Books & Blog: January 26, 2015

by | Jan 25, 2015 | 2015

Books of the Week:

  • Nice, Jen Sacks
  • The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Patrick Rothfuss
  • Dry Bones in the Valley, Tom Bouman
  • Symbiont, Mira Grant

Jen Sacks’s Nice came recommended by another member of Sisters in Crime. The description of it – “A girl hates breaking up with boyfriends, so she kills them” – just spoke to me. There’s a lot of truth in this novel. Grace has been raised to never argue or criticize. Consequently, she is pleasant to men she doesn’t really care for, and they get caught up in the illusion that she’s interested, and it ends very badly. Luckily for Grace, she meets the right man – another killer. Though I found a false note or two, this was such a delightful book that I’d like to read it over again for a second first time.
 

Patrick Rothfuss has been promising his anxious readers that he’d produce the third book in his Kvothe series. Instead, we have this ‘outtake’ book about Auri, the mysterious waif befriended by Kvothe. The Slow Regard of Silent Things tells us what Auri does in between her rooftop meetings with the magic student who is her only friend. If you’ve ever had a hint of OCD, you’ll empathize with Auri as she keeps the huge underground chambers beneath the college in order. This short book has its own kind of magic.
 

Dry Bones in the Valley is Tom Bouman’s debut mystery, and it’s been nominated for an Edgar Award. Henry Farrell has returned to his home town in Pennsylvania after the death of his wife, and falls into a job as Wild Thyme’s policeman. He has one deputy. He expects life to be easy, but it isn’t. Fracking is the county’s biggest industry. Meth may come in second. Farrell, shy and musical, watches his world fall apart when a body is found on a recluse’s land, and very soon after Farrell’s deputy dies. This is a challenging first novel.
 

Mira Grant (also known as Seanan McGuire) has written another intelligent, suspenseful, scientifically based novel. No big surprise! Symbiont is the second book about the characters we met in Parasitology, and it’s also no big surprise that their lives haven’t gotten any simpler or easier. The parasites that were first installed in humans to ward off common health problems have begun taking over their hosts. This is an oversimplification of a complicated plot, so please be sure and read Parasitology first.
 

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Patrick Rothfuss, Laurell K. Hamilton, various mystery writers . . . and to a certain extent, myself. What do we have in common? Pullouts. At least that’s how I think of think of work that’s not part of your main body of fiction, but deals with the same characters from another viewpoint.
 

I just finished The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a short book about one of the characters in Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle. And Laurell K. Hamilton has published several books that are focused on one or another side character in her famous Anita Blake series (the most recent is Jason).
 

One of my favorite mystery writers, Robert Crais, simply switched points of view in his Elvis Cole series to write about Joe Pike, Elvis’s friend and partner.  Bomb squad ace Carol Starkey has also gotten her own novel after appearing in an Elvis Cole story.
 

Speaking for myself, I suppose Dead but not Forgotten might be considered a series of pull-outs . . . just penned by other writers, about characters who’d appeared in my Sookie Stackhouse novels.
 

I don’t know if this happened very often in past decades. If you know of instances, please tell me. And I’m sure I’ve only skimmed the list of writers who are approaching this way of looking at their worlds.
 

I think that’s what this mini-trend reflects. It’s like flipping over a shiny thing you like, to see all aspects of it. If you think it’s so neat, maybe other people will, too. Besides, it’s your favorite shiny thing, and you hate to let go of it. And maybe you feel you have a lot more to say about it, too.
 

Those of you who are writers, have you ever considered doing this? Those of you who are readers, how do you feel about it?
 

Charlaine Harris

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