Reaper at the Gates

Reaper at the Gates by Sabaa Tahir, 458 pages.

In the previous volume of this series there was a big shift away from the magic-tinged, but ordinary battle. The battle, fought by people with modest, but helpful powers, shifted from the one being fought on behalf of the downtrodden, the scholars, and others, and against the emperor and against his commandant to one against some more powerful, mythical creatures.
The third (and obviously not the final) volume continues the battle against the Nightbringer and the djinn and the Commandant, who is fighting on their side for her own particular reasons. We're given information to show that the Commandant's motives are maybe not quite purely evil and self-serving, and we're shown that maybe Elias Venturius maybe stuck as the Soul Catcher for a good part of eternity (or maybe not). All-in-all, a fast-paced and engaging middle volume. I'm looking forward to the fourth (and maybe the subsequent) volume(s).

Cocaine Blues

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood (1989) 175 pages

After recently being bowled over by Phryne (rhymes with briny) Fisher, a young woman who solves mysteries while exhibiting  reason, fashion sense, and lust, I needed to read the first book in the series, Cocaine Blues (set in the late 1920s). Within 6 pages, Phryne goes from living in Britain, attending a huge dinner party where a diamond necklace is stolen (and solving the crime in five minutes, tops) to getting her next job, finding out what's up with the adult daughter of a rich, worried couple. Phryne packs up a truckload of clothing and takes up life in the poshest hotel in Melbourne, Australia. Upon entering the country down under, where Phryne had lived in her youth, she hears much talk of lives wasted due to the influence of cocaine. She also learns that there is an abortionist at loose in the city, butchering young women in trouble.

Hold onto your hats; the action never slows down for long! I will definitely be reading more of this series.

My Brother's Husband

My Brother's Husband Volume 2 by Gengoroh Tagame  352 pp.

This is the conclusion to the story of Yaichi, his daughter Kana, and Yaichi's brother-in-law, Mike. While the first volume involved Yaichi's shock and discomfort at his brother Ryoji's life and the intrusion of the burly Canadian, Mike, to their home. In this part Mike learns more about Ryoji's life growing up in Japan while Yaichi examines his own feelings about his late brother's homosexuality. Of course, it is young Kana who is completely accepting of her Uncle Mike and is heartbroken when he must return to Canada. This is a charming and thoughtful graphic novel.

Still Life

Still Life by Louise Penny  312 pp.

This is the first of the Inspector Gamache mysteries. In a small Quebec town, a retired schoolteacher dies in the woods of an arrow wound. Gamache of the Surêté de Québec and his team are called in to investigate. Most belief the death was a hunting accident as it is bow season for deer. As more and more details are uncovered it seems that someone had planned a cunning murder made to look like an accident. Meanwhile Gamache also has to contend with a troublesome new addition to his team of investigators. It is a well written, with interesting characters, and a story that is not blood & guts gory. All in all a nice light read.

Fifty Grand

Fifty Grand: a Novel of Suspense / Adrian McKinty, read by Paula Christensen, 308 p.

Fifty Grand opens with a young, pretty Havana detective pushing a naked American man through a hole in the ice over a Wyoming lake.  Detective Mercado of the Havana Police has tricked her way to Colorado via Mexico in search of the man who killed her father there in a hit and run.  Along the way she meets Francisco, a young Nicaraguan who becomes her friend and protector of sorts.  Posing as a Mexican migrant worker, Mercado, along with Francisco travel to Fairview, an Aspen-like place where Hollywood's super wealthy have their houses cleaned and their drugs ferried by immigrants who live in a state of quasi-slavery, beholden entirely to their handlers and the vicious town sheriff.  One the one hand a suspenseful whodunnit, on the other a sharp critique of American immigrant policy and racism, with a bit of Scientology satire for fun, this was a great listen.  The parts of the novel set in Cuba have a great you-are-there feel, and Christensen's reading was excellent.

A Darkness More Than Night

A Darkness More Than Night / Michael Connelly, 418 p., read by Richard Davidson

Harry Bosch and retired FBI agent Terry McCaleb join forces to find a particularly sadistic killer.  The killer seems to have left a message in the form of an owl statue.  What does it mean?  Do McCaleb's suspicions about Bosch have any basis?

This particular title includes characters who appear elsewhere in Connelly's series, such as Terry's friend Buddy Lockridge, and reporter Jack McEvoy. 

The Shakespeare Requirement

The Shakespeare Requirement: a Novel / Julie Schumacher, 308 p.

