This book is the last in the series of three, and just as enjoyable as the previous two. This book has the rather large burden of wrapping up all the loose ends and storylines from the whole series – kind of like the last season of a very popular drama on TV.

In this the author succeeds, and we get answers to every question we might have had – people get what was coming to them, and I found it very satisfying.

Again the writing is excellent, and since it is in the first person it moves along quickly with very things happening elsewhere – we are seeing events play out directly. The writer continues to write excellent action sequences, and this book has a few less than others but still some are pretty epic.

Which brings me to really my only criticism of the book (and the series) – it took a long time to get to where we are now in the story, and I’m not sure it was worth the long ride. I can’t go into why this is without spoiling the story, but to me it felt a little like these big battles that we spent so many pages and chapters on before amounted to very little by the end of the series.

Because I read the books as they came out, with a year or so in between them, I did find myself struggling to remember some of the characters – and despite the reference materials included in the books it really broke my rhythm to stop and look up who that person was who just got killed.

It isn’t the fault of the author, of course, but I’d recommend anyone reading this series to go straight through without too much time in between volumes. I think you’ll find that it is a series that is definitely worth your time.

Next I am re-reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

This was a book that made the conscious choice to be unusual – and I like books that are weird, as long as the weirdness has a point.

It tells a strange story about someone who we might call “God”. How do they come about their powers? Are there any other gods out there? Who do they have to step over to take the job?

This book does a good job of answering all these questions, in a roundabout and convoluted way. It takes some trust on the part of the reader to start understanding where the book is going. I guess that trust was rewarded, but after the culmination of the main struggle the story continues in a way that I thought was not really necessary.

It was funny – the writer is gifted with the ability to make characters likable and interesting, and there is a mixture of popular culture and brand names that I guess are included to set a time and place. Once you kind of understand what is happening it is fun to read the interactions between these characters.

But the ending of the book and the overall idea of what the author was trying accomplish left me confused. Kind of like a pilot making a successful emergency landing, but ending up at the wrong airport.

Next I am reading The Traitor by Anthony Ryan.

How did I end up reading this book? Sometimes titles end up on my reading list, and by the time I get around to them I have no idea where they came from. This is one of those books – and after reading it I’m not sure if I got any benefit at all from it.

The basic idea is interesting, I guess. The book describes what happens when a bored psychiatrist resolves to leave all decisions to the roll of a die. He is hoping to break out of his routines and allow some other “minority voices” have a chance at directing his life.

It was thought-provoking, but it also seemed to be more than a little provoking in general. Written in 1971 there is a lot of content here that probably wouldn’t fly in a modern novel, and a lot of graphic sex – to the point of obsession.

Maybe because of the age of the book and the changes in society a lot of what I think were attempts at comedy didn’t really work for me. After a while it felt like most of the plot was just a way to end up in crazy sexual situations, and to titillate rather than provide any meaningful message.

Of course there is something going on in the undercurrents – commentary on religion, psychiatry, and moral responsibility. But buried as it was underneath the lurid stories and silly situations, I’m not sure it was worth exploring.

Next I am reading The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins.

I really enjoyed this book, a sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy that has its heart in the right place. The book seems inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with a little bit of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire mixed in.

Truly this is a great example of a book written with structure and balance – there is no extra fat to cut and it accomplishes its purpose with minimal digressions. The characters are likable and safe – no big shocks when somebody is different than what you expected (I’m looking at you, Gene Wilder!)

You would think that a book like this would be cozy and warm, but there is plenty of background that comes up during the story that is plenty sad enough to counterbalance all the happiness and sunshine. Thanks to this sort of light/dark balance the book feels less saccharine and more wholesome. It was a pleasure to read.

Next I am reading The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart.

I always like reading a good mystery – and this one was quite satisfying. The pacing of the story, the mysteries that kept coming up, and even a murder-mystery party – all of these kept me reading.

The book had plenty of twists, which I won’t go into here but I will say that unlike some other mysteries that I’ve read lately I didn’t see them coming.

Some parts of the book I felt had been done before – getting a little tricky with timelines and hiding characters you’ve met before by changing their name… these are tricks that only work when you are reading the story rather than seeing it, and I’m still not sure if they are fair tools to use on a reader.

The summation of the story made everything clear in the end, although I did feel like this book helped me determine just where my limit for believability really was. Just a little bit farther and I might have been less inclined to recommend the book.

Next I am reading The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer.

A fascinating true crime book on one of the most prolific art thieves in history – and surprisingly the events in this book happened relatively recently.

First, the book is written really well. The writer is careful to keep himself out of it and put you right there as a sort of invisible witness to what happened. You feel the thrill and the risk, and even the surge of relief at escaping without being caught.

Thanks to the access that the writer had to most of the people involved, including the main art thief himself, the story is well-researched and full of interesting cross links and background info. It is no surprise that it took ten years to assemble this work.

