Book Report

Another month comes to a close, and this time I've managed to read six books.  Funny, since February is the shortest month, but given that I read two books in four days, not that surprising.

Yes, you read that correctly - I read two books in four days.  I'll explain shortly.

As I said in the first post about my monthly book reading, this month's series was the Calliope Reaper-Jones novels by the lovely and talented Amber Benson.

First up was "Death's Daughter," where we meet Callie and her most unusual family - older sister Thalia, younger sister Clio, her father's executive assistant Jarvis de Poupsy, and her father...Death.



Callie wants nothing more than to pursue her dream of working for a fashion magazine, but the life she thought she'd left behind - immorality, demons, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory - interrupts her "daily grind" life in New York.  Someone's kidnapped her father, Thalia, and the entire Board of Directors of Death, Inc, and it's up to a very reluctant Callie to rescue them.

In the second book, "Cat's Claw," Callie encounters  even more bumps in the road when she has to do Cerberus, the three-headed hellhound guardian of the North Gate of Hell, a really major favor. 

Then I took a slight detour before reading the third book, "Serpent's Storm."  I'd finally found the last two Spenser novels written by Robert B. Parker before his passing, and took the time to read both of them.  In four days.  For some reason those books are insanely easy for me to read (obviously) and it's not unusual for me to get through one in three or four days.

In "Painted Ladies" Spenser is hired to protect a man who is making a ransom payment for a stolen, very rare painting.  When his client explodes, Spenser finds himself drawn into a very complex world of art, forgeries and deceit.



"Sixkill" was a very different Spenser novel.   The title refers to the last name of one of the characters, a large Native American named Zebulon (as in Zebulon Pike) Sixkill, the former bodyguard of a fat, self-important actor accused of killing a young woman.  It felt to me like Parker was planning on using Sixkill in future novels - we got a lot of his back-story, and he became one of Spenser's "projects," like Paul Giacomin, the young kid he takes under his wing in "Early Autumn."

Both books were good, with the snark and wit I've come to love from Spenser.  I plan to read the entire series from the beginning in the near future.

The last two books in this report are the last two of Amber's that I have (Still haven't gotten the final book in the series, "The Golden Age of Death," but I hope to soon), "Serpent's Storm" and "How to Be Death."



In "Serpent's Storm," Callie once again takes on the mantle of Death when an old enemy of hers breaks free of Purgatory and tries to stage a coup.  Callie finds out that she really has to be careful what she wishes for, because with her powers it will happen.

And in "How to Be Death" Callie, Jarvis and Runt (Cerberus' daughter Giselda, whom Callie "borrowed" in the first book and bargained to keep in the second) have to attend the annual Death's Dinner and All Hallow's Eve "Eve" Masquerade Ball, on the one night of the year when all magic ceases.

Amber is amazing.  She blends mythology, magic and the "real" world seamlessly, bringing in legends from around the globe (Kali, the Hindi Goddess of Death and Destruction, Wodin, Watatsumi, the Japanese God of the Sea who takes on the form of a giant sea serpent, just to name a few) and various religious beliefs (souls, the afterlife) without any of it seeming farfetched.  Callie grows throughout the series, learning what her strengths are and how to overcome her weaknesses.  It's sad that "Golden Age of Death" is the last of this series.

Next month I start off with "Dr. No" and "From Russia, With Love," by Ian Fleming.  I've never read any of the Bond novels (Although I have all the movies.  Including Never Say Never Again, and the first two of the Daniel Craig films.  I'll probably get the last one just to have all of them, but he just doesn't feel like Bond to me.) but they were .79 cents each at Goodwill, and I couldn't pass them up.  Then I'll start the Odd novels by Dean Koontz over ("Odd Thomas," "Forever Odd," "Brother Odd," "Odd Hours") because I just picked up "Odd Interlude," which is a collection of the three digital books released for the first time in paperback. 

Oh dear.  Looks like I'm running a bit behind in that series - "Odd Apocalypse" came out last year, and "Deeply Odd" comes out this year.  If I can just track down my missing copy of "Brother Odd" (I know I have it.  I remember reading it.  Just like I know I have those three missing Valdemar books, "Arrow's of the Queen," "Arrow's Flight" and "Arrow's Fall" but can't find them anywhere) I'll add the other two to my "next time I'm in a half-price bookstore" list.

In case you're wondering, the narrator's name is Odd Thomas.  That's actually his given name.  He's a short-order fry cook who can see the dead, and also shadowy forms he calls "bodachs" that manifest around someone who is about to commit murder, or someone who will die soon.

(As a side note: There have been two graphic novels, "In Odd We Trust" and "Odd is on Our Side," but I don't read graphic novels, and have no plans to get these books.)

Now on to March, and Her Majesty's Secret Service.