It's Begining to Look a Lot Like Book Time!

 

    The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by P.D. James are short, sharp, and, in one instance, creepy. Christmas is tangentially involved. James is a superior mystery writer.

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The Bombay Prince by Sujata Massey is the third in the series. It continues the adventures of Perveen Mistry, the first woman lawyer in 1920s Bombay. Again, Massey does a great job of telling a complex, enlightening, and suspenseful murder mystery. 

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I enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky as a sci-fi writer and was eager to read his newest series. I didn't like it as much as Children of Time, but it is still an excellent space opera with large ideas, clashing cultures, and planet-destroying mysterious aliens. I'm on hold for the second book in the series.

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    Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark is a mind-bending book. The protagonist, Maryse Boudreaux, is at war with the Klu Klux Klan, or is it something more sinister? Is it evil demons (is that redundant?) who want to take over the world? Clark takes folktales, myths, and history and weaves them into an epic battle between good and evil, set in the 1920s surrounding the movie Birth of a Nation and the subsequent resurgence of the Klan. Clark won several awards for Ring Shout, including the Hugo, and it is fantastic.

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    I started The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin several weeks ago, but I stopped because the women--their lives and their wounds--the suffering was visceral. I returned to it because I had bought it on Audible, and the reader was excellent. It is read by the author Lola Shenyin. It is a masterpiece of story and narration. I haven't read many reviews of it, but I wonder if it will be like a mirror that when you look in it, you will see different things reflected. I saw daughters whose mothers didn't treasure them, broken women seeking wholeness and relief through revenge or financial security, and power being used for cruelty against the weak. The narration moves from person to person in a multiple-wife household in present-day Nigeria. The women's voices are authentic and powerful, but not restful.

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