Welcome to #6degrees. On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book. I mostly use this meme to work on my backlog, aka reviews that I haven‘t yet posted to my blog here. Or to give myself a reminder of the books on my TBR pile or want-to-read-shelf.
So, as usual, this month starts the chain link with a book I haven‘t read or ever heard about — we begin with Trust by Hernan Diaz. Pretty cover. Is that a snowglobe with a skyscraper inside?
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the brilliant daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth. But the secrets around their affluence and grandeur incites gossip. Rumors about Benjamin’s financial maneuvers and Helen’s reclusiveness start to spread–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. At what cost have they acquired their immense fortune?
Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of money and how power often manipulates facts.
Part of the book blurb
Historical fiction, but not necessarily set in an era that I enjoy reading about. I have another book on my shelves though that is titled Trust…
Link 1) Perfect Trust (A Rowan Gant Investigation #3) by M.R. Sellars — read in 2007.
Rowan Gant used to be just an average guy who just happened to be a Witch. However, when the spirits of murder victims found out he could hear them, they started coming to him for help. His life just hasn’t been the same since…
Part of a 10-book series, of which I read 8. Not typical UF, Rowan Gant is a witch in a very contemporary setting. He hears dead people, but there is less magic going on as for example with Harry Dresden. Unusual and I liked it. Maybe one of these days I will get the last two books of this series. Not all witches are enjoyable though. This one didn‘t really do it for me:
Link 2) Dead Witch Walking (The Hollows, #1) by Kim Harrison — read in 2013.
Marked for death, Rachel is a dead witch walking unless she can appease her former employers and pay off her contract by exposing the city’s most prominent citizen as a drug lord.
Bottom line, this book was boring and the main character was not interesting. Potential for great world building, but it was not happening. The narrative was flat, not funny and sloooooow and I had the sneaking suspicion that Rachel is really stupid, not just clumsy. It was a major struggle to finish this book and I never picked up another book of this series.
A dead witch walking leads me quite naturally to many other dead walking… a classic by now!
Link 3) The Walking Dead #1 by Robert Kirkman — read in 2016 for the first time.
At first I was a bit confused, because Rick didn‘t look like Rick. And then I wanted to smack myself, because the comic came before the TV series. I really like the black-white-and-grey pencil work. Minimalistic, but great in telling the story. Very good artwork. I still haven‘t finished the whole series. Last year I completed volume 21, The Walking Dead, Vol. 21: All Out War Part 2. Still a few volumes to go. I do like Robert Kirkman though, he tells great stories. Another comic on my shelf that he wrote is this…
Link 4) Invincible Vol. 1 by Robert Kirkman — I haven‘t read this one yet.
Mark Grayson is just like most everyone else his age. He’s a senior at a normal American highschool. He has a crappy part time job after school and on weekends. He likes girls quite a bit… but doesn’t quite understand them. He enjoys hanging out with his friends, and sleeping late on Saturdays… at least until the good cartoons come on. The only difference between Mark and everyone else is that his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet, and as of late, he seems to be inheriting his father’s powers. Which sounds okay at first, but how do you follow in your father’s footsteps when you know you will never live up to his standards
Superhero comic with a teenager. Not really my thing. This came as part of a comic bundle, aka a mixed bag. Not sure yet, if this will work for me, but you never know. The subtitle of this comic is „family matters“ — family and those previously mentioned dead lead me down memory lane…
Link 5) Dead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse #10) by Charlaine Harris — read in 2011.
After enduring torture and the loss of loved ones during the brief but deadly Faery War, Sookie Stackhouse is hurt and she’s angry. Just about the only bright spot in her life is the love she thinks she feels for vampire Eric Northman
Remember Sookie Stackhouse? Truly a Blast from the Past! The last one hundred pages or so of this particular one were pretty good. Turns and twists and suspense. The two hundred-odd pages before that were meh. Not good, not bad, they flowed along pleasantly. Not much of a plot, really. Sookie was getting a bit tired by book #10. And I backed myself into a bit of a corner with that last link. Let‘s see…. Faery war… the Fae!?
Link 6) Darkfever (Fever, #1) by Karen Marie Moning — read in 2015.
When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….
Mac is extremely annoying. Obsessed with pink, nail varnish and silly clothes. Petulant and childish. I would have tossed her and her stupid book over a cliff, if I hadn’t received assurances, that she grows up in consecutive books. The afterword by the author also put my worries to rest (a little).
What I didn’t like either: being told at the end of a chapter (or anywhere, really), what horrible thing might happen to her soon / how irrevocably her life will change or what she will commit, do, not do… It’s a lazy plot device to raise suspense and it made me roll my eyes by the third time the author did it.
I was really uncomfortable with that first scene at the museum and don’t understand, how anybody can find that guy sexy after what he did. There is no coming back from that.
What I did like:
Barrons, although he stays a bit one-dimensional. I hope that’ll change in the coming books.
The writing in general. Good characters (annoying, pink, stupid…), good setting, flows along nicely. I liked the idea of a dark zone. I’ve never been to Dublin, so I don’t have an opion on how well it was described. The world building was not bad, although I could have done with more.
Summarizing the experience: massively annoying female main character. Barrons has potential, but remained a bit flat. Good story, bit flat as well. Kept me hooked, I will definitely read the next one, in the hopes that plot, characters and world-building pick up a notch in the next books. Would recommend it.
PS: I gave up on this series after the first chapter of the third book. The MC was just too silly.
Cathy's Reading Bonanza 