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Monday, March 17, 2008

Three short reviews

Storm Front: Book 1 of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.
Good stuff. An interesting blend of genres, as Harry Dresden is a wizard who also works as a private investigator. When the police have a case they deem “weird” they go to Harry.
On the same day, two seemingly unrelated cases show up on Harry’s doorstep. A woman is searching for her missing husband, and has found something that leads her to Harry, and the police department has a double murder, committed in such a way as to also lead them to Harry’s door.
Soon, Harry is in well over his head.
The blending of genres works pretty well, and Harry Dresden is an engaging character; flawed yet funny.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Q & A by Keith R A DeCandido
Set after the events of Resistance; this is a better novel. The new Enterprise-E crew is settling in and ready for an exploratory mission; which Picard is particularly looking forward to, as it brings the Enterprise back to her roots.
Then Q shows up and everything goes south very quickly.
It turns out that Q isn’t exactly the malevolent mischief-maker that everyone has always believed; it turns out all these years he’s been working to save humanity, with a little mischief thrown in for fun.
Good escapism.

The Six Pack: Various
Short stories from the winners of a competition for New Zealand Book Month in 2006. Five short stories and one collection of poems. Very good, but my favourite story is The Life Coach; funny and light for the most part, with a couple of shadows thrown in for good measure.

Also finished recently: A Pocketful of Rye by Agatha Christie and Jeeves in the Offing by P G Woodhouse. Christie and Woodhouse are my “fill-in” authors, when I can’t think of anything else I want to read.

Whew! That’ll do for now!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Q as a good guy?! I think he's a great character - funny, but just a bit scary at the same time.

The Dresden Files sounds interesting, I'll be checking that out. :)

Maree said...

Not exactly "good"; but definitely an advocate for humanity. In his own way.

Bybee said...

oh, I have the six pack book. One of my Kiwi co workers brought it back from New Zealand.