From the author of the delightful Dear Committee Members comes another year in the life of beleaguered English professor Jason Fitger.  As department chair, Fitger fears that he will preside over the total annihilation of his department at the hands of Roland Gladwell, the power-hungry econ prof who would like to wipe away Fitger's fiefdom to make more room for the higher 'quality' faculty in the Economics department.  Plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, some of them involving miniature donkeys, and a keen feel for the rhythms of campus life make this another enjoyable read. 

Let it bang

Let it bang: A young black man's reluctant odyssey into guns / RJ Young, read by the author, 224 pgs.

RJ Young always felt like he should avoid guns because he knew just having one could get him killed.  But when he marries and joins a family whose patriarch is a "good old boy" with an extensive gun collection, he decides to learn more about guns.  A black man and NRA member, he becomes an expert shot and becomes certified to teach classes.  An interesting look at gun culture and the differences of gun ownership for blacks and whites in America.  Well read by the author.

The unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver

For Willa Knox’s family, there has been a perfect storm of misfortunes and losses.  The magazine she wrote for folded at the same time her tenured professor husband, Iano, lost his job – his university has also gone under.  Taking whatever job he can find nearby, they relocate to Vineland, New Jersey, and move into a century’s old brick home inherited from Willa’s late aunt.  Alarmingly, the house too is a “shambles” and literally falling down around them.  Willa and Iano have two grown children.  Bright and striving Zeke lived with his partner, Helene, a similarly inclined British woman.  After their child Aldus is born, Helene, who is more troubled than anyone realizes, commits suicide, leaving Aldus, soon nicknamed Dusty, in the care of his paternal parents while Zeke seeks his fortune in a start-up in New York.  He’s deeply in debt with student loans from his ivied education.  Daughter Antigone, called Tig, has also moved back home after several years in Cuba – a free-spirit with contempt for free-market, consumer-driven American life, she is the diametric opposite of her successful brother.  But that’s not all!  Nick, Iano’s difficult and foul-mouthed (in both English and Greek) father, is also living with them and is not “going gently into that good night” despite being obese, chair-bound, and dangerously diabetic.  Think they have it bad?  Well, there’s another family who inhabited this plot of land 140 years earlier and they had their problems too – including a falling down house.  The two families lives intertwine in alternating chapters, connected as well by the last word or words of one chapter becoming the first in the next.  The older story involves a fascinating real-life character, Mary Trent, who studied ferns and other plants in the nearby Pine Barrens area and corresponded with Charles Darwin and other scientific heavy-hitters of the time.  The fictional Thatcher Greenwood, a science teacher in the town’s school, owner of the falling-down house, and her neighbor, becomes involved with her life and that of the utopian town of Vineland, where Darwinism is clashing with religion.  The founder of this utopia has some strikingly undemocratic ideas.  This novel is engaging but not one of Kingsolver’s best.  Unfortunately, too much recent politics works its way into both storylines which I found intrusive and not that well-handled.  Frankly, I am reading novels to escape that…..  462 pp.

Lincoln in the bardo, by George Saunders

Winner of the Man Booker Prize, and on almost all the “Best of…” lists last year, this novel really deserves to be called unique.  I had resisted reading it as I found many of the short stories in his similarly well-reviewed Tenth of December more experimental than pleasurable (although I was blown away by the title story).  Hmmmm, another, longer, experiment?  Even the title was opaque – what is a “bardo?”  Bardo is a Tibetan word for the "in-between" or "transitional" state between lives.  The central character caught in this state is Willie Lincoln, beloved 11-year-old son of Abraham Lincoln, who has succumbed after a lengthy bout of typhoid fever, an endemic infection in the Washington DC area which has been further spread by the presence of troops in the Civil War.  The war is entering its second year and Lincoln is increasingly troubled by the struggle and his responsibility for it.  His son’s death has pushed him further into melancholy and despair.  The Oak Hill cemetery, where Willie is interred in a borrowed tomb, is far from quiet – many troubled spirits remain caught in this intermediary state and converse among the tombstones.  When Lincoln returns alone to visit Willie’s tomb after the burial, and again later that night, a struggle for the fate of Willie’s soul takes place.  Similar in some ways Spoon River Anthology and Our Town, the novel is narrated through multiple viewpoints and print citations – some historical and some invented by the author.  There are some sections that are beautiful poetry, some are funny and others are quite disgusting.  I came away impressed by the author’s audacity and loved the book.  Others have cited the audiobook – I don’t do audiobooks but fell across a wonderful 17 minute bit on Prairie Home Companion, of all places, that is well worth watching/listening to,  https://youtu.be/Y2yA4TI1kS4,  342 pp.