Clockwork Princess

Note to self: When it’s been over a year since you have read the last book in a series, a refresher might be a good idea. It was almost 18 between reading this book and reading Clockwork Prince and I spent a lot of time looking things up on the internet and hoping I didn’t accidentally fall into a spoiler. I liked the book, but one day when I have some time (you know, when I win the lottery I never buy a ticket for) I am going to reread all three back-to-back so I’m not so confused!

I found what I wrote last August:

I had a hard time getting into Clockwork Princess. It dragged at first but about 5 chapters in it picked up. I'm not sure if it was the book that dragged or if it dragged because it had been so long since I read Clockwork Angel and Clockwork Prince.

Clockwork Princess reveals a lot of genealogy and other details that are relevant to the Mortal Instruments books as well. I am quite tempted to reread the three Infernal Devices books and the first five Mortal Instruments books before the last book comes out. I always reread all of the Harry Potter books before a new one came out and while I knew those books better than these, it always helped.

I thought the epilogue wrapped things up a little too nicely...there seemed to be a little too much of people getting what they wanted even if it was far fetched…

(August 2013)

Speaking from Among the Bones

Baby C came home from the hospital and a few days later, Alex came home from the library with this…I had put a hold on it and of course the hold came up at the most inopportune time…but I finished it and I enjoyed it. Easter at Buckshaw and the crypt in Bishop’s Lacey is opened and disturbed…sounds like a ghost story and maybe a bit like of of the most famous ghost stories in Christian lore…and then, because he can, Alan Bradley tosses a curve ball on the last pages…a good book for a new mom!

Oh, and have I mentioned that I think the name Flavia is awesome? I would have named Baby C Flavia, but Alex wasn’t a fan…and I think I like her name better than Flavia now anyway…but Flavia is still an awesome name.

(April - May 2013)

The Lost Boy

This was the last book I finished before Baby C made her grand entrance…and it had me guessing for most of it…the connections were not what I thought they would be. The next book (the eighth I think) will be available here soon and I am really looking forward to it!

(March – April 2013)

Before the Frost

This is the second last of the Kurt Wallander novels and his daughter Linda is a central character (I read somewhere that this was supposed to be the first of a trilogy about Linda, but it never happened because of a tragedy of some sort) I remember the murders in this one were a bit disturbing…it was interesting to see how Linda was similar to her father. It’s too bad there aren’t more Linda novels. I enjoyed this one.

I just have the last book left to read, A Troubled Man. It’s somewhere in a box from when we moved. I’m sort of avoiding it because I’m sort of pretending it’s not the last one…

(February-March 2013)

The Pyramid

The Pyramid is a collection of short stories that date back to Kurt Wallander’s start as a police officer. I remember these and I liked getting the background on Wallander and his ex-wife and his life before the book Faceless Killers. It was interesting…I finished the book and had Faceless Killers sitting here. The end of the last story is the opening of Faceless Killers and the two books were translated by different people. The tone of the two texts is very different…I can’t remember the words exactly but I think one of the Swedish words tranlated to senior citizen in one text and elderly farmer in another. It was quite interesting! And a reminder that we’re not always getting all the nuances in a translated text.

 

(February 2013)

Firewall

For some reason while I was pregnant and after, I had a fascination with crime novels. And Kurt Wallander in particular. Of course, I can’t remember what this was about other than there was more than one crime and they ended up being related. Maybe there was a man in a hidden room…I know I liked it…except for The Man Who Smiled, I have liked all of the Henning Mankell I’ve read, but I sure can’t remember much more than that…

(February 2013)

The Mark of Athena

I was very excited when a message from the library popped up, telling me this book had arrived. But the thing that made me the most excited? On one of the last pages, a few little lines reading: The House of Hades, coming Fall 2013. For whatever reason, correct or incorrect, I thought The Mark of Athena was the last book in the Heroes of Olympus series. I'm so glad there's at least one more book!

I felt like I needed a refresher from The Son of Neptune before I started this one...I kept mixing up which of the "new" characters came from Camp Jupiter and which ones came from Camp Half-Blood.

I liked the book - the adventures were exciting and there were enough of them, but not too many (if that makes sense). I did kind of wish we got to see more of Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood preparing for their inevitable meeting (maybe that will happen in the next book?). The little teaser glimpses of what was going on that the seven got to see through Piper's knife were revealing, but I wanted more!

I'm on track for 16 books in the first four months of 2013...yahoo!

