Dead Cert (Standalone) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Dead Cert
Series: Standalone
Author: Dick Francis
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 218
Words: 86K
Publish: 1962

First off, that has got to be one of the world’s ugliest, most uncreative covers ever. I don’t like it and the publishers should be totally ashamed of themselves. In fact, if the publishers were standing right in front of me now, I’d punch them in their ugly face and tell them that cover hurts me more than me mashing their schnozzes did them. #metoo

I saw Dick Francis books all through my growing up years. He was at the library. He was at K-Mart. He was at Barnes & Noble. He was at the airport. He was everywhere. Most of the time the covers just had his name in HUGE letters and then a small title and no picture. I was not interested in a book styled that way (of course, what I’m showcasing here is even worse, so be careful what you wish for, right?). Fast forward 30+ years to today when I was on the hunt for new to me old books. I think somebody recommended Dick Francis to me as an author in one of my “Book Recommendations” posts. So I knew the name, I just didn’t know anything about him or the stories he wrote. My interested was piqued when I found out that most of his stuff was standalone stories. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind multi-volume stories or even series that are self-contained stories, but there is a part of me that just wants to read ONE book and have that be it. Francis filled that niche. It has taken me almost 18months to start, but given my TBR Reading List, is actually quite a reasonable time frame. I also knew that horses and equestrian racing formed the nucleus of the stories, so I prepared myself for all sorts of horsey things.

This was an enjoyable murder mystery that at times left me scratching my head as to why the main character was doing what he was doing instead of going to the police. Then I realized it was 1962 and things were a little different in Merry Old England than they are today. Seriously though, that was the part of the story that made this 3stars and not any higher. It also brought out just how much the speed of communication changes things. Walking somewhere to get to a telephone. Leaving messages. Crime was slower because life itself was slower because it was going as fast as it could but it just wasn’t as fast as today. Now that I’ve gotten this first book under my belt I expect to be a little better prepared for next time. I’m not sure that if the main character in the next book tries to be super detective man that that will go over any better than it did here though. Our guy has to play detective because the police aren’t doing anything, but man, it just didn’t ring true. Even with the “Oh, it’s 1962”. It’s probably as realistic though as those filthy casual cozy murder mysteries where some bleeping blonde bimbo baker solves a mystery with her friends instead of actually running her bakery.

I learned about steeple chasing (the specific kind of horse racing featured here in the story) and am now an expert. Ask me anything about it and I’ll give you the answer. It probably won’t be the correct answer, but that’s on you for asking some random guy on the internet questions about horse racing.

While I enjoyed this book overall, it did feel like the kind of popcorn summer book that people who only read a book a year would read. What I am hoping for is that each book will be different enough to set it apart from its predecessors.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

Admiral should have won his race at Maidenhead, but an unexpected fall and the accidental death of top jockey Bill Davidson gave his friend, Alan York, the win instead. But Alan recognised a trip wire when he saw one and was not about to let a murderous act go unpunished. The trouble was that he left drawing it to the attention of the authorities too late and the evidence had disappeared. Only the efficient Police Inspector Lodge is prepared to believe that it was a deliberate killing - and at first is inclined to suspect Alan's involvement.

Alan is persuaded to ride a novice hunter in another race and is surprised to find it belongs to the glamorous Kate Ellery-Penn, whose Uncle George has given her the horse as a birthday present. Alan is attracted to her from the start, but unfortunately so is another of his jockey friends, Dane.

As he leaves the course, Alan comes across two gangs of taxi drivers, from London and Brighton, brutally fighting it out with knives and knuckle-dusters. Not long afterwards he recognises some of them when he is roughed up as a warning not to pursue his enquiries, but this only spurs him on to investigate what is obviously an organised attempt to interfere with horse racing on a wider scale than he had first thought. Some of his jockey colleagues have already come under suspicion for deliberately slowing down their mounts: the popular and experienced Sandy Mason, for example, and the cocky but easily panicked youngster, Joe Nantwich.

From now on Alan sets out on a double pursuit, of the gang responsible for the death of his friend, and of Kate. The latter lives in a stately house in Sussex with her upper-crust Uncle and her Aunt Deb, who does her best to discourage Alan from taking his interest in Kate further when he pays a weekend stay. While there he visits Brighton with Kate and comes across an ex-military pub landlord who has organised his fellow owners of small businesses in resisting a protection racket. Taxi drivers from one of the local firms were involved with this and Alan traces some of those he recognises from his earlier run-in with them to Marconicars.

