Barnes’ first novel is promising, if less than entirely satisfying, and certainly not lacking in ambition nor scope. It’s set in a fantastic London peopled by flamboyant, unlikely charactersat the close of the 19th century. Several folk are Not As They At First Seem, including the narrator, who does, it should be noted, remark in […]
Entries Tagged as 'historical'
Jonathan Barnes: The Somnambulist
15 Nov 2008 · No Comments
Tags: historical · s-title · mystery · fantasy · b-author
Charles Stross: Missile Gap
04 Aug 2008 · No Comments
Good golly, I love libraries. I was delighted to have a chance to read Stross’s Missile Gap, a novella published in a small print run without coughing up its hefty price tag. I enjoyed Missle Gap, but truth to tell, if I’d paid the asking price, I would have been kinda bummed.
Missile Gap shares […]
Tags: m-title · historical · horror · science fiction · fantasy · s-author
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
01 Feb 2008 · No Comments
There is so much that’s good, even excellent, about this novel that I feel a little churlish for stating that the primary impression it left me with was one of disappointment, but that is the case, and the disappointment doesn’t arise solely as a consequence of the many accolades and awards heaped on it (although […]
Tags: historical · j-title · fantasy · c-author
Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon
05 Jan 2008 · 1 Comment
Cryptonomicon has several attributes that will be familiar to readers of other Stephenson novels like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. There’s the crazy see-saw between action that’s basically naturalistic and surreal, exaggerated sequences. If Cryptonomicon were a movie, I feel like most of it would be live action, but many of the scenes […]
Tags: thriller · historical · c-title · s-author
Lindsey Davis: The Iron Hand of Mars
07 Dec 2007 · No Comments
Don’t worry, I’m not going to write about every single volume of Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco series. But this one is interesting because it both is and isn’t a major departure from the preceding 3 novels.
The basic ingredients are the same: historical fiction, hardboiled whodunnit, comedy of manners, political intrigue, and romance. But the proportions […]
Tags: historical · mystery · i-title · d-author
Lindsey Davis; Venus in Copper
30 Nov 2007 · No Comments
With this, the third novel in Davis’ series of mysteries set in the Roman empire and featuring professional “informer” Marcus Didius Falco, I became an unabashed fan. A library request for the next volume was delayed by the long holiday weekend, and as my impatience grew, I cleaned Kate’s Mystery Books out of their entire […]
Tags: v-title · historical · mystery · d-author
Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers (eds); Slipstreams
14 Sep 2007 · 11 Comments
Pretty much ever since the genres science fiction, fantasy, and horror have existed as distinct marketing categories, there have been periodic movements seeking to un-define them as such. In the 60’s there was “The New Wave.” In the 80’s some bruited about the awkward, demi-hemispherist phrase “North American magical realism.” And more recently, an unruly […]
Tags: s-title · historical · mystery · science fiction · h-author · fantasy · g-author
John MacLachlan Gray: The Fiend In Human
04 Apr 2007 · No Comments
I think the first time my friend Marty and I had a conversation about books, he said something like “I read classic literature [which gave us substantial common ground] and thrillers about serial killers.” [which didn’t much increase it] and he expressed a distinct lack of fondness for modern “serious” fiction.
We’ve spent plenty of time […]
Tags: thriller · historical · f-title · g-author
Lindsey Davis; Silver Pigs
03 Dec 2006 · No Comments
Silver Pigs is a hard-boiled historical mystery set in ancient Rome, specifically, in the reign of Vespasian, just after the turbulence that followed Nero’s death.
I’ve frequently enjoyed historical mysteries, but they rarely succeed for me on both levels — either the period detail is compelling and the mystery is a bit slight, or the […]
Tags: historical · s-title · mystery · d-author