The Cruellest Aviary
May. 20th, 2008 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maribouThe Aviary Gate, by Katie Hickman
So not only did Bloomsbury give me this book because they are awesome - they gave me the real book and not just an ARC. All shiny and hardcovered with a lovely odalisque on the dustjacket. Yay Bloomsbury! Bloomsbury rocks. Also, the book was grand fun; both the historical and contemporary strands of the tale were engrossing and sweet and skillfully written, with moving characterization and nice solid concrete descriptions, and the plot was tastily twisty while still somehow being predictable enough to feel mythic and soothing, and while I know very little about the habits of British academics, and even less about the Turkish sultanate of the 16th century, everything rang true. This was very hard to put down. Highly recommended to fans of historical fiction with a touch of the dreamy-eyed about them.
(83/300)
The Cruellest Month, by Louise Penny
The first two books in this series bowled me over, and this one wasn't quite that good. A little too disjointed, perhaps? Or maybe there were too many people crowded into the story. However, it was still a top-run mystery novel, full of tasty things, and the ending was not only a satisfying resolution for the individual book, but also for an arc that hard started back with the initial story, Still Life. Ending multi-book arcs is hard, and Penny did so very well. Hope she has more novels in her, and that they go back to being incredible all through rather than patchily.
(84/300)
So not only did Bloomsbury give me this book because they are awesome - they gave me the real book and not just an ARC. All shiny and hardcovered with a lovely odalisque on the dustjacket. Yay Bloomsbury! Bloomsbury rocks. Also, the book was grand fun; both the historical and contemporary strands of the tale were engrossing and sweet and skillfully written, with moving characterization and nice solid concrete descriptions, and the plot was tastily twisty while still somehow being predictable enough to feel mythic and soothing, and while I know very little about the habits of British academics, and even less about the Turkish sultanate of the 16th century, everything rang true. This was very hard to put down. Highly recommended to fans of historical fiction with a touch of the dreamy-eyed about them.
(83/300)
The Cruellest Month, by Louise Penny
The first two books in this series bowled me over, and this one wasn't quite that good. A little too disjointed, perhaps? Or maybe there were too many people crowded into the story. However, it was still a top-run mystery novel, full of tasty things, and the ending was not only a satisfying resolution for the individual book, but also for an arc that hard started back with the initial story, Still Life. Ending multi-book arcs is hard, and Penny did so very well. Hope she has more novels in her, and that they go back to being incredible all through rather than patchily.
(84/300)
