Chez Aloysius

The Serial Killer's Wife by Alice Hunter:
It was definitely the title that drew me into this book, though it turned out to be a bit of a drawback because it gave away information the author started out trying to keep hidden in the story...
This was exacerbated by the multiple POVs trying a bit too hard to obscure things within first-person narratives, which felt contrived and left the characters' motivations and actions seeming very off-kilter to me.
Still, it was a pretty well constructed story, following Beth trying to hold her life together in a small town after her husband is arrested in connection with a suspected murder.
It kept me invested in the story to begin with (and not wanting to skim, which is often an issue I find with these kinds of books) but it started to feel unnaturally drawn out in the second half and got a bit ridiculous by the end.
It was largely interesting on an intellectual level but didn't engage my emotions and wasn't particularly satisfying overall.


God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines:
I love stories about people who reappear after long disappearances.
And I love stories about disparate groups of characters who are stranded somewhere and have to work together to survive.
So this book - about a boy who disappears for five years, reappears with stories of a remote valley where dinosaurs roam, and then spends decades trying to find a way back there, inadvertently taking several other people along for the ride - seemed designed to appeal to me.
And it was really good!
It started out really fun and highly entertaining, though it got pretty grim in places and quite a lot of rather horrible things happened.
I didn't really like that many of the characters, but they made a very interesting bunch to follow in these circumstances and I enjoyed all the different perspectives we got on the events of the story.
By 75% through, it still felt like it was only at the very start of the story in a lot of ways - and then a huge amount happened in the last section, which felt a bit rushed.
But I liked where it ended up and I thoroughly enjoyed it overall.


The Electric Michaelangelo by Sarah Hall:
I didn't get very far with this at all.
The opening scene was really off-putting, the writing felt very overdone, there were a lot of sensory details that were very unpleasant and it didn't have any dialogue punctuation, so I DNF'd very quickly.


My Real Children by Jo Walton:
I've had a mixed experience with Jo Walton, and I think this one will be it for me with this author.
The premise is very interesting - an elderly woman, who is starting to get confused about certain things, remembers two very different versions of her life, and the story then tells both stories, diverging from a particular decision she made.
But the execution left a lot to be desired. It was way too much telling, which prevented me from really getting into the story, but one of the timelines was so incredibly unpleasant I was actually extremely glad my emotions weren't being engaged, and I had to stop reading about 30% through.


Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut:
This was a real surprise!
It came out in 1952 and is about a near future were most human jobs have been replaced by machines, and it explores how this would affect society.
It's scarily prescient regarding various aspects of how things have developed - and very appropriate for the times we find ourselves in now.
It's also much more character-driven than I expected (having read Slaughterhouse Five), with really in-depth, layered analysis of various characters, especially protagonist Paul.
It's still a produce of its time, with some unfortunate racial stereotyping and some issue with the presentation and treatment of women. But those aspects aren't nearly as bad as quite a few much more recent books I've read.
It really made me think a lot about various things and, overall, I thought it was fantastic.

Can I be disappointed by a four-star reading experience?
Apparently so - especially when it's a Becky Chambers book.
Don't get me wrong - As You Wake, Break the Shell is a really good book - I think my expectations were too high and I'm sure a lot of other people will enjoy it more than I did.
And I did really enjoy it!
It's about two women living on a colony on a farflung planet, with a toxic atmosphere and limited resources, basically just trying to live their lives and make the best of a difficult situation.
And parts of it are *glorious* - especially when the story involves the side characters (Colibri and Otto in particular). I found parts of the romance absolutely adorable and really heartwarming, too - though mostly, when the story focused just on Cora and Signy (together or alone), it felt a bit flat to me.
It was never remotely any kind of chore to read - but it just wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be, and I was also very confused by certain things about the ending.
I'll definitely read the sequel, though!

