September 2026's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Laws of Solomon (Martyr Maker #4) by Eriq La Salle

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Redemption isn't given. It's fought for.

After years of violence, Solomon leaves the brutal backdrop of New York and its underworld to find peace in California where he settles for the quiet life of a gardener defined by routine, restraint, and a fragile kind of peace that had alluded him. Having been a former child soldier, mercenary, and hit man, he is determined to put his past behind him. But as violence erupts on the grounds he tends, his hard-won tranquility shatters when he encounters a young boy named Gaby whose life is in danger.

Protecting the child pulls Solomon back into a world he swore he'd buried. As they set out on an unexpected journey, hunted by men who will stop at nothing to get what they want, Solomon must confront not only the threat closing in but the darkness he carries within.

Propulsive and deeply human, Laws of Solomon is a story of redemption, found family, and the cost of choosing compassion in a brutal world. In saving Gaby, Solomon may finally discover whether peace is something a man like him can earn—or something he must sacrifice everything to protect.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The fatherly love Solomon lavishes on the child Gaby is very welcome to see in a literary landscape where men are solely violent and hateful, or redeemed by some woman or another. Solomon's world has only ever been violent so he's redeemed, but by the need to protect and guide a child not his.

Not to say he's non-violent...many readers will love that, but I didn't, and I can't get all the way to a fourth star despite how well-written the story is.

Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $7.99 for an ebook. Tolerant of violence? Go ahead.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


She's a Killer by Kirsten McDougall

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Alice is struggling to find things to care about.

Branded 'smarter than most' at the age of seven, she now works in Enrolments at the local university and spends her time stalking the internet for shoes she can't afford.

Meanwhile, the climate is in crisis and wealthy immigrants are flocking to New Zealand for shelter, stealing land, driving up food prices and taking over.

When Alice meets teenage genius Erika, life suddenly gets a lot more interesting.

But Erika soon reveals a dangerous plan to set things 'right', forcing Alice out of indifference and into action of the most radical kind.

Just what is a slacker to do? Bold and brilliantly bizarre, She’s a Killer is the satirical dystopian cli-fi thriller you never knew you needed. Until now.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Buy it for the new (to me, anyway) coinage of "wealthugees." The rich are taking over beautiful New Zealand and screwing it both up and over, a too-smart-to-be-happy woman's caught up in a scheme to do something permanent about it, and hijinks ensue. Very slowly, but they do ensue.

I'm not over the moon because cli-fi and satire are odd bedfellows, the Māori in the story come across to me as more a white person's vision than real people, and I ran out of patience with Alice before I ran out of book.

Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $14.99 for the openable ebook. In the proper mood....

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Children of wolves: a novel by Lawrence Osborne

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Never fall for your prey....

A thrilling tale of manipulation and deceit about an American private investigator who travels to Turkey to track down the daughter of a wealthy family, unwittingly setting off a sinister plot.

Four children from wealthy families are sent to a strict prestigious boarding school for troubled teenagers. Haunted by the horrors they experience, they vow to disrupt the status quo by all means necessary.

Years later, Tyler is a private investigator with a failing career who has been hired by petrochemical billionaire James Arthur Knight Jr. to find his run-away daughter, Chana. At a seaside hotel in Turkey, he finds Chana lounging with her three wealthy friends and living with a fake name.

Enthralled by Chana’s shyness and elegance, Tyler decides to keep his discovery to himself, accepting Mr. Knight’s payments while feeding him elusive information and partying with Chana and her friends over wine and raki. One night, when Tyler lets slip his relationship with the American consul, Chana lights up with interest and asks if he can orchestrate a meeting.

With a backdrop of of glitzy ex-pat parties, diplomatic galas, and the gritty underworld of Istanbul, Chana conjures a plot involving the consul that sets into motion a dark chain of events.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Glitzy surfaces that sound nice, have interesting shapes, and doesn't do much with them beyond note their surfaces' shine and elaborately describe to color and texture. Tyler's failings are self-inflicted; Chana's rebellion is pique at how her rich dad, a scumbag to be sure, failed to give her *enough* so now she and her buds want to take it away.

It was nicely paced, had a fascinating geopolitical setting that's mostly squandered in travel-magazine puffery, and ultimately ends in sequel bait. It was not a huge success for me.

Summit Books/S & S (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) thinks $12.99 is fair for the book. Library's free....

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them together: this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as you’ve never read it before

Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang’s Babel

The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene.

A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls.

Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets, Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web.

