Review: A Nest of Vipers

A Nest of Vipers by Harini Nagendra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Bangalore Detectives' Club returns for their third complicated mystery, involving a traveling circus troupe, traditional Indian magic, and an impending visit from the Prince of Wales at a time when his previous visits have been marked by riots in other cities. While Kaveri and her allies are absolutely independence minded - and know well of Gandhiji and his movement, though they have a wide range of conflicting thoughts about him and how effective he may be - they have to walk on a tightrope to keep the British from cracking down hard on them like they all know the Brits want to do. Where this book shines the most, though, is the character development - especially for Bhargavi, who spent the first two books as a prototypically grumpy mother-in-law and has finally started to really come around to having Kaveri in her family. And that ending with the final twist...oh, I hope Nagendra doesn't turn that one into tragedy in Book 4...

View all my reviews

Review: The Dragon and the Sun Lotus

The Dragon and the Sun Lotus by Amélie Wen Zhao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As always, it's a great sight to see when Amélie Wen Zhao proves her old YA Twitter haters wrong again and again, and now with the conclusion of her third straight fantasy series. Like in the first book of this saga, Zhao chalks up a great deal of her greatest hits in the action and romance departments, but particularly where she writes a love triangle that's truly for the ages. Additionally, this book shifts briefly at times into Yù’chén's POV instead of Àn’yīng's, and Zhao knows when to hit that switch to the greatest effect. In the end, it's sad to see this series end, but Zhao's career has truly become one of the most rock-steady in the YA business, so we know this isn't the end for her. But for the Three Realms, until we meet again, 再见.

View all my reviews

Review: Murder Under a Red Moon

Murder Under a Red Moon by Harini Nagendra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Bangalore Detectives' Club returns to solve a murder on an inauspicious night, the night of a lunar eclipse, when the most traditional people of this time and place would otherwise be holed up inside to stay safe from ill omens. Like the first book in this series, it's a relatively short one, but it's loaded for bear with thematically important storylines all converging - storylines about increasing tension between the Indians and their English colonizers, a rising feminist movement or two, and a self-styled godman "Swamiji" whom anyone with sense (like Kaveri, of course) can sense as a charlatan at best and a predator at worst. This series is now becoming one of my new favorites, and I've already got the remaining two (so far) in my current stack from the library.)

View all my reviews

Review: Trust No One

Trust No One by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mr. Rollins. You market this as a standalone thriller and you end it like that? Leaving us hanging? How dare you, sir. But you know what? Since this is the logical extension of the Sigma Force universe into dark academia - like Katabasis meets Map of Bones in particular - I'll accept this as the start of something new in that world, with potential for a future crossover with the mainline Sigma Force novels just like Tucker Wayne and his war dogs Kane and Marco get. But my favorite part was that Rollins was good enough to include Malta as a setting, because at this point I feel like he was about the only big-time thriller author not to do so yet.

View all my reviews

Review: The Bangalore Detectives Club

The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first in a series of period mystery novels set in 1920s Bangalore, this book introduces Kaveri and Ramu, a lovely lady and her doctor husband, who get involved in solving a strange case of a murdered gate-crasher at the white man's party. Kaveri is an interesting study in contrasts - she has no love lost for the British, and Ramu does encourage her to join an independence movement while he is unable to do so without losing his job, but she also loves Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and takes cues from the great fictional detective's methods to solve this murder. The resolution is one of the best twists I've seen in the genre - maybe a touch predictable, but not easily so, and yet it made nothing short of perfect sense.

View all my reviews

Review: Oxford Soju Club

Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book out because it happened to have a character whose name is the same as someone I work with. While the Dr. Ryu I work with is a man and a spine surgeon, this book’s Dr. Ryu is a woman and a doctor to the spies, responsible for one of the most memorable conversations in this book. Other memorable conversations come about from the spies themselves - Koreans, North vs. South, and when we’re in the northern POV, the political commentary about the West becomes particularly gothic, in the sense that it’s using another country known for abominably treating its citizens to critique the West for using many of the same methods, just funhouse mirrored.

View all my reviews

Review: Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I went into this one not knowing much about it, except that it was a spacefaring story set on a generation ship. It wound up surprising me immensely with how excellently readable it was, following a group of British teens training for years for a mission to be the first to set foot on a potentially habitable planet only a few solar systems away. It's an alternate history, too, similar to For All Mankind, where space exploration is significantly more advanced - the story begins in 2012, where by this time there are Americans on the Moon and Russians on Mars. As much as I flew through this book, however, its focus on characters meant that the story took a hell of a long time to reach a conclusion of sorts, and even then, it felt like there wasn't much closure. Also, while the vast majority of these teenagers were bogged down by drama and self destruction, there was one in particular who was so horrible as to deserve a particularly painful comeuppance that, sadly, never comes about. But the character focus leads to such strong and memorable chemistry between these teens - even if they make bad decision after bad decision - and helps boost this from a 3.5 to a 4 star rating easily.

View all my reviews