THE BOOK OF THORNS by Hester Fox did something that almost never works for me. Nominally it’s a historical fantasy in which two sisters who communicate with plants get embroiled in the final “100 Days” of the Napoleonic Wars. After 100 pages the magic didn’t seem important to the story at all, which as I said, is a dealbreaker for me. I threw in the towel.
HAWKEYE: LA Woman (Matt Fraction, Javier Pulido, Annie Wu) has apprentice Hawkeye Kate Bishop fed up with Clint’s drama. She heads west to LA where she has to deal with her wealthy, conniving father, an eccentric called Harold H. Harold (a character from Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula, though I think he’s drawn like Elliott Gould in Long Goodbye) and a vengeful Madame Masque.
I never liked Fraction’s Clint Barton take — too much a clueless doofus — but here Kate seems almost as much a goofball. Much like Fraction’s Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? he writes this cute and whimsical to the point I can’t get into the story.
THE STEAM ENGINES OF OZ by Sean Patrick O’Reilly and Erik Hendrix is set a hundred years after Wizard of Oz; the heartless Tin Woodman now rules and Oz has become a vast, mechanical steampunk city, steadily expanding to take in more of the realm. Victoria, an engineer who helps keep the city running, slowly begins to realize she’s on the wrong side … As an Oz fan (and someone who literally wrote the book on the series), I’ve seen plenty of Dark Oz stories. This one was competent enough, but completely uninteresting.
This week’s winner was comics writer Arnold Drake’s (probably) only novel, the hardboiled thriller THE STEEL NOOSE. Gossip columnist Boyd McGee doesn’t see any harm in reporting an unremarkable item about a businessman stepping out on his wife (serial numbers all carefully filed off, of course) — that’s par for the course in his line of work. Unfortunately this intel could wreck said businessman’s elaborate scheme to cut off his wife’s community property in their divorce so he’s not happy; throw in blackmail, murder, Bad Girls, mobsters, worried politicians and we have a tangled web that looks like to strangle Boyd. It’s a complicated plot to synopsize but unreels well on the page, though describing the Good Girl as a “nymphomaniac” sounds laughably old fashioned. I’m glad Dave’s Pulp and Mystery Reads recommended this as Drake’s Doom Patrol is a favorite of mine from the Silver Age.
Hawkeye cover by David Aja. All rights to images remain with current holders.
Just had that with Through a Darkening Glass by R.S. Maxwell. The description said witches, ghosts, paranormal. The witches were mentioned 2 or 3 times in passing, and the ghost/paranormal was conveniently explained away. It’s really a historical romance, which would be fine, if that’s what I was led to expect.
Yeah, the bait-and-switch aspect is a big part of my annoyance.