Review – Trent’s Last Case

Posted August 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Trent’s Last Case

Trent's Last Case

by E.C. Bentley

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 224
Series: Philip Trent #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong.

Trent’s Last Case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth as they probe ever deeper in search of a solution to a mystery filled with odd, mysterious twists and turns.

Called by Agatha Christie "one of the best detective stories ever written," Trent's Last Case delights with its flesh-and-blood characters, its naturalness and easy humor, and its style, which, as Dorothy Sayers has noted, "ranges from a vividly coloured rhetoric to a delicate and ironical literary fancy."

I was very curious to read E.C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case, knowing that Dorothy L. Sayers greatly admired it. It’s definitely more in Sayers’ line than, say, Christie’s or Marsh’s, with a detective character who shares some DNA with Sayers’ Wimsey. He’s not quite as clearly characterised as Peter begins to be, and his piffle isn’t quite as outrageous, but he’s a definite precursor.

That said, the pacing feels really slow, and I found Trent a mite less charming. It’s always uncomfortable when a private detective character withholds information from the police, and that thread of the story (Trent’s interactions with Murch) swiftly disappeared in a way that felt outright odd, even if Trent decided not to share his info. The police are just letting you run around all over the place, are they? And you’re the only one who thought about fingerprints? And you’re going to keep quiet when you’re fairly certain about a murderer? Hmmm.

The other way in which this is like Sayers’ work is that the detective has a love story, and as in Strong Poison, it’s pretty intimately tied up with the mystery plot. It’s resolved within the book, though, rather than being something that develops well over time.

Overall, I did enjoy reading this; there are some bits of scene-setting and characterisation that feel really vivid, and the mystery is fun once we get somewhere with it. I’d read more of Bentley’s work.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Dominion vol 2: The Sandman

Posted August 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Dominion vol 2: The Sandman

Dominion: The Sandman

by Thomas Fenton, Jamal Igle, Steven Cummings

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Mystery
Pages: 50
Series: Dominion #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A gripping supernatural thriller of biblical proportions...quite literally. When detective Jason Ash arrives on the scene of a particularly strange murder in the suburbs of New Orleans, little does he know that he is about to take on the case of a lifetime. As dead people begin to come back to life, revealing that they hail from a realm where angels fight for power, it becomes clear that an epic battle between good and evil is at play, one threatening the very future of humanity.

The second volume of Thomas Fenton’s Dominion, The Sandman, still has the weird page numbering issue I mentioned with my review of the first volume: some places say 150 pages (ish), while Amazon says 50. The version I read said 50. That said, it picked up from the first volume in a way that made sense, and it doesn’t feel like I’m missing any story, so I guess it’s a weirdness in page-numbering on the Amazon files (or just bad numbering from other places).

The second volume has Jason Ash discovering a little bit more about what’s happened to him, finding that he can read the script of angels, getting unexpected offers of help, and finding himself to be apparently psychic (at least, when he needs to be). It continues to be fairly predictable in its story beats.

It was surprising to me how swiftly the various abduction sub plots are wrapped up, and yet I’m really not sure how Jason’s story can be wrapped up satisfactorily with just one more volume of this length. I guess that remains to be seen; I remain curious enough to continue.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Divider

WWW Wednesday

Posted August 7, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

WWW Wednesday normally asks:

  • What have you recently finished reading?
  • What are you currently reading?
  • What are you planning on reading next?

So, without further ado…

Cover of The Sarpedon Krater by Nigel SpiveyWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was The Sarpedon Krater, by Nigel Spivey, which is about a particular Greek ceramic (a krater is a sort of bowl used for mixing wine and water), and what it’s meant to different people over the years. It digs into the artist, where the krater was actually found (in an Etruscan tomb), some of the controversies around it, and also how the scene on it might have inspired other artwork. Art history generally isn’t my thing, but I’m always willing to be curious about things, and this was an interesting detour for me.

Cover of Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van PeltWhat are you currently reading?

As ever, I have a few books on the go at once. I’ve just started Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures, which isn’t as SF/F as you’d expect given one of the protagonists is an octopus. I’d file it more under literary fiction, really, and I’m feeling a little meh about at least one of the plot arcs (though it just became apparent how it links up, at least). I’ll finish it, at least, not sure yet how much I like it.

