changed after the attack and wanting to help care for a beloved family member in his final days. At this point, there were several more chapters of Toby caring for said uncle, reminiscing with him and his cousins, and so on. This could have been a novel about how a fairly self-centered man learns to care more about others in the wake of his own personal trials, and it would have been a good example of that – just not really what I was looking for.

Eight hours in, though, the mystery finally starts to show itself. One of his cousin’s kids discovers a skull in the old tree on the grounds (the witch elm of the title), and it turns out that it belongs to a classmate of Toby’s who disappeared when they were kids. Murder is clearly how he died – but who is the culprit? I listened for a bit longer, glad to have finally gotten to the good part (as I saw it), but the glacial pace continued and I stopped caring. Ultimately, I let my digital checkout expire, read the ending on Goodreads, and moved on.

Kimberly’s Third Quarter of 2020 (a bit belated)

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In the first part of this year, I made the decision to write about each quarter of my reading here on the blog, which I succeeded with for the first half of the year. And then October happened, and it seemed like everything was both frenzied and dull at the same time. I read very little and wrote even less, so my third quarter post never happened. But I still find the tracking useful, so here I am, a month late, with the summary of my reading life from July – September, wherein I read a total of 15 books.

 

Seeing a Large Cat by Elizabeth Peters

This was the first book in the Amelia Peabody series that I ever read, many years ago when I was a child on a family road trip. It was the book that made me fall in love with both the Peabody Emerson family as well as Barbara Rosenblat’s audiobook narration. I still love this book. It introduces two interesting characters who become part of the ensemble cast for nearly all future books, and it introduces Ramses’ own POV narration, which adds a newness to the long-running series that I think it needed. It’s funny and absurd and everything works out mostly for the best at the end – just the ticket for this sad and strained time.

 

The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters

This book was notable for me in that it’s really the first time that Amelia’s prejudice toward Egyptians is acknowledged openly as being prejudice. Certainly she was better than most of her time (and better than many today), but when a young Egyptian man whom they had taken in as a member of their extended family falls in love with her British niece and the two wish to be married, Amelia’s first instinct is to object – and she holds to this view for some time. Her husband (who is irritated by everyone equally but does seem to be genuinely free of racial prejudice) brings her round eventually, and Amelia learns of and is ashamed by this unsavory facet of herself. It’s the first time since Book 1 that Amelia’s character grows in any real sense, and it was nice to see.

 

The Falcon at the Portal by Elizabeth Peters

Well, this book is engaging but extremely sad. If you make it this far in reading the series, I suggest you have the next book, He Shall Thunder in the Sky, close at hand.

 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This is one of those books that I can’t stop talking about (probably to the mild aggravation of friends and family). Harari has written an ambitious book about the history of humankind, from 100,000 years ago to the present. Among the most interesting things for me personally were these two bits: there were half a dozen or more different human species that lived at the same time as homo sapiens (not just the Neanderthals as most of us think); and the agricultural revolution may have been ultimately good for 21st century humans, but for most of its duration it actually caused a decrease in the quality of life for most people (not to mention animals). The way Harari frames certain concepts was also fascinating. For example, he writes that what enabled humans to bind together in large groups necessary for modern civilization was our shared belief in myths, and by myths he basically means anything that is not physical. This could be religion, but it’s also abstract ideas like liberalism, democracy, economic systems, and human rights. Without these shared myths, large groups of humans cannot work together across distance and time. I’m excited to read the graphic adaptation that was just published October 27.

 

Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

I’ve not read anything else by Hugh Howey and I wasn’t particularly impressed by this one. I’m having a hard time even recalling the concept, and I ended up skimming the last third.

 

He Shall Thunder in the Sky be Elizabeth Peters

This volume concludes the events that began in Falcon at the Portal (albeit three years later for our characters) and sees the villains brought to justice. Satisfying and cathartic.

 

 

Cursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales edited by Marie O’Regan

I enjoyed this short story collection, though I’d be hard pressed to tell you what any of the stories were about. I’m going to blame pandemic brain.

 

The Companion by Katie Alender

I really enjoyed this gothic-esque YA thriller and wrote a full review of it here.

 

Heist Society & Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter

These were just what I needed in a book for this time: fun, fluffy heist stories of a found family with plenty of banter and love. And of course, happy endings. I own these two and was glad I could re-read them when I needed them.

 

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

Junger’s short book provides his explanation for why so many white colonists in America willingly abandoned their Western society and culture and went to live with Native American tribes – but there are no records of the reverse ever happening. He weaves this question together with the fact that many American soldiers returning from war have PTSD not only because of the extreme violence they witnessed and participated in, but because of the struggle of leaving behind a communal society (soldiers in war) and trying to reintegrate into an extreme individualist one (modern American society at peace). Certainly he is not arguing that war is good – but the more communal cultures of both the armed forces and Native American tribes exert an inexorable pull on humans. It’s a fascinating book that provides a lot to discuss.

 

Lord of the Silent by Elizabeth Peters

Another solid entry in this reliably good series.

 

The Last Confession of Autumn Casterly by Meredith Tate

Autumn Casterly has disappeared, and the only person who believes she hasn’t just run off is her younger sister Ivy. Trapped on the brink of death somewhere, Autumn’s consciousness follows Ivy as she tries to find Autumn. Seasoned readers will know what happened to Autumn years ago that started her down a spiral of dangerous behavior – drug use and dealing, violence – but most of them will still be surprised by the culprits responsible for her kidnapping in the present. This is a thoughtful, often painful read that shines a light on complex sister relationships.

 

The Fortress by S. A. Jones

Jonathon Bridge offers himself as a supplicant to the Fortress, a protected society of women that exists alongside our modern day world. His wife is requiring this of him in order to remain married after learning of the sexual violence in his workplace and the ways Jonathon was complicit in it (including multiple infidelities). The Fortress has three rules for supplicants: They are forbidden to ask questions, to raise a hand in anger, and to refuse sex. This was a buzzy title at PLA in February, and I picked up it partly because I’ve always been intrigued by matriarchal societies and partly because I wanted to see how it would resolve the issues of consent that its premise raises. It doesn’t. This is a book full of rape that the author and her characters refuse to name as such. The book is interesting to talk about, I suppose, but it’s a really distasteful read without anything meaningful to say.

 

The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson

I was really irritated after reading the first book in this trilogy, which contains two mysteries – neither of which are resolved in that first volume. Thankfully, this third and final volume wraps everything up nicely. I think I actually enjoyed the second book most, but this is a solid series for mystery readers – one I recommend reading now, when you don’t have to wait a year to learn whodunnit.