Books I’ve read

DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU picks up Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu series (which I’ve been rereading off and on) a decade after Hand of Fu Manchu, as new narrator Shan Greville discovers that the mysterious beauty hanging around his boss’s Egyptian excavation  is no less than the titular Fah Lo Suee, whose schemes threaten to trigger the next World War until Fu Manchu’s rather deus ex stepping in. Since I know Rohmer tried spining off this series before (the non-Fu Manchu The Golden Scorpion) I wonder if this may not have been another revamp. Fairly entertaining.
TIME OF THE GHOST is Diana Wynn Jones’ story of a drifting ghost who can’t quite remember which of four sisters she is, but slowly comes to realize she’s on the brink of being devoured by an ancient goddess they awakened, unless she can find some way of altering the past before the payment on the pact comes due. The content of this one is more horror and less fantasy than Jones’ usual (the concept of the girls unwittlingly arousing a Dark God is pretty stock) but feels quite different due to the ghostly approach, and it plays on her constant interest in families who aren’t quite what the focal character imagines.
DARK BANQUET: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood Drinking Creatures by Bill Schutt does a fascinating job exploring the lives of vampire bats, leeches, ticks and blood-drinking finches, their evolution and lifestyles. This is strongest on vampire bats, which are Schutt’s professional field of interest, describing the different modes of attack (one species apparently rubs against birds’ brood patch and triggers a nurturing impulse to keep them from leaving while it bites) and the compliexities of their diet choice (since their diet is pure liquid protein, they can’t store it as fat and have to eat half their own weight every night. Well done.
THE MAKING OF THE FITTEST: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean Carroll, is a look at evolution from a genetic perspective, including a species of fish without hemoglobin, the shifting  development of color visuion through vertebrate history and  fossil genes coding for functions no longer used (“We aren’t perfectly designed, because these genes are junk.”). Carroll intended the book as a mix of evidence for evolution, and to the evolutionary studies being done at the genetic level; good, though a lot of this was familiar to me.