What Am I Reading? Episode 5
Betsey Wilcox
What I am Reading 5.0
There is a lot to read these days and the books just keep on coming! I have stacks of books piling up. When I sat down to begin this column, I realized there was a little bit of a theme running through what I read, and I am just going to leave it up to you to see if it was coincidence or just what was read in this time frame.
Tamsyn Muir- “Gideon the Ninth”
Yes, I know this is not a recent publication, but it finally got to the top of my stacks. I actually enjoyed this book and hope to read the follow up book for next time. I got caught up in the author’s world building and how she layered/uncovered the world in this book. It was like peeling back a big onion with layers on layers. Some smell bad and some smell good, combined in the right way this smelled & tasted amazing, sort of like a fried peeled onion. But the end of the book left me wanting more of Gideon and unsure of how Harrow the Ninth’s tale in the next book might further improve the characters and the readers understanding of all that the author intended. Guess I will have to read Harrow the Ninth and report back.
Lois McMaster Bujold - “Knot of Shadows” (Penric & Desdemona) Kindle
This is the eleventh novella in this wonderful series set in Lois McMaster Bujold’s World of the Five Gods. This episode in Penric & Desdemona's journey shows a new take on the powers of the Five Gods and confronts the sundered and possession and how to rid one of being possessed. The multiple possessions and the various strategies used to rid the unlucky possessed one of possessor. Penric muses on all that he has learned about death prayers, the sundered, and possession. Desdemona puts a name to all of Penric's musing as “experimental theology”, the idea of which electrified me and sent my brain spinning off into potential stories driven by this new idea of Penric's. I cannot say enough good things about my visits to the World of the Five Gods.
Nathaniel Philbrick- “Mayflower”
I bought this book hoping to find out more about my ancestors who came on the Mayflower. The beginning was exactly what I was looking for. Suddenly the book jumped 50 years forward and ran in a different direction. The remainder of the book was caught up in King Phillip’s War, involving the Indian tribes of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Detailing the various tribal leaders & colonial players, how the colonists learned to change fighting tactics from the Indians and how the colonist treated Indian prisoners. I almost feel that this book was a slightly fraudulent for my purposes, but it does seem to be well researched and well written. I have Philbrick’s next book “Travels with George” waiting for me because I always heard George Washington slept here; I want to see where he really laid his head.
Faith Hunter- “True Dead” Kindle
This is the 14th novel in Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock series and picks up from her miraculous cancer cure and how she is dealing with being the Vampire Queen and her return to New Orleans and her family there. The European vampires are still up to no good and trying to destroy everything that Jane has worked and sacrificed for. This installment deals with how Jane deals with all of the various loose threads and weaves them back into the web of her life. My favorite big cat story. Good read.
Robert Masello- “The Haunting of H. G. Wells” Kindle
This was an impulse buy and sounded too good to be true. I was completely taken in by this book and the story woven by Robert Masello around H.G. Wells and his investigation of a story written during WWI about a miraculous intervention of ghost soldiers saving a group of British soldiers who were about to be overrun by the German troops. What Mr. Wells discovers is even stranger than that fiction. I highly recommend you try this book.
Until next time,
Betsey
PS. Did anyone catch the pre-Christmas theme running through my choices?
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