The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first. This twisty, queer, dark academia is a brand-new take on the questions that haunt Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: To read, or not to read: that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous youthful solipsism, or to take leave from Horatio's roiling inner-sea of troubles, and by opposing the demand to re-tread deepworn paths leading to that ever-stormy inner-sea, end them at bloody last; to die to this endlessly refought battle, finally to sleep through more youthful Sturm und Drang; and by a sleep, to say we end...at least my unwilling awareness of...the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that solipsistic young transmasc Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

I read the whole bleedin' thing and I want those hours back.

DAW (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
thinks $15.99 works as a price for the ebook...I disagree.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Three Hitmen and a Baby (Assassins Anonymous #3) by Rob Hart

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Welcome back to Assassins Anonymous, where family is everything and danger lurks around every corner.

Assassins Anonymous isn't just a weekly recovery meeting for reformed killers—it's also a family.

When Valencia receives troubling news that her brother has gone missing, she wants rush off to LA to find him. But she can’t bring her baby girl, Lucia. Enter the other members of Assassins Anonymous—Mark, Astrid, and Booker, who offer to watch the toddler while she's gone. After all, they're three of the deadliest, most highly skilled people on the planet; what could go wrong?

Turns out, a lot. Shortly after Valencia leaves, Mark is summoned to the lair of Zmeya, a Russian mob boss calling in a deadly favor—she wants him to kill Astrid, his protege and friend. Mark refuses, but Zmeya reveals that she knows the identity of Mark’s ex-girlfriend . . . and his son. Either Astrid goes, or they do.

Meanwhile, Lucia spikes a dangerously high fever, and when Booker and Astrid take her to urgent care, they realize too late, that their fabricated identities are a real liability. Also, they don't know Valencia’s last name, let alone Lucia's. They can hardly blame the staff for calling the NYPD.

Suddenly the splintered group is on the run from both the Russian mob and the police, dodging bad guys and do-gooders while trying to find refuge in a city full of surveillance cameras—all without killing anyone. That is, until Zmeya captures Sara and Bennett, and Mark is ready to throw his sobriety out the window.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I lost steam, lost the thread, lost my sense of humor...SOMEthing happened to reduce my enjoyment of the silliness of this series to a new low. Maybe it's the baby's fever...?

Whatever it was I chuckled a couple times early on then sat stonefaced in front of my Kindle flipping pages with no trace of a smile, no moment of rib-tickling daffy fun I could see on my mental TV screen.

G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires $14.99 to completely transfer you a reading license that they can revoke at any time, for any reason. At least the library isn't capricious. (see? humorless)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir (tr. Mary Robinette Kowal)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: An Icelandic night may hide secrets and affairs—or even bodies—in this gruesomely cathartic horror thriller from the author of The Night Guest.

Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.

Trying to do the right thing, Unnur reunites the lost pet with its owner—a young woman named Ásta who is in desperate need of some help. Unnur reluctantly agrees to take in the cat until Ásta is able to care for it again herself.

Soon, Ásta becomes a fixture in Unnur's life and the two form an unlikely friendship. But like a black cat, trouble is tailing Ásta, and Unnur is the only one there when things take a violent turn.

Nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Dark, horrifying story of how vicious the world is to women, how victimization of women is met by apathy, and how few women step up to help each other in hours of need. Nothing else in this story made me afraid and angry...I was pretty eye-rolly about the "horror" in this story.

At a hair over 150pp, this is a novella which is exactly long enough to spend with dreary, depressing Unnur and ridiculously unintrospective Ásta...about three and a half hours and I was gnawing on my Kindle's case to escape the dreary sadness I was feeling with some microplastic consumption.

Tor Nightfire (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $12.99 for an ebook, but the library's free.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


To Rob a Bank Is an Honor by Lucio Urtubia (tr. Paul Sharkey)

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: For the first time in English, the life story of the revolutionary outlaw who brought Citibank to its knees.

In 1981, Lucio Urtubia received a suitcase full of cash from Citibank executives, handed over the plates he’d used to forge 20 million dollars in traveler’s checks, and walked away a free man. This is the true story of the most famous Robin Hood of the twentieth century, a lifelong anarchist who robbed from the rich to give to liberation struggles the world round.

Born to a poor family in the Basque Country, Urtubia was conscripted into Franco’s army at seventeen, where he began smuggling rations from military stores. In 1954, he fled to exile in Paris, where he learned to work as a mason, laying bricks by day and collaborating with Catalonian anarchists by night. Soon, he was planning bank heists to fund the Spanish struggle, stealing weapons, and masterminding the escape of resistance fighters. Following the uprisings of May 1968, Urtubia opened a printshop, producing political pamphlets while amassing a crew of operatives to counterfeit passports, ID cards, and workers’ paychecks.