Cover of Bitter Waters by Vivian ShawWhat are you planning on reading next?

Probably Vivian Shaw’s Bitter Waters — I love the Greta Helsing trilogy, and am honestly feeling like maybe I want to reread it. Reading this new novella might be a good way to scratch that itch and decide if I really do want to reread.

How about you?

Tags: ,

Divider

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Favourites From Ten Series

Posted August 6, 2024 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

Naturally, as soon as I saw this week’s TTT prompt, my brain went blank: “Ten Favorite Books from Ten Series”. But after some digging around on my shelves in the blog, I do have some answers! I’ve probably left out something perfect and amazing, but here goes. I’ve linked to my review in each case, assuming I have one posted on the blog!

Cover of Death of an Author by E.C.R. Lorac Cover of Mirror Lake by Juneau Black Cover of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System vol 3 by MXTX Cover of Two Rogues Make a Right by Cat Sebastian Cover of A Fashionable Indulgence by KJ Charles

  1. Death of an Author, by E.C.R. Lorac. Of the British Library Crime Classics series, this is one of my favourites. This is perhaps not the conventional sense of “series”, and perhaps I should’ve picked my favourite Lorac of her series about Inspector Macdonald… but, well, I didn’t.
  2. Mirror Lake, by Juneau Black. It’s hard to pick a favourite of this series, because it’s less about any individual book (at least so far) and more just enjoying the setup. Still, Mirror Lake is very clever.
  3. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, vol 3, by MXTX. Okay, maybe it’s cheating to count this as a series, but we’re not being marked on accuracy here. I like book three the most because Shen Qingqiu starts to realise some things — and starts to finally understand Luo Binghe and treat him a little more fairly. And of course, they get their happy ending.
  4. Two Rogues Make A Right, by Cat Sebastian. I didn’t choose this just because a major character has TB, but that kinda factors into why I find this so memorable. But I also enjoy how Sebastian’s series usually take a character who seemed an unlikely love interest in a previous book, and get into why they acted that way, and make them worthy love interests after all, and — if I remember rightly, anyway — this was the first book where I noticed that pattern.
  5. A Fashionable Indulgence, by KJ Charles. I wouldn’t always expect a first book in a series to be a favourite, but I think there were things I found frustrating or just not to my taste in the latter two books — while appreciating the arc and story over the whole trilogy, and liking the second and third books quite a bit, to be clear! And I do enjoy the characters (and their relationship) a lot in this first installment.
  6. Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis. I’m not absolutely positive I shouldn’t pick Voyage of the Dawn Treader here, but on the other hand, this has all four of the Pevensies, and as a kid I ate up the introductory chapters with the secret midnight meetings in the tower…
  7. Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan. This book is where that series fell into place for me, and it’s a perfect illustration of how Isabella is as a person (and a scientist). I just had a lot of fun with it, and always do.
  8. Feed, by Mira Grant. Honestly, this book has lived rent-free in my head for so long. I’m not as big a fan of the rest of the series — not that I dislike it, just, this is the book that I like the best.
  9. Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal. This is another series where it was the second book that made things really click for me. It was very unlike the first book, and went some bold places.
  10. Have His Carcase, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Perhaps a controversial choice, compared to Strong Poison or Gaudy Night, and there’s a strong argument to be made for The Nine Tailors, in my book. But ultimately I love Peter and Harriet’s early friendship and the wittiness this particular book is written with.

Cover of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis Cover of Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan Cover of Feed by Mira Grant Cover of Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal Cover of Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers

Those are my choices, and I’m sticking to them!

What about everyone else? Would you/did you find this one difficult to answer?

Tags: ,

Divider

Review – Standard Deviations

Posted August 5, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Standard Deviations

Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways To Lie With Statistics

by Gary Smith

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 304
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Did you know that having a messy room will make you racist? Or that human beings possess the ability to postpone death until after important ceremonial occasions? Or that people live three to five years longer if they have positive initials, like ACE?

All of these 'facts' have been argued with a straight face by researchers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase once cynically observed, 'If you torture data long enough, it will confess.' Lying with statistics is a time-honoured con.

In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful deductions and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves.

