What happens when nine-year old Lunella has the Inhuman gene and desperately doesn’t want to be an Inhuman? Alien Kree experimented on my DNA thousands of years ago. The Inhumans exploded a Terrigen Bomb of mist that triggers genetic transformation. No way. I’m the boss of my own body. Nobody gets to tell anybody who…
I’m slightly annoyed that Novik left the introduction of one of her greatest characters to the last book in the series–I’m talking about Temeraire and Izkierka’s egg, Ning, who has some, I must say, very sensible ideas about war. “Certainly the war must be halted,” Temeraire said. “That is precisely why we mean to…
Read more Novik figured out a way to tether Napoleon that Metternich himself would have envied
I really liked the first book in this series (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…), liked the next three, and then came this one. Wow, is it good. *Spoilers. Can’t talk about this book without them.* After we’ve had four books to get fully invested in the lives of armed space freighter Rocinante’s crew, Earther Captain Jim Holden, Belter…
Read more Nuts and bolts sf when it’s done right? There is just nothing better.
Young Katie Steelstock, back in her home village of Hannington from her TV role in London as Britain’s sweetheart, is brutally murdered after a small-town dance. Her lover stands accused but not so fast, as other bodies begin to pile up. One of Gilbert’s grimmer efforts, as in maybe he went one death too…
Read more “Like a wasp eating marmalade,” whispered Mrs. Havelock.”
Three centuries after Shakespeare died, across the pond New Yorkers rioted over the relative merits of Macbeth as played by a British actor and an American one. The National Guard was called out, people actually died, and the British actor had to be hustled out of the country for his own safety. America had embraced…
Read more The British actor had to be hustled out of the country for his own safety.
It’s 1938, and ranch-raised 19-year old Bud Frazer’s family lost first his sister in a riding accident and then their ranch, and after a couple of years following the rodeo circuit he heads for Hollywood to find work riding horses in Westerns. There are a lot of different things going on here, just for starters…
Read more “You ranch long enough, you make peace with what you can’t help.”
If you’ve ever seen Jaws you’re familiar with this story. Days after it delivered Little Boy to Tinian, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. The attack is so effective that the bow literally vaporizes and because they are running “yoke-modified,” or most of the hatches dogged open because the…
Read more I can feel the sharks bumping my feet as I type these words.
Another recommendation by Smart Bitches Trashy Books, I’ve just finished this fifth and final book in Higgins’ Blue Heron series. Set in a small town in upstate New York, the heirs and friends of the Blue Heron vineyard fall in and out of and back into love and eventually live happy ever after. Romance…
Read more There is a lot going on here besides the central story of two star-crossed lovers.
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough A Who’s Who of 1800’s Americans travel to Paris to study medicine and art and to just bask in the radiance that is the world’s greatest city. Everyone’s here, Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.), James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel Morse, Elizabeth Blackwell, John Singer Sergeant, Mary Cassatt, Teddie…
I spent the summer of 1987 in Paris, studying beginning French at the Sorbonne and staying at the Cité Universitaire, in a program geared toward older students. Some of them wanted to take a cooking class, and the Sorbonne organized it for them. They needed one more student to make it go, and I was…
