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| Syd |
 Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2023 12:17 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I pause a third of the way through, and read his previous novelette and novella in the series. (He also has a short story which I haven't read.) It's not essential that you read "A Dead Djinn in Cairo"* but it helped. and it's referred to in this novel. "The Haunting of Tram 105" is not essential at all except for introducing a couple of peripheral characters but is delightful. Then I continued and the novel is brilliant. The Hugo Award went to Arkady Martine's "A Desolation Called Peace," which is also excellent (but in MHO is not quite as good as "A Memory Called Empire", which is one of the best sf novels I've ever read) but this may actually be better. A very good year for SF.
*Which is why this is called the "Dead Djinn series". |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2023 11:31 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I was a little dismayed when I read the jacket of The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith and discovered that Robin infiltrates a cult and expect that Cormoran* Strike is going to launch a major break-in to save her at the end of the novel. That doesn't happen, but Robin does stay undercover for about two weeks too long. This is quite a bit better than The Ink Black Heart, but not as good as Lethal White or Troubled Blood. But like them, it is very long, with subplots into our character's personal lives that often drag, but in this case distract them at crucial moments. I recommend it. It's made me late for dinner or sleep for the last three days.
Since J. K. Rowling gets so much flack for her views on transgendered, she keeps that pretty much out of all her novels, and completely out of this one. She does come out against sexual abuse, paedophilia, cultic techniques of brainwashing, rape (statutory and otherwise) child trafficking and the way people can justify any atrocity though rationalization and being slowly acculturated, until you don't realize it's wrong to deny medical treatment and bury those corpses anonymously.
Rowling obviously did a lot of studying on how cults operate. I can see evidence of not only Jim Jones's cult, the Branch Davidians, several European cults, the Manson Family, and that cult that committed suicide so they could go to Halley's comet. And some cults that became religions. I'm sure that critics will point out Scientology, but I also think she had early Mormonism and Mormon and Christian offshoots in mind.
The cult in this book is a successor to a paedophile ring, and there are hints that out of the ashes of the cult another one will rise. Hopefully a less toxic one.
*Referred to as Cormorant Strike by one character, which is going to stick in my mind. |
_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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