Gary Smith’s Standard Deviations is basically a primer on how to notice when data is being manipulated in some way. Some of it is obvious (omitting zero from a graph’s axes can obliterate scale; reporting only some of the data from an experiment means likely the effect disappears when using the full data; p = 0.05 still means the result is a coincidence 5% of the time), and some of it less so — though to some extent I likely find it familiar/obvious because some grounding in statistics is required to study biology and especially infectious diseases.

For me, the book was far longer than it needed to be, with some principles repeated in multiple places (even without counting the final summing-up chapter). I can imagine that others would find multiple examples and reinforcement of the ideas helpful, though.

Overall, it felt surprisingly dated for a book published in 2014. I think that’s down to the examples used, and some difficult-to-put-one’s-finger-on attitude on the part of the author — it feels like you could mention sexism, racism, etc, etc, and he’d go look at the data with his initial starting point being “you’re wrong”. That may be unfair, it’s a very personal reaction to not-very-much actual evidence.

And admittedly, he got my back up immediately by opining on cephalopod intelligence in a way that demonstrated he clearly didn’t know the first thing about cephalopod intelligence. Stay in your lane and write about what you understand, Mr Smith.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Threading the Labyrinth

Posted August 4, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Threading the Labyrinth

Threading the Labyrinth

by Tiffani Angus

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 357
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

American owner of a failing gallery, Toni, is unexpectedly called to England when she inherits a manor house in Hertfordshire from a mysterious lost relative.

What she really needs is something valuable to sell, so she can save her business. But, leaving the New Mexico desert behind, all she finds is a crumbling building, overgrown gardens, and a wealth of historical paperwork that needs cataloguing.

Soon she is immersed in the history of the house, and all the people who tended the gardens over the centuries: the gardens that seem to change in the twilight; the ghost of a fighter plane from World War Two; the figures she sees in the corner of her eye.

A beautiful testament to the power of memory and space, Threading the Labyrinth tells the stories of those who loved this garden across the centuries, and how those lives still touch us today.

Tiffani Angus’ Threading the Labyrinth seemed like a promising choice: the idea of “garden fantasy” sounds fascinating, especially for someone who thrived on The Secret Garden rereads as a child (even if I am not really an outdoorsy person, not even as outdoorsy as the back garden). Overall, though, it just didn’t come together for me as it skipped and slipped through time, jumbling characters together and echoing them here, there and everywhere. At one point toward the end of the story the sections got really short, almost like the author ran out of patience with filling things out.

There were some lovely descriptions, and scenes which revealed character beautifully or were intriguingly mysterious. At other times, I almost couldn’t tell what was going on. In the end I found myself having difficulty not just skim-reading, because I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Ultimately, not one for me, I think. Perhaps a little more patience with it is rewarding for some, but for me it just didn’t work out.

Rating: 1/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted August 3, 2024 by Nicky in General / 22 Comments

Wow, it’s been a warm week! I’m not really built for warm weather… nor for cold weather… I think I’m just not really built for weather. But the sunshine has been nice on my walks, I must admit!

The latest Bookly readathon has started, so I have been doing a little more reading than I was, and I hope the week ahead will be pretty busy, reading-wise. Especially given the haul I got last weekend.

Books acquired this week

I’m going to split my haul over the next 2-3 weeks, since I got a lot of books in one go. (Next haul… probably due the week after that, since August 20th is my birthday, ahaha.) First up, a little non-fiction:

Cover of Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie With Statistics by Gary Smith Cover of They Were Here Before Us by Eyal Halfon and Ran Barkai

Cover of Invisible Friends by Jake M. Robinson Cover of Plagues Upon The Earth by Kyle Harper  Cover of Infectious by Dr John S. Tregoning

And here’s a couple of the fiction books I got as well:

Cover of Love Everlasting by Matt Hollingsworth, Tom King, Elsa Charretier Cover of The Duke at Hazard by KJ Charles

It’s a rather random mix, I know, just like the full haul. I do love having such a range around to read!

Posts from this week

Here goes the usual roundup:

Other posts:

What I’m reading

Right now I’m trying to finish up one of my new books, Standard Deviations, which is all about how data/statistics can be twisted to support totally made-up or opposite conclusions. It’s pretty well-explained, though I do have the advantage that I have (of necessity, as a science student) done two courses on stats.

