perlmonger::metalog

Even in Deptford, you can’t carry bodies far in daylight... [loc. 1402]

In which William Shakespeare is suspected of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and makes common cause with Marlowe's sister Ann (formerly Will's lover) to find out who really killed Marlowe, and why. Well-researched, witty historical whodunnit with a credible denouement and some excellent dialogue (Jenkin is an award-winning scriptwriter) and lots of period detail. Also, set in my neck of the woods...

The premise sounded excellent, but didn't quite ring true for me.( Read more... )

... it had been said -- it had been believed -- that much of the old, deep magic of Alinor before the coming of the Empire was gone.
The Fall of the Empire had made it clear that that magic was only quiescent... [Plum Duff, loc. 126]

Reread, because (as per the final line of my February 2023 review of Plum Duff) the seventh book in the series really is due soon... I note that on first reading, I found this wintry novel, full of solstice cheer and ancient traditions and the threat of the Dark, less enjoyable than the 'cosier, more mannerist' novels that preceded it. I do think it feels as though the scope of the story is expanding rapidly:  but given the miracles and wonders of the previous pair of novels, that makes more sense to me this time around.( Read more... )

One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones. [loc. 238]

Talia has always wanted to get married in a haunted house: when she announces her marriage to Faiz, their wealthy friend Phillip flies the couple and their friends -- Cat the narrator and Lin her ex -- to Japan, and sets up a sleepover in an abandoned mansion. They have "“booze, food, sleeping bags, a youthful compulsion to do stupid shit... and a hunger for a good ghost story”" [loc. 202]. And they have a setting rich with stories about dancing girls buried in the walls, and a legend of an aborted wedding where the groom died en route.

All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera. [loc. 1023]

Love in the Time of Cholera is the long and rambling love (or 'love') story of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. They fall for one another as teenagers, and have a romantic correspondence by letter and telegram -- but never a conversation. When Fermina sees Florentino again after an absence, she realises she feels nothing for him, and rejects him. Instead she marries Doctor Juvenal Urbino, a young doctor determined to eradicate cholera, and they make a life together.

Meanwhile Florentino embarks on a life of promiscuity. Six hundred and twenty two affairs, plus casual (and not always consensual) liaisons too numerous and nameless to count. ( Read more... )

They like to make sure I am observed. When no one is looking, that's when I forget to be ... acceptable. Normal. Part of this world. [loc. 1116]

This is the first-person account of Mawukana Respected na-Vdnaze ('Maw'), who's born into poverty and debt in an uber-capitalist civilisation known as the Shine. When the Slow -- a huge, ancient construct that is something like a god -- sends a message warning of a future supernova that will destroy all life within a radius 100 light years, the Shine suppresses the warning. ( Read more... )