This is a solid feel-good that reminded me why I enjoyed the world of the Innkeeper. First written as a serial in 2020, it’s got pandemic cozy vibes all over it, with more humor and stakes that feel pretty low for our Innkeepers.

With the threat of the Innkeeper Assembly meeting over them, Diana and Sean are asked to host a powerful guest instead. There’s all sorts of justifications about the annual Innkeeper celebration known as Treaty Stay where they can’t turn anyone away, but we know they would have done it anyway. Of course, other groups want to stay at the Inn as well. One is a warrior pilgrim, but the other party? “They are koo-ko.” “Dina, we’re going to host sixty-one space chickens.” Yeah, you just know they were having fun with that one. I, on the other hand, wasn’t.

Innkeeper tradition has a visit from a warrior, a sage and a pilgrim, and unsurprisingly, the guests fall into the traditional pattern. The eminent guest has an unusual food request that sends Orro into a tizzy.

“For the sake of this hamburger, I have committed the sin of adding MSG and silicone dioxide.”

There’s perhaps a little more social philosophy in this one. Or maybe the same amount. I couldn’t help but note a couple of the passages.

“Sentient beings are spectacular liars. We are gifted with an unparalleled ability to deny things that make our life unpleasant. We even pretend death isn’t a certainty.”Ah, Caldenia. She may be vicious, but she isn’t wrong.

Loads of fun, with only a couple small hiccups. Of course I bought it, silly.

Re-read March 2025. Still fun. Probably more like 3.5 stars.

Re-read January 2026. No life-threatening Innkeeper fights, hurrah. Definitely the most cozy Andrews I’ve ever read.

Oh, alright, I’ll elaborate.

This Penric novella is a little different.

Penric and Desmonda are under sail, traveling to someplace or another. Demons don’t do well with water, however, so their impressive set of powers has been diminished to almost mortal-like constraints. Unlike other books in the series, it feels like there’s a lot more violence, even if some of it is off-screen or threatened. The pirates are the utterly reprehensible sort, dealing in slavery as much as stolen goods. In fact, their home port has become a bit of a slave market, though this is portrayed as fairly normal in this part of the world. This leads to a greater sense of mortal peril than most of the novellas I’ve read in the series. It also feels incongruous that the whole slavery bit gets introduced to the world this way when the ones I’ve read to date are basically the sanitized, traditional fantasy version of the Renaissance. At any rate, if you don’t look too hard, it’s decent–albeit simplistic.

Further story-telling strides have been made since the first two installments of Pendric and his demon, Desmonda. This is a straight-up mystery that brings the gang of the second book–Idris, Oswyl and Penric–all back together for some investigation and demonic problem-solving. Pendric is the original fantasy book-nerd, a hero that loves knowledge, including from books, to new experiences, to new cultures. The premise of the demon brings an interesting aspect of knowledge, personhood, and the mystical.

I rather liked it, although it still feels like when I was fifteen and into reading Mercedes Lackey. As I mentioned to a friend, this is the grilled-cheese/tomato soup combination of the fantasy world. It’s really not damning with faint praise; in a genre that feels saturated with tropes, it is such a relief to have solid writing, characterization, and plotting. I recommend it for scratching the fantasy-mystery itch.

“Either she’d told no one of her errand, or at least one person was lying to me.’ He sighed, as if this latter were an irreducible hazard.”

There are indeed foxes, and in a mild spoiler, no babies are harmed in the making of this story.

The cubs followed with about the orderliness one might expect of any other six toddlers, which was to say, none.

I have a love-hate relationship with airport thrillers. Much like Fritos, honestly. Full of things targeted to hit our triggers, like salt, sugar, and fat (incidentally, a book I highly recommend reading), or outsider heroes, missed communications, mortal danger, and vigilante justice. Just like Fritos, Dark Sacred Night worked for me, an easily devoured crunch, crunch.