The Man Who Smiled

This book was weird. I didn’t really like it. It’s definitely my least favourite of the series. It is apparently actually the 5th book (it should come after Sidetracked), but it’s not listed in the lists in the Vintage editions. The edition I read was published by The New Press. I was not thrilled with the translation – there were a bunch of weird errors. There were also a few fact check errors and I’m not sure if they are actual fact check errors or other problems with the translation.

Reading this one out of order demonstrated how well the others are written to be stand alone books if need be. There were a few references to events in this book in The Fifth Woman and One Step Behind, but I didn’t feel like I was missing much. This book filled a few details that were nice to know and enhanced the story, but they weren’t necessary to the plots of the others.

I’m glad I read this after The Fifth Woman and One Step Behind because I disliked it enough that I may have just stopped reading the books…but now I’m waiting for the next two books to show up at the library…in the meantime, I might read some other author!

One Step Behind

I think this might be my favourite of the series so far. I like the way Ann-Britt Höglund has been developed and I like the new chief. This plot line was the most twisty-turny so far and I liked how it was done…I could seen the connections, sort of – it was like they were just outside my peripheral vision.

I was a bit annoyed at Wallander though with his health issues, but that seemed to be a plot device.

I read it in a day and a half, so a reread might be a good idea someday!

The Fifth Woman

 

Possible SPOILER ALERT at the end of the post. There is a warning below too.

 

Unfortunately 2013 did not start the way I had hoped…I ended up with bronchitis and an infection and spent a lot of time in bed and on the couch at the beginning of the month. But, that did give me the opportunity to read a lot.

And because I still had a ways to go to get through my library books before they were due to be returned, I stuck with Kurt Wallender. Again, I was surprised by the identity of the killer and the discussion that surrounded that in the book.

Possible spoiler coming up
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One thing I’m unsure of…the skull that is mentioned on the dust jacket of my book and is discussed throughout the book – is that just a random clue that didn’t actually have anything to do with the crimes and ended up not being a clue? I sort of felt like it was left dangling, but I might have missed something…

Sidetracked

Yes, another. This one was interesting. I was surprised to find out who was committing the crimes – the reader knows throughout who it is, but some of the details about that person really surprised me.

Again, I read this too long ago to really comment on it…I liked it, or I probably would have stopped reading these books…

 

And with that, the books of 2012 are complete…63, wow!

The White Lioness

 

I made the mistake of requesting a whole whack of Henning Mankell books at the same time from the library…a mistake because of course they were all ready to be picked up within two days of each other and because I had to request them, that means three weeks to read them, that’s it, because in all likelihood there are others who have requested them after me.

Good thing I like these books!

The White Lioness is the third in the series of Kurt Wallander mysteries and it takes place in Sweden and South Africa. One thing that drives me nuts about some mysteries is the amount of coincidence. Mankell’s books have a lot of coincidences, but the reader knows they exist (even if the connection isn’t obvious) before Wallander does…and somehow that makes it more believable to me.

So, because I’m so slow and because I’ve read four other Mankell books before I read this one, I don’t have a lot to say. I did enjoy this book and I might just have to sit down and reread all of them one day, because I’m certain I missed a lot.

The Drowning

Ugh…I had a bit of trouble with this one…and most of my complaints come from a place that I liked in the previous books – I liked that Erica was involved on the periphery of the investigations that Patrik was working on, but in this one, I felt like Camilla Läckberg let Erica get too invovled.

In The Hidden Child, I didn’t feel like Erica’s involvement was intrusive – I understood why she was there because the family history she was researching and the crime that Patrik was working on (while on paternity leave) ended up being linked. But this time, I cringed a bit when she got involved. And I thought the constant references to Erica’s and Anna’s pregnancies got to be a bit much…

I had no idea where this story was going – the twists were good and the ending was surprising. I had to go back and reread a few parts once I was just done, just to get everything straight in my mind.

And the very last page made my head spin. I’m glad the next book will be out in the next few months…cliff hangers like that make me anxious!

The Hidden Child

So after plodding through The Casual Vacancy, I flew through The Hidden Child. I have really been enjoying the Camilla Läckberg books, so this didn't really surprise me!

The book starts with Patrik starting paternity leave and Erica returning to work...although Patrik doesn't really stop working. Erica is supposed to be writing another book, but instead starts researching her mother's past and discovers a number of interesting things. The police investigate (with some assistance from Patrik and Maja) the murder of an elderly historian, who Erica had approached to ask for assistance identifying an old Nazi medal she found in her mothers belongings.