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers has been on my shelf a very long time - and I'm delighted I finally got around to reading it, because it turned out to be really good!
It follows Julia Garnet, who decides to take a six-month trip to Venice upon her retirement, in honour of her longtime friend, Harriet, who sadly dies shortly before they were about to go off on adventures together, upon their retirement.
It also tells the story of Tobias and the Angel, from the Apocrypha, weaving parallels between the journeys taken by both Julia and Tobias in a clever way throughout the book.
Some of the attitudes and behaviours of the various characters did take me aback at certain points, and the plot took an odd turn towards the end. But the only thing I found jarring throughout was that the book felt very old-fashioned and I was constantly surprised by references to modern things, because I kept thinking it was set in the 40s or 50s, rather than 2000.
Still, I very much enjoyed it overall - not least because Venice is depicted in vivid detail and it brought back many good memories of my multiple trips there.

Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M Valente was a huge surprise. I was expecting a light-hearted, possibly even comedic romp through a Wild West version of the Snow White fairytale, with perhaps a feminist slant to it. What I got was an exquisitely written, beautifully evocative, searing narrative that cut me open and left me gasping. Every time I thought it couldn't stab any deeper, it found a whole new knife. Amazing read.


Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi seems to be about an editor working through a book of short stories with the author, discussing their significance and identifying potential areas of revision for a new edition. Each of the seven short stories from the fictional book are given in full, and cover a range of different murder mystery formats, scenarios and outcomes. And the discussions between editor and author are really interesting, insightful and amusing, especially to a professional editor and author, as I am. But then - the twists, the turns, the red herrings, the reversals - brilliantly conceived, masterfully executed, highly entertaining.

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho follows a group of mercenaries who gain another member of their team - a former nun - after an altercation in a tea shop. It wasn't really what I was hoping it would be - there didn't feel like much of a story, it was very slow, and it took a long time for the characters to become distinct enough from one another for me to connect to them. I'm glad I persevered with it, though, as I liked where it ended up overall - but if it had been any longer, I probably wouldn't have finished it.


The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky is about rifts in the barrier between different versions of Earth starting to erode and let through monsters. At least, that's where it starts... It ends up involving a multidimensional task force trying to save the multiverse from disintegrating altogether. Oh, and vast flying trilobytes... I was looking for a long, in-depth, immersive fantasy book to sink into - and I got a rip-roaring, highly entertaining romp of a book that required high levels of concentration to follow - but was very well worth it. Best book I've read in ages.


The Rift by Nina Allan tells the story of Selena, whose older sister disappears when they are teenagers and then turns up again twenty years later with a wild tale of having travelled to another planet. I found Selena's part of the story much more engaging than Julie's narrative (despite the 'other planet' aspect), so the book dragged for me in the middle when we switched wholly to Julie's story. But it picked up again a lot towards the end and was much less conclusive about events than I'd thought - but not in a bad way.

Fire Danger by Claire Davon is an urban fantasy / paranormal romance involving elemental beings, demons, werewolves, vampires, and all sorts of other creatures that wander around, magically concealed from humans, and having turf wars and feud cycles, etc, etc.
I knew going in that it probably wasn't going to be for me (lack of worldbuilding, too overwrought and melodramatic, much too focused on everyone's physical attractiveness, little apparent depth of character development or emotion) - but I'm sure it has an enthusiastic audience somewhere, so people who find the setup appealing definitely shouldn't take my views into account.
I DNF'd about a third of the way through.

Crunchy With Chocolate is a short story anthology full of different versions of dragons. One of my stories is in it but I'd never read the rest and it was very interesting to see how 26 other writers came up with ideas around the concept of 'dragon' when asked to subvert expectations and veer away from traditional presentations. As you would expect in such a chunky collection, all written by different people, I liked some of the stories more than others but I enjoyed the whole thing overall.


Bury Me When I'm Dead by Cheryl Head is the first in the Charlie Mack investigations series, following several ex-cops and intelligence agents who set up a private investigations firm in Detroit. There's a lot of exploration of different types of politics - gender, queer, class, geographic, racial - and the ways in which the different members of the team are deployed in different situations, depending on their demographics. I initially liked the dynamics within the team and the romance subplot - but both went awry towards the end as a few of the characters made decisions or displayed attributed I wasn't keen on. In particular, Charlie herself fell into several bisexual stereotypes, and her female love interest also stated an opinion that she didn't really believe bisexuality was a thing, which was disappointing. The case itself didn't really interest me at all, so it's definitely not a series I'll be continuing with.


Contact by Carl Sagan follows Ellie, who is involved in the SETI program in the 1980s and finds a message that seems to be instructing humanity to build some kind of machine. I saw the film years ago and remembered liking it, and I've also read one of Sagan's nonfiction books and enjoyed that, so I was interested to read the original story. But I really struggled with the book - it mostly reads more like nonfiction, with pages and pages of science or philosophy or astronomy or religion, and a few bits and pieces of character or emotion scattered about, as if Sagan was having a great time expounding on a subject and then suddenly remembered he was supposed to be writing a story. This did change towards then end, where there was a lot more about Ellie's actual experience of what was happening and her thoughts, feelings and reactions to it. But I'm really not sure I how I feel about the ending and I'm left a bit adrift with my thoughts on this one.


Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett is about the titular character trying to find a new location for the titular shelter, after the previous one is damaged by wizards duelling in the streets of Montreal. I started listening to the audiobook but didn't get particularly far in, because I wasn't grabbed by the story and found the narration a bit flat.


Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty is another masterclass in managing tension and treading the difficult line between the ending being too little or too much in this kind of book. We know from the start that something happened at a barbecue that had serious repercussions for multiple people's lives. We then follow various of the people in two timelines - the day of the barbecue and several months later. What I love about Moriarty's books is that I get invested very quickly, am very keen to find out what happens, but never want to skim because the journey the characters go on is compelling in and of itself. Plus, even though I have no idea how events can possibly work out in a satisfying way - they always do. This one was desperately sad in places, but it all came together brilliantly - and the depiction of what was going through the various characters' minds along the way was fantastic.


Our Blue Orange by MR Merrydew is about a man who works in an unspecified ministry, who starts to think something odd is going on with the central AI and the various androids that do menial jobs around the building. It started out well enough, but the overall tone grated on me and the style of humour wasn't appealing to me - the disconnect between dark content and absurd behaviour felt very jarring and I gave up partway through.


Some Luck by Jane Smiley is the first in a trilogy that follows one family through 100 years from 1920 to 2019. This first book spans 1920 to 1953, and the family starts out on a farm in Iowa, with various of the different generations moving away at certain points to other places. It obviously covers World War Two, as well as the ways in which the weather, the economy and technological advances affect farming in the Midwest of the US. It's quite weird in the way it's written, though, because each chapter covers a different year, largely summarising what's happening to each character, with varying amount of direct action along the way. This makes it quite disjointed and a bit remote, since we get a snapshot of everyone's situation for each year, but no real throughline or traditional arc of a plot. In a way, everything happens but nothing happens, with long stretches of mundanity, punctuated with occasional high drama - which is very true to life, but doesn't necessarily make for an effective story. By the end of the book, I felt like I knew all the characters really well and had an overall sense of what had happened to them over the course of 33 years, but I wasn't sure I'd necessarily enjoyed the reading experience all that much. Considering the other two books in the trilogy are both over 700 pages, I think I might leave it here.


How to Defeat a Demom King in Ten Easy Steps by Andrew Rowe is a novella, set in a world where there's a 100-year cycle of a demon king rising to power and then being defeating by a hero. It's very literal LitRPG, with the characters having a virtual inventory they use to carry things around, gaining experience points from doing certain things, and being able to choose classes and skills that then allow them to progress in their various activities. It's a bit too technical for me in terms of the ins and outs of the levelling system - but definitely picks up in the second half when the protagonist starts questioning the status quo and breaking tradition to manipulate the system in her favour. I liked the dynamics between her and her much more traditional companion, and there were a lot of fun moments in their quest to defeat the demon king outside of the usual cycle. I liked how it all concluded and it was an enjoyable listen.


Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith is the second in the Isabel Dalhousie series, about a woman who edits a philosophy journal as her job, but gets involved in solving mysteries along the way. It turns out I had read the first book some years ago and forgotten - but the presentation of Isabel's character and the vivid Edinburgh setting reminded me. It was an enjoyable enough read - though the quite interesting plot (about the recipient of a heart transplant who starts having memories that are not his own) was very much sidelined by Isabel mooning over her niece's ex-boyfriend in a very irritating and repetitive manner. The story itself went to some interesting places and I liked how it was resolved, but I didn't really like Isabel herself, so must remember not to read any more of these!


The Four Seasons of Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem is an adorable set of four stories about the mice who live in the titular hedge and their very sweet and gentle adventures throughout the year. It was really fun to see how their lives progressed in the different seasons - though the winter story reminded me a bit too much of the video game Winter Burrow, which was quite a traumatic experience for me around a year ago. Still, that's not the book's fault - and I thought this was lovely overall, generating just enough tension for each story to be interesting, but never stepping over the line away from cozy fun.


Constellations is a play by Nick Payne, about a couple who meet at a barbecue, and then presenting various individual moments in multiple different possible ways their relationship might work out or not. It's masterfully woven together in a mosaic of individual scenes that eventually build up a complex picture of the vagaries of life and where our decisions might take us. It didn't wholly work for me on every level, but it was very well done overall.

Electric Idol by Katee Robert is the second in her Dark Olympus series - and I enjoyed it nearly as much as the first one!
The worldbuilding was still nonsense, the narrative was still endlessly repetitive, the plot was still ridiculous - but the romance was also still very much hotter and more adorable than I would have expected, and the book as a whole was still compulsive binge-able and highly entertaining - as well as pretty hilarious (at least to begin with.
There's an issue with Eros being actually a murderer - and there were a couple of moments to do with the sex and/or romance that made me slightly uncomfortable.
But I do love an unapologetically plus-size female main character who is never seen as anything other than spectacularly attractive by the male main character. And the climactic (no pun intended) section of the book was very compelling and exciting - with Psyche taking the lion's share of the planning and executing of the action finale.
So another solid entry in this series for me.

I had high hopes for The Midnight Bookshop by Amanda James - a magical bookshop that helps people improve their lives and find friends along the way - but I didn't get past the first couple of chapters. The first two protagonists introduced felt like cookie-cutter stereotypes who didn't engage my sympathies at all, and the writing felt very pedestrian (not helped by a fairly flat narration) and statement-heavy.

Black Seconds by Karin Fossum tells the story of what happens in a small Norwegian town after nine-year-old Ida goes missing. It took a while to get going and felt quite flat to start off with, but there was a lot of really good exploration of different characters' thought processes and feelings about the situation. I liked the two policemen investigating the case and I definitely got invested in what was happening.
The main issue was that I realised not too far from the end that the answer to the mystery was either going to be the incredibly obvious series of events that was signposted from very near the start - or a completely different series of events that would have to come completely out of nowhere with no clue - neither of which would be a satisfying ending - which was the case.
However, the last two pages were exquisitely well written - which was an odd contrast with the rest of the fairly pedestrian style, but very welcome.


The Butcher's Masquerade by Matt Dinniman is the fifth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series - masterfully narrated by Jeff Hayes. I'm still suffering diminishing returns with this series, though I'm also still engaged enough to carry on. Parts of this one were extremely grim, and Carl himself got pretty dark (though Princess Donut did call him on it, which was good) - and it really wasn't funny at all, which is an increasing and disappointing trend with the books. As with several of the others, the minutiae of the details of the dungeon level just slid right out of my brain and it was sometimes hard to follow what was going on - but it still had great character and relationship development and a lot of great additional layers of significance that will become important later in the series. So I think I'll be in it to the end - it's just a shame I'm not enjoying the books as much as I was at the start.