By the late 70s, Urtubia hit on the plan that would make him infamous: changing the serial numbers on traveler’s checks and depositing them simultaneously. Citibank’s early global banking system offered the prime target, and checks spread to revolutionary movements in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. “He who robs a thief is a thousand times forgiven,” Urtubia argued. Over decades, Urtubia funneled material support to groups including the Red Brigades in Italy, the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the Black Panthers in the US, and the ETA Basque separatists.

Told with Urtubia's characteristic warmth and humor, To Rob a Bank Is an Honor collects the adventures and political convictions of this larger-than-life figure of an incendiary era.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Gets into inspiration porn pretty quickly, is 75pp too long, and deals with rebellion in a world that simply does not exist in today's societal panopticon.

OTOH he's got good stories to tell, makes an excellent example of "who robs a thief is a thousand times forgiven," and very clearly does not succumb to the right-wing-encouraged "moral purity" bullshit afflicting leftists for centuries.

AK Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $21.99 for an ebook...I'd make the obvious joke but....

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


When the Tamarind Tree Blooms by Elaine Russell

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Geneviève Dubois, half-Lao, half-French, turns eighteen and leaves the French orphanage where she has been trapped for fourteen unhappy years. She is determined to uncover the story of her parents and locate her missing twin brother.

Stepping into the deeply divided world of 1931 French colonial Laos, she finds neither French colonists nor native Lao readily accept her mixed heritage. Even falling in love is fraught with the cultural restrictions of two dissonant societies. Where does she fit in?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Interesting setting, interesting mixed-race woman's PoV in colonial patriarchal cultures (plural), and somehow it never comes together. From the outset I was not clear as to why I was so involved in the story as I read it; when I'd put it down, I'd forget about it. It's a two-year-plus odyssey, my finishing the story.

Yet finish it I did, and without much flipping back to refresh my memory; unusual experience, honestly I just don't get it at all.

Belles Histoires (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $4.99 for an ebook. If the premise interests you, it's not a bad read.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Warning to the Crocodiles (41%) by António Lobo Antunes (tr. Karen Sotelino)

Rating: 3* of five because there was no reason it should've been this obfuscatory

The Publisher Says: Set in the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, Antonio Lobo Antunes's Warning to the Crocodiles is a fragmented narrative of the violent tensions resulting from major political changes in Portugal.

Told through the memories of four women who spend their days fashioning homemade explosives and participating in the kidnap and torture of communists, the novel details the clandestine activities of an extreme right-wing Salazarist faction resisting the country s new embrace of democracy."

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I don't know what's going on here, I'm told there are four narrators and okay that's nice but who are they and why are they helping the men doing these horrible things to decent, upstanding communists anyway? Like, they're men who're bruised by losing but you're going to be better off so what the what is the cheapness of the family treasures causing such gold-plated anxiety about?

It's never been harder to say "No thanks" to a read because I liked the strange, not-ordinary descriptions (that church shadow *shudder*), the way the prose wrapped around itself; but when you don't like these women and you can't tell who's who and there's not one shred of help...ya gotta bail eventually.

Dalkey Archive Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) has a yen for getting $9.95 per ebook.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Swallows (46%) by Natsuo Kirino (tr. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The highly anticipated new novel. When a young single woman in Tokyo decides she’s ready to sell anything—even her womb—to escape the precarity of her life, an agency pairs her with a wealthy couple desperate to have a child. The match seems made in heaven. She even looks a little like the wife. But is anything ever that simple?

Nothing has ever gone right for Riki. She left her boring hometown in Hokkaido, where she worked at a nursing home, for a better life in Tokyo. But as a temp in the big city she has no job security, and barely scrapes by. She eats the same old discount boiled egg for lunch every day, sometimes for dinner, too. Many of her peers have to take on a side hustle just to make ends meet. So when her friend discovers an agency offering a hefty sum for egg donation, both leap at the chance for an interview.

Meanwhile, former ballet star Motoi Kusaoke and his wife, Yuko, have been trying to conceive for years. After trying what feels like every available option, it seems futile—until Motoi dives deep into his research and learns that, while surrogacy is technically illegal in Japan, there is a company that’s found a loophole.

Before long, everyone has an opinion on the from Yuko’s sex-obsessed, asexual best friend, to Motoi’s controlling prima ballerina mother, and even the affable sex-worker-slash-therapist that Riki has been to a couple of times, after she accepted a down-payment to be a surrogate.