Of course there are all kinds of twists and turns and somehow the two things are related. Once again, I didn't have it figured out until it was spelled out to me, but I suspected bits and pieces of the puzzle.

I was glad to see Erica play a bigger role in the book - I missed her while she was on maternity leave. The personal goings-on at the police station were entertaining as always...although Läckberg does seem to have baby fever - this book involved two babies and no fewer than four pregnancies.

I have the last book (the next one isn't due out until spring) waiting to be read right now. It's due back at the library by Monday and there's a hold on it so I can't renew it, so I better get cracking!

Faceless Killers

More Swedish thillers/crime novels. My dad introduced me to Henning Mankell last time I was in Kelowna and I came home with a suitcase full of books – all of the Henning Mankell we could find in the house (he thinks there are more, we just didn’t know where to look). I enjoyed the Stieg Larsson books (only the last one made it on here – I started them before I started this blog) and I’ve been devouring the Camilla Läckberg books, so it made sense to read “Sweden’s greatest living mystery writer” as well.

An elderly farmer and his wife are brutally murdered by unknown assailants. The wife last word is “foreign” and she says it more than once. There isn’t a lot of evidence and there are a some strange twists that in the end are only peripherally related to the crime, but the plot focuses on the divisive debate about immigration and asylum seeking in Sweden. The book was published over twenty years ago but some of the problems and hesitations in the books echo what we’re hearing in Canada today.

If you like Larsson or Läckberg, I’d recommend Mankell for sure. Kurt Wallander is a detective I’m enjoying following.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Demigod Files: A Survival Guide to Greek Gods and Monsters

Hey, you, remember the note-to-self yesterday? Yeah? Well here’s another example for you.

Quick read anyone? Less than an hour! This was fun. And that’s that!

The Stranger

I did it! With this book, I reached my goal!!! This is book 52 for 2012 and I did it with 2 months and 3 weeks left in the year…I’m super curious to see how many books I end the year with!

I am really enjoying the Camilla Läckberg books and The Stranger was no exception. I like the characters at the police station: I’m finding the personal storylines of Erika and Patrick and their lives intriguing and I can’t wait to read more. But I will have to wait. Either for the library or for my parents to finish the next two books and then come to visit.

We were in Kelowna for a few days in October and I read this book in about 24 hours. I wondered from the very beginning about a new character Läckberg introduced and while I was right to be suspicious, the reasons I was suspicious were so far off base it’s amazing!

Patrick investigates a bizarre car accident that seems to be a drunk driver on the surface, but as the layers get pulled away in the investigation, the story gets more and more bizarre. The connections that Patrick makes are interesting and the story veers off in directions I never would have anticipated more than once! Erika was less involved in this investigation, but her experience as a stay-at-home and dealing with her sister was prominent. I’m looking forward to the next few books as I think she is soon back to work after her maternity leave and I’d like to see Erika and Patrick working together again.

The Heroes of Olympus: The Son of Neptune

I’m waiting somewhat impatiently for my name to come up on the list for The Mark of Athena, but I’ve got a few weeks at least ahead of me…this book followed a similar format to The Lost Hero except this time it was Percy Jackson who had no idea where he was or why. I’m super excited to see Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter join forces in the next book. And I’m super excited that Michelle is also all over these books so I have someone to discuss them with. She’s a little peeved that the third book is Athena and not Minerva, but I think there’s a reason for that…I don’t think that the son of Neptune referred to in the title was Percy Jackson…

And with that, we're finally into October...I'm so far behind, it's unbelievable, but I'm blaming it on the six weeks in trimester number one where the guy who got up at 3:30 am every morning, the preschooler and the pregnant lady were in a competition to see who could go to bed first and our house was usually silent at sleeping by 8:30 pm at the LATEST!

The Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero

Yay...more Percy Jackson, except Percy Jackson is missing and all of a sudden there are Roman demigods running around with the Greek demigods. I really liked this book and how Rick Riordan meshed Greek and Roman mythologies. I really appreciated the glossary at the end that explained who the various gods where and what their Greek equivalent was. I was super impatient to read the next installment...and I have now...so in a few days, that will be up too...

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian

And the series ends...I liked this one...and I wasn't too happy that the series was over, but then I discovered that The Heroes of Olympus has the same characters in it! And to me that's a sign that a book or a series is good - if I'm sad there isn't more, I've probably enjoyed it, but if I'm annoyed there isn't more, the story was probably missing something. (This was sad, for sure!)