Zombie, Indiana is third in a series after Zombie, Ohio and Zombie, Illinois, but all three books take place simultaneously and follow different characters so they can be read in any order.

I don't read a lot of zombie stories, but I've followed this series because it's always doing something in addition to the zombie mayhem. In Zombie, Ohio, it followed a unique sentient zombie. Since then the focus has been on the humans instead; in fact, although the danger of the zombies is ever present, the bigger threat to civilization has been the humans.

When the outbreak first hits in Indiana, before people realize what's happening, a school group of teenagers goes missing in a cave. The Governor's daughter is in the class, so he sends the IMPD sergeant who handles special jobs for him. Sergeant Nolan finds one teenage girl alive in the cave, a scholarship student named Kesha. As the two of them continue to search for safety and any other survivors, back in Indianapolis, the Governor strives to make sure it's clear he has matters under control without federal assistance.

The zombies provide the catalyst, but the heart of this story is what happens when people see things only in terms of assets and opportunities. The Governor may (or may not) have caused the zombie outbreak by giving corporations free license to pollute the state, and during the outbreak his focus is on protecting and projecting his image as having responded single-handedly, treating the federal government as a bigger enemy than the zombies. There were moments that felt insufficiently justified. E.g., the governor's daughter's conviction that she needed to get to her father because he was going to do something terrible. Although the governor was more concerned about his daughter's safety than anybody else's, there was no sign that it was a motivating factor in any of the bad calls he made. For example, he wasn't diverting resources to locating her that could have been better used defending more of the population. Nor did her reappearance motivate him to do the right thing. Overall, however, this was an exciting story and a credible depiction of what happens when politicians put ideology above delivering what their constituents need.

Overall: B+

The Getaway God is the latest in the Sandman Slim series. As we rejoin Stark, the apocalypse appears to be imminent. In L.A., it's raining nonstop and people are fleeing the city en masse without quite knowing why. In hell, it's also raining nonstop but there it's blood. There's a serial killer on the loose who has been dubbed Saint Nick, and some people from the Vigil aren't entirely sure it's not Stark. A self-mummified monk is trying to figure out how to use the Qomrama Om Ya, a weapon that can kill gods. And something just isn't right with Candy.

This book remains everything that I love about this series. It's pure messy, violent, gritty fun capped with wise-ass dialogue. I attempted to sum it up once as Sin City with angels and demons running around, which doesn't quite cover it but comes close. For a while near the end I wondered if this was going to be the last book in the series, but then it became clear it was just being turned in a new direction. I'll always be looking forward to the next one.

Overall: A

Visions is the second in a series after Omens, reviewed here: 
http://unreachableshelf.weebly.com/on-the-shelf/omens-by-kelley-armstrong

Olivia Taylor-Jones discovered in the first book of the Cainsville series that not only was she adopted, but her birth parents are convicted serial killers. She cleared them of one of the murders of which they were accused, but before she can begin investigating any of the others, she sees a dead body dressed to resemble her. Then it vanishes before anybody else can see it.

Although this book was a fun ride, and the murder plot itself was nicely twisty, I felt like the book overall was a bit obvious. My guess from the first book of fairies being behind the weirdness of Cainsville and Olivia and Gabriel having fae blood has been confirmed. 

I have some further predictions:

Although Olivia begins a relationship with Ricky in this book: I officially predict that she's going to wind up with Gabriel by the end of the series and that Ricky will more likely than not die in some heroic way. Former fiance James is at this point too obviously either evil or being manipulated by evil supernatural powers to be taken seriously as a potential direction for Olivia to be pulled between the men in her life. On a non-romantic note, Olivia's parents will turn out to be exonerated of all the murders. I'd find it more interesting if they were guilty for various reasons related to their not being human but I feel like the first book set the tone as far as that's concerned.

At this point I'm reading for the ride and to see exactly how the fairies relate to the murders. And a little bit to see if I'm right.

Overall: B+

The Artful Dodger was always a far more interesting character than Oliver Twist, who mostly burst into tears and got rescued by other people. Why, then, did Charles Dickens choose to write the story of the latter rather than the former? Peter David here proposes the answer: because the story of the Artful Dodger is full of vampires and people simply were not willing to accept that. Having escaped transportation to Australia, the Artful Dodger stumbles into a conspiracy of vampires in high places. (As Peter David points out, Dickens was so known for giving characters revealing names that the practice has become known as Dickensian, and there was a character in the original called Magistrate Fang.) What happens from then is equal parts hilarity and adventure featuring the best known names of 19th century London, historical and fictional. It's terribly fun, with everything I expect from Peter David's fantasy and streaks of Douglas Adams and George MacDonald Fraser as well.

Peter David is in the middle of two series that I would very much like to see continued, and which I'm under the impression are supposed to be, but I have absolutely no bitterness that he chose to write this instead of the next installment of one of them. It might be my favorite book of his yet... or I may need to reread some of the others just to compare and make sure.

Overall: A

I rarely bother to review a cookbook, but that's because it's a rare cookbook that I read straight through. Garden and Table is framed as the journal of Harald Bumbleburr, a halfling. Harald included in his journal detailed notes about recipes he made or enjoyed, and so this book is both useful and entertaining, with the glimpses of Harald's life and hints of his relationships with his neighbors in the narration around the recipes. It was fun to read straight through and I'm looking forward to trying a few of the recipes in it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I know one of the authors, Daniel Myers, who also happens to be Master Eduoard Halidai in the Society of Creative Anachronism. While that did have something to do with my buying it, it does not affect the content of this review. (Not having made any promise to review it, if it weren't worth a good review I'd probably have not bothered to write one at all.)

