Shades of Milk and Honey
I finished Shades of Milk and Honey
My rating: 
The Sun Over Breda
I finished The Sun Over Breda
Inigo and the Captain are in Breda, fighting for their king against the Dutch heretics. Bravery, honor, and imperfection -- and a really good story.
My rating:
"Surrender of Breda" by Diego Velazquez
The Morning News Tournament of Books
The Morning News Tournament of Books - Presented by Field Notes.
India Black and the Widow of Windsor
I finished India Black and the Widow of Windsor
My rating: 
On Target
I finished On Target
I found this much more enjoyable than the first book in the series. One of my complaints with that book was the overuse of the main character's various names, and even though he gets a new handle in this book, the editing was a lot tighter, and the names were used sparingly and in context. The action is still there - almost non-stop - and the plot is more believable and structured more cleanly. We're still not in Adam Hall territory, but we're making good progress.
My rating:
The Masqueraders
I finished a second re-read of The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer this evening. Still one of my favorites. See my original review.
The Gray Man
I just finished The Gray Man
I picked up this book because someone on the Quiller mailing list recommended Greaney as someone with a style similar to Adam Hall's. There are some similarities, but reading Greaney made me appreciate the brilliance of Adam Hall even more. I noticed a few things that annoyed me somewhat while reading this book:
- Throughout the book, the protagonist is referred to by three different names: Court, his first name; Gentry, his last name; and The Gray Man, his nom de guerre. No problem - except when the author uses all three in the same paragraph.
McVee was the only man on Gentry’s left as the Gray Man crouched behind the pallet and faced the cockpit doors, thirty feet away. Dulin was up by the bulkhead wall near the doors, and the other three operators were ahead and to his right. Court rolled left, emerged from behind the pallet with his M4 raised, and fired a long burst at McVee. The man’s goggled face slammed back against the wall, and his H&K dropped away from his fingertips.
- Throughout the book, low-level operatives who specialize in locating and/or tracking a target are called pavement artists. This arcane term is repeated far too often throughout the book.
- It's too obvious that the author is an aficionado of high-end weaponry, by the loving descriptions he overuses throughout.
I look forward to the other books in the series, but let's be clear -- Gentry is no Quiller, and Greaney is no Hall.
My rating:
Naughty in Nice
I finished reading Naughty In Nice
It was the first book I read on my new Nook Simple Touch. I love my Sony, but the contrast on the Nook was a lot easier on my eyes.
My rating:
Purity of Blood
I finished Purity of Blood
Captain Alatriste and his young ward Íñigo are back with more intrigue from Madrid in the early 17th century. Honor-bound to help an old friend, the captain narrowly escapes a trap, but Inigo is caught up by the captain's enemies who are working with the Inquisition. The story is told by 13-year old Íñigo, who adds glimpses into his future and the captain's, including his crush Angélica, the daughter of Alatriste's sworn enemy:
Up Calle de Toledo came a very familiar black coach, one with no escutcheon on the door and a stern coachman driving the two mules. Slowly, as if in a dream, I set aside paper, pen, ink, and drying sand, and stood rooted as if the carriage were an apparition that any wrong movement on my part might dispel. As the coach pulled up to where I stood, I saw the little window, which was open, with the curtains unfastened. First I saw a perfect white hand, and then the blond curls and the sky-blue eyes that Diego Velázquez later painted: the girl who had led me to within a breath of the gallows. And as the carriage rolled past the Tavern of the Turk, Angélica de Alquézar looked straight at me, in a way—I swear by all that is holy—that sent a chill from the tip of my spine to my bewitched and furiously pounding heart. On an impulse, without considering what I was doing, I placed my hand on my chest, honestly and truly lamenting that I was not wearing the gold chain with the amulet that she had given me to ensure a sentence of death, and which, had the Holy Office not taken it from me, I swear by Christ’s blood I would have continued to wear around my neck with besotted pride.
Angélica understood the gesture. Her smile, that diabolic expression I so adored, lighted her lips. And then with a fingertip, she brushed them in something very like a kiss. And Calle de Toledo, and Madrid—the entire sphere—vibrated with a delicious harmony that made me feel jubilantly alive.
I stood watching, still as stone, long after the carriage disappeared up the street. Then, choosing a new quill, I smoothed the point against my doublet and finished putting down don Francisco’s sonnet.
Soul, in which a godhead was enclosed,
Veins, through which a humor’s fire arose,
Marrow, the seat of earthly passion’s reign,
Will fly the body, but quiddity retain;
Though ash, they will have sensibility,
Be dust enamored through eternity.
Royal Blood
I finished Royal Blood
This may be my favorite of the bunch so far. The Romanian vampire/werewolf angle was done tongue-in-cheek for the most part, and we all hope that Darcy will do right by Georgie one of these days - and I don't mean marrying her...
My rating:
A Soldier Like My Mother
The military has traditionally been a male preserve, and military SF, coming from the traditions of military fiction, has tended the same way. There’s no reason an army of the future need be a male army, and there’s no reason honour and duty and loyalty are exclusively male virtues, but that’s the way things have tended to be.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga is more than military science fiction, but it started off firmly within MilSF. It’s also solidly feminist and written from a female perspective, while being about all the things military SF is about. Bujold constantly holds these things in tension — masculine, military mad Barrayar against feminine social controlled Beta; the glory of war against the reality of messy death; duty and honor against expedience and compromise. It’s partly these tensions that make the series so compelling. You can have the fun and excitement of galactic mercenary adventures, with a matchless depth of thought and character development.
“You have the competence one would look for in a mother of warriors,” Aral says to Cordelia in Shards of Honor, the first book of the series. She’s military herself, she’s an astrocartographer and the commander of a Betan exploration ship, she is his prisoner and and he means it as a compliment. She replies: “Save me from that! To pour yourself into sons for eighteen or twenty years and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics — no thanks.” This is central to what Bujold’s doing with showing the human cost of war. She’s just as good at the rest of it — the honour and the glory — but she never forgets or lets you forget that the lights blinking on the screens represent ships full of human lives, and every one of them with a mother.
via A Soldier Like My Mother. Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga | Tor.com.
The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
I finished The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
More good fun in Edinburgh, with a minor mystery and lots of snippets of Isabel's life.
My rating:
Bertie Plays the Blues
I finished Bertie Plays the Blues
A few too many loose ends for my liking, and Irene's turnaround was too abrupt, but otherwise a very nice addition to the series.
My rating:
Books I read last year
In 2011, I read 65 books to completion. I started but did not finish 3 books - one I abandoned for good, but the other two I will finish in the future - they just didn't fit my mood at the time I picked them up.
One for the Money
I just finished One For The Money
It's not Crais, or even Lee Child, but it just schmaltzy enough to be both fun and interesting.
My rating: 
Pages
Recent Posts
- Fun With Words: Contronyms
- Shades of Milk and Honey
- The Sun Over Breda
- The Morning News Tournament of Books
- Apheresis – April 9, 2012
December 24, 2011
December 19, 2011
December 15, 2011
Categories
- Albums
- Bookshelf
- Doing
- Family & Friends
- FJR1300
- Listening/Watching
- Main
- Pet Peeves
- Politics
- Recipes
- Rides
- Site News
- Sports
- Technology
- Uncategorized