Before he can take things much further, Alan's own horse is tripped during a race. As he lies on the ground helpless, one of those who had helped rig the wire comes over and kicks him unconscious. When he comes round in hospital, he is concussed and there are gaps in his memory. Back at Bill Davidson's house, where he continues to live for the time being, he discovers that one of Bill's young sons routinely listens to incoming phone calls. From him he learns that Bill had received a phone instruction to pull the race in which he died. Having had such a call too, Alan had forewarned Inspector Lodge of what might happen and is visited by him as he recovers. Suspicion seems to point to a bookmaker who has an office above Marconicars and to one of their principal customers.

Joe Nantwich has discovered a clue to who might be rigging the races but before he can hand it over to Alan, he is stabbed to death at the West Sussex races. Next the killers come after Alan, posing as police officers, but he manages to escape them on Admiral (which he has inherited from Bill) and jumps over the wayside hedges into the fields and then a fir plantation, with the fake officers and the Marconicars fleet combing all the nearby roads.

Overcoming one of their drivers, Alan heads for the main office and finds Uncle George at the radio microphone, furiously insisting that Alan be killed. Rather than be arrested, Uncle George shoots himself and consequently Kate rejects Alan, only relenting later and agreeing to marry him. When Alan's memory returns fully, he realises it was Sandy Mason who had been passing on information about his enquiries to the gang and had kicked him after his fall. With Dane's magnanimous help, Alan gets his revenge by unseating Sandy from his horse mid-race.

Mind Bomb - MTG 4E

 

Who says artists don't have a sense of humor? I mean, a literal mind bomb here? That just makes me laugh, while it also grosses me out completely.

London Rules (Slough House #5) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: London Rules
Series: Slough House #5
Author: Mick Herron
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 264
Words: 101K
Publish: 2018

None of the crew die in this story. I kept waiting for someone to die, the last person I’d expect. So when someone didn’t die, I’d think to myself, ok, who don’t I expect next? And then someone else wouldn’t die. Right until the end of the book. I was simultaneously happy and disappointed :-D

There was also a chapter where Jackson Lamb was just on a roll with his his un-pc remarks and I was in stitches for paragraph after paragraph. I think I was laughing for a solid 30minutes. The one instance that really made me laugh was when Jackson Lamb mansplains “mansplaining” to one of the female characters. I just about died, hahahahahahaa.

The story itself was a bit confusing and I still don’t understand WHY North Korea running a non-secret UK Government sanctioned op would cause “embarrassment”. Honestly, when I was done I felt exactly how I did when I finished up From Russia with Love, the last James Bond novel I read. There are bits of spycraft in James Bond and here in Slough House that I simply do not understand. The whole “appearance” thing has to be pretty blunt (as it is in most instances here in Slough House) for it to make sense to me. That’s not a brag, more admitting a weakness.

So I had a rollicking good time and would continue to recommend this series to anyone wanting some modern day spycraft story without the more typical kabooms and super action heroes.

I did reach out to Dictator Xi Jinping to see if he had read this book, but sadly, his schedule was full of goat humping, so he hadn’t gotten around to it. So you’ll have to survive without his thoughts on it.

★★★★☆

From Supersummary.com

The fifth novel in the Slough House series is set against post-Brexit political turmoil in Britain. Slough House is a decrepit London office building where MI5 (Britain's domestic intelligence agency) dumps agents who have disgraced themselves or botched assignments. These agents, known as "slow horses," are given pointless busywork designed to bore them into quitting. Their boss, Jackson Lamb, is a slovenly, foul-mouthed contrarian who delights in tormenting his staff while covertly protecting them from the Service's main headquarters at Regent's Park.

The novel opens with five armed men massacring the residents of Abbotsfield, a small village in the Derbyshire hills, killing twelve people in a two-minute assault. The attack is claimed by the so-called Islamic State and plunges the country into crisis. At Regent's Park, First Desk (head of MI5) Claude Whelan faces pressure from the Prime Minister, who is politically besieged by Dennis Gimball, a Brexit-championing MP planning to rejoin the governing party and challenge for the leadership.