Overall: A

A middle aged man returns to his hometown for a funeral and wanders to the farm at the end of the road where he grew up. When he was a child, it was occupied by a young girl named Lettie Hempstock, her mother, and her grandmother. There, he remembers strange events that happened to him and Lettie when he was seven.

I didn't enjoy this as much as Anansi Boys, American Gods, or Neverwhere, but it's still beautifully written and has a number of wonderful, stand out quotes in it. It has a certain fable-like quality to it which, though while it is probably exactly the tone it was meant to have and which suits the matter of fact way the narrator accepted what was going on around him as a seven year old, also leaves the characters sketched rather lightly and made it hard for me to connect with them. Sometimes I hoped that the action was going to shift back to the present and that a true adult perspective (as opposed to an adult remembering childhood) would help, but after a few chapters and in such a short book it became evident that wasn't going to happen.

I still expect I'll be rereading this in a few years.

Overall: B

This review is based on an e-galley, which I will miss very much when it expires.

Fool's Assassin is Robin Hobb's fourteenth novel in the Realm of the Elderlings books, and although so far I'd say you could probably get away with just reading the other Fitz trilogies before reading this one (The Farseer Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy), you definitely wouldn't want to leap straight into this.

The most important thing for fans to know about this book is that, although the Fool gets equal billing in the title of the series, he's not on the page much in this book. Don't think that this is his story more than the Tawny Man trilogy is. In fact, there is in general a lot of building in this book and it mostly focuses on Fitz's family relationships and daily life.

That is not to say that I don't like this book. I do. Robin Hobb regularly rips my heart out every hundred pages or so. The Realm of the Elderlings is, as always, fascinating, and her characters are a pleasure to spend time with, even when one wants to shake them. I remember a LiveJournal community called fitz_is_stupid. Fitz remains, in some respects, rather stupid. I don't want to include spoilers for a book well into a series in a review published months before the release date, so I'll just say that something happens less than halfway through the book that seems rather obvious to me, and which Fitz has seen all the evidence for, that he still hasn't gotten at its end. But he is Fitz, and even though he's been well trained in observational skills of the kind that he uses when he reports to Chade, he's still amazingly oblivious in some areas.

This is very much a latter book in a series and the first book in a trilogy. Starting here wouldn't give you a good entry point, and stopping here without the intent to continue wouldn't be satisfying. If you're the sort of person who sometimes can't handle waiting for sequels, this might be a good series to wait to be completed before you start. As for me I'll be on the second book as soon as I possibly can.

Overall Grade: A


Fool's Assassin will be available August 12

This review is based on an advance reading copy received from the publisher.

After Eli Burke dies, his granddaughter, Marjorie, discovers that in his private notebooks, the "White Magician" from the stories he told in her childhood is called the "White Rebbe," a figure out of the Wandering Jew legends on which she's writing her dissertation. The stories contained in the notebooks, involving also the Angel of Losses and a lost letter of the alphabet, not only reveal a lost history of the family but a legacy that must be taken up by the current generation and a possible miracle for Marjorie's sister Holly, from whom she has been estranged since Holly married an Orthodox Jew and converted.

The Angel of Losses is a wonderful mix of magic, history, and folklore (some of it invented). It's also a powerful story of family, of the ties that bind and the ones that people break, or try to, to survive. In a way, it struck me also as the story before a fantasy story- which is not to say that I expect a sequel. It's clearly self contained, but Marjorie ends the story at the brink of something new, and perhaps this isn't the "quest" itself, but the explanation for why Marjorie undertakes it.

Overall Grade: A

The Angel of Losses will be available July 29.

This review is based on an advance reading copy received from the publisher. I did almost finish it in time for the "advance" part to do some good.

The Oversight, a free company of people of mixed supernatural and human blood, has guarded the line between ordinary life and the magical world since ancient times. In early 19th century London, their number has fallen to the bare minimum to keep the order intact and their enemies have seen the opportunity to steal a powerful item they guard.

This book reminded me of a historical Neverwhere more than anything else. The world is permeated by a magical, dreamlike quality, and yet individual people have a matter-of-fact, natural quality that makes it seem perfectly normal in a way that I associate with Neil Gaiman. There were a few characters whose stories seemed underexamined to the point that I wondered what they were doing in the book, but in the last couple of chapters it became clear that this is intended to be the beginning of a series. (That was not apparent from the cover text or any publicity that I've seen.) Most likely those threads will be picked up at another time.

Overall Grade: A

This review is based on an ARC received from the publisher. Normally, that's the only ARC related thing I would say, since it's a given that an ARC is not a final copy and it's likely to be of lesser quality than a finished book. I'd never let any physical or copy-editing issues in an ARC affect my review, but I feel the need to mention that my ARC fell apart as I was reading it.

I feel the need to mention it because I can't think of a better way to sum up my opinion of this book to say that it was falling apart as I was reading it and I still finished it.

James, having just graduated from Oxford, moves to London with the intention of becoming a poet. He finds an aristocrat roommate who introduces him to new aspects of the world. Then he suddenly stops writing to his sister, Charlotte, who comes to find him. This book is atmospheric, gothic horror, intriguing even before the paranormal aspects of the story are out in the open. I'd recommend it not only for fantasy fans but for anybody interested in dark 19th century fiction.

Overall: A


The Quick will be available June 17