Yet More Book Reviews

Miss Julia Delivers the Goods (Ross): D-, DNF. First 75 pages contain disparaging ethnic stereotyping, sex-shaming, and a degree of boundary-crossing meddling that gave me hives.  Plus it was boring.

Death in the Stocks (Heyer): Re-read.  Okay, largely inoffensive. I remembered halfway through who did it.

The entire Mrs. Pollifax series: Library. Soothing, not-too-violent series about a little old lady who decides to go work for the CIA in her spare time.  Marred by the occasional racism (stop saying that dude has slanted eyes!  Gah!) but otherwise good, and a refreshing change to have an older heroine who rescues herself. 

Locked Rooms (King): Re-read.  Entertaining, not too violent or bizarre or shark-jumpy (I'm looking at you, Pirate King).

Two for Sorrow (Upson): Again, D-, would not book again.  Takes an engaging premise (Josephine Tey, novelist and notable lady-lover, is a detective!) and butchers it under a heap of anachronisms, gory violence, dead babies, and - to top it off - weak, wandering, uninteresting writing.  Bah, humbug.

Attolia series (Turner): Trilogy about a fantasy world.  Quite good and interesting.  Main character is a dude but interesting women also feature prominently. 

Unquiet Land (Shinn): Okay but the plot is wander-y and full of feeeeeelings.  Series seems to be declining; the first one was great, now heading for meh. 

Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen (Nix): Re-read.  I forgot how much I like these badass young ladies rescuing everyone else.  (Clariel, the more recent, is a bit unsatisfying.)

Norse Mythology (Gaiman): Did you KNOW that none of the women in Norse mythology ever did anything interesting?  About 100 pages in, I was suddenly intensely glad I had not paid money for this book.  Seriously, so much sausage.