Books

The Tomb is the first book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.

Jack fixes things. Not washing machines and stuff like that. He fixes situations for people. It’s a job that takes him outside the law and means he has to separate himself from most of the things society think of as normal. It also recently separated him from his girlfriend when she found out his job doesn’t involve fixing household appliances. Now he’s got to fix a situation for his ex girlfriend involving a family curse that started generations ago in India.

Snuff is book 39 in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. In this one Sam Vimes is forced by his wife to go on holiday to his country estate. Being a copper he’s on the lookout for anything amiss and ends up getting involved in more than he bargained for. It’s typical Vimes, typical Discworld and typical Pratchett.

I love how Terry Pratchett manages to state the obvious in a way that makes it sound novel. It’s not just what he says, but when he says it. For example, in one part of the book a rather nasty incident occurs, then he hits you with the line,

“I tell you commander, it’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they are doing it for best, especially if there is some god involved.”

“The Naming of the Beasts” is book 5 in the Felix Castor series by Mike Carey. Juliet, the succubus, has gone all wild, beaten up her human wife and is on the verge of feasting on aroused men’s souls again. Felix’s friend Rafi, still possessed by the demon Asmodeus, has gone AWOL and started a killing spree. Life’s never easy when you’re a freelance exorcist…

This is the last in the series so far and it maintains the pace of the other books, while tying up a lot of loose ends. According to Wikipedia the next book is out late 2001 (imminently). It will be interesting to see what Felix does next, since the main thrust of the story of the first 5 books is now concluded.

Cheers

Tim…

As Martin I had a pleasure to “unofficially” review Jonathan’s latest book, Oracle Core. It was my first experience in the area of printed content. If you want to know little bit more how the process went, my opinion on the book and what to expect from it – I’ll try to cover these points [...]

“Thicker Than Water” is book 4 in the Felix Castor series by Mike Carey.

I’m not even going to try and summarize this bad-boy. It’s just a crazy-paced page turner. We find out more about Felix’s life before he became a freelance exorcist. More about his brother, the Catholic Priest. More about the Anathemata, the excommunicated millitant arm of the Catholic Church. Juliet, the succubus, gets involved in the action again. It’s just bam, bam, bam. Love it.

Cheers

Tim…

Number 3 in the Felix Castor series from Mike Carey, Dead Men’s Boots is about ghosts of criminals possessing humans to effectively allow them to live forever. I got about 2/3 the way through this book then left it on a plane and was stuck for a couple of weeks. As soon as I got home I bought another copy and continued.

I am now totally invested in Felix Castor. I’ve got two more books to read (and another due out at the end of the year) and I’m already starting to get separation anxiety at the thought of finishing the series. This is exactly how I felt about Harry Dresden when I was reading The Dresden Files.

Cheers

Tim…

I had a real treat this summer during my “time off” in that I got to review Jonathan Lewis’s up-coming new book. I think it’s going to be a great book. If you want to know how Oracle actually holds it’s data in memory, how it finds records already in the cache and how it manages to control everything so that all that committing and read consistency really works, it will be the book for you.

{Update, Jonathan has confirmed that, unexpected hiccups aside, Oracle Core: Essential Internals for DBAs and Developers should be available from October 24, 2011}

The second in the Felix Castor series by Mike Carey. In Vicious Circle, Felix has to save the ghost of a girl from getting killed (sort of). File under supernatural detective with similarities to The Dresden Files. Pretty cool if you are into this sort of thing, like I am, but not for everyone.

My favorite character has to be Juliette, the succubus. To paraphrase one of her comments regarding attempting to use her abilities on some people suffering from demonic possession, “They should have only been capable of spontaneous orgasm.” It seems demonic possession gets in the way of your average succubus innocently going about their business…

Second favorite character has got to be Nikki, a zombie conspiracy theorist. It’s good to know that Zombies care about their appearance too. Nikki tries to prevent his corpse decaying by using industrial air conditioning and avoiding bacterial contamination as much as possible. Nikki is rather surprised by his physical reaction to Juliette, which should be impossible for a zombie as their congealed blood does not flow. I’ll leave it up to you to guess what happened to him.

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve just finished reading “The Devil You Know”, by Mike Carey. It’s the first in a series of books about an exorcist called Felix Castor, who lives and works in London. It’s not all spinning heads and green vomit. Like The Dresden Files, it’s more of a detective story that includes supernatural stuff.

If, like me, you are a fan of Harry Dresden and can’t wait for the next book, then this might quell your appetite.

Cheers

Tim…

Ghost Story is the latest book in The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher.

Spoiler Alert. Don’t read on if you are currently reading the series and haven’t got to this book yet. It’s hard to talk about the book without doing a bit of a spoiler.

At the end of the last book Harry Dresden died. At the start of this book he comes back as a ghost and is sent back to Chicago to help his friends. The fact that there is another book planned makes you think one of two things are going to happen.

1. He will be so successful as a ghost version of himself he will be able to carry on in that capacity.
2. He will somehow be ressurected.

This book is more predictable than any of the other books in the series, but that’s not a bad point. The outcomes of certain situations are predictable, but the journeys to those outcomes are far from predictable, which is half the fun. You are sitting there thinking, I know how this is meant to pan out, but how the hell is he going to get there?

It was a great story, and well deserving of its place in the series. I’ve now got a really long wait for the next book (Cold Days) to be released.

Cheers

Tim…