At Slough House, the slow horses endure their dreary routines. Catherine Standish, Lamb's office manager and a recovering alcoholic, handles the department's accounts. Roderick Ho, a talented but socially oblivious computer specialist, spends his lunch hour playing Pokémon GO. Shirley Dander, a combative agent sixty-two days drug-free after finishing anger management classes, carries a wrap of cocaine she plans to use as a reward; she still grieves for her late colleague Marcus. Louisa Guy compiles lists of library users who have borrowed terrorism-related books. J.K. Coe, a former Psychological Evaluation specialist who once shot a handcuffed prisoner, writes fake breakup letters to protect deep-cover agents. River Cartwright visits his grandfather David Cartwright, a retired senior intelligence officer in a care home with advancing dementia.

The plot accelerates when Shirley witnesses a silver Honda deliberately mount the pavement, heading straight for Ho. She tackles him out of the way, but Ho, engrossed in his phone, does not notice. Lamb privately believes Shirley but refuses to notify Regent's Park, invoking "London Rules, rule one," one of his informal survival maxims for MI5 operatives: Cover your arse. Reporting the threat would invite scrutiny from Diana Taverner, the Park's ambitious Second Desk (head of Operations), who might use the opportunity to dismantle Slough House. That night, Lamb stakes out Ho's house while Shirley, Louisa, and River independently trail Ho to a nightclub. There, his girlfriend Kim sends him home alone, then calls someone to confirm he is home, adding, "Make it quick? He's harmless." An intruder enters Ho's house in the small hours, but Lamb, waiting inside, attacks the man. A silver car fires at Shirley outside. The car is later found burnt out, its bullets matching weapons used at Abbotsfield.

Two more attacks follow: A pipe bomb detonates in a penguin enclosure called "The Watering Hole" at a zoo near Chester, and a bomb is found and disabled on a train into Paddington station. Taverner orders a lockdown of Slough House and sends Emma Flyte, head of MI5's internal police (the Dogs), to guard the slow horses. During lockdown, Coe identifies a critical pattern: The attacks follow stages from an old British Intelligence document designed as a template for destabilizing a developing nation. "Destroy the village, poison the watering hole, cripple the railway" match the attacks precisely. The document was digitized onto the Service database, where Ho could have accessed it. The devastating implication is that when the perpetrators reveal they followed a British-authored blueprint, the scandal will be catastrophic. The remaining stages are to assassinate a populist leader and seize control of the media.

The slow horses suspect Ho was honeytrapped into stealing the document by Kim, who drugged Ho and convinced him he had already revealed secrets, making him willing to steal it from the Service database. Lamb pulls a gun on Flyte, has Shirley handcuff her, and dispatches his agents: River and Coe to Slough, where Gimball is holding a constituency meeting, and Louisa and Shirley to Birmingham, where Zafar Jaffrey, a Muslim politician favored to become Mayor of the West Midlands, is speaking at a library.

Whelan blackmails Gimball into cancelling his speech using compromising photographs. Gimball capitulates but later steps outside, where Tyson Bowman, Jaffrey's aide, confronts him. River intervenes and fights Bowman. Coe, positioned on scaffolding above, accidentally kicks a heavy tin of paint that strikes Gimball on the head and kills him. In Birmingham, when Gimball's death breaks on social media, a suspicious van near the library pulls away. The narrative reveals the attackers are North Korean agents planted in the UK years earlier as students, operating under the SSD (North Korea's State Security Department). They decide the assassination stage is complete without their intervention.

The slow horses capture Kim at Ho's house. Flyte interrogates her, and Kim reveals the attackers are North Korean operatives. She mentions that their leader Shin spoke of "the snake eating its own tail," suggesting the final attack will circle back to the beginning. The group deduces that "seize the media" means staging an assault at a heavily covered event, likely the Abbotsfield memorial service at Westminster Abbey. The PM orders maximum security but insists the service proceed. Taverner privately insists the attackers must be killed to prevent them from revealing the British origins of their plan.

Coe concludes the real target is the simultaneous, smaller memorial at Abbotsfield village, a soft target with media coverage but minimal security. He and Shirley drive to Derbyshire; she takes Marcus's Glock from Lamb's desk. Inside the attackers' van, An, one of the operatives, shoots the most fanatical member, Danny, dead after Danny accuses Shin of betrayal. The remaining three attackers assault Abbotsfield for a second time. Their van strikes and kills a police officer. Chris, the driver, is killed by police after exiting the van. Coe picks up a fallen officer's rifle and shoots one gunman at close range. Shin enters the church with a semi-automatic weapon. Shirley, who has locked the front door to prevent a stampede, draws Marcus's Glock and walks down the aisle toward him. He whispers that he deliberately missed during the original massacre and surrenders. Shin is later reported dead at the hospital, though the circumstances imply he was killed in custody.

In the aftermath, Lamb meets Molly Doran, the keeper of Regent's Park's physical archives who uses a wheelchair. Doran traces the history of the stolen destabilization template, called the Watering Hole Paper. It was declassified nineteen years earlier by then-First Desk Charles Partner as part of "Operation Shopping List," a sting operation conceived by a young Whelan to catch a traitor in the Service by feeding him impressive-sounding declassified documents as bait for foreign buyers. The operation was aborted when the traitor died by suicide, but the document had already been circulated to foreign parties, including the SSD. Because it was officially declassified, Ho technically did not commit treason. Lamb uses this leverage to deal with Taverner: In exchange for the information to force Whelan out and claim the First Desk position, she must leave Slough House untouched, return Ho, and keep Doran in her post. Gimball's death is ruled an accident. Whelan arrests Jaffrey after discovering that Jaffrey's younger brother survived a drone strike in Syria and that Jaffrey used an underworld fixer to obtain a false passport for him.

Before leaving Slough House, Taverner tells Catherine that Lamb murdered Charles Partner in his bathtub and that Partner's death was not a suicide. Catherine receives this in silence. In the closing passages, Shirley breaks her clean streak by snorting her cocaine, River receives a mysterious phone call that cuts off after a single word, and Catherine continues buying bottles of wine each evening. Dusk settles over Slough House, Lamb departs alone into the night, and the building waits in darkness.

My TBR Lists - The Deep Dive

 

Back in July, Nic (from Dragon Rambles) did a post All the Series, about her tbr lists and how it looked. I'm a sucker for posts like that and it inspired me to check my own tbr and write this post.

A bit of background for anyone who might not know, I am not one of those people who see a book and automatically throw it on their tbr pile. If a book goes on my tbr, it means it WILL be read, unless I end up dnf'ing the series or author. I also limit the number of books on my tbr to 2-3 years worth of books, otherwise books get lost in the shuffle or I know I'll never get to them. If a book deserves to go on my tbr, it deserves to be read in a timely manner. Well, semi-timely, if you call 2 years timely ;-) My tbr is not a wish list, but an honest to goodness To Be Read list in actuality.

Last year I wrote a post about all the books/authors/series on my ereader, "Reading Rotation 9/25". I figured I'd combine that post idea with Nic's and create a Master TBR for your viewing pleasure. I'll be dividing this post into two sections, the first will be what is on my Pocketbook Era and the second will be what is in my Calibre digital library. So without further ado, let the deep dive begin!

Pocketbook Era List

The following are the various Lists I have on my Pocketbook Era. I go through them in alphabetical order. So when I finish a book in one list, I simply read the next. No choosing, no drama, no damned feelings, just reading. I haven't had a reading slump since '16 or '17 and it is all thanks to reading this way.

Action Man

These are the Phoenix Force books by "Gar Wilson". I added 5 to my Era and have gotten through 3. If I get through all 5, I'll be looking for more to add to my Calibre tbr list. They are the kind of mass produced books that you can only take in small doses, like 5 books at a time, hahahaha.

Asimov

I just finished this category with "I, Asimov". As soon as I get around to it, I'll delete it off the Era and add some other series or author to replace it.

Austen

Reading a Complete Collection, and I'm currently in the last legs of her juvenilia short stories. Might be a while as she wrote a lot of scraps in her teens.

Conan

A complete (chronological) compendium of the original Conan stories by Robert Howard

Cook / Herron

This is a selection of Glen Cook's Black Company alternating with Mick Herron's Slough House. Read 2-3 of one series, then switch to the other. Keeps me reading both series, albeit at a slower pace, which I'm ok with.

Dick Francis

A collection of 15 of Dick Francis's stories. I'm reading them in publication order and I believe they are all standalones. Never read Francis before so we'll see what I think.

Bond / Discworld

Same idea as the Cook/Herron slot, only for James Bond and Discworld. See my note on Discworld in the Calibre section below for more info.

Dracula / Lord of the Isles

Same idea yet again. I find it much easier to read 3 books of one series and then immediately switch to another instead of reading both. This way I'm not reading all 9 Lord of the Isles after one another, nor am I suffocating on Dracula mediocrity.