Acutely funny and addictively page-turning, Swallows pulls at the seams of society, reassessing our understanding of motherhood, self-worth, bodily autonomy, and class. What does it mean to be “in control”? And can money really buy happiness?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: My discomfort reached the breaking point at the end of chapter two, when the ironic distance between Ririko and those around her crystallized into the overarching phoniness of the entire story's relationships being so in-my-face I couldn't unsee it. It could simply be a mood-based dislike of that, it could be there's humor in how it was being done that I simply didn't cotton on to, or it could just be a sea-change in me, away from interest in stories about fa¸ades, is real.

Whatever the source, I'm not continuing reads that lose me, no matter where they do so.

Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $12.99 for the ebook. Read a sample first.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Fallow (61%) by Sarah Anderson

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Slyly funny and disarmingly tender, Fallow is the story of a young woman who signs up to be the world’s first in-house corporate surrogate, then finds herself caught up in a social experiment of another kind.

Natalie knows one truth: There is no such thing as a good job.

As the clock ticks away at the workplace harassment call center, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways workers are not just not getting by, but actually getting hustled.

Then, at the blood bank where she sells her plasma, a mysterious flyer leads her to The Company. Natalie turns out to be the perfect candidate for their pilot in-house surrogate. The Company pitches it as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity, motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately—generously—compensated.

For years, her every need is stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock healthcare. Between deliveries, she takes time off—no obligations or expectations. For the first time in her life, she is good at her job; for the first time, she feels free.

But just as she’s about to fulfill the terms of her contract, a staffing decision upends everything and drags her deep into another social experiment. There she meets new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, and what she can expect from the world.

Woundingly funny and deeply moving, Sarah Anderson’s Fallow is a tender, hilarious, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: K.M. Szpara's Docile made my skin crawl, with its pharmacologically induced submissiveness as an enforcement of sexual servitude to repay debt. This is, somehow, worse. I was all the way into part three of three when a twist occurred that caused me to mark a character's speech given to Natalie...very amusing name to give her, Author Sarah...and decisevely type "Uncle" and nope out. I can't say why because I hope you will be deeply intrigued by this not-unrealistic end-stage-capitalist cautionary tale of why we need tumbrils, guillotines, and Mme Defarge to recrudesce, and to give it a fair shake.

My breaking point is entirely, idiosyncratically personal so irrelevant to the quality of the book.

FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $14.99 for your ebook passport to capitalist dystopia. Only if it gets me *out*....

MURDER ON THE SACRED RIVER, the TWENTIETH Lady Emily Ashton series mystery

MURDER ON THE SACRED RIVER (Lady Emily Ashton #20)
TASHA ALEXANDER
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this next enthralling mystery in Tasha Alexander’s bestselling series, Lady Emily chases down a killer in India along the misty banks of the sacred river Narmada.

1908: Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves, along with an eccentric group of English tourists, are vacationing in India at Ahilya Fort, the old home to the Maharaja’s family, when a man is found shot along the Narmada River. Emily and Colin jump into action, but their suspect list is large, including a wonderful spinster and her not-so-wonderful companion; a local doctor; a widow who lives nearby; an English explorer; and an Englishman who now runs a tea plantation near Darjeeling.

1740: Fifteen-year-old Ahilyabai has been married to the son of Malharrao Holkar, the Lord of the Malwa territory, for seven years. Now the time has finally come to produce an heir. But though Ahilya’s in-laws have shown her nothing but kindness, her notoriously-drunken husband remains a mystery to her, having rarely spoken to Ahilya since their wedding as children. Faced with this tortured and distant man, Ahilya’s sense of loyalty is tested as she attempts to balance fulfilling her duty with forging her own destiny. Her decisions will have ripple effects across time—including Lady Emily’s investigation almost two hundred years later.

Lady Emily’s case takes a dramatic turn when a shocking new person arrives at the fort—and when the killer strikes again shortly afterwards, she and Colin must race to uncover the villain’s identity before it’s too late.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: So, dual timelines...I did not know when I picked up this series how that was going to remain a feature of the reading experience. At least I've never, not once, felt unsure of which timeline I'm reading.

I confess the whole "sacred river" trope felt bookhorned into the plot. It's more set-dressing than it is integral to the action from my observation, a kind of local color add-on that doesn't sit very well with me when it's so emphasized in the synopsis.

Colin and Lady Emily are exactly as you'd expect them to be, and that's a good thing. Like Peabody and Emerson, they're as British as Bovril and just as unmistakable. The murder victim is the sort of person who they'd cut dead. And, may I say, dead's the exact right way for the creep to be. The interrelationship of the murder to the 1740s timeline bordered on psychometry, and wasn't a bit surprising; but it was absolutely fascinating as a piece of historical knowledge I now treasure possessing.

There was a slight air of didacticism surrounding the proceedings as we-the-reader are quite brusquely led to the conclusions Author Tasha wishes us to reach. It's not as elegantly done as I could wish, but since I agree with her, I'll look past it.

