I have read two very different but very enjoyable books this week and still have a pretty big pile next to my bed.

Caliban’s War By James SA Corey

The first one I finished was Caliban’s War by James S A Corey, #02 in The Expanse series. This is the blurb:

We are not alone.

On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system.

In the vast wilderness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been keeping the peace for the Outer Planets Alliance. When they agree to help a scientist search war-torn Ganymede for a missing child, the future of humanity rests on whether a single ship can prevent an alien invasion that may have already begun . . .

I really rated the first part of the series, Leviathan Wakes, and this book was also great. This is my review for four stars:

Whoop! Another fantastic book in this series and now I am going straight on to read the next one. This future world(s) is so well thought out and planned. Love the characters, particularly the central four crew members, but also Bobbie and Avasarala. The women are well written in this book and, as an old woman myself, I am so pleased to see another has such a special role in the story. I don’t think the TV series has reached the UK, so I will have to seek it out on DVD? Now to book 3…

I already have books three and four of the series in my pile, but decided to make a change with my next read:

The Midnight Line by Lee Child

I requested the latest Jack Reacher novel, The Midnight Line by Lee Child, from the local library months ago (I was initially #88 in the queue!) and finally got the message to collect it last week. So I managed to kind of “rush” in to collect it and began reading it straight away. Here is the blurb:

Jack Reacher takes an aimless stroll past a pawn shop in a small Midwestern town. In the window he sees a West Point class ring from 2005. It’s tiny. It’s a woman cadet’s graduation present to herself. Why would she give it up? Reacher’s a West Pointer too, and he knows what she went through to get it.

Reacher tracks the ring back to its owner, step by step, down a criminal trail leading west. Like Big Foot come out of the forest, he arrives in the deserted wilds of Wyoming. All he wants is to find the woman. If she’s OK, he’ll walk away. If she’s not … he’ll stop at nothing.

He’s still shaken by the recent horrors of Make Me, and now The Midnight Line sees him set on a raw and elemental quest for simple justice. Best advice: don’t get in his way.

As there is still a massive queue for the book, I must get it back to the library as quickly as possible – see, always the Librarian! Anyway, I did enjoy the book, but was not quite as taken with it as others in the series, so gave it three stars and this review:

What I liked about this book: the basic setting up of the story with the search for the owner of the class ring, the code of honour that Reacher obviously has, the strong and interesting female characters and…. well, I did enjoy reading the book, but I didn’t love it. So, what didn’t I like? The descriptions of Reacher: chickens!!! The endless driving backwards and forwards on the same dusty and bumpy roads. The pages of that endless travelling with little or no action. The rather boring fact that Reacher always has to love and leave at least one woman in each book. Poor Detective Nakamura. And the ending – say no more. I will read more books in the series, if more are written, simply because I like the main character, but perhaps it is time to move onto something else, Lee.

What I must add is that, as an English person, it was so interesting to read about a place, Wyoming, which is so huge and which has such a small population. Here in the UK, we, unless living somewhere really remote, expect everything to be on hand and balk at travelling for hours for basic amenities. I find it hard to get my head around the thought of not having neighbours closer than twenty or even forty miles!

Abaddon’s Gate by James S A Corey

I have just started book #03 in The Expanse series, Abaddon’s Gate, and will let you know how I get on with it next week.

Hope you enjoy your reading,

Best wishes,

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