The Land of Laughs
Carroll is one of those writers whose name gets dropped from time to time as a great writer if you hang around people who love fantasy. Revered for his original ideas and genuine skill as a writer he's been on my 'to read' list for a long time. I bought two of his books a few years back to do just that. I had difficulty getting into the mood of the first book I tried (Voice of Our Shadow), so I put off trying again for a while.
The Land of Laughs is the story of a man who pursues his obsession with a children's writer to the extent that he takes a sabbatical from his job to write a biography. With his similarly obsessed girlfriend in tow he travels to the writer's hometown to seek the permission of his daughter to write the biography.
An undercurrent of weirdness builds up through the story that powers a series of twists in the final third that transforms a pretty normal story into a fantasy.
I found it very interesting, and it certainly kept my attention but there's something deeply unsettling about the last few pages of the book that make it hard to process properly.
I'd certainly recommend it if you're looking for something beyond generic fantasy.
Mortal Causes
I no longer keep up with Rankin's books as eagerly as I once did (I think I'm about three books behind the publishing schedule) and I never did get round to reading all the early books (I entered with Black and Blue).
Now I was watching the documentary about Rankin, Rebus and Edinburgh on BBC Four earlier this year and Rankin was back in the Cardenden cul-de-sac he grew up in mentioned about sectarianism in small town Scotland and that he'd eventually dealt with it in a book called Mortal Causes. Now this certainly piqued my interest, because sectarianism is something I have never really understood or really experienced (at least not in it's red raw guise) despite growing up in a town just five miles away from that Cardenden cul-de-sac.
So when I saw it in a local supermarket for £1.99 I couldn't resist.
It's a bloody good book, all the better from not suffering from the bloat that later books are infected with. The brilliant device of a young man being found murdered in Mary King's Close, terrorist execution style leads you into the plot and from then on in you're hooked. Rankin covers a lot of ground including sectarianism, gangs and paramilitaries in this one meshing it into a coherent whole with all the skill that would lead to the amazing Black and Blue.
I would very much recommend this book, as a crime novel, as a look at 90's style terrorism and as a bloody good read.
The Jennifer Morgue
The second Bob Howard book is a genuine delight.
Where the first played with the tropes of a Len Deighton style spy, this one subverts the James Bond archetype.
Full of clever twists and humour, Stross subverts your expectations at every step.
Of all his varied output I think that the Laundry books come out best - he tries a bit too hard with his full-on SF and seems a bit bored of his fantasy series. With the Laundry he\'s just having fun and it shows.
I wholeheartedly recommend that you read both The Atrocity Archives and this one - you will not regret it.
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