This is the first book of an ongoing collaboration between LAPD detective Renee Ballard and ex-detective Harry Bosch. Ballard has been exiled to the Hollywood Division night shift after sexual advances from her former boss while Bosch has been free-lancing as a private investigator as well as a rural deputy.

Pushing my junk food analogy, just as we all have affiliations to certain shapes and textures (really, who likes the little cornucopia shapes besides grade-schoolers?), we all have preferences in narrative and plotting. The story uses one of my more unfavorite techniques of alternating narratives between the two lead characters. Sometimes it feels like a crutch to ratchet tension, but mostly it allows for deep character insight and multiple smaller cases to develop. Both keep working their routine cases while they investigate a  cold case of a young woman who went missing. One reviewer even describes it more as a “week in the life,” emphasizing the multitasking and problem-solving of law enforcement, sometimes to the detriment of their personal lives.

Honestly, I was surprised by the extent to which I enjoyed it, given my up and down reaction to other Connelly books. Next time I’m in the mood for snacking, I know what I’ll reach for.

Haha, old people! They are so funny, right? But don’t say that to their faces–those Boomers take themselves very seriously and expect that you will be doing the same. Why, all over the place we have old people getting together and Solving Crime in between playing chess and eating duck a l’orange in the assisted living dining room. But, Thorogood’s take is thoroughly different, because his seventy-seven year-old protagonist lives independently, though she doesn’t seem to drive. No, she fastens her cape and jumps on her bicycle to get around. Haha! Isn’t that so funny! Also, she swims nude at night after her nightcap, since her mansion is right next to the river. That’s just hilarious! Wrinkled bodies are even funnier! (until they are your own, obviously). And she drinks a lot, even though I have met exactly zero elderly people that drink like fish and ride bicycles. She has the best liver of them all, clearly!

I don’t know; perhaps its the two decades working in hospitals, or appreciation for the elderly olds in my own life, or even the fact that I grew up on Miss Marple that makes me suspicious of the sudden boom of quirky-yet-oddly-competent old people who are running around and solving mysteries with viv and sass (interestingly, there’s a song called ‘Sass’ by VIV, which is hilarious). Miss Marple certainly didn’t bicycle, and she solved most of her mysteries by talking to people while she knitted. And occasionally hiding in the broom closet. And while I know there are a bunch of seventy-five year-olds out there trying to prove they are immortal by bicycling, that usually only lasts until they hit a patch of sand and bump their helmeted noggin, causing a head bleed.

Wow, I’m dour.

ANYWAY, Judith Potts (haha!) is our seventy-seven year-old protagonist who is living by herself in Marlow, England. One night when she is skinny dipping, she overhears her neighbor and ‘friend’ Stefan scream and then an echoing gunshot. She calls the police, who aren’t convinced he didn’t suicide, despite the uncanny way he would have had to shoot himself in the forehead and toss the gun in the pond. But you know these daffy old ladies! The whole village knows about Judith and her big ol’ house and humors her as she bicycles around town interviewing co-workers and such of the deceased. In the process, she meets Becks, wife of the local vicar, who is shy and perfectionist; and Suzie, the even more eccentric dog walker. Women are so funny! Together they will drink alcohol and bond during crazy attempts to gather information. It’s so funny when non-twenty year-olds get together and drink lots of alcohol!

“Unlike when she visited Elliot Howard, this time she had a plan. Or believed she had a plan, which was practically the same thing as far as she was concerned.”

Haha! It’s so funny to investigate without a plan. Still, I was mildly amused during the story that has a gentle pro-female slant. There’s many nods to unequal and sometimes unhappy marriage relationships.

 “She couldn’t help noticing everything about her existence seemed to be defined by someone who wasn’t her. She was the kids’ mum, the vicar’s wife, and the house’s wife for that matter.”

