The Law of Angels Cassandra Clark
Okay, the cover is God-awful, but I checked the book out from the library, so I didn't see it...and nobody saw me reading it, lol.
The book was fine; I think it's the third in the series (and the third that I've read), and it's getting a little boring. But it passed the time.And now I am only in the middle of four books, yay!!!
Showing posts with label Cassandra Clark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cassandra Clark. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Second rounds
This was the week/end of going with the obvious answers...
Read the second Rev. Merrily Watkins book, Midwinter of the Spirit, by Phil Rickman. Better than the one before it, but still not great. Slower going, strangely - it dragged a bit. In this one the experiences Merrily had in the Wine of Angels have led her to become an exorcist - the premise of the rest of the series, apparenly. It's a little silly, but I like the idea of a modern-day exorcist bopping about rural-ish England. Plus, the characters are appealing - I'm growing fond enough of them to keep reading.
The same is true of Cassandra Clark's The Red Velvet Turnshoe: not great, but I like the main character, Hildegarde, and the political and social setting is drawn well.
Almost done with the sequel to Imperium, Conspirata, by Robert Harris. Oddly, I liked Imperium more than any of the other "firsts" in these series, but the second in the trilogy (I think it's meant to be a trilogy) is pretty damn boring, considering it should be more exciting - Cicero's consular years, the Catiline conspiracy, etc. Weird. Am plugging through, but actually read Velvet Turnshoe in the middle of Conspirata. Not sure if I'll care enough to read the third when it comes out (I assume it's not out yet, since I think Conspirata came out this winter).
Read the second Rev. Merrily Watkins book, Midwinter of the Spirit, by Phil Rickman. Better than the one before it, but still not great. Slower going, strangely - it dragged a bit. In this one the experiences Merrily had in the Wine of Angels have led her to become an exorcist - the premise of the rest of the series, apparenly. It's a little silly, but I like the idea of a modern-day exorcist bopping about rural-ish England. Plus, the characters are appealing - I'm growing fond enough of them to keep reading.
The same is true of Cassandra Clark's The Red Velvet Turnshoe: not great, but I like the main character, Hildegarde, and the political and social setting is drawn well.
Almost done with the sequel to Imperium, Conspirata, by Robert Harris. Oddly, I liked Imperium more than any of the other "firsts" in these series, but the second in the trilogy (I think it's meant to be a trilogy) is pretty damn boring, considering it should be more exciting - Cicero's consular years, the Catiline conspiracy, etc. Weird. Am plugging through, but actually read Velvet Turnshoe in the middle of Conspirata. Not sure if I'll care enough to read the third when it comes out (I assume it's not out yet, since I think Conspirata came out this winter).
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
A Pig in Sh*t
So, I am going to be happily wallowing soon - saw Noni this weekend and she gave me a brand-new, gorgeous looking copy of The Long Song, by Andrea Levy, which I have been meaning to read for a while. And with that in mind, when I was reading a little piece about this year's Man Booker short-list in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2010/sep/07/man-booker-prize-shortlist-2010), I started running through Hollis looking for what else is out there. Managed to reserve the on-order copies of C (Tom McCarthy), The Finkler Question (Howard Jacobsen), and Parrot and Olivier in America (Peter Carey), which means I will have in my hot little hands 4 of the 6 nominees. Room (Emma Donoghue) and In A Strange Room (Damon Galgut) were both checked out already, and I didn't think I should recall them...although one is due in 2 days anyhow, so maybe I should, before someone else get it... That's probably enough to have on the shelf, thought, especially since - beyond the normal lack of space for my "to read" collection - I already today picked up Conspirata, the sequel to Imperium, and requested from deposit The Red Velvet Turnshoe (I don't even know what that is, but I like the name a lot!), the sequel to Hangman Blind. Speaking of those two, I read both over the weekend.
