Books read in September / October
Oct. 29th, 2011 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gervase_fen19) The Cypress House by Michael Koryta (Gold, longlisted)
20) Second Son and The Affair by Lee Child
Keeping up with the Dagger longlists (now since awarded) brought me to a fairly well-established genre writer who I hadn't read before, Michael Koryta. The Cypress House has a paranormal flavour that is reminiscent of Stephen King (specifically The Green Mile with which it shares a Depression era setting). I thought it was excellent - Koryta's control of his narrative is exemplary and the nature of the hero's unwanted supernatural gifts (able to see if men are going to die because their eyes are replaced with smoke, communing with some very unpleasant dead spirits) doesn't diminish the jeopardy.
Since 2004 I've been enjoying each new Jack Reacher novel ahead of publication in audiobook form, thanks to proof copies sent out by the publisher. These (a novella and a novel) mark the end of that tradition. Second Son is Young Reacher, in the vein of Andrew Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes -- it's diverting but doesn't work. (Reacher here has a 40 year old's savviness in the body of a hulking thirteen year old.) The Affair is at its most interesting when Child is having fun with its position as the ur-text of Reacher books -- this is the one where Reacher leaves the Army to become a drifting, modern day knight errant. It's solid, workmanlike, but not as striking as the earlier Reacher-as-MP book The Enemy, or as gripping as previous series entries such as Persuader or 61 Hours.
20) Second Son and The Affair by Lee Child
Keeping up with the Dagger longlists (now since awarded) brought me to a fairly well-established genre writer who I hadn't read before, Michael Koryta. The Cypress House has a paranormal flavour that is reminiscent of Stephen King (specifically The Green Mile with which it shares a Depression era setting). I thought it was excellent - Koryta's control of his narrative is exemplary and the nature of the hero's unwanted supernatural gifts (able to see if men are going to die because their eyes are replaced with smoke, communing with some very unpleasant dead spirits) doesn't diminish the jeopardy.
Since 2004 I've been enjoying each new Jack Reacher novel ahead of publication in audiobook form, thanks to proof copies sent out by the publisher. These (a novella and a novel) mark the end of that tradition. Second Son is Young Reacher, in the vein of Andrew Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes -- it's diverting but doesn't work. (Reacher here has a 40 year old's savviness in the body of a hulking thirteen year old.) The Affair is at its most interesting when Child is having fun with its position as the ur-text of Reacher books -- this is the one where Reacher leaves the Army to become a drifting, modern day knight errant. It's solid, workmanlike, but not as striking as the earlier Reacher-as-MP book The Enemy, or as gripping as previous series entries such as Persuader or 61 Hours.