I really enjoyed this book, probably because I enjoy heist stories/movies so much. Because this one takes place in contemporary Europe it feels a little more tangible, and reminds the reader that similar things could be happening right now, right where you live.

This book is why I prefer reading in long form – you can appreciate the attention to detail and the setup of the story. It is just something you’d never experience reading online clips or Wikipedia articles. Extremely well-done.

Next I am reading The Perfect Guests by Emma Rous.

This was a fast-paced novella that maybe was a bit too ambitious for the time it took to tell the story.

The science fiction backstory seemed pretty interesting to me, but a lot of the background and history is sort of skipped over to concentrate on the scary events happening at the moment.

Because of this the whole story felt rushed to me, and the characters often didn’t have much of a connection with each other. Shouldn’t there be a lot more history between them after living together on a spaceship for most of their lives?

Occasionally the characters made odd choices, and it felt like these choices were to serve the plot rather than them doing what normal logical people would do.

I think this would have been much better as a full-length novel, but for whatever reason it has been sanded down to a quick story that didn’t really do much for me. It was good for what it was, though: a quick sci-fi read.

Next I am reading The Art Thief by Michael Finkel.

Written in the vein of a scientific research survey, the book is not really about if art is good for the brain, but rather why it is good for the brain. When I started the book I expected some discussion on this but rather the authors have already moved on to the point of “here are the benefits that art with confer”.

Since they have already decided that art is good for the brain, all the scientific papers and results that they cite support this, and there are no sources of dissent.

It seemed to me that a lot of the programs, systems and strategies introduced in this book have some sort of direct connection with the authors themselves, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how strictly you are judging the contents.

But really, even if the premise of this book is wrong, what is the worst that could happen? You get more culture/art/dance/music in your life – it is hard to imagine that being a bad thing.

So although the writing is a little woo-woo they do make a convincing case for adding some art into one’s routine lifestyle. I especially was interested in the writing about children’s play and learning styles and leveraging these into strategies for adults.

Next I am reading The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown.

This book was an interesting mix of naturism, activism and self-help, and a source of unusual ways of thinking about some of the very modern issues of maintaining focus and resisting the attention economy.

It is truly an unusual book and certainly not what I expected. But sometimes surprises can be good, and happily this was one of those times.

The book is not just about “doing nothing”, but really about deciding (and controlling) where your attention is spent. There are some excellent suggestions in here, with lots of information about art, nature and activism. It has been a long time since I’ve read calls to action like this – and I think I did a good job of not dismissing it as naïveté. Considering ideas from the young is just as interesting as from the old.

In an odd parallel the author grew up living around the same area where I had lived around the first dot com bubble, near Cupertino, Campbell and Los Gatos. It was hard to remember what life was like for me at that time – I remember mostly a lot of office work and hiking, not much in between. But while I was doing all this, the author was attending elementary school nearby and maybe hitting the same fast food restaurants that I was.

Like any book some ideas resonated with me and some didn’t. The section where social media feeds were described as information stripped of context was especially well written. There was also several sections heavy on labels and identities, and for some reason this rubbed me the wrong way and made me question some of the justifications given.

Overall it was a good read and I enjoyed stretching my brain a little bit.

I am still reading The Moonstone, and I’ll bring it along with me on our summer trip coming up. I’ll be posting a summary of the trip here, along with more book thoughts once we get back!

Once again a really good thriller that builds up to a fast pace a little quicker than usual. I like the books in this series because they have a great balance of action, complex characters, and dry comedy. After the second book you don’t really know if any characters are going to be around for the rest of the series – so it feels like anything could happen to anyone.

The pace is set by the way this book is written – switching between characters within chapters so it feels like you need to keep reading to get to the next stopping point.

Unfortunately the author still has the habit (or is it his style, in fact?) of setting up little mini-cliffhangers designed to make the reader fear the worst, when usually there is a way out for the person in jeopardy. These come up so often that you just kind of know that there really isn’t any danger at all – you just expect them to get out of trouble a few pages later. Maybe the writer is setting our expectations for a huge twist down the road?

So, great book once again, and it’ll be hard to stay away from the next book in the series. I want to make these last, however, so I’m waiting for some other books to come up at the library first.

I picked up this book because the writer also wrote the Murderbot Diaries, a great series of short novellas that were extremely enjoyable to read.

Unfortunately this one landed in a weird way for me – and I think there are a variety of reasons why I couldn’t really enjoy the book.

There is rich world building here – lots of history of different races, and hundreds of years pass while these races interact, evolve, and go to war. This is usually a good thing for me, but the way these are introduced makes it seem like you should already know everything about them. The characters have a shared history that they allude to throughout the book but only towards the end do we get to find out about the details.

