I’m just starting a new cathegory today-books. Obviously, divided into two: books I love and cherish and re-read every now and then (yes I do re-read books I love, to the great dismay of my boyfriend who is more than willing to throw away books as soon as he’s done with them. We both hate clutter and a lot of books we (please read “he”) buy turn out to be right fit for the recycling bin (no WAY to re-sell them in Sofia, which drives me crazy and makes me even more determined to keep them-I mean, don’t you just hate throwing money away like that?), but the books I love, they’re like children to me. No, strike that, they’re much much better than children. They keep me company, they make me think, and they don’t make a mess, they don’t cry, and need no food. Perfect. I wouldn’t dream of throwing them away!
And obviously, cathegory “recycling bin”. There are two sub-cathegories in this one. Books that are objectively well written by people who know how to write, and who had something in mind when they started writing said book-but they just didn’t strike my fancy. And books that were apparently churned out by someone who is paid by the page-as long as they provide the editor with 200 pages, 14 font double spaced, they get paid regardless of WHAT they wrote. A sorry end for some of the planet’s proud trees. And good TP material.
I’ll color-code them (because I’m not good enough at this blogging thing to make different sub-chapters and stuff)-blue is for the ones I loved, because that’s my favorite color (well, one of them, anyway); green is for the ones that are good, but not to my liking-because they’re still going to end up in recycling, and everyone knows-green is for recycling; and brown is for the ones that I wasted precious time on reading, because brown is the color of doo-doo and those books are Toilet Paper material.
The order will be just random (I’ll obviously start with the ones that i’m currently reading or just finished, because they’re fresh.
Most recently finished book:
The Death Maze-by Ariana Franklin. This one sadly gets the thumbs down. It’s the second book of a series. Now, I like series-but not everyone knows how to do them well. I also like misteries, especially those set in yesteryears. I’ll blog about some of my favorite ones later on. I bought this book because I really loved the first book-Mistress of the Art of Death. (Trust me to ruin a review by making it…two!). Now, THIS one, I mean the first book of the series (I know, confusing, no? Maybe I shouldn’t take up writing professionally, after all ha ha!) was wonderful. It had pace, it had verve, the characters were well worked-the nice ones had little flaws, the bad ones had good sides, the story was very well plotted. It had enough interesting historic details, about daily life in the time of Henry the II Plantagenet (plus it was a nice surprise to see a positive book written about this very interesting character in English/French history. He’s normally the bad character linked to the murder of Thomas Becket, or overshadowed by his wife, Alienor of Aquitaine (what a formidable woman!!!!) and his sons, them of much fame Richard and John-that would be the Lionheart and Lackland. Yet Henry was a very interesting person, the first king in English history to style himself King of England, and a right force of nature-he had to, to be able to put up with his willy wife and plotting children). It also added to the interest factor, that the plot is about a woman medical examiner (a “dead doctor”) who has to find a serial killer who was abducting, mutilating and killing children. And do so without all the tools of modern Forensics (fingerprints, DNA, databases of all sorts). It doesn’t get much better than this, and Ms. Franklin pulled it off quite wonderfully, really. I didn’t suspect who the killer was until the very last pages, which is quite new and honestly quite thrilling for me-I love being surprised (mainly because I’m so darn smart that it’s almost impossible to do so! I know, I know, I don’t have a big ego, either!). Short, loved the book. If you’re into historic novels, give it a try. If you’re into misteries, try it too. If you like a bit of a love story with a wicked twist, read this book. It’s a winner, I’m telling you.
Turns out I can’t say much at all about the Death Maze, the book that I started reviewing in the first place . The main character is still in England, had a child, lost a lover, and needs to investigate the murder of the royal mistress (because whoever killed her, made it look as if it was ordered by Alienor, the king’s wife, and that, my friends, could have sparked a civil war-which England couldn’t affford). But…it seems like Ms. Franklin lost the plot a bit. There’s a second murder that comes in, none of those two is in any way spectacular, the murderer/s are not especially evil and cunning, and the worst thing of them all, it looks like she got bored with her own book at one point so she rushed the end and made it all…quite uninteresting. Shame, really, because I was looking forward to buying the next book of the series, and now I won’t-once disappointed, will never be fooled again.
So here’s the conclusion of today’s review:
Mistress of the Art of Death-by Ariana Franklin, gets blue, my favorite color, because I hearted it. And it gets to stay with me for a while.
The Death Maze-by Ariana Franklin, gets brown, the color of doo-doo, and is now sitting on the pile of books by the bed on DB’s side, waiting to be read by him (I swear, that man would read anything, anything at all!) and then to move to the pile of books waiting for the recycling bin (or for me to find some way of selling them-I want at least some of my money back!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment