Book Review: The Heist of Hollow London, by Eddie Robson
It’s an entertaining heist story that can be raced through in a few hours (288 pages), but it also has some deeper themes to consider.
It’s an entertaining heist story that can be raced through in a few hours (288 pages), but it also has some deeper themes to consider.
In Folklore: A Journey through the Past and Present, co-authors Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook take a scholarly but very readable look at British folklore. They convincingly treat folklore as an evolving presence in culture, not just the remnants of a vanished past (and they point out that even a lot of allegedly ancient customs are actually relatively modern). I’m no expert in the subject, but the authors’ broad grasp of the subject and reasoning about its various aspects seem quite sound. I found the book very interesting and often extremely entertaining.
I greatly enjoyed Elizabeth Bear’s first Karen Memery novel, Karen Memory, when it was published in 2014, so when I saw that a new book, Angel Maker, had just been published, I played hooky from my “assigned” Skiffy and Fanty reading/reviewing list and checked it out from the Hoopla library app. Then I realized that this was actually #3, and checked out the intervening short novel Stone Mad from 2018, too. This turned out to be a very entertaining way to spend a couple of low-energy days while sick.
Hole in the Sky, by Daniel H. Wilson, is an entertaining, pleasantly eerie, and occasionally scary adventure novel told from four perspectives about what is initially treated as first contact science fiction but is also connected with cosmic horror, and reawakening mythology. It may encourage readers to think a little more about different perspectives, and connecting with others, and even the nature of reality, but mostly it’s a fun page-turner (288 pages, slated for release Oct. 7).
I do highly recommend The Captive for anyone who can get onboard with the premise and can stand the sometimes graphic and often violent plot.
It’s a short, sharp, biting read, and thoroughly engrossing; I highly recommend it for lovers of history, linguistics, politics, and truth.