Empire / Icarus

Rise of Empire and the Icarus Saga. I read 3 Icarus to 2 Rise of Empire. See notes below in the Calibre section for more details.

Misc

I have 6 or 7 standalone or one of a series that I want to read sooner than later. Once example is Unlucky for Some, by Tom Wood, which is the latest in the Victor the Assassin series. I want to read it "now", so I'm adding it to this instead of waiting for more books in the series to come out. I've also got that Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain.

Nonfiction

I have 8 (yes, you read that right, EIGHT) books in this category. I haven't read this much nonfiction since my school days. It's good for me and I'm learning to expand my taste. Seeing as how I'm almost 50, I think it's time I read a bit more than just SF&F all the time.

Pollifax / Alphabet

This is the Emily Pollifax slot. I used to have that horrible "A is for Blah, blah" and "B is for even more Blah, blah" series but I hated the main character so much that I stopped it and just read Mrs Pollifax by herself. Emily Pollifax is worth about 100 of those pathetic Kinsey Milhone losers.

Rohmer

This is a complete collection of Sax Rohmer. It's also where I used to keep William Hope Hodgson until I read his horrible The Night Land and gave up on him. I also used to have Dumarest here until I gave up that too. Sadly, I have a feeling that the next Doctor Fu-Manchu novel or two will see Rohmer being given up on too. Just because a book is older doesn't necessarily mean it is better. Writers suck today and they sucked back then.

The Russians

• Dostoyevsky complete collection
• Tolstoy complete collection
• Turgenev complete collection

I read a Dostoyevsky, then on the next rotation I'll read a Tolstoy and then on the next rotation I'll read a Turgenev. Then on the 4th reading rotation I start the cycle all over again :-D

The Shadow

The Shadow knowz! enough said.

WH40K

This year I'm reading one book, Death & Duty, which is a compilation of Warhammer 40,000 short stories about the Astra Militarum (the ordinary humans that make up the bulk of the armies of the Empire of Mankind). I'm reading one story a month and will be done by year's end. For next year's plans, see the WH40K section down below.

Wolfe

Here we have the Nero Wolfe series, detective extraordinaire! I have been reading this series steadily since 2021 and while I won't quite wrap things up by year's end, it will wrap up near the beginning of '27. Then I'll take a year or two off to let things percolate and then I'll start the whole process all over again. Rex Stout is that good of an author.

YA

This is really more of a childrens or middle grade section, but I call it YA so that I can read something aimed at teens if the spirit moves me. Right now I have the Little House on the Prairie series here by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I've got 7 books left in the series. Plenty of time to search out another YA series when I get closer to the end of this.

Calibre Digital TBR List

(There is some overlap between this list and my Pocketbook list, because I don't load up every single book in a series or by an author onto my ereader all at once. I tend to stick to 5 or 6 at a time and then add more as I run out.

Neal Asher

• Dark Diamond
• Dark Agent

These are the latest by Asher in his massive Polity Universe and I am waiting for the third and final book to drop in this trilogy before diving in.

C.J. Box

The Joe Pickett series. Pickett is a forest ranger and one of the people I followed binged on the series and it looked quite interesting. There are around 20'ish novels/novellas and I've got the first 4 on tap. If I like them, I'll hunt down the rest of the series and add it to my tbr. But right now, there is no sense in doing all that work only to dnf the series at book 3 or something.

Jim Butcher

• The Aeronaut's Windlass
• Warriorborn
• The Olympian Affair

These are the opening books in Butcher's series "Cinderspires". Real life and that damnably horrible Dresden series have kept him from concentrating on this, so it is coming out extremely slowly. I'm going to wait until another book is released before I think about moving this over to my Era.

Glen Cook

The Black Company series. This is one I also have on my ereader and I cycle through it a few books at a time. I have 7 still in Calibre. I change it up with the Slough House series too, which is stretching out my reading time even more. It is a re-read so I'm in no rush.

Charles Dickens

The Complete Works. Next year or in '28, I am going to be making a concerted effort to read more Classics (or in the case of Dickens, re-read more Classics). I haven't decided if I'm going to give each Classic author their own spot or if I'm going to lump them together in one "Classic" category and cycle through them, like I am currently doing with my Russian authors.

