Marley Jacob is a wealthy old woman, known for her charity and eccentricity, a lawyer who no longer needs to practice but who has various unusual clients. She also has a nephew whom everyone – even, with sadness and regret, Marley – dislikes. Aloysius is the classic self-centered, unconsciously arrogant man who has literally never looked at himself in the mirror of the soul. Or rather, Aloysius was that sort of man, and Marley Jacob had such a nephew. Aloysius was murdered, found drained of his blood over a storm grate, and Marley suspects [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: King Khan
December 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
King Khan is a novel by Harry Connolly, author of Child of Fire and other stories in the Twenty Palaces universe. I've reviewed Child of Fire elsewhere, and as I said there it was an excellent read, but riding my tolerance for dark material closely, presenting a gritty, horrific universe where even the protagonist can't avoid getting his hands … and the rest of him… dirty in more ways than one. King Khan is almost the polar opposite of the Twenty Palaces universe. While Harry's deft mastery of language is still [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Child of Fire
December 2, 2013 By 2 Comments
Harry Connolly, under the handle of "burger_eater", has been a Livejournal friend of mine for a while. I got and read the first of his Twenty Palaces novels, Child of Fire, not long after it came out, and was pleasantly surprised. The following article takes a lot from my original Amazon review but adds some new pieces. Very simple spoiler-free summary: Despite the typical urban-fantasy setup (world like ours, secret magical background, first-person narrator), Child of Fire manages some highly inventive twists on both the [ Continue reading... ]
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