Already a fan? Here's another one to enjoy. Not yet a fan? This is a good place to start. Don't like historical mysteries? Please see a therapist at your earliest opportunity.

FURY IN DEATH, the SIXTY-THIRD In Death series novel featuring Eve Dallas

FURY IN DEATH
J.D. ROBB
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the new crime thriller from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author, Lt. Eve Dallas journeys into the darkness where murder is born…

NYSPD homicide detective Eve Dallas never knows what to expect when she gets word of a body. It could be an elderly man who made the mistake of climbing a ladder in slippery footwear. And the next call could be a wealthy biotech executive beaten to death in his home office—but what was Larry Chu’s mistake?

The victim’s corpse is so mangled and damaged it’s hard to believe a lone, unarmed assailant could have managed it. The killer was clearly unnaturally strong—and smart enough to find a way into Chu’s highly secure building. Most of all, whoever did this was very, very angry.

The excessive violence leads Dallas to conclude that this was a deeply personal act, born of a rage that she can’t excuse but can understand thanks to her own traumatic past. And though the motive seems rooted in heated emotion rather than cold hard cash, she can’t ignore the suspicious bank account in the Cayman Islands, or the shadowy, profit-hungry company Chu worked for. The mystery only grows when it turns out Chu isn’t the only victim—and Dallas will need to tear through one layer of secrecy after another to reveal what lies behind this explosion of fury...

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The story starts with a huge spoiler and it's not the perp's identity. It's a weird place to put one of those, Author Robb, and I think rafts of people have been hollerin' at you online.

A very interesting slantwise take on the Luigi Mangione case, with a deeply aggrieved victim deciding on exacting revenge against the corporate scum he once worked for after they cause him irreparable harm. It's terrible to contemplate the events that drove him to take the actions he took.

It's Eve and Delia solving the how part of the crimes, uncovering deeply buried secrets and unearthing the bodies literally everyone in the story would prefer to remain buried if only for decorum's sake...there were *awful* crimes committed in connection to this case.

I'm routinely gruntled by the explicitly anti-capitalist messaging in these stories. It gives me a happy dose of fellow-feeling for the undoubtedly well-off Author Robb to expressly go out of her way to chastise greed that blinds the greedy to morality and common sense, while loving and enjoying a billionaire with that lifestyle because no one's ever said Roarke is an evil rotten-souled bastard.

I'm sure it's just me, but it feels like this is the first time I've heard MacNab's name? Delia and Summerset and that repugnant felid all recrudesce as expected, but MacNab? No bells in my brain so much as clinked still less rang. I got an unnerved frisson, though, about the seemingly eternal housewarming party FINALLY coming home (!) to roost...is Author Robb planning to retire now, after I finally found my way into the series by starting at #40? No fair, if so, and I'll kick off big style if there's no #64 in 2027.

I myownself think you'd do best to start where I did rather than here. It's okay to get this plot early but most of the best fun is dynamics that develop best over time. Start with Obsession in Death, #40, for maximal character and series-story enjoyment.

A COMPLEMENT OF SCOUNDRELS, debut (on several levels) revenge thriller with magical trimmings

A COMPLEMENT OF SCOUNDRELS
S.V. LOCKWOOD
Bindery Books | Kist Reads (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: There are many ways to bring down the man who betrayed you—and Myria Cadessa has thought of them all.

Cracking the Elysius Vault should’ve made Myria the richest thief in all Carintheum. Instead, it shattered her crew and left her rotting in jail while her double-crossing master walked away with everything that should’ve been hers.

But now she’s out, and it’s time to settle the score. Reunite her crew? A pleasure. Steal back everything her erstwhile leader took? And then some. She’ll just need to trick the king of all tricksters, with the law on her heels, and a troublesome new ally whose loyalties seem as conflicted as his feelings for Myria. It’s the most audacious heist she’s ever attempted, but she failed her crew once. This time, she’ll make it right—at any cost.

A Complement of Scoundrels is a bold, raucous journey through the underbelly of an empire where the devil’s rules reign, and morality, loyalty, and friendship are values few can afford. But where there’s a wit, there’s a way—and Myria has plenty of that.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Woman-led cast in The Count of Monte Cristo, among thieves in *London/Oxford, with less romantic pining. I absolutely co-sign each of these changes as an improvement.

Well? What're you waiting for? Go buy one.

Look, I'm annoyed enough that I can't in good conscience deliver the scathing insult-ridden takedown I threatened that guy Kist with, and there's still eyes looking at me like I should say something else only nice. Get him to restart weekly reading updates on YouTube instead of paywalled and we'll talk.