It’s been a fun week, with some comics I plan to review and some manga which I won’t, alongside my chunkier non-fiction reads. Here are the books I read this week which I will post reviews of soon:

Cover of Love Everlasting by Matt Hollingsworth, Tom King, Elsa Charretier Cover of Tour de Force by Christianna Brand Cover of Clear by Scott Snyder Cover of Color by Victoria Finlay Cover of They Were Here Before Us by Eyal Halfon and Ran Barkai

Combined with the manga I read, it was definitely a busy reading week!

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

Tags: , ,

Divider

Review – The Brutish Museums

Posted August 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Brutish Museums

The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution

by Dan Hicks

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 336
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museum, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.

It’s difficult for me to evaluate Dan Hicks’ The Brutish Museums, since it’s not really my field and at times he gets quite technical and academic. It feels like the audience for this isn’t really clear: is it those who visit museums? Is it activists? It doesn’t quite feel like it’s other curators… As a result, that makes it a bit of an uneven read.

I’d been hoping for more detail about the actual Benin bronzes and how they’ve been displayed and discussed, but really this is about the wrong that’s been done — it could be about any kind of object displayed in a museum, it’s just an exemplar of a particularly egregious episode of looting, slaughter, and display of spoils.

It’s an interesting read, though it’s hard to know what to do with the information. It’s definitely a viewpoint worthy of thought, though: those who visit museums can be helping to perpetuate harm.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Love Everlasting, vol 1

Posted August 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Love Everlasting, vol 1

Love Everlasting

by Matt Hollingsworth, Tom King, Elsa Charretier

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Horror, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 136
Series: Love Everlasting #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Joan Peterson discovers that she is trapped in an endless, terrifying cycle of"romance" -- a problem to be solved, a man to marry -- and everytime she falls in love she's torn from her world and thrust into another tear-soaked tale.

I really loved the art in volume one of Tom King and Elsa Charretier’s Love Everlasting. It’s stylised and expressive, with well-differentiated characters and designs. It’s a fun race through a bunch of different styles of love story, with the main character Joan Peterson always dying just as soon as she’s declared her love for someone.

The fact that Joan — and a weird masked cowboy — are the only constants does mean that there’s not really much character-building, especially as Joan herself isn’t really exactly the same in every single scenario. The concept is the most interesting thing there, rather than the character (though Joan’s approach to her problems is, ah, entertaining).

By the end, it’s getting a touch too repetitive without any explanation, but it’s a really fun concept, and I am itching to know a bit more. I hope the second volume will explore the plot stuff from the fifth issue and deepen the story a bit.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Divider

WWW Wednesday

Posted July 31, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I did one of these, but I’m currently reading stuff I’m excited about and not just rereading (though I’m doing a lot of that too), so it seems like a good moment for an update!

So WWW Wednesday normally asks:

  • What have you recently finished reading?
  • What are you currently reading?
  • What are you planning on reading next?

Cover of Tour de Force by Christianna BrandWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last substantial thing I finished was Christianna Brand’s Tour de Force, of which I wasn’t a big fan — I find Brand quite cynical in her way of writing characters, and compare her unfavorably to E.C.R. Lorac, who by and large I love (even if sometimes she errs in the other direction, I’d rather that).

Cover of A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ CharlesWhat are you currently reading?

Today I’m trying to finish up reading Victoria Finlay’s Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox, which is interesting but also has a feel of travel writing or memoir, neither of which are totally my thing. For each colour, Finlay’s travelled and researched by asking people in person, and set great stock by things like simply seeing the crocus fields from which saffron is made. Sometimes it feels very touristy.

I haven’t finished The Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel (KH Charles) yet, and I’d like to get back to that too.

Cover of Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie With Statistics by Gary SmithWhat are you planning on reading next?

That’s a difficult one, because I have a bunch of new books begging for my attention. I’m actually quite tempted to turn to something a bit off my usual path, which is Gary Smith’s Standard Deviations. I’ve studied a bit of statistics because you have to in order to study science at all seriously, and I’ve always been rather better at statistics than I expected (I think I got good marks in my undergrad statistics course, and I definitely did in postgrad). Anyway, the point of this book is about discussing the ways statistics can be used to mislead, and I think that’s something everyone could do with being aware of — and I should be able to follow along fairly well, or so I hope!

What about you?

Tags: ,

Divider