It will take me a while to recover from this book. It's a thrill ride of near-miss triumphs and terrifying reversals, full of
gasp-out-loud twists and ruthless betrayals by good guys as well as bad.
Set in
a solar system of genetically engineered castes, its ruling classes fetishize
ancient Rome, emulating not only its traditions but its quest for territory, a
dangerous itch in an age of weapons able to burn planets to ash.
The resulting fight
scenes and space battles are spectacular, the best I've ever read, but the real brilliance is in its characters. I know from online reviews that
I'm not the only reader who, rooting for the heroes and shuddering
over the villains, found "almost unbearable suspense" to be more than
a cliché.
Darrow returns as Pierce Brown’s New York Times bestselling Red Rising series continues in the thrilling sequel to Dark Age.
The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains.
But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend.
Marooned far from home after a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Mercury, Darrow longs to return to his wife and sovereign, Virginia, to defend Mars from its bloodthirsty would-be conqueror Lysander.
I'm completely charmed by Peter Grainger's D.C. Smith, a
seemingly (but only seemingly) mild-mannered police detective whose understated
style and sly humor remind me of John le Carré's George Smiley. This book, although part of a series, is close to being a stand-alone, with Smith far from home and work.
Thirty years earlier, Smith was a British officer in Belfast, undercover
with the IRA. He barely escaped with his life when his cover was blown, and he's
had no contact with anyone there since, including people he'd grown to love. That
changes when a young Belfastian tracks him down, blaming him for the disappearance
(unbeknownst to Smith) of his uncle right after Smith fled. Smith returns to
Belfast to try to discover what happened that night.
The story emerges as Smith
risks his life to confront and question members of the IRA cell he betrayed.
Two weeks of rest and recuperation – that’s what the doctor ordered. Detective Sergeant DC Smith could listen to some music, make some of his own and maybe even catch up on his reading; he is almost looking forward to it. And then there is a knock on the door. It’s only his next-door neighbour but it is the beginning of a sequence of events that will bring him face to face with some of the darkest episodes and the most dangerous people from his own past. This is Smith’s fifth investigation but this time it’s personal.
I'm always looking for novels that will carry
me to distant and remote places, especially those I'm not likely to visit any
other way. Peter May does this in this beautifully written book set in Scotland's
Outer Hebrides.
This is a story of loneliness
and regrets shaped and intensified by life on the isolated archipelago. The sense
of place is especially vivid in chapters set on the hard-to-reach rock known as
Sula Sgeir island. Few people are permitted there because it's a breeding ground for endangered gannets. But each year, a select group of locals is allowed to make
camp and collect the birds, a culinary delicacy hunted in the same traditional
way since the 15th century.
May's gift for transporting readers to
otherwise inaccessible places makes this novel stand out.
BOOK ONE IN THE MILLION-SELLING LEWIS TRILOGY. A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. A RICHARD & JUDY PICK. WINNER OF THE USA'S BARRY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR.
PETER MAY: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT MURDER TO THE OUTER HEBRIDES 'One of the best regarded crime series of recent years' Independent
A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith.
A MURDER
Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past.
A car falls from the sky, landing atop another
car and killing its driver. It must have sailed off the cliff above, but there are
no tire tracks in the soft ground there. The surviving driver can't recall what
happened but refuses to believe the story he's told under hypnosis: that a spaceship grabbed, then dropped, him and his car.
When the DA charges him with
vehicular manslaughter, his attorney despairs. The only weakness in the prosecution's
case is the undisturbed field leading off the cliff.
Not all juries will acquit
based on absent evidence; some expect an explanation that accounts for it. But
can any lawyer's career survive if, despite her own and her client's beliefs,
she calls alien abduction experts as witnesses?