Yeah, yeah, not the author's fault blahblahblah. You want nice? Go find somebody nice, get them to tell you about Author Lockwood's way with banter that takes in-jokes between strangers and gives us chuckles as well as a sharper picture of the speaker's inner workings.

The world of Carintheum is given inner workings as well, and as deftly and eloquently. I'm pretty fussy about magic systems; I'm not naturally drawn to reading about magic because it doesn't exist, like gawd or vampires or mpreg. It's got to be presented, as it is here, in a way that lets me suspend disbelief; Myria's experience of the magic she and her partners in crime encounter a the very beginning of the book totally convinced me this was well thought out, so I relaxed right away. It was trust well placed because I never had any reason to revisit my decision to believe this was in-universe plausible stuff happening. It's a real pleasure to encounter an author whose assured and enjoyable presentation of prose could disarm my long-ago-acquired suspiciousness so fast.

The initial conditions of Myria's life as we join her set the other facet of worldbuilding, the society in which the magic is used, as a sort of pre-Victorian time starting industrialization...just not quite as we did in our rather fallen world. Magic as a harvestable, refineable resource capable of being extracted led to some very interesting consequences indeed...Myria's unique relationship to the resource is a very enjoyably used take on an old fantasy trope, the magically deprived in a magical society. It also explains the source of her betrayal that would otherwise have made me feel a bit cheated, so very well done indeed Author Lockwood for seeing a problem and turning it into an advantage.

The scoobygroup Myria forms also suffer deprivation on account of her betrayal on top of losing trust in her. It's the reason this revenge plot, very much a thriller wearing lace cuffs and expensive shoes, is so firmly rooted in the complex social and societal webbing Author Lockwood presents. The depth of field means the machinations and the interrelationships don't ever flatten out into that dreadful second-rate diagrammed-sentence feeling padding so very common when an author isn't given time, or space on the page, or guidance in choices, to fully realize the basis of their world and its social network. Author Lockwood was very well served in this regard.

So what happened to that vanished quarter star? I'll tell you, old girl: the catchphrasiness, the very real and human tendency of people to settle into mannerisms, wears thin in a book. It's great when the characters themselves bicker and banter about it, as Leo and Myria do from the very start. But reading a novel is being married, deeply in the hip pocket of the characters without the IRL ability to pat the partner's pate just a touch too hard while saying "oh, very amusing, dear," thus earning a respite from the actually cute and endearing behavior that's annoying you right then. I also felt a case of quibbles coming on with Myria's found-family dynamics resolving neatly...having the crew's emotional hurts coming up in different ways at different times would be more like establishing the firm intent to return to Carintheum as I feel positive is the intent in this author's (and more than likely publisher's) mind.

I can't offer a perfect score but I can most certainly see Author Lockwood's ability to wring one out of me is definitely there.

CITY OF SOULS AND SINNERS, second in the House of Devils dark romantasy series

CITY OF SOULS AND SINNERS (House of Devils #2)
KAYLA EDWARDS
Scarlett Press/Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$23.00 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the sequel to City of Gods and Monsters, Loren Calla and Darien Cassel have settled back into their old routines, grateful that the whirlwind of dangers they’d faced on Kalendae and the weeks leading up to it are now behind them—or so they think.

But Loren soon finds herself caught in a new storm of trouble when the Terran Imperator blackmails her into working for him. There’s only one problem: he expects her to use her magic, and she doesn’t seem to have any of it left. To keep Darien and the other Devils safe, she agrees to everything the imperator asks of her. But the secrets she is forced to keep from Darien, and her involvement with the imperator’s son, threaten to drive her away from Darien in ways she might never recover from…

As Randal Slade’s successor, Darien wants nothing to do with the throne his father once sat in, but the city of Angelthene has other plans. The Magical Protections Unit asks for his help in taking down the illegal arms trade his father once dabbled in, and to do that Darien must claim his place at the top of the tiers of Darkslayers—a crown the other circles are willing to kill to possess. As he spirals deeper into the secrets his father kept, he makes enemies of friends and friends of enemies—and finds himself buried so deep in Angelthene’s underbelly that he is uncertain he’ll ever get out of it. And if that wasn’t enough, Darien fears he is going crazy when he starts to see creatures that only he can see…

Return to Angelthene in City of Souls and Sinners, a gripping, action-packed tale that tackles themes of love and loss, light and darkness, and the battle between good and evil—and what happens when you can’t tell which is which.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I somehow did not notice, or possibly retain, the information that this is #2 in a series...and that it's got child abuse as one of its themes. It's a serious no-go area for me. It is presented to us in flashback, so supposed to be cushioned that way...we know it came out okay since it's been survived.

