Dustmouse5

Another excellent Ruth Galloway novel but...

Revisado: 05-14-24

I miss the previous reader, Clare Corbett. Jane McDowell is good but Corbett is better. Effortlessly gives characters distinctive voices., does terrific accents, and embodies Kate, a little girl, beautifully. It's unusual to find a reader who does small children well. With McDowell I often don't know who is talking. Still, I listened to the rest of the Ruth Galloway novels and Jane McDowell was fine.

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Excellent as usual

Revisado: 12-27-23

My only criticism: sometimes too much detail of the wrong sort. Descriptions of DC making coffee, for example. Those of us who have read all the previous DC novels already know. And pls no more sections written from the point of view of a bird. That said, I love the new characters, the way Jason Diver has changed, and the surprisingly smooth way DC has been moved into a new world which allows him to continues to be a detective after retirement. Action scenes excellent as usual.

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I'm sorry. Mostly boring.

Revisado: 09-20-22

I'm an Ann Cleeves fan. This was disappointing. The last 20% was good but the long interior monologues and histories of the main characters was a yawn. It read like character notes for a novel. The villain revealed in the end: it was one of those mysteries where the character barely registers for most of the book and is suddenly a big deal. Unearned denouement.

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Lesley Manville is a gift to listeners

Revisado: 09-20-22

I am here to sing the praises of Lesley Manville. She is absolutely perfect, gets all the characters right, with all their various accents and personalities. Her American accent is a wonder. Will the series be a movie or a TV show? If so, please please please cast Lesley Manville as Elizabeth.

The plot isn't as good as the first novel and the cuteness is sometimes over the top but it's lovely and engaging.

BTW, is Donna black? Was her race mentioned in the first novel?

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Very funny and unusual

Revisado: 09-20-22

An entertaining, original, heartwarming book. If you're looking for something engaging and warm, this is it. A little sappy but when life is full of worry and anxiety, this is a tonic.

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Big disappointment

Revisado: 05-12-22

The last novel in the Slow Horses series, Slough House, ended on a cliffhanger: River Cartwright has been poisoned. He lies on the floor, losing consciousness, while Sid Baker calls 999 and begs River to stay alive.

That was book seven. So when you start reading book eight, you expect to learn the fate of River and Sidonie, if not right away then soon.

That doesn't happen. River is gone. He not only isn't in this book: he is barely mentioned. Any reference to him is brief and in the past tense. Meanwhile, there is no trace of Sid at all.

So, is River dead? If so, there are no repercussions. No one is trying to find out who killed him and why. No one is mourning. Is Sid dead, too? Her name is never uttered.

At the very end Louisa hints that River might still be alive. Really? if he is in a hospital healing from the attempted murder, why does no one mention him? Why don't they visit him? Why not talk about whether or not he's coming back? Why don't they want to find who did it, to avenge his death?

Instead this is a story animated by...nothing. There are two new characters, one an evil politico, the other possibly a double agent. She is blond and beautiful and has disappeared. Yawn. Neither one of them makes a strong impression. I'm sorry to say that parts of the book were a little tedious.

There is clever writing and there are entertaining scenes, as always. Roddy Ho has funny moments, Shirley too. Louisa and Lech are there, moving the plot along. Jackson Lamb is spending too much time talking with Diana Taverner who should either be in jail or dead by now. Catherine has turned into the drone of Slough House, part hall monitor, part governess. She has lost any trace of a personality.

Although the Slow Horses books are ensemble pieces, River stands out. Jackson Lamb is important but River is the closest thing to a main character. Yet in this book it's as if he never existed. I felt cheated.

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Big disappointment

Revisado: 04-25-22

This is a story about a woman in her 30s whose brilliant mother died when she was a toddler. Upon the death of her father, she struggles to learn about the history of her parents, the reasons behind their deaths, and why her father kept an ordinary map secretly locked away. It's possible her father's death was a murder. Then another person is murdered. She is both helped and hindered by five friends of her parents who she meets along the way. Her parents and their friends all got their PhDs in cartography or geography or related fields together at the same university. They were an inseparable group until some bad things happened.

This got really good reviews and it sounded fascinating. Sadly, it wasn't. Although there are at least nine characters in the novel with PhDs in cartography/geography, nobody really has anything of interest to say about maps. No one mentions borders or boundaries, perspective, distortion, scale, longitude, latitude, nothing like that. Not a word about political maps, topographical maps, conflicts or controversies in the field, etc. We are told repeatedly how brilliant the characters are but it's not very convincing. It is a work of fiction but calling it The Cartgraphers made me think it would have more intellectual heft to it.

The most important map in the book is magical. There are also some magical floor plans. Despite the magical elements, it still wasn't hard to see lots of things coming ahead of time. Not the ending, which was unexpected and unusual, but a lot of other details. Sometimes I felt like I was reading a novel for young adults.

There are many narrators and they're all fine. Unfortunately, the person who voices the main character isn't as good as the rest.

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Nope

Revisado: 03-25-22

I've liked a few other Karen Pirie novels but this one lost me when it started disgorging chunks of history. Yes, the countries that were once Yugoslavia are interesting, and the history is sad and complicated, but maybe write a novel about it instead of trying to stuff it into a Karen Pirie book.

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Ingenious and entertaining

Revisado: 03-25-22

I don't usually read science fiction but I really enjoyed this. It's funny and inventive. Great explanations of scientific phenomena. The narrator was perfect: completely inhabited Ryland Grace.

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The weakest of the wonderful Slow Horses books

Revisado: 10-22-21

The narrator makes no distinctions between characters so I often had no idea who was talking.

There are many entertaining scenes but the plot is overwrought and overall it’s unsatisfying. The others in this series are terrific and Gerard Doyle is a treasure.

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