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#24 The Eyes of God – John Marco

I'd picked up the third book in this SFantasy series and figured I'd take a leap of faith and buy book one. As it turned out it was a reasonably entertaining novel, but not enough to make me want to buy book two or read book three. Although the characters were interesting, the plot was very derivative in parts and it suffered from the most appalling dialogue I've read in a long time, which struck me as neither believable or logical and so continually pulled me out of the story.

#25 Definitely Dead – Charlaine Harris

There's such a glut of vampire authors on the market these days, that I almost passed this one by. So glad I didn't. A thoroughly enjoyable romp with a wonderful heroine in Sookie Stackhouse and a host of interesting and intriguing characters. This book is quite a way into the series, so I'm quite looking forward to catching up with the rest.

#26 Double Cross – James Patterson

If you've read my other book posts, you'll already know that I have a like-hate relationship with Patterson. This was one of his less irksome works. I still get irritated by the short chapters and 'Janet and John' writing style, but it passed a couple of hours fairly painlessly.

#27 The Queen of the Night – Paul Doherty

This was an interesting murder mystery set in Ancient Rome, with some interesting characters. I found myself a little lost here and there as historical detail of the everyday lives of the denizens of Rome was tossed in without explanation, but other than that, I enjoyed this one.

#28] The Crippled Angel – Sara Douglass

After the disappointment of Battleaxe, I put off reading this third and final novel in the author's Crucible series. But I really liked it and found it a very satisfying read. The originality of the plot, in marrying and reworking historical fact with a tale of cruel, malicious angels and loving demons locked in an apocalyptic war made for an intriguing setting and the characters were easy to have empathy with. (Well, except for the angels of course. Boo! Hiss! laugh ) I still find it hard to believe that the same author wrote this series and Battleaxe.

#29 The Crystal Palace – Phyllis Eisenstein

As I mentioned in a previous post, this author's Sorcerer's Son has always been one of my favourite SFantasy novels and it was only recently that I discovered there was a sequel to it. I wasn't disappointed – the same blend of magic, romance and fairytale were here and I'm looking forward to reading the other books still available. My only disappointment is that the author's website has an excerpt from a novel which was clearly intended as a third book in this series, but it has obviously never been published.

#30 Dolores Claiborne – Stephen King

Having caught the movie on late-night TV recently, I gave in to the urge to read the novel again. I was quite ambivalent about it first time I read it – which would have to be a good decade or so ago – but enjoyed it much more second-time around. A fascinating character study.


Athos: If you'd told us what you were doing, we might have been able to plan this properly.
Aramis: Yes, sorry.
Athos: No, no, by all means, let's keep things suicidal.

The Musketeers