Category: Books

March in Books

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

I read some nice books last month. After a boring February, March brought me some cool thrillers. Not necessarily great but interesting for other reasons.

Best

  • The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett – this was the best read for the month by a wide margin. A beautiful story in a beautiful hardcover print. It inspired me to look for other books by the same author and I’m currently reading City of Stairs. 5/5
  • Exit Strategy by Lee Child and Andrew Child – there was a hint of the former Reacher in this story, which awarded it 4/5. I’m very surprised that this, from all the books, is what I remember as the second best story for the month.
  • The Missing File by D.A. Mishani – an intimate story about a detective from Tel Aviv who will find the path to the truth for a missing person’s report. The storytelling is quite unorthodox, which made me give it a 5/5.
  • The Revenge of the Damned by Chris Bunch and Allan Cole – an interim end of the Sten series. There will be another end later on after the emperor resurrects but I’ll probably skip that one because the story became too grim. I am looking for less stressful reads. 4/5
  • Killman Creek by Rachel Caine – a horror I wouldn’t like to remember. 4.5/5
  • The Edge by Lucy Goacher – “nobody believes me” type of story, right at the bottom of the list but still fine. 4/5

Worst

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I’ll start writing about this book by comparison. It has the charm of Tress of the Emerald Sea, the worldbuilding of The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, and the green aesthetic of Jade City by Fonda Lee. I mean, the story feels green, not the book itself. That’s good company for any novel.

The world is GMO-fantasy, where all life is subject to genetic modifications, and the modifications often go out of control. Perhaps one of these insanely potent GMOs, one of the sources of them, or both, are the leviathans. They are Godzilla-like monsters, coming out of the sea every year in a mindless attempt to either destroy all humans or talk to them. Humans are always trying to stop them, structured to sustain an army that can battle with such giant creatures. That’s the world, and the world is just a humble background.

Our main characters, Dinios and Ana, are investigators with peculiar powers. He has a GMO-altered memory that lets him remember everything, and she is smart. Ana and Dinios have to investigate a murder where the victim has a tree growing out of his corpse. How does one even approach a disaster like that? They will figure it out, step by step, by using their superpowers.

The story flows naturally, and the pacing is strong right up until the ending. If there’s one critique, it’s that not every thread needed to be fully explained or wrapped up in detail. I would have preferred a bit more left unsaid for what comes next.

Overall, a fantastic story, a solid 5*, and probably the best book I’ve read this month so far.

Gone Before Goodbye by by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I knew it will be a tough book to read because it had bad reviews. It wasn’t easy but wasn’t too bad either.

Alexander Belyaev has a story about a man who is essentially dead but his head is attached to a machine and is still talking. The head is waiting for a compatible headless body so it can be reattached. The story is called Professor Dowell’s Head. You would expect that Gone Before Goodbye is a crime mystery thriller, where we are trying to figure out what happened to the missing person (who’s gone). But it is, in reality, something similar to Belyaev’s stray head.

The book is very well written in most parts, and well translated too. The first 100 pages were excellent; then chaos set in. Maggie, a surgeon who lost her license, is offered redemption if she performs a difficult and illegal surgery. Once she accepts and sells her soul to the devil, people start flying around the globe like there’s no tomorrow and for no clear reason. Perhaps to show off how rich they are.

The resolution is like the head I mentioned. It’s sci-fi and ridiculous. We also have an avatar, living inside a phone, a common trope in present-day sci-fi. These AIs are usually demigods, who can do everything, and so is Maggie’s AI app. Also ridiculous.

Why three stars and not four, for example? Because it is never really clear why anything really happens. The book contains all kinds of cataclysmic and dramatic moments, and not a single one of them is actually necessary for the story. The explanation for everything is that a head is trying to find a body. Characters fly to Russia, billionaire balls are held, some people chase others, while committing grand acts of bravery without any relation to this problem. It’s not exactly a head but you’ll see if you read it. So I felt a disconnect between the great writing style, nice characters, the grandiose scenes, and setup, and the missing link to the actual story.

I could have given it two stars as well because of the publisher’s decision to compact the 350-page book into 300 pages by making the letters tiny and squeezing the letter spacing.

Despite the review, I enjoyed the individual fragments of good writing. 3/5 because of that.

Killman Creek by Rachel Caine, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

Gwen survived the encounter with her husband’s serial killer buddies. Peace didn’t last long. She’s now chased by a worse enemy – a ransom group who produces deepfakes to extort rich people. They’re now after Gwen. She is interesting because her husband is a serial killer who is somehow connected to the group.

Gwen is not helpless, she shoots well, she’s deeply suspicious of everyone and everything, and moves a lot. So in an ideal world, the hackers wouldn’t be able to find her. Unfortunately, the world is not ideal and the wonders of the modern Big Brother have turned against her.

This book is disturbing. It’s like a different point of view to Chris Carter story. There’s blood and horror, and the book is like a scream that never stops. You have Gwen and a few of her friends who are rational, and then you have characters who are acting like victims. They are doing everything possible to sabotage their chances of survival. Buddy, I know this is the first time you see me but please hop in my pretty, white van.

At the end of the day, you don’t buy this book if you have no tolerance to horror. It’s fine but I liked Stillhouse Lake more. I had to skip a few exceptionally silly pages, and I think I missed one of the clues this way. 4.5*/5.