However, I didn’t find it to be particularly well-written–as Hirondelle points out, there’s some odd point-of-view stuff happening–nor particularly suspenseful. I was annoyed at the ending, when it became clear Thorogood was using a very well known plot device with an over-the-top twist (incidentally, the plot was first used by Patricia Highsmith in 1950). I’m about over this latest crop of hilarious old people. Unless we put them in space. I haven’t read a space mystery yet about a group of interstellar aged people. Say they wake up and have aged in cyrosleep due to a malfunction, so part of the hilariousness will be them learning about their wrinkly bodies (note: will have to research if wrinkles happen in space). To be adapted for BBC soon.

I’ve been in a ships-in-space mood for quite a while, leading me to different corners of the galaxy. I gave a shot to the mystery spacefarers, then the romantic ones, and even the occasional dash of horror. Fearless sounded like it would fit more into the horror–an emergency ship responds to a distress signal from a freighter with unknown cargo, and enroute to the distressed ship, a crew member is murdered (I mean, with a title like Fearless, one expects something to be fearful of, right?)

“Automated distress signal from a freighter just outside our navigation plot. It’s the Hercules. She’s three days out of Phobos Station.”

Alas; great set up, choppy execution. Multiple point of views for unclear reasons, limited character depth, and a wild sequence of escalation events all contribute to the uneven experience.

“This is how we work. Most of our time is spent moving between spaces, operating computer systems, making decisions… There’re six vessels like ours, patrolling the trade lanes, too few to make space safe, but enough to make a difference.”

The captain of the ship, Captain Shann, is a woman born without legs, who long ago realized that zero-gravity and space suits fit her physical being well. I was interested in her perspective on living with an obvious physical disability, but her first-person narrative is periodically interrupted with single chapters from her ambitious officer, April Johansson; the notably less ambitious crewmember, Engineer Sellis; and occasional historical missives. The primary narrative interspersed with two other snapshot viewpoints isn’t my favorite device, and here I found myself wondering why they were included. Johansson doesn’t achieve much difference between Shann (the heavy mantle of command) and Johansson (rising the ranks). Sellis, on the other hand, is likely supposed to add to the plot tension and humanize the opposition.

Well, things continue to happen; there are lots of twists: perhaps too many for this story. The Captain and crew are terrible at running any kind of murder investigation (or was it an accident?). Suspicion falls easily and early on one individual, and at one point, when a different person confesses with self-justification, the Captain easily accepts their story. In fact, her response is, “You’ve taken a life,” I say. “That’s a hard thing to deal with,” before letting them go about their job duties.

This highly-trained crew of twenty-five also struggle when they are fired upon:

“Fleet’s ships are equipped with weapons, but all the scenarios in which they’ve been deployed have involved encounters with asteroids, or stray debris. In those situations, we’d fire a guided rocket at range, or in close quarters we’d warm up the ship’s laser. Any situation we’ve dealt with has involved an adversary that doesn’t fire back.”

I mean, I guess? Back in the day, rescuers used to run into emergency response scenes without due diligence for scene safety, but somehow, I feel after numerous ambush situations, anyone professionally equipped with weapons gets some sort of tactical training. It just felt contrived, which sums up most of my reaction to the story. ‘The solution is this’ one crew member says, only to have something happen why that won’t work. ‘Now we’ll do this’ another person says, only to be reminded that they only have so much fuel for getting to safety. Some of the ‘twists’ rely on information that is only revealed with then twist happens, so a major plot point becomes diluted with explanation. Emotionally, it leaves the reader reeling as we are supposed to be reacting to dead bodies, a derelict hip, fuel issues, oxygen issues, and universe politics with the same urgency. Instead of ratcheting up tension, it just defuses it.

“There is a power in blind ignorance. A power of possibility that we feed with our imaginations, our speculation and our fear. Planning, strategising, preparing, anticipating.”

Um, yeah. The language tends to be matter-of-fact, often dialogue oriented. The inner musings are diffuse and prone to general ruminations on the universe and the nature of man. There are some flashbacks, but really, not a lot of description. In fact, there is a remarkable absence of fear for a story called ‘Fearless.’ Perhaps it’s a joke?  Maybe fearful of initiative? Command?

