Book Chain, etc, Week 18
May. 3rd, 2026 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther#17: A book with a lower average rating than the previous book
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. In a world where being a practitioner of the magical Craft is sometimes remarkably like being a corporate lawyer (it's the loopholes that get you), the high-powered firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao is hired to sort out a problem for the Church of Kos the Everburning: God is dead. (Well, mostly dead.) And it looks increasingly like it might have been murder.
The worldbuilding is intriguing, the characters are great, and the mystery was very cleverly put together; I got to the end and wanted to start again from the beginning immediately to look for the clues I missed the first time around. One thing I personally appreciated was that, although the book contains enough charismatic young people in Situations to headline several romantasy novels, there weren't any romantic subplots. I will be keeping an eye out for opportunities to read the sequels.
#18: A book with a similar cover to the previous book
The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders by Marshall Browne. Inspector Anders, on the verge of retirement, is assigned a rubber-stamp investigation of a murder that everybody knows and nobody will say was a mafia hit, and finds himself faced with a choice between keeping his head down and playing out his assigned role or making a possibly doomed stand.
This was pitched to me as a mystery novel, with the result that I spent at least half of it waiting without result for there to be a twist where it turned out that the murder was done by someone else, or for some other reason, than was posited at the outset. The question is never whodunnit, but rather can there be anything done, and if so what and by whom, to bring the perpetrators to justice. The answer to that question, when it came, I found disappointingly predictable, and I was left in the end doubting that much had been accomplished.
#19: A book that was added to your TBR before the previous book
Now, I don't have an exact record of when I got The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders -- but it can't have been any earlier than 1999, when it was first published, and I know I have books that have been waiting longer than that...
St Vincent de Paul by M.V. Woodgate. An account for children of the life of Vincent de Paul, 17th-century saint and philanthropist.
I'm not organised enough to literally have a list of books I was presented with as a child that I never actually got around to reading, but if I did the main benefit of reading this would be being able to cross it off the list. It has the usual faults of children's books about historical figures; as a story, it's told in a fairly flat way, and considered as a source of knowledge, there are enough details that are clearly invented (including an entire person that I'm pretty sure the author made up out of whole cloth) that I wouldn't trust any of it without getting a second opinion.
#20: A book whose title has more letters than the title of the previous book
First attempt: The Dog Sitter Detective by Antony Johnston. Struggling actress Gwinny Tuffnell's best friend is falsely accused of murder and needs someone to look after her dogs and also to find the real culprit.
I'm having real trouble engaging with this book, which I suspect is largely because this kind of gimmick-led cosy murder mystery has never been my kind of thing. I had hopes for it because the author is a regular on some of the podcasts I listen to and I've always enjoyed his appearances, but this turned out to be an additional obstacle because I'm so familiar with his speech patterns that I can hear his voice in the narration, and at first I couldn't hear past it to the protagonist whose narration it's supposed to be.
It settled down a bit after we got past the elaborate scene-setting and onto the actual murder and subsequent investigation, but I'm still not really into it. I haven't officially given up on finishing it, but I've put it aside in hopes of being in a more receptive frame of mind at some point before it has to go back to the library.
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. In a world where being a practitioner of the magical Craft is sometimes remarkably like being a corporate lawyer (it's the loopholes that get you), the high-powered firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao is hired to sort out a problem for the Church of Kos the Everburning: God is dead. (Well, mostly dead.) And it looks increasingly like it might have been murder.
The worldbuilding is intriguing, the characters are great, and the mystery was very cleverly put together; I got to the end and wanted to start again from the beginning immediately to look for the clues I missed the first time around. One thing I personally appreciated was that, although the book contains enough charismatic young people in Situations to headline several romantasy novels, there weren't any romantic subplots. I will be keeping an eye out for opportunities to read the sequels.
#18: A book with a similar cover to the previous book
The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders by Marshall Browne. Inspector Anders, on the verge of retirement, is assigned a rubber-stamp investigation of a murder that everybody knows and nobody will say was a mafia hit, and finds himself faced with a choice between keeping his head down and playing out his assigned role or making a possibly doomed stand.
This was pitched to me as a mystery novel, with the result that I spent at least half of it waiting without result for there to be a twist where it turned out that the murder was done by someone else, or for some other reason, than was posited at the outset. The question is never whodunnit, but rather can there be anything done, and if so what and by whom, to bring the perpetrators to justice. The answer to that question, when it came, I found disappointingly predictable, and I was left in the end doubting that much had been accomplished.
#19: A book that was added to your TBR before the previous book
Now, I don't have an exact record of when I got The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders -- but it can't have been any earlier than 1999, when it was first published, and I know I have books that have been waiting longer than that...
St Vincent de Paul by M.V. Woodgate. An account for children of the life of Vincent de Paul, 17th-century saint and philanthropist.
I'm not organised enough to literally have a list of books I was presented with as a child that I never actually got around to reading, but if I did the main benefit of reading this would be being able to cross it off the list. It has the usual faults of children's books about historical figures; as a story, it's told in a fairly flat way, and considered as a source of knowledge, there are enough details that are clearly invented (including an entire person that I'm pretty sure the author made up out of whole cloth) that I wouldn't trust any of it without getting a second opinion.
#20: A book whose title has more letters than the title of the previous book
First attempt: The Dog Sitter Detective by Antony Johnston. Struggling actress Gwinny Tuffnell's best friend is falsely accused of murder and needs someone to look after her dogs and also to find the real culprit.
I'm having real trouble engaging with this book, which I suspect is largely because this kind of gimmick-led cosy murder mystery has never been my kind of thing. I had hopes for it because the author is a regular on some of the podcasts I listen to and I've always enjoyed his appearances, but this turned out to be an additional obstacle because I'm so familiar with his speech patterns that I can hear his voice in the narration, and at first I couldn't hear past it to the protagonist whose narration it's supposed to be.
It settled down a bit after we got past the elaborate scene-setting and onto the actual murder and subsequent investigation, but I'm still not really into it. I haven't officially given up on finishing it, but I've put it aside in hopes of being in a more receptive frame of mind at some point before it has to go back to the library.