Nope. I'm seeing the damage, the awful burden the adult carries and not happy to see it in the flashbacks. It's also a cishet romance, moderate steam, so not going to appeal to me there either. (At. All.) So how'd that fourth star appear?

Clocking in at 750ish pages, it should've been a serious effort to connect the worldbuilding dots for someone stating here, yet it wasn't. It's possible I'd be more annoyed at the slower pace if I'd read the first one. As it was it felt as though I was being given a shot at really getting in there, getting the lay of the land. I felt the magic system was a bit fuzzy, but then checked my response because it's book two so shuddupppp. I flipped past the steamy bits, but it's not like that's anyone's *fault* I'm just not the audience. Darien does some world-class yearning for Loren. I'm always happy to see a man presented as unashamedly being in his feelings for someone, and dude's down bad for this (dull to me) woman and not a bit hesitant to say so: "Do you want me on my knees? Do you want me to beg, is that it? Because I will, I’ll crawl for you."

The size of the cast wasn't as much of an issue as I'd thought it would be. I took in the nicely detailed map in the front matter, then hit the dramatis personae that kept going and going...and turns out I kept up fine because there was enough real estate to do a decent amount of character building for most everyone.

It's on the downside, though, that there are as many opportunities as there are for the romantasy reader with a taste for the yearn to get their fix. Five fewer would not make a negative impact on the story itself. I'm also not convinced we needed the urpsome flashbacks about horrific child abuse. Like, at all. I'm admittedly totally outraged by the topic, but even someone who does not have my sensitivity could see the ease with which we-the-reader could get along fine with only dealing with the aftermath would give the same result.

I mean:

"You belong with me." His words were a declaration. A shout out into the universe, a claim that could not be challenged. "No one else. This—" He lifted her left hand to his chest, flattening it right above his heart, his strong pulse thumping under her palm. When he spoke, his eyes burned with passion and intent. "This is yours. From now until the day I die, and every day after, I am yours. Got it?"

Who needs the cruelty?

AMERICAN ELEGY: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States of America, short hits about touchstones of US culture

AMERICAN ELEGY: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States of America
ED SIMON
Ig Publishing(non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.75- of five

The Publisher Says: Before there was the United States, there was America. The former is a country, a nation, a geographic reality, but the latter is an idea. Invented more than discovered, “America” signified a revolutionary ideal of freedom, liberty, equality, and justice, what Tom Paine in Common Sense meant when he wrote that “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Among the greatest expressions of that faith was the Declaration of Independence with its promise to forge a nation dedicated to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. American society and culture have always existed within the gulf of our stated aspirations and the actual reality, which has necessitated the forging of prophetic voices from Walt Whitman to Toni Morrison, Herman Melville to James Baldwin. Now, just as we prepare for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the United States is succumbing to authoritarianism and the noxious blood-and-soil nationalism which curses the faith in the universal and indispensable America.

In response to this moment, noted cultural critic Ed Simon offers a rejoinder in American Elegy: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States of America. Compiling an assemblage that’s less a canon than a cultural mixtape, Simon presents fifty short chapters that are asynchronously organized works of flash criticism, meant to draw connections across time periods, which each celebrate an aspect of the “America” that’s larger, deeper, and broader than the mere United States. Here the Great American Novel meets the Great American Songbook; sign language converses with the blues; method acting shares the stage with Afrofuturism, and Superman plays baseball. Defining “literature” as broadly as possible, each of the works profiled critiques the status quo and imagines a better world.

As cynical politicians deny the diversity, complexity, and actual beauty of American culture in favor of myths about the nation being made great again, Simon provides not just an elegy, but a challenge and celebration, as well as a repository, an archive, and a call to start over. In the tradition of Gary Wills and Greil Marcus, American Elegy charts a course to a land still undiscovered.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The most valuable concept I came out of this read in possession of is how deeply rooted the fallacy of conflating the term "America" with the United States is. This is a project of lessening urgency as Little Vladdy Pu-Pu's stooge squatting in government housing has wrought havoc on the country's international standing. Most places in the world do not respect the US as much as they did between 1940 and 1990.

Viewing the development of the US cultural identity in the short bursts that he does makes this effort at self-justification for "Americanness" a great browser's book. The brevity of the chapters militates against depths of argument or thoroughness of contextualization. It relies instead on the cumulative effect of tendentious, surface-level prose about the Usual Suspects of US culture...Twain, Walt Whitman, Saul Bellow...to achieve it aim of challenging the monomyth of US manifest destiny in matters societal. Kind of an odd choice, its effectiveness relies on we-the-reader agreeing that the touchstones *are* touchstones....

