A couple of titles

So, just catching up on reviews of two books I've read over the past couple of weeks. So far, I seem to be having a decent reading month. I've read just 4 books but all were good. 

First up, Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

So, this is book two in the author's 'Children of Time' trilogy. I read the first book eighteen months ago (I actually thought it was much more recently than that) and my review is HERE. I can't see any other way to speak about book two other than to reveal spoilers to book one, so please, if you're going to read this series, STOP HERE! Okay. So, representatives of Kern's world from book one, the spiders, and of the human ark ship from Earth, take off in a space ship to find other planets that were terraformed by humans. They find a planetary system. Flip back a couple of thousand years to read what happened here. Terraformers came from Earth but things go pear-shaped when they lose communication with Earth, a disaster has happened there. The terraformers are on their own. Something then happens to one of them, they think it's a minor accident: it's not. Flip forward again and the spiders and humans are approaching the system with no idea what they'll find. What they find is the result of experiments one of the scientists was doing thousands of years ago. Right, so this can easily be read as a standalone but probably best to read Children of Time first. But Children of Ruin is a whole new, very scary, ballgame. I'd say bordering on sci-fi horror, it certainly would be if it were a film and not a book. As I found with book one, it's not the people who stick in my mind it's the world-building and ideas. It's not always easy to follow, and is perhaps overly wordy, but goodness me, I look back at it and see a fantastic book. What an amazing writer Adrian Tchaikovsky is. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads as it wasn't quite the book that Children of Time was, it's a 4.5 really. But if you like a bit of hard science fiction, you can't really go wrong with this series. I've just checked Fantastic Fiction for the title of the next book, Children of Memory, only to find this is not a trilogy at all, book four is due out in 2026! Excellent. 

Lastly, Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman.  

It's 1798 and Pandora 'Dora' Blake wants to be a designer of exotic jewellry. She lives with her uncle in a shop of antiquities that used to belong to her parents. They were archaeologists who died when Dora was eight and since then the famous shop has gone downhill, her awful uncle filling the shop with tat. There's no tat in the basement though, and when a beautiful vase is delivered and goes straight down there, Dora decides to investigate surrepticiously. She's aided by Edward Lawrence, a stranger who comes to see her one day. He's trying to gain entrance to the Society of Antiquaries and wants her help. Dora realises that the two can help each other in achieving their dreams, but not how much danger this is going to place both of them in. So this is a sort of Gothic mystery combined with a bit of Greek myth, based on the story of Pandora opening the box etc. It wasn't quite as myth based as I was hoping, I felt the link between Dora and the vase was not fully explored. It was very good on London of the late 1790s, the squalor and the crime in particular and how hard it was for 'everyone' to survive let alone for a woman to try to get a foothold in what was considered the male preserve of jewellry designing. Hermes, the magpie, was an interesting touch. The uncle was a bit 'too' awful, verging on being a caricature. All in all, I did enjoy this one but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads, rounded up from 3.5 as I'm more inclined to do that than round down. 

So, my current read is this:

 I absolutely love an academic mystery so this is a 'must read' for me. Martin Edwards has done a fantastic job of collecting together an excellent clutch of short stories based in schools and colleges. I'm three quarters through and will review it when I've finished. 

A couple of quick reviews

 

So we've had 'No-mow May' here in the UK and that's my excuse for one of my lawns looking like this. In actuality my gardener, who cuts the grass, couldn't do it last week as it was raining too hard. And if I'm honest, I absolutely love how cheerful this looks and how many insects and birds it attracts. These are not dandelions, as some people think, but something called Catsear (Hyphochaeris radicata) and they're what happens when you don't keep a perfect lawn. I have lots of lovely clover too and the bees 'really' love that! Important to keep them happy these days. 

Anyway, this is a book blog not a horticultural, 'Monty Don' fangirl page. :-)

My first book for June (started in May in fact) was A Book of Bones by John Connolly. Anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time knows how much I adore this series. This is book 17 and my interest is not flagging at all. 

So this is basically a continuation of book 16, The Woman in the Woods, which I see I did not review properly. In that, an individual named Quayle wreaked havoc all over the US, but ultimately in Maine, looking for the missing pages to an Atlas which, when complete, will alter the world - and not in a good way. Quayle returns to London after these events and it's there that Parker, Louis and Angel head after a stop-over in The Netherlands to gather information. In the UK, the body of a woman has been found in an abandoned village near Hadrian's Wall, connected to The Familists from book 16. The police are investigating and realise that there's a connection to other bodies discovered all over England. When Parker arrives in the UK is he going to be a help or a hindrance to their enquiries? This was 675 pages long but as usual with John Connolly, it didn't feel like it at all: I whipped through it. It's different to others in the series in that it's half police procedural as Connolly concentrates a lot on the Northumberland police trying to trace the woman's killer. There are also little 'weird' stories inserted into the text, from the past. This worked very well for me and added to the mystery of what The Fractured Atlas is. What Parker actually is - and Louis and Angel - is also known to readers of this series, oddly one of the police officers actually put her finger right on it but was joking when she said it. That was a bit of an 'Oh' moment. I've just discovered that there's more about the history of this 'Atlas' in Connolly's second book of short stories, Night Music, which I own but haven't read. I shall be doing that thing very soon. I must add that this is not a series for people who don't want to read about people dying in nasty ways. And Connolly does not mind who he kills. It's not quite Game of Thrones, but not everyone survives! Just sayin'. I plan to try and catch up with this series this year, I have five left to read as book 22 came out last month. 

Next, Death Rites by Sarah Ward. I thought the author was new to me but when I checked I realised I'd read In Bitter Chill, the first of her Peak District series about DC Childs. Death Rites is the first book in her 'Carla James' series, set in New England. 

Carla James is an English archaeologist from Oxford. She lost her husband recently and is looking for a change of scenery to take her mind off her loss. She gets a position at an elite university in the town of Jericho, 'somewhere' in New England. The body of a woman is found in a country area outside the town. It's surrounded by various objects or artifacts and Carla is called in for her opinion on these. None of it makes a lot of sense to her but she can't resist continuing to look into the murder, and that's when she starts to find connections with a handful of other killings and suicides that have happened over the last few years: the connections could lean towards the occult. The police actively try to dissuade her from investigating but their antipathy does nothing but spur her on. But who, on the university campus can she trust? And why won't the police listen to her? So this was very well written and pacey - a pageturner so I read it quickly. I think I saw the series mentioned by a blogging friend but I'm afraid I can't remember who. I found Carla a bit annoying at first, possibly too pushy and overstepping the mark at times. Then I saw how obstructive the police were being and I started to get annoyed that they couldn't see what was in front of them... and it didn't help that they were not pleasant people. At one stage Carla does not know who to turn to for help and I have to confess to thinking, 'Call Charlie Parker!' The setting of a New England university town felt realistic, we drove through a few when we were over there at various times. But I do wish the author had said which state it was in. There is apparently a Jericho in Vermont and it looks lovely, but too small to have a uni. Anyway, an interesting start to a new series. Will I read more? I'm not sure. It was good enough but I have a 'lot' of books on my tbr mountain, so we'll see. 

So now I have to choose a new book... think about me at this difficult time.