Pre Pub Book Buzz: Dark Horse by Rory Flynn

Readers, I don't know about you but I LURVE a good mystery/thriller. The kind that keeps you turning pages well beyond when you should hit the hay. The kind that sticks with you long after. The kind that puts an author on your must have list. 

Rory Flynn's Third Rail was all of those things and more and I've been waiting anxiously (and patiently) for more in the series. Well, the wait is ALMOST over! This june Eddy Harkness, the hero of Third Rail, finally makes his return and I couldn't be more excited!

Here's a bit about the book from Goodreads:

When a late-summer hurricane slams into Boston, Detective Eddy Harkness and his Narco-Intel crew are thrown into the eye of a very different kind of storm. Dark Horse — an especially pure and deadly brand of heroin — has infiltrated the gritty Lower South End. Harkness soon finds that the drug is also at the center of an audacious land grab by the city’s corrupt new mayor and his shadowy power brokers. Meanwhile, Lower South End residents displaced by the storm use an obscure bylaw to move into Eddy’s hometown, and soon enough tensions are running high along Nagog’s tree-lined streets.

Fast-paced and atmospheric, Dark Horse moves from dive bars to Harvard dorm rooms to the city’s elite social clubs, as Harkness puts everything at risk — his department, his nascent family, and his life — to try to derail the seemingly unstoppable conspiracy before it’s too late.

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading Third Rail yet, you do have a little over five months to catch up. (I've linked my review above if you're interested.) Dark Horse is due out in June from Houghton Mifflin. 

The Past by Tessa Hadley

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Tessa Hadley's latest, The Past.

Siblings Harriet, Roland, Alice, and Fran are to spend three weeks vacationing at the family home in Kington while they decide what to do with the place. After years of holding onto the abode and all the memories it holds, they finally have to face the fact that the upkeep is just too much. 

Harriet arrives alone, Alice brings her ex's college-age son Kasim, Fran's husband is suspiciously absent but her two children Ivy and Arthur are in tow and desperate for an adventure. Roland arrives late with his brand new bride and his own teenage daughter, Molly. From the start everyone is a bit on edge and quick to take umbrage with their fellow housemates' actions and comments. It'll be a tense visit, but one that the siblings have vowed to see through to the end. 

The Past wasn't quite my cup of tea. Tessa Hadley has a beautiful writing style, one that definitely puts the reader right smack dab in the middle of the crumbling house and its surroundings, not to mention the family drama. Fans of character-driven stories will no doubt love that aspect and gobble up this book - especially fans of somewhat dysfunctional family stories.

I admit, though, that I need a bit more plot to really get excited about a story. The actual book's description (I've linked the Goodreads page via the cover art here) promises "...hidden passions, devastating secrets, and dangerous hostilities..." And yes, those are present, to an extent, just not to the extent that I'd hoped.

I wanted drama, I wanted awkward moments, I wanted the secrets to be devastating. All in all I just wanted the book to be more exciting than it really was.

Again, I've no doubt that fans of more quiet novels and character studies will love The Past. Fans of Tessa Hadley's work will likely be pleased as well (I've not read her prior to this one). Newcomers with expectations in line with my own will probably, sadly, walk away with the same meh response I had.

Rating: 3/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble

Infinity Lost by S. Harrison

Finn Blackstone hasn't had what anyone would consider a normal childhood. Her father, CEO of Blackstone Technologies, is a recluse even his own daughter has almost never seen. Instead, she was raised by a nanny and security specialist, trained in tactical fighting and privately tutored until she was allowed to attend boarding school for her final years before graduation. 

This was just everyday life for Finn, until the dreams started. Strange dreams about things that seem almost like memories, but memories of events Finn never lived. And then the dreams start coming during the day, coinciding with a trip to Blackstone's headquarters. Finn had hoped the trip might mean an opportunity to confront her absent father. Instead, one of Blackstone's top secret advances turns deadly and Finn might be the only one who can stop it. 

Ugh, this is a hard one to review. I wish that Infinity Lost was a single title rather than the start to a trilogy. It's short, under 250 pages, and the balance of the plot as a whole is off. Three quarters of the book is set up for a final quarter of action and revelations, most of which are easy to see coming even if the full explanation has yet to be revealed.

As a single title, I didn't love Infinity Lost. I'm not even sure how much I liked it because so much of the story relies on the next two pieces. As a series start, it felt truncated and too forcefully split into pieces - almost as if it was one volume that was randomly cut into thirds for the specific purpose of dragging it out into a trilogy. Which may not be the case, but it certainly felt that way to me.

In theory, it's an interesting concept. Finn's own past is a mystery to her. She has enemies she isn't aware of. And what's the deal with her dad?! Stretching this out into three installments seems a bit unfair to the story, though. The full middle section of the book is tech talk, a show and tell of Blackstone's creations. It's foreshadowing, sure, but there's very little in the way of tension or action. The only pieces of suspense come from Finn's dreams/flashes of memory. Unfortunately those flashbacks break the book up, giving too much of a stop and go feeling to the narrative as a whole.

The second book, Infinity Rises, is actually due out next Tuesday but the third installment, Infinity Reborn, won't hit shelves until this summer, which means those final revelations are still six months out. Unfortunately I'm not sure I'll be able to decide whether I like the books or not until I have all three in hand.

The Expanse

Are you watching The Expanse? I certainly hope so! This week brings us current with the show, which means my first new episode in a couple of weeks now. Syfy teased us with early OnDemand and online availability of the first four episodes, which meant binging and then waiting for the live airing to catch up.

The show is based on The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, which kicked off in 2011 with Leviathan Wakes and has since grown to include five more volumes and an additional five shorts.

"Drive"
"The Churn"
"The Butcher of Anderson Station"
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
"Gods of Risk"
Abbadon's Gate
"The Vital Abyss"
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Game
Babylon's Ashes (due out in June)

I've listed them here in the order they appear on Goodreads, but Lady Business offered up a great alternate reading order you can check out here. Her argument is that Leviathan Wakes is so different in terms of storyline and such that it's not necessary to begin your reading there. If you're following the show, however, we are pretty tightly tied into that first book with a smattering of details from subsequent installments (Avasarala doesn't appear until Caliban's War, for example).

I'm quite loving the show adaptation. There are definitely some differences right off the bat but for the most part it's clear that these deviations from the book's storyline are meant to give us faster character development and increased tension right off the bat. Let's face it, no show has the time to do what a book can so things have to be condensed for maximum efficiency.

We begin the show with three story lines: Miller, a cop on Ceres, has been tasked with tracking down Julie Mao, the daughter of a well-to-do moon-based family. It's an off books job that involves finding Julie and shipping her back to her parents. But it turns out the case isn't quite that simple.

Meanwhile, an ice freighter responds to a distress beacon and is rewarded by being blown out of the sky. The only survivors, led by Jim Holden, find themselves on the run and faced with maintaining their freedom by outing the ones they think were responsible for destroying their ship.

Oh, and there's a ton of political tension brewing thanks to conflict between Earth, Mars, and the folks in between (the Belters). This is clear in the book but is made more so in the show through Shohreh Aghdashloo's Chrisjen Avasarala. (Earth is pretty hands off in Leviathan Wakes, so this additional plot line is probably the biggest change so far.)

In both the book and the show, Miller is my stand out favorite, no doubt this comes from my own personal penchant for mysteries. I'll admit that Thomas Jane's Miller is a little on the cheesy side. Frankly, though, I kind of like him more because of that. Miller is your typical noir detective: he has a mission (find the girl), he has baggage galore, and he's your pretty typical anti-hero (a little on the shady side and definitely willing to bend the rules when necessary). His on screen portrayal is exaggerated a bit, but is to my mind much in line with classic portrayals of the genre.

Holden is not so much a favorite of mine. In both mediums he comes across a little too self righteous for my taste and, in spite of what's to come in the show, never quite meshes with Miller. But that's for you to discover!

In both cases, I think the actors (and the rest of the cast - Tyreese!) are doing a fabulous job bringing these characters to life. I'm also really glad to see that Syfy is upping their game significantly with their current crop of shows. I was already won over by Helix (yeah, there's a little cheese there) and Twelve Monkeys and was blown away by Dark Matter and Killjoys. So far The Expanse has delivered as well, living up to my grand hopes and expectations. (I should note too that IMDB does have a second season of The Expanse listed already!)

Episode 5 of The Expanse airs tonight on Syfy. If you've yet to start the series, the good folks at Syfy have all four previously aired episodes available here for your viewing pleasure :)

Psst - hit the image at the top of this post for the official IMDB page and I've linked "Drive" above as well - Syfy has that prequel short available online as we speak.

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Resolutions for 2016

I've decided to jump on board with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week the topic is: Bookish Resolutions.

Just five for me this time around :)

1. Finish all those trilogies that are hanging around - I have the worst habit of letting series finales linger in my TBR. I don't know if it's because I just don't want them to be over or if it's really that hard to squeeze them in, but there are a ridiculous amount of them staring at me accusingly from the pile right now!

2. Read more sci-fi - This seems to be one I make to myself every year and I think every year I'm getting a little better about it. It's a genre that's intimidated me since high school, when I dipped my toe in and promptly jumped right back out. I just felt like too much of it went over my head. Course that could have been the books I chose to try (cough, cough, Dune). And while I've always enjoyed titles with sci-fi elements, titles like The Martian and James S. A. Corey's Expanse series have boosted my confidence in the full on genre reads and my ability to GET them. 

3. Building a kick ass client list - Many of you may not know this, but I've very recently been promoted to Associate Agent. Yes, for some of 2014 and all of 2015 I've not so secretly been working as a reader and assistant at a literary agency, which means that my Goodreads challenge count (which I met at 240 titles read) was actually under considering the un published manuscripts I read throughout the year. So for 2016 I'll be reading for the agency, reading for my list (yay!), AND reading for my personal pleasure/reviews. 

4. Being a bit more brutal with DNFs - Yeah, this is one I struggle with. I still feel like I have to finish every book I start even if it means slogging through a read I can't stand. But given that the new job responsibilities mean even more reading, there's really just not going to be time for me to muddle through something I don't like. 

5. Being a bit more brutal cleaning out my shelves - I'm no slouch when it comes to getting rid of books. I regularly pass them along to friends and family members or donate them. I have to purge my shelves quite often to keep the books from taking over the house, though. In the past, I felt I had to hang on to every book I ever read. You know, in case I wanted to go back to them one day. I'm being much more selective in that regard, with the knowledge that for the most part I CAN actually find the book again in one form or another should the desperate urge to reread hit me. 

The Dirt on Ninth Grave by Darynda Jones

Happy Monday, readers! Today I am pleased as punch to be taking part in The Dirt on Ninth Grave tour!

Fair warning, guys, if you're not current with the series there are definitely spoilers ahead!

After giving birth to Beep and learning her celestial name, Charley vanished, waking in Sleepy Hollow, NY with no memory of who she was or where she came from. It took some time, but her friends did manage to track her down and have convened on the town in the hopes that their Reaper friend will eventually come to her senses. Unfortunately, according to Charley's sister Gemma, it's best if they wait for her to remember on her own. And it's a warning Reyes is sticking to.

Even without knowledge of her special skills Charley - aka Janey - still manages to attract both trouble and the dead and soon finds herself in the midst of a possible kidnapping. What's more, Reyes and the others know there's a BIG enemy hiding out nearby, one that's an even bigger danger to their friend now that she's got amnesia. 

I do love this series! Giving Charley amnesia in the midst of a HUGE loss not only made sense but allowed Jones to shake up the series a bit. New setting, new characters, new cases even when our PI reaper doesn't have a clue she's an investigating natural. Of course all of her friends rally around her, trying their hardest not to spill the beans about actually knowing who and what she is even when she's at her most frustrated.

Darynda Jones's singular sense of humor is ever present here. Amnesia doesn't take away Charley's penchant for naming things nor does it take away her snark or love of coffee. Or love of Reyes for that matter! She recognizes something in him and all the rest of her friends, latching onto each and every one of them much the same way she has in her normal life. Course now she has no clue what Reyes is and she has no one to share her visions with either. Her musings about her special gifts are particularly funny, especially when she convinces herself she must be a time traveler and Cookie a psychic.

If you're a fan of the series, you will not be disappointed. If you stumbled upon this and ignored my spoilers warning, then I do hope you'll venture out and grab a copy of First Grave on the Right. It's full of fun, mystery, sass, and ghosts. And there's just a bit of steam in there as well.

The Dirt on Ninth Grave doesn't hit shelves officially until January 12 but you can most definitely pre order a copy now. You can also head over here to treat yourself to a little excerpt if you like.

For more on Darynda Jones and her work, you can check out her website here. You can also like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. There's also an official Darynda Jones fan group over on Goodreads with discussions, Q&As, and giveaways!

(I should note that yes, there is a bit of a cliffhanger ending in Dirt but Jones has been a busy, busy bee and we only actually have to wait til June for the next installment! In the meantime, you might not have known that there's also a new ebook written from Reyes's perspective.)

Rating: 5/5

New Releases 1/5/16

Some of the new titles hitting shelves this week are:

Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris

The Past by Tessa Hadley

The Children's Home by Charles Lambert

After the Crash by Michel Bussi

Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian

The Last Dream Keeper by Amber Benson

Angels Burning by Tawni O'Dell

Vagabond by Gerald Seymour

The Restaurant Critic's Wife by Elizabeth LaBan

The First Order by Jeff Abbott

A Thousand Falling Crows by Larry Sweazy

Blackout by David Rosenfelt

The Dressmaker's War by Mary Chamberlain

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

Thicker Than Water by Kelly Fiore

New on DVD:
Sicario
The Green Inferno
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse
The Visit
The Walk