Because of all the details here there are large chunks of the book that are simply exposition – explaining this and that and it just grew tiresome. “Show, don’t tell” would serve the author better here.

There are a lot of likable characters, and some unique ideas about magic, demons, witches, etc. The way these ideas are presented made me feel like I had missed a book in the series – but this book is apparently the first.

Despite a great start (waking up locked in a prison with no memory how they got there) the ending fell oddly flat. There was no big moment of payoff or resolution. I’m sure there’ll be more books in the series, and this one is focused on putting pieces in place for greater things, but if I don’t care about the story now I won’t be reading later books.

So a bit disappointed with this one – despite the writer’s talent I think I’d categorize this one as a misfire.

Next I am reading Real Tigers by Mick Herron.

Sometimes it seems like a difficult task to make history interesting, especially to people living hundreds of years later who have access to (almost) all the knowledge available to mankind.

In this case, the history of the HMS Wager, a ship that foundered and wrecked off the coast of South America in the mid-1700s, is completely fascinating on its own. Thanks to a great deal of research, the writer really brings this old tale to life and it does well when seen from a modern viewpoint.

The story has it all – shipwrecks, battles at sea, war, mutiny, cannibalism, treasure and desperate reaches for life. Written in a brisk, modern style it is really interesting to see what life was like for a sailor back then, and how it compares to the modern day.

Because of preserved logs and first-hand writing about the incident, the story is as clear a look as we’ll get at what really happened, and the author assures us that he is relating events without embellishments or bias. We have to trust the writer on this, but there is an extensive list of sources and explanations for the material laid out in this book.

I had no real criticism of this book – it was for me interesting from start to finish. The only minor point I found disturbing was that the passage of time in the pages seemed so short relative to what these people actually went through. When some castaways are caught by the Spanish there is only a sentence saying “after two and a half years of imprisonment they could go home”. You are left wondering what kinds of experiences and lifestyle they must have had during these and other times that are sort of fast-forwarded for this book.

But I think the author made the right choices to keep this book to a reasonable length and it leaves some things to the reader’s imagination.

Next I am taking a trip to the USA, not sure when I’m going to be reading again. I have a few books on my list though – maybe I’ll get back to reading those in a couple of weeks.

I don’t often read thrillers, but I had heard this was a page-turner and it was available at the library so I decided to check it out.

It sort of reminded me of the TV show Lost – mystery upon mystery, with characters always being added with unknown backstories. As their backstories fill in it informs us of the big picture, and the making of those connections provides the little hit of endorphin to your brain.

At least that’s my theory.

This book was written in a way that the author seems to going for a WTF moment at the end of every chapter. I like WTF moments, but when there are this many you start to anticipate and they become less powerful. I think the writer may have overdone it here.

The structure of the story was fairly clever, and the pacing was good, but I’m not sure I was a big fan of the final product. Maybe I am just getting old and hoping for a little intellectual stimulation with my thrillers.

Next I am reading The Wager by David Grann.

This science fiction book was a long read – and the first thing I thought when I started was that I wasn’t used to reading this genre written at such a scale.

It deals with the rise and fall of civilizations across the universe, a universe in which humans are only a minor player. It was interesting to read about how some civilizations transcend and move beyond the rest of the universe, while others fizzle out by destroying themselves with war or poisoning their planets.

This book uses this huge stage to tell a story both broad and narrow – you enjoy it on whatever level you prefer. The writer does a great job introducing the aliens (alien to the reader) and their unique cultures and forms of communication.

There is a lot of adventure and Game of Thrones style treachery and power jockeying so the pages go by quickly. I thought it was a great mix of story and science fiction thought experiment.

That said, it is a little over-technical at times. The story sometimes takes a back seat while the author over-explains some bit of technology that he dreamed up. Also there are long portions that I thought could have been edited out for more brevity – especially a long section where the main characters are essentially reading the internet and getting mad at the bullshit they find out there. We get it – we’re living it already!

So I thought it was a fun book but not light reading – I’m not sure if I’m interested enough to continue the series. We’ll see down the road if I keep thinking about it or not.

Next I am reading a thriller called The Drift by CJ Tudor.

I really enjoyed this novel about first contact between two species, that happens right here on Earth. Similar in tone to the movie The Arrival, it struck the perfect balance between cerebral and action for me.

I’m out familiar with this author, but he writes about exotic locations very well. The future that he has envisioned here is pretty scary and although there is a lot of techno lingo at first, things calm down and we get pulled into the story.

I thought that the story started off quite slowly, hit a good stride for most of the novel, and then very abruptly wrapped up.

Although the plot was pretty interesting, and all angles come together at the end, it felt a little too predictable, and the way the author set up the ending it felt like an easy set up for a future sequel.

I guess I was hoping for a little more of the inter-species communication – there wasn’t enough of that for me in this book.

Next I am reading A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.