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I'm reading a book that would be a lot more fun if the characters weren't interchangeable. I play with the plot in my mind, making this young female a middle-aged male and this other female of a different nationality and about three stone heavier. The characters have so little individual shape and colour that my changes hardly affect the plot at all and don't impact on the dialogue or the situations. This makes the book very fast reading, so I'm catching up on the time I lost to that three day migraine. I'd rather fall further behind and have a better book to read.

I haven't got time today to catch up on the IHR conference, which is a pity. Still, if I can finish the current round of Aurealis reading and do a third of what I need to do for BiblioBuffet and find my notes for the Angry Robot books (of which this current novel is NOT one) and blog them, I shall consider the day well spent and I shall go out tonight in a state of "I've worked, so there." Tonight is dinner with one of the best cooks of all the many extraordinary cooks who tested Conflux banquet recipes for me: Ingrid-of-the-astonishing-cakes. It's time out for both of us, as we're going to a local cafe.

The Big Angry Robot Catch-Up Post

Today continues strange. We have weather and so I'm battling aches and almost-functioning eyes. The books I'm reading for all the various things I'm reading for are not what I expected and, just now, of all the pages of notes about Angry Robot books, only a half has manifested. Since I wrote them all months ago, I'm giving up on them and will resurrect my thoughts.

Let me start with the book I enjoyed most and found most memorable: Guy Adams' The World House: Restoration. It's very much a sequel to the first World House book and really can't be read comfortably without it. I love the smooth transition between the two books and the feeling that I just paused in the adventure to take a breath. This is the way I like my trilogies.

I loved that the cover comments talked about the fast pace, because for me the pace wasn't that fast. Lots was happening, but there was no sense of tumult. The characters are starting to be stronger and the peril deeper. The mysterious box that is the World House (I need a better way of explaining it but a storm is on its way and I've lost all my notes and so you will have to live with my impoverished language and ideas) is no longer just a quirky and strange thing that some people find changes their lives, but something bigger and more ominous.

Occasionally there was drama and display and pageant for the sake of drama and display and pageant, but not too often. Some of the plot points are a little too neat. To balance that, there is some lovely writing. It has a sense of reality and (oddly) a sense of Indiana Jones. And I want to know what happens next. I want to finish the story.

I didn't expect this. I enjoyed the first book, but not enough to make me hunger for the next one. Sometimes a trilogy is stronger in its whole than the first book shows and The World House is definitely one of those instances.

Peter Crowther Darkness Falling. It has a great beginning. Sharp and unexpected. An unhappy couple are on a plane and… any more will tell you what happens and will give away the first twist. Since this novel is all about the twists and the turns, I won't do that to you.

The pace is good in the first part, it lags a bit and then it picks up again. There are some interesting choices for viewpoint characters (a serial killer - what is it with Angry Robot and serial killers?) And… I didn't enjoy it. This is one novel, though, where lack of enjoyment meant it's not my kind of book rather than it's not a book worth investigating. It will suit other readers, especially those who like slow build and conclusions as part of the successive volumes.

My problem was quite simple: I needed a reason to enter the book emotionally, and I didn't find one. I also found the elucidations not complex enough for the time and attention given to them. These are the reasons why I'm not giving you a plot summary - if the main reason to read the book is its horror and the thrill of the unexpected then really, it doesn’t help for me to explain these things in a neat plot summary, and yet these are the things that one wants to explain in a plot summary where one (personally, this is not a universal truth about Crowther's characters) doesn't feel an affinity for the focal points of the tale.

Tim Waggoner's Dead Streets is really for avowed fans of the first book in the series. It has the same wonderful twisted Underworld and many of the same characters. For me, alas, it doesn’t have the heart of the first book. It revolves around clever invention and characters acting to meet the need of the plot. Waggoner's level of invention is fabulous, I have to admit. He's like a magician pulling bunch after bunch of extraordinary flowers out of a hat.

Waggoner's zombie detective has to visit an alternate world to deal with its very specific alternate problems otherwise disaster will ensue. Disaster will ensue anyway, of course (as it always does in an underworld with a zombie detective-for-hire and far too many vampires), but if he's not careful, it will ruin any chance of happiness for him and the people he cares about.

I love the zombie private eye and the send-up of the hard-boiled and horror and the way it morphs into comedy. What I don't like, here, is the way the plot is forced and characters don't seem to develop naturally. It feels as if I'm watching a world that's designed, rather one that has grown. And the hard-boil is now rather soft-boil. As I said earlier, it will have enough for fans of Waggoner's writing and this particular world to enjoy, but it's not for someone coming in new and me, I much preferred the first book in the series. I'm hoping that the third one will pick up the genuine fun of the first one and make the characters live for me again. I liked Dead Streets enough so that I will be reading the third one, but I felt that Waggoner was coasting, and that he's capable of much, much more.

I missed a couple of Angry Robot books because my computer didn't want to talk to their website for a bit, and, of course, there are the ones that I've read but can't review (all of which are worth reading, let me just say, now that I've finished them all). What this means is that I only have two Angry Robot books to read and report back on before I'm as up-to-date as I'm going to get.

I intend to get hold of the missing volumes and read them eventually, since I really do want to see what's happening with Angry Robot as it evolves as an imprint. When I do, I'll report back on that, too.