Random Thoughts

I was going to read something else, but then I decided I wanted to read some junk instead, so here we are.

I was ready to ditch this book after the first three pages — they seem pretty overwrought and overwritten. But then the book evened out and before I knew it I was up to page 100 and I went “hm”.

It’s just an oddly structured book. Or rather, it’s got the structure of a bowl of suet: Our protagonist is a (disgraced, of course) journalist (with a very traumatic background, of course) who’s investigating a murder, so we get a lot of interviews. Totally normal. But the thing is that nothing seems to make much difference — we don’t really learn much of interest to the case in question, and there’s no mounting tension or anything that resembles an arc.

The protagonist gets a literal box of literal evidence pretty early on, but doesn’t bother to actually look at the contents, because… because in that box is the culprit, and it’s (to boot) the only culprit it could possibly be out of the characters we’re presented with. So basically everything the protagonist does — the interviews, the running around — it’s all pointless.

I’ve seldom read a mystery book where the mystery is handled this ineptly. And this won an Edgar award! (For best debut mystery.)

This very much reads like the first book somebody would write — or rather, it reads like the book before the first published one, because it’s just weird that the editors didn’t say “well, you don’t write badly (for the most part), so get back to us with your next novel”.

Then again, in the foreword the author says that he rewrote the book extensively in 2020. Perhaps it was better in the original version? Unless he totally changed the mystery itself, too, it’s hard to see how.

Right.

Simple Justice (1996/2020) by John Morgan Wilson (buy new, buy used, 4.15 on Goodreads)

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather (some virus? something?), so I went with this book.

Back in my 20s, I guess I was a Mercedes Lackey fan. I mean, I understood that she wasn’t what you’d call a “good author”, but I found the books to be pretty entertaining. I mean, some of them — others were a bit trying, as Lackey has a tendency to focus on things like packing, unpacking and eating at inns. There was one middle book in a trilogy that was nothing but packing, unpacking and eating at inns, packing, unpacking and eating at inns. The end.

It’s been almost a decade since I last read a Lackey book (or whoever’s writing them these days), and I don’t remember at all whether I liked them any more or not.

Well, she hasn’t changed much. I guess this is aimed more at kids than her earlier books used to be? I think the target audience for this book is 12 years old, and that’s fine by me.

And Lackey still writes page after page about packing for going on a journey, and making bedding, and of course, lots of scenes like the above where they sit down to eat at an inn, and the food is always surprisingly good, even if it’s cheap. It’s soothing.

It only becomes a problem when the plot actually starts, which is after two hundred pages of the above: They finally find the Big Evil Evil, and then just putter around for another hundred pages before doing anything about it, and then the book is over.

It’s a very relaxing read; I liked it fine, and the next time I get a cold, I’m going to read the next book in this series.

However, I have to wonder whether any children are reading these books.

I have no idea — I think I would have really liked his when I was twelve, but that’s a long time ago. Perhaps some kids still like Slow Fantasy? As a way to bow out of a stressful life? The copy I have is a cancelled library book (from Alabama!), and I think I may have been the first person to read this copy, so that’s one data point.

Exactly:

It’s a Mercedes Lackey novel. It was fun while I was reading it, there are telepathic animals and close family love and evil was defeated. At this point, those are my expectations, and they were met.

Looking at the reviewers on Goodreads, the readership doesn’t look very young, exactly.

The Hills Have Spies (2018) by Mercedes Lackey (buy new, buy used, 4.04 on Goodreads)