David Drake

• Fortress of Glass
• The Mirror of Worlds
• The Gods Return

This is the final wrap up trilogy to Drake's Lord of the Isles series. I am alternating these books with the Dracula Files which I will mention further along.

Alexandre Dumas

The Complete Works. Another entry in my "Classics" selection.

Steven Erikson

• The God is Not Willing
• No Life Forsaken

the first two books in Erikson's latest entry into his Malazan universe. It is supposed to be a trilogy, so I am waiting for the final book to drop before reading these. The God was published in '21 and No Life in '25, so I might still have a couple of years of waiting.

P.J. Fitzsimmons

The Anty Boisjoly mystery series. The reviews I've read make it a mix of cozy mystery and PG Wodehouse, so I was sold from the get-go. I've got 9 of these on tap and more available if I end up liking them.

Ian Flemming

James Bond 7-14. I was alternating these with Discworld, but discworld has fallen by the wayside, so Bond is on his own. We will see if I get to the end of these or not.

Brian Flynn

The Anthony Bathurst mysteries. From the late 1920's to the 1950's. I have 6 available and more after that if I like the series.

Margaret Frazer

The Sister Frevisse series. I believe it is supposed to be in a similar vein to the Brother Cadfael mysteries, so a nun solves mysteries of one sort or another. I've got 6 in Calibre and more available if I like them.

William Michael Gear

The Donovan series, consisting of 6 books. This is very close to being added to the Era.

Maxwell Grant

The Shadow omnibuses. I have 10 omnibuses and then I have a complete collection, which has all 300+ stories. These are once again an old reliable that are both on my Era and in Calibre.

Brothers Grimm

The Complete Fairy Tales. Another "Classic" entry.

Non-Fiction

• The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop
• Nero Wolfe of West 35th Street by William Baring-Gould

I need to add some more non-fiction to my calibre library. Stock up for next year.

Cthulhu Mythos

I've got 8 various collections and anthologies of Cthulhu stuff just waiting for me to return to the Cosmic Horror fold. Maybe in '27, we will see how I'm feeling.

Misc

• The Truth of Carcosa by Jacob Rollinson
• Thraxas Meets His Enemies by Martin Scott

This Misc category is another one I need to stock up on. I like adding standalones or one-offs to this, not series.

Mick Herron

I have 4 more entries in the Slough House series. 3 novels and 1 short story. I'm spacing these out with the Black Company books so I never get too bored of one or the other. Read 3 of one series, then switch to 3 of the other. Keeps things fresh without burning me out.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

There are 13 more volumes available. I've been taking a break from Alfie for a bit but am thinking I'll dump him back into rotation in '27.

David Holmes

This is the "guy" who wrote the Empire Rising series, one that I am convinced he used AI to fill it up. I'm still enjoying it, just in smaller doses. I have 4 more volumes that I am interspersing with the Icarus series by Timothy Zahn. Reading some Zahn, then read 2 of the Empire Rising. Rinse and repeat

Victor Hugo

The Complete Works. Another in my "Classic" enterprise.

Andrew Klavan

I have a 5 book series, Cameron Winters, about an assassin, I think? I got some Victor the Assassin vibes from the review I read, but not quite. But I'm jonesing for some assassin style stories, so I'm hoping this will scratch the itch.

George MacDonald

A Complete works. Yet another in my "Classics" selection! As you can tell, I'm going serious on this.

Herman Melville

Moby Dick. This is the only book that has defeated me to date. That has stuck in my craw ever since I tried to read it in 2011. Reading this book is one of those literary hills I will die on. I'm sticking it in it's own category for the moment, but it might either end up in the "Classics" or in "Misc".

Fred Saberhagen

The Dracula Files, of which I have 4 in Calibre. Interspersing this with the aforementioned Lord of the Isles series by David Drake. LotI and Dracula are both barely "par" series, so changing them with each other keeps me from raising the bar very high yet keeps me from burning out when things go low.

Joel Shepherd

I have the final 4 of his Spiral Wars series. I read the previous 6 books as they came out but then he took a hiatus and extended the series and so I gave up on him until he finished it. I thought about re-reading the series, but I didn't enjoy the previous books that much, so we'll see if I can drop back into the series or not. Worst that'll happen is I dnf the series and move on, kind of like I'm currently doing to it ;-)

Michael Sullivan

I'm going to be re-reading his original Riyria Revelations series. I loved this 6 book series when I originally read it but now it is time for the acid-test. Will it survive a Bookstooge Re-read? Stay tuned and find out with me!