Started Hangman Blind, by Cassandra Clark (can that really be her real name? good for her if it is) after the Rickman book (hmm, should consider having some of those on hand for sick days). I liked it, I guess. A bit predictable, especially with the love interests, and some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing on the same for the next books (I was reading it and thinking, okay, it's like she's setting us up for fictional r&d ("revelations and developments" - yes, just coined that phrase...I think...) for another book, and then sure enough I was reading the quotes on the cover later, and one of them revealed that Hangman Blind was intended as the commencement of a series featuring the book's main character, Sister Hildegard. Hildegard, a recent widow & nun in 1382 England is a decent character, not too prone to anachronistic independence or feminism. And what she has of both (and I've read enough of these types of novels to know that you can't escape them in a heroine) is fairly legitimately explained by her being the widow of a rich man - thus, she has some exposure to the world, and learning, and also more freedom than as a married woman. It's not perfect, by any means, but it works - enough so, clearly, that I'm going to read the sequel - and Clark does a nice job showing the unsettled nature of a time and place where Saxons struggle still against Norman overlords, even if the Conqueror is long since buried, and two popes vie for supremacy as Wat Tyler's followers look for a new direction, and a young king and his supporters and enemies try to rule England.
Imperium, by Robert Harris, was the next book, and it wasn't what I was expecting - in a good way. Much less the toga-clad, murder-mystery pot-boiler I was expecting, and more a fun, super accessible tale of Cicero's rise to prominence. I had put Imperium on the "to read" list because it's the predecessor to Conspirata which got a Select 70 mention in a Harvard Bookstore flyer this winter (I think this winter?) - and that, I thought, was a murder mystery that happened to be set in Cicero's Rome. But this, purportedly the memoirs of Cicero's personal secretary/slave, Tiro, talks about how Cicero trained as an orator, prominent cases and speeches, and takes us from his initial entrance into Roman political life to his election as Consul in 64 BCE. It really was quite fun - all the gossip and scandal and deal-mongering of today's elections and politics, but with togas :) The issue of imperium in the Roman Republic could have been drawn out more, but that would have been a different book...
Started Hangman Blind, by Cassandra Clark (can that really be her real name? good for her if it is) after the Rickman book (hmm, should consider having some of those on hand for sick days). I liked it, I guess. A bit predictable, especially with the love interests, and some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing on the same for the next books (I was reading it and thinking, okay, it's like she's setting us up for fictional r&d ("revelations and developments" - yes, just coined that phrase...I think...) for another book, and then sure enough I was reading the quotes on the cover later, and one of them revealed that Hangman Blind was intended as the commencement of a series featuring the book's main character, Sister Hildegard. Hildegard, a recent widow & nun in 1382 England is a decent character, not too prone to anachronistic independence or feminism. And what she has of both (and I've read enough of these types of novels to know that you can't escape them in a heroine) is fairly legitimately explained by her being the widow of a rich man - thus, she has some exposure to the world, and learning, and also more freedom than as a married woman. It's not perfect, by any means, but it works - enough so, clearly, that I'm going to read the sequel - and Clark does a nice job showing the unsettled nature of a time and place where Saxons struggle still against Norman overlords, even if the Conqueror is long since buried, and two popes vie for supremacy as Wat Tyler's followers look for a new direction, and a young king and his supporters and enemies try to rule England.
Imperium, by Robert Harris, was the next book, and it wasn't what I was expecting - in a good way. Much less the toga-clad, murder-mystery pot-boiler I was expecting, and more a fun, super accessible tale of Cicero's rise to prominence. I had put Imperium on the "to read" list because it's the predecessor to Conspirata which got a Select 70 mention in a Harvard Bookstore flyer this winter (I think this winter?) - and that, I thought, was a murder mystery that happened to be set in Cicero's Rome. But this, purportedly the memoirs of Cicero's personal secretary/slave, Tiro, talks about how Cicero trained as an orator, prominent cases and speeches, and takes us from his initial entrance into Roman political life to his election as Consul in 64 BCE. It really was quite fun - all the gossip and scandal and deal-mongering of today's elections and politics, but with togas :) The issue of imperium in the Roman Republic could have been drawn out more, but that would have been a different book...
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