[books 2016] Local writers anthology

42. North by Southwest edited by Joanne Hall

Disclaimer: This is another one where I know almost everybody involved. My name's in the acknowledgements because I contributed to the Fundsurfer.

This is a collection of short stories by the North Bristol Writers' Group. While it's not explicitly SF/F like the BristolCon publications, there's a critical mass of overlap so it leans in that direction. Throw in a murder mystery so it ticks that genre box as well.

The quality of the stories is very good overall. As has been mentioned in other reviews, the most fun story is J H-R's Miss Butler number, but there's a lot of good stuff. As always with short story collections, the very short ones do very little for me, but they were all technically good. I enjoyed the murder mystery, Pete Sutton's Latitude was nicely disturbing, and I especially liked Ian Milstead's House Blood. He's not the first person to link slavery and vampirism, but it works well nonetheless. Recommended.

[books 2016] More Falco

43. One Virgin Too Many by Lindsey Davis

Of all the books clamouring for my attention, this one got me because of the end of the last book in the series, where Vespasian has ordered Falco back to Rome urgently. It turned out all he wanted to do was to give Falco a bogus sinecure as Procurator of the Sacred Fowl as a reward for uncovering a plot to poison them.

Compared to Two for the Lions, this one's fluff (which could well be intentional). There's lots of weird stuff going on but Falco is even slower than usual at putting it all together as he's even more preoccupied with personal matters than normal. As to where the missing child was, it was pretty obvious even to me.

The portrayals of the priestly class are straight out of Asterix comics. While it's hardly surprising that Falco is not well disposed towards them, Davis portrays them as buffoons at best and dangerous lunatics at worst and it's kind of at odds with the picture she usually paints of Roman life (human with good and bad qualities).

I still enjoyed it, but it's far from the strongest book in the series.

[books 2016] weird shit

44. The Haunted Vagina by Carlton Mellick III

This month's book club selection. (Thanks, J-P).

Well, that's one way to set up an alternative universe.

I didn't hate it as much as I should have, there was some visceral body shock horror that definitely worked, and some almost good ideas which simply never got followed through. And the author clearly hates women. It took two hours to read, so it's not like it took any investment. It also generated more discussion than I would have thought possible.

That does not mean I'm saying you should read it.