Phil Williams

The Ordshaw trilogy. I think somebody recommended it to me, but I'm not sure and I can't remember why it's on my tbr. A trilogy is almost as good as a standalone in these days of superlong series though, so it's going to get its chance to shine.

Dan Willis

I have the latest 2 of his Arcane Casebook series and once the 3rd (it's actually going to be #14 in the series) is released, I'll catch up. I used to read them as they came out but once it became obvious the series had no end goal in mind, I stopped.

Timothy Zahn

The Icarus saga. Good ol' space detective'ing. Reading this with the Empire Rising to give me a break from the Empire Rising's 500+ page wordiness. Zahn tells a taut story and I appreciate that.

Warhammer 40K

I've currently got 6 wh40k books in Calibre by various authors, divided into various factions. My main interest is the Astra Militarum (formerly known as the Imperial Guard, about the regular humans in the Empire) and the Necrons (a civilization of multimillion year old terminators that have gone code-crazy). I've got a novel or two about the Tau (aliens) and some about the Adeptus Mechanicus (humans who've gone the cyborg route in the Empire of Man). The problem is that WH40K is vast and its too easy to get spread out. Trying to keep my focus tight though.

Groo

The silliness of the Groo comic is a constant reminder that life is short so we should enjoy the good parts that have been given to us. As long as the artist, Sergio Aragones, isn't hammering us over the head with a "message" anyway. I just read #55 and have up to #120 in Calibre. Good times ahead!

So the numbers are a little fuzzy, but in total there are about 135 books on my tbr list in my Calibre library and 70 on my Era. So that brings the grand total to 200'ish. A bit  over a year's worth of books. I'm pretty happy with this list overall. I realize this post is almost 3000 words long, about 4-6 times my usual, so thank you for sticking around to the end.

May your next book be fun and enjoyable!

The Pool of the Black One (Conan Chronicles #6) 3.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Pool of the Black One
Series: Conan Chronicles #6
Author: Robert Howard
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 41
Words: 11K
Publish: 1933

This is the first published story about Conan being a pirate instead of a mercenary. And this isn’t so much about him being a pirate as him becoming one at the story’s end.

The gist of the story is that Conan and the crew of the ship fight a bunch of giant black men on an island and barely survive. There’s a pool that turns people into little stone statues but that’s about the only “supernatural” part of the story. Otherwise, it’s just a survival story.

I was really wavering about to give it just 3stars, but I’m really interested in Conan’s adventures as a pirate and so this origin story gave the overall story the bump it needed.

★★★✬☆

From Bookstooge

"The Pool of the Black One" is a novelette by Robert E. Howard, first published in the October 1933 issue of Weird Tales. Conan, serving as a pirate on the ship Wastrel, voyages to a mysterious island where the crew encounters a pool guarded by eerie, dark-skinned islanders and unearthly horrors. The captain and Conan fight before Conan discovers the horror of the island. Giants take the drugged crew to throw them into the pool whereby they are shrunken into statues and stored for the inhabitants amusement. Conan leads the survivors in a desperate fight to get off the island then a desperate flight on the Wastrel to escape the last remaining giant, who happens to be a magician of some sort. The story ends with Conan deciding to be a regular pirate and the crew cheering him on as the new captain.

PS,
what they don’t do is hump any goats like Dictator Xi Jinping does, every day.

• The “Essential Conan” Trilogy

• All of My “Conan the Barbarian” Reviews

• All of My “Conan Chronicles” Reviews

[Art] Maiden of the Fall 2026

 

Autumn Fires

Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens
   And all up in the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
   See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over, 
   And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
   The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
   Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
   Fires in the fall! 

All the oranges and reds in the picture really made me think of fire, hence this poem. 

Millstone - MTG 4E

 

One of the rules in Magic is that if you can't draw a card from your deck, because there are no more cards, you lose the game. So there is a strategy where you force your opponent to discard cards from their deck and so they lose that way. The strategy is called "Milling" and takes its name from this particular card. It is a viable strategy but is hard to make work. You basically leave yourself open to your opponent's attack and pray your milling strategy works faster than them. It's also rather boring, so you have to want to win more than play a fun game.

Of course, if you don't like your opponent and want to make them suffer, this would be a good way to do that. Grind down their soul while you grind down their deck, mwahahaha...