Posts tagged with action-and-suspense
Sugar Daddy, by Lisa Kleypas
Sugar Daddy, Lisa Kleypas’s first contemporary romance novel, is entertaining, well-written, and—best of all—free of anachronistic sexual politics. (Many authors* producing both contemporary and historical romances have been known to lose sight of the fact that readers have different expectations for modern characters than they do for historical ones.) Sugar Daddy features...
The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones
There’s nobody quite like English fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones. Her novels feature bizarre subject matter, but she writes with such relaxed assurance that her worlds instantly feel familiar...
The Watchman, by Robert Crais
I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Crais’s action/suspense novel The Watchman. Crais’s book is neither deep nor plausible, but it is fast, fun, furious, and capped off with a satisfyingly noisy shoot-‘em-out ending. It doesn't have any of the intellectual ambitions of the last action/suspense novel that we reviewed, but it's much more entertaining...
Ilium, by Dan Simmons
Plenty of science fiction writers get so dazzled by their own ideas that they sometimes forget about developing a decent plot. This is not the case with Dan Simmon’s novel Ilium. It has plot coming out of its ears—in fact, most of the story is based on tried and true literary classics. While his overarching storyline is based on Homer’s Iliad...
Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville
I confess: I didn’t expect to like China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun. Preconceived dislike is a terrible thing for a book reviewer to admit, but there’s no denying it. I opened Miéville's book hoping to give it a fair shake, but A) I’m still recovering from reading certain scenes in Perdito Street Station...
Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau S. Wilce
Ysabeau S. Wilce’s Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Adventures of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), A House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog is...
Size 14 is Not Fat Either, by Meg Cabot
Size 14 Is Not Fat Either is the best series installment Meg Cabot has produced in years. It’s sunny-tempered (well, as sunny-tempered as a story featuring a beheaded cheerleader can be) and witty, and it does a great job of displaying Cabot’s gift for engaging characterization...
Mistral's Kiss, by Laurell K. Hamilton
Laurell K. Hamilton’s most recent book, Mistral’s Kiss, the fifth title in the Meredith Gentry series, is better than I expected. It’s not as good as the first two installments in the series, but Mistral’s Kiss has some decent action scenes, ends on a tantalizing cliffhanger, and...
Jane and the Barque of Frailty, by Stephanie Barron
Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen mysteries are always clever, but some of the books in the series are more emotionally effective than others. It’s difficult to forget the facts of Austen’s life—she...
The Deception of the Emerald Ring, by Lauren Willig
Apparently, Penguin has a tagline for author Lauren Willig: “Lawyer by day, romance novelist by night”. The press release that they sent out with the latest installment in her swashbuckling...
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, by Bill Willingham
I always encourage comic book-wary female readers to try Bill Willingham’s Fables. Not only is it unquestionably a story for grown-ups, it’s one of the few American comics I've encountered that boasts a truly involving romantic storyline. I love almost everything about this series—except for the internal artwork, which has consistently been competent but pedestrian...
The Mislaid Magician, or, Ten Years After, by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede
Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede’s 1988 novel Sorcery and Cecelia was a delightful curiosity—a cult favorite that appealed equally to devotees of Diana Wynne Jones and Georgette Heyer. The book's two sequels, 2004’s The Grand Tour and the just-released The Mislaid Magician, don’t totally recapture the magic of the first story, but they still make for very entertaining reading...
Morrigan's Cross, by Nora Roberts
As anyone who’s had the misfortune of hearing me speak recently knows, I’ve been sick. Really sick. I sound like a seal with a lifelong pack-a-day habit. The only upside to the past week and a ...
The White Mountains, by John Christopher
As post-apocalyptic visions of the future go, the world in John Christopher’s Tripod series isn’t so bad. In some ways, it’s almost idyllic—a world without war or famine, where people are comfortably assured of their own destiny. But there is one major downside: as soon as you turn fourteen, you’re sucked up into the belly of a three-legged, alien-controlled machine called a Tripod, and you’re not returned until a mind-controlling metal cap has been fused onto your skull...