“They said war never leaves you. Once you’ve been there, forced to choose your life over someone else’s, your life changes. There’s a clarity that comes with making that kind of choice, a framing in your mind that makes everything binary – good and evil, right or wrong.”

Except I can’t recall where we were at war? It’s an awkward rumination that doesn’t land under the parameters of the story.

Many readers protest a cliff-hanger ending. Technically, I suppose it is a cliffhanger, but since there were so many situations and twists, most of the immediate plots were resolved with who did what (although not always why). I might have just been relieve to have finished the book. The good news is that all three books of the trilogy are out. The bad news is that with under a hundred ratings each, most of those reviews will be enthusiasts or friends of the author. Well, fortune favors the bold, right into the abyss.

Linda Nagata has been on my watch list for a long time. She is fairly prolific, and, interestingly, one of the few ‘hard’ sci-fi writers, and one of the only ones that I’ve run into that writes about militaristic aspects of sci-fi. The Red picked up both Nebula, Locus, and Campbell nominations, so I put it at the top of my list of her works to try–she has four different series as well as a number of one-offs).

As an aside, The Red was originally self-published as The Red: First Light, then republished by Saga as The Red, so it can get a little confusing, especially after you learn it’s a three part trilogy. Trilogies much work for her, because The Red: First Light is then divided into three episodes. This matters.

It has a fantastic opening that hooks the reader in and gives a hint at both the personal and political angles of the story, as told by Lieutenant James Shelley to his new combat squad leader Jaynie Vasquez:

“There needs to be a war going on somewhere, Sergeant Vasquez. It’s a fact of life. Without a conflict of decent size, too many international defense contractors will find themselves out of business. So if no natural war is looming, you can count on the DCs to get together to invent one.”

The are part of a linked combat squad of Americans, using an exoskeleton, a skullcap, and in cases like Shelley, even sensory implants. In fact, “as I watch an array of icons come up on my visor’s display. They assure me I’m fully linked: to my skullcap; to my M-CL1a assault rife; to each one of my soldiers, to my angel, soaring invisibly high in the night sky; and to my handler at Guidance.”

Shelley has been nicknamed ‘King David’ by his squad because he gets feelings that push him into decisions he can’t quite explain, but smack of being ‘a beloved of God.’ (The book isn’t religious-themed, although the men that gave him that moniker were). The reader and Shelley are left wondering about these premonitions.

I don’t want to say more, because it goes into spoiler-land.

Pacing is generally swift, with the story divided into three ‘episodes’ that each have a very different feel both with plotting and storytelling. In some ways, the first episode feels like an action movie prologue sequence, the second episode is a slower ‘personal journey’ story that includes helpful backstory to fleshe out the character, and the third jumps back to sustained action movie, albeit under very different parameters. This third section does feel very movie-like, with sustained missions relating to capture of an individual. There is a thin leitmotif tying these three sections together, but for me it didn’t do enough to connect the book.

Nagata is a decent writer whose prose is focused, not sparing a lot of time on elaborate descriptions or backstory. She does not explain everything as it appears, but does go back and fill in the blanks later, as when a member of the squad states Shelley was in the army under a deferred sentencing program. This did not trouble me; what troubled me, very much, is the direction the third episode took. I felt like had I known about that direction, I would have been less likely to pick up the book. I stuck with it–it really is griping–but I was annoyed whenever it was referenced again.

Will I read the second? I don’t know. I like that she was able to keep me surprised, but am less fond of how she did it. And, as noted, while I often enjoy watching action movies, I don’t know that I enjoy reading them. Still, good to stretch the ol’ brain once in awhile.

A popcorn read.

An interesting start to an urban fantasy series set in London. Lydia has come back ‘home’ to London, taking a break from a disgruntled client in her work as a PI apprentice. Her uncle offers her a place to crash and when she checks it out, she’s save from someone attempting to throttle her by a ghost who is able to materialize.