I enjoyed reading the book, though I wonder if it will succeed in its stated aim of acting as a "call to start over." I was not so called, but I'm a curmudgeonly old man who really needs a nap.

THE STRANGERS, autofiction? metafiction? thought-provoking grief-study no matter how you look at it

THE STRANGERS
NAOMI ALDERMAN
Little Brown and Company (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: They came from nowhere, and now they are everywhere.

A few months after her mother dies, the novelist Naomi Alderman sets up a wildlife camera in the back garden of her parents’ home. It captures the first image of a strange new animal. Low to the ground, about the size of a badger, flat face, long, trunk-like nose. Suddenly these “mimmoths” are as common as foxes or dogs. And no one knows where they’ve come from.

As Alderman negotiates the territory of grief—a place with its own logic and rhythms – the mimmoths spread. From the UK east and west, to the United States, to Russia, to India. They seem harmless, but oddly intelligent. They cannot be captured, they will not take food from humans, they have their own purposes.

Alderman cannot shake the feeling that she has a particular connection to the creatures. Or is she just succumbing to ‘mimmoth psychosis’? As the impact of the mimmoths increases, she is pulled into the cross currents of conspiracy theories and global power struggles. Have her deeply personal forms of mourning lent recent events a surreal air, or is our reality changing drastically and irrevocably?

From the award-winning author of the international bestseller, The Power, The Strangers is a thrillingly original and devastatingly moving novel that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be human. It’s like nothing you’ll have read before.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Grief does very weird things to a person. I'll hold up my hand and admit I've hallucinated (officially) the sound of my thirty-five ears gone belovèd's voice more than once over the years. That one, however, is nothing compared to the mimmoths.

Shared, collective grief powers the mimmoths, of course; no way are fun-sized mammoth-y entities that just...appear...as Naomi Alderman's mother dies, her father's decline speeds up, the planet's climate and civilization's bad-crazy frag-grenade era heat up, just totally unrelated. There is plenty of evidence that Naomi Alderman is not the only one seeing them!

Mass psychosis? Permaybehaps...the mimmoths being widely seen hasn't meant they're easily, or even at all, interacted with, no feedings by humans, no captures (just killings) by humans, nothing tangible except ubiquity. Oh, and lots of (potentially) related effects stemming from being in the vicinity of the mimmoths, healing or spontaneous abortion or death, but SOMEthing momentous occurs to some people (Naomi Alderman included), so of course the conspiracy-theory areas of society have new fodder for old conspiracies and material to make new ones.

Book-Naomi Alderman and Author Naomi Alderman are entwined narratively and intertwined emotionally, as the genesis of the story in mother-loss is real world; the mimmoths and their effects, well...the effects are real, and while I haven't seen a mimmoth I'd love to. What led to Author Naomi Alderman creating this lovely, odd, off-kilter sci-fi memoir is the awfulness of needing a way to work through the random events in a world where the god you thought was yours turns out not to exist and nothing you've thought was real is, in fact, enduringly persistently real, the stuff that god should prevent/ameliorate isn't getting better, and love does not conquer all...but Love persists, endures."Everyone knows the saying: Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

But it's not true. Some things don't kill you but just leave you permanently weaker," as Naomi Alderman muses.

A better way to present the fragmented sensation of living on after the death of a love object but not the love is hard for me to conjure. A mimmoth is real, if not tangible; it affects the world but has no effect on it, like a past, like a dead love; and comes from a silent nowhere without explanation like the Orthodox Jewish god that Naomi Alderman has lost.

It is in blurring the lines separating Author Naomi Alderman's terrible emotional, psychic blows, and the consensus-reality immiseration of end-stage capitalism, that this story's impact is most powerful. Creating, summoning the mimmoths, endowing them with potency of emotional and practical sorts...affect and effect...Author Naomi Alderman makes this a story to be reckoned with. As Author Naomi Alderman processes the profundity of her loss (mostly the loss of possibility, a different, better future) after her mother's death, Naomi Alderman reckons with the world's losses and the loss of the world through her semidivine, partly malign living-but-not mimmoths.

Like every other grief considered I've ever read, this is not a story for its own sake or an entertainment to be enjoyed for a while then largely forgotten. It's not tidy enough for that. Manicured Versailles gardens are not the analogues here, but the designed and controlled wildernesses of Capability Brown. Visibly as different as it's possible to be, yet each is a planned, designed, shaped, undergirded and attention-directing space to be within. Moving through The Strangers will give you the feels a great piece of writing is so good at delivering. Don't expect Versailles, enjoy the wilder, less trammeled world of Capability Brown, and I expect you'll feel amply rewarded.