Let the Right One In

Title: Let the Right One In
Original title: Låt Den Rätte Komma In  
Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist
Published: 2007 by Quercus, originally in Swedish in 2004
Genre: Horror
Pages: 519




I've been wanting to read this one for some time now... still, it took me a while to warm up to it, but once I sunk my teeth properly in, once I got to know the characters a little better, I couldn't let go.


It's the beginning of winter in 1981, in a small suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. 12-year old Oskar is bullied at school, has practically no friends, and is all around miserable. Oskar's life starts to turn around when he meets one of the new neighbours: a skinny little girl who seems to be unaware of things like personal hygiene and the fact that it's pretty damn cold outside. Her name is Eli, and she only comes out at night. Ooh!


There's also a rather large cast of other characters who kinda grow on you. It's a horror book so not everyone is going to get a happy ending here, and I was genuinely sorry to see some go. Others, good riddance! There were some extremely creepy and even scary bits, and I loved the whole frigging ride. I'm going to try and see if I can find the movie somewhere...




   She lay completely still like a stone, calm spreading through her body. She had time to formulate one last thought before she sank into rest. Why isn't it hot?
   With the blankets over her face, wrapped in heavy cloth it should be hot and sweaty around her head. The question floated sleepily around a large black room, finally landing on a very simple answer.
   Because I have not been breathing for several minutes.
   And not even now when she was conscious of the fact did she feel any need to. No feeling of suffocation, no lack of oxygen. She didn't need to breathe any more. That was all.

Small Favor

Title: Small Favor
Author: Jim Butcher
Published: 2008 in book form but this was an audio book
Genre: Noir urban fantasy
Pages: 432, some 13 hours in audio form




Tenth book in The Dresden Files! It's been about a year since the events of the last book, and about the same since I listened to the last book. Harry and his apprentice Molly are having a pleasant training session/snowball war when the servants of the fairy Summer Court attack. Harry has barely distracted/destroyed them when the Winter Queen, Mab herself, comes to cash in a favour. Fairies...

Things are never easy for the only professional wizard in Chicago, and Harry has little choice but to agree. He soon finds himself face to creepy bits with several of the Fallen Angels, and the servants of Summer are plowing through ever-rising amounts of snow, bigger and stronger and after some Harry arse. Just to... just to beat him up and kill him and stuff. Nothing sexual.

I was thinking that I'm finally starting to catch up with Mr. Butcher's writing speed, but no... still dragging plenty behind. This book left some characters in worrying places, so I might pick up the next one soon. Also, I'm not 100% sure that the audio version I had wasn't missing a bit at the very end. It stopped quite suddenly.




These books are highly quotable, but since I am listening to them, I have to turn to the internets for one to add here. This one's courtesy of GoodReads. I wish I had the whole conversation on paper...



   "Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?"
   "Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white."

Moon over Soho

Title: Moon over Soho
Author: Ben Aaronovitch
Published: 2011 by Gollancz
Genre: Urban fantasy
Pages: 373


Hey, guess what? It's the sequel to Rivers of London! That means that it took about two months of Saving It Until A Little Later before I cracked and read it. Funnily enough, that's also how long two large bags of Maltesers lasted. I bought them from Cardiff while reading Rivers of London, hoping to make them last for the rest of the year. Ha ha haa. No. Now I'm all out of Maltesers again...

We return to Peter Grant's story a little after the events of the first book, spoilerrific events from which some of his friends are still recuperating. There's no time to take a long breather, though, not when a part-time jazz saxophonist turns up dead with magic in his head and music still playing. Peter gets called to look into it, and he soon finds that there's something worrying happening to a lot of jazz musicians in the area.

There's also a vagina dentata monster on the prowl. I don't think I have to spell out what she is doing to the men she seduces...

Moon over Soho was just as fast-paced, amusing and addictive as Rivers, if not more so. Peter is a funny guy, and I really do like how you could follow the action on a map. I've got the third book waiting already on my little Kindle mobile app. As of now, there are five books, the latest came out this year!


   Murder investigations start with the victim, because usually in the first instance that's all you've got. The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with 'ology' tacked on the end. To make sure you make a proper fist of this, the police have developed the world's most useless mnemonic - 5 x WH & H - otherwise known as Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Next time you watch a real murder investigation on the TV, and you see a group of serious-looking detectives standing around talking, remember that what they're actually doing is trying to work out what sodding order the mnemonic is supposed to go in. Once they've sorted that out, the exhausted officers will retire to the nearest watering hole for a drink and a bit of a breather.


Why don't they sell Maltesers around here? They should. It's 2014, we even got Milka a few years ago, why not Maltesers?

Misfortune

Title: Misfortune
Author: Wesley Stace
Published: 2006 by Vintage (orig. 2005)
Genre: Historical drama
Pages: 519 + appendix




The SO and I went on a trip to London and Cardiff two months ago, and before we left, her cousin recommended to us this book shop called Gay's the Word, with books pertaining to the non-hetero persuasion from wall to wall. I highly recommend the place. I was on a budget so I had given myself permission to buy two books, no more. Just two. I easily found twenty interesting ones. But no, only two. This was one, and I admit, I picked it up just before the till (and discarded a book I had already chosen after much consideration), just because of the cover. I don't think I even read the back until a while later, sitting outside a pub, having a pint. Ah, London... that particular pint was a questionable one, though.


Anyway. Misfortune is the story of Rose Loveall and her unconventional family, set in England during the 19th century. Abandoned as a newborn into a heap of trash, Rose is rescued by the richest man in England, so far unmarried and, frankly, quite uninterested. He decides to make her his heir, the new Lady Loveall. Despite the fact that the baby has a very obvious thorn, he names her Rose Old after his dead but beloved sister Dolores.


(It seriously took me 250 pages. 250 pages. To realise that Rose Old is an anagram of Dolores. I'd figured that Rose does indeed come from Dolores, minus a few letters, but "Rose Old? Why Rose Old? She's just a baby...?" I am not a smart woman.)


Rose grows wanting nothing, a happy little kid with no idea that most girls don't have what she has between her legs. But years tend to make those differences clear, and greedy relatives will not hesitate to use such things to make trouble.


I put Historical drama as genre, but there's a lot of humour and warmth in the book, and I found myself grinning and giggling like mad more than shedding tears, even though there were a few of those as well.Mr. Stace's writing has a hypnotic tone, it carries the reader with it, and Rose is a most generous narrator. And the cover? It's of course a picture of her, in her pretty dress and lovely moustache and tiny beard.




   I read in my mother's diary that a joke circulated even then that I had been born a male but that my parents had so hoped to have a girl. And those villagers were a superstitious lot, no strangers to dressing a son in a girl's nightgown to protect him from harm and hide him from bad fairies: old wives told that such a boy would grow up to fascinate all the girls. And it was common knowledge that girls don't grow feminine till their mother's milk is out of them, so perhaps they wondered whether I was still at the teat. But people will talk, and it was all dismissed as unkind. It is astounding what effect the confidence of weath can have upon the general consensus. No one stood up and declared that I had no clothes - perhaps they had barely noticed - so I was the best-dressed yound lady in the kingdom.