It’s an interesting start with a more unusual take on magic. There are four primary ‘families,’ each with different kinds, making it sound rather Mafia-esque but supposedly more modeled on trade groups.

“There were four magical families left in London and the Crows were the most powerful of them.”

There’s a long bit with her friend in the middle that acts to explain the world and “the Family” to the reader, which was an interesting plot choice. I would have put it somewhere closer to the beginning, if included at all. I did appreciate the friendship angle, but it didn’t feel quite as well integrated into the story.

However, Painter does a disservice by having Lydia be quite mercurial in speech and behavior; often aggressively confrontational, and then a more obsequious reconciliation approach. Is it a character trait? Immaturity? Or a writer that needs to hit certain plot points?

There’s also an insta-attraction, which I didn’t mind too much, only it is allowed to be unreasonably consummated against both characters’ stated natures (and then fall into the mercurial behavior pattern).

“‘Makes me wonder why you’d do something as stupid as come back.’
Lydia relaxed. Hostility she could deal with. ‘Did you want to go inside? Brush up on your history?’

I’ll read the second to see where it goes, but judging by other reviews, will try to let expectations go.

The first book in the series, Ink & Sigil introduced the reader to a new character in the Iron Druid world, Al MacBharrais. Al soon made the acquaintance of a hobgoblin, Buck Foi, and has since been on some adventures. I skipped book two in the series because the characterization of the Iron Druid drove me bonkers in that series (Hunted), and apparently Atticus and Al end up having Adventures in Australia. Still, when I sale drove this one into my radar, I thought I would give it a shot.

I would only recommend this book for people who had read at least the first in the series. This has somewhat of the feel of fan/character service, more than a tightly woven story.In this book, Al and Buck wrap up a number of threads introduced in the first. There’s a procession of characters from the first book (and presumably second) making an appearance. The hob eventually works on becoming epic, once he sobers up. Al works on dealing with human traffickers, brokering treaty issues on the ocean, solving his curse, and helping out the American sigil agent. Morrigan works on becoming human, first on getting a lot of money to finance a castle, and then on double-dating with Al. Nadia works on starting a cult (but a nice one). And Gladys Who has Seen Some Shite is traipsing around, hoping to see things. It’s not a bad story (really, stories); it is just not a very coherent one. In an apparently tongue-in-cheek note, Al says,

“Naw, we never circled back to that. There was far too much to circle back to, in my opinion. I hadn’t heard anything from the Blue Men of the Minch or the government regarding yachts… Eli hadn’t said anything more about whatever might be bothering him in the western United States. Buck had not received any blowback as yet”

Don’t worry, fans, despite the resolutions, there’s a lot of threads left idly dangling, if Hearne wants to pull on them. Which actually makes this a little bit more frustrating. Why tie off all these different threads if you just leave new ones out there? Still, there are worse ways to spend my time.

“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.”

I had to pause at the opening line. That is a brilliant piece of writing. So this is why Chandler is a classic. The PI Philip Marlowe is brought into a mystery by a wheelchair-bound old man looking to protect one of his daughters.

“Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.”

The descriptions! In a line, you get a character study.

“I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General.”

The worst part of this is, of course, is that its the 1930s, and we know how they felt about women and gays and people of color–you know, basically anyone who wasn’t a straight white male–back in the 1930s. Not with equality, that’s for certain.

“If you can weigh a hundred and ninety pounds and look like a fairy, I was doing my best.”

Reading, I understood why he became a classic. A leader in Noir, both beautiful and fun with language, with a private eye who mixes with the mob as easily as the police (or as poorly) and an action-packed plot. However, it is a twisty-turny mystery that makes a little sense, and that only if you accept the premise of the characterization.

“Ohls showed the motorcycle officer his badge and we went out on the pier, into a loud fish smell which one night’s hard rain hadn’t even dented.”

I lived in L.A. for four years, and I enjoyed the tour through the 1930s version of LA County. Lots of fun. If it weren’t for all the -isms, I’d probably even read it again.

“The smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.”