I’m on Thanksgiving vacation so I didn’t feel like any deep thoughts, so book-postings will probably be it for the week.
A Victorian boy becomes one of THE HOMEWARD BOUNDERS in Diana Wynne Jones’ novel when he intrudes on the enigmatic game-playing Them and finds himself bounced out of his world to meet Prometheus, the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman and finally learn how the Homeward Bounders are propping up Their control of reality. Typically good work from DWJ, one of my favorite authors.
THE HAND OF FU MANCHU by Sax Rohmer is a minor landmark in the series, introducing the sinister conspiracy of the si-Fan (and overcoming the earlier books’ positioning Fu Manchu as middle management by establishing he can effortlessly manipulate his supposed superiors) and introducing an unnamed Fah Lo Suee (Fu Manchu’s daughter) as the Supreme Empress to whom the organization bows. That being said, rather weak on plot, since the Devil Doctor is mostly just trying to kill Nayland Smith, trying to evade capture or having the bullet that hit him last book removed.
THE PEARL DIVER by Sujata Massey is the seventh in a series I haven’t read since book three, so I was surprised to find Japanese-American protagonist Rei Shimamura has moved with her fiancé from Japan to Washington where she winds up helping another Eurasian solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance 30 years earlier (I admit to being somewhat jarred to realize that these days, a 30-year-old mystery dates back to the seventies). Enjoyable, though less interesting than Rei’s Japanese adventures; given the tendency for “cozy” detectives to have wacky older relatives, I was pleasantly surprised how competent Rei’s elderly aunt is here.
THE CHILDREN’S BLIZZARD by David Laskin is an excellent account of the brutal winter of 1888, in which a sudden super-storm (“Temperatures on some parts of the Great Plains dropped 50 degrees in eight hours.”) struck just as schools were letting out for the day, leaving students and teachers struggling desperately to find shelter, and frequently failing. A good job capturing the lives of the prairie immigrants, the mechanics of the weather system and the limitations of the forecasters (or as they were then known, “indications officers”) that prevented a warning getting out.
