The Snow Empress by Laura Joh Rowland My rating: 2 of 5 stars The 12th in the Sano Ichiro series, this was a slight departure from the series in that it takes place in far northern Japan, where Sano and Reiko’s son has been kidnapped, apparently to lure him away from the capital. The lord […]
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Death and the Chapman by Kate Sedley My rating: 3 of 5 stars The first of a series of historical mysteries set in fifteenth-century England and introducing Roger, a young man who quits the monastery to be a traveling salesman and discovers his talent for solving mysteries. Told in flashbacks by Roger as an old
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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was a fun, quirky story of a dysfunctional English family and the 11-year-old, precocious heroine who likes to snoop and specializes in poison. The post-WWII setting was appealing and the characters were certainly entertaining. I could tell
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The Wind-up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi My rating: 1 of 5 stars I was truly disappointed in this book after reading the rave reviews. The plot looked fascinating and many people obviously loved it. But once I began, I realized how bleak the story truly is. One down. The writing itself is very descriptive and
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Aztec 3. City of Spies by Simon Levack My rating: 4 of 5 stars One of my favorite series, simply because it is so different. Yaotl is a down-on-his-luck Aztec slave who is good at logistical problems and has an disfunctional, extended family. His cohorts are interesting and entertaining, in most cases, and the life-and-death
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Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card My rating: 2 of 5 stars Interesting but very slow going. This book is simply an introduction, but I expected (and wanted) a little more story instead of all backstory. The alternate American frontier is only slightly different from the real past, so it’s not a strange, new world
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Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron by Stephanie Barron My rating: 3 of 5 stars A truly sad beginning mars this otherwise typical Jane Austin mystery, as a major character from the series dies. But there is no dearth of other acquaintances (and suspects) to fill the story with soap-opera angst and over-the-top aristocratic
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A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very good Victorian mystery, flawed by patches of mundane domesticity. The protagonist is simply not very interesting, although he is certainly a good man, and has a fine supporting cast. What kept me going were the intricacies of the mystery itself,
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