My last 5 books: Thriller and adventure

1. Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith. This book was brilliant in so many ways. Exploring Strike's feelings for his family, but also for Robin, and Robin exploring her feelings towards her job, her future and for Strike, as well as dealing with a nasty divorce from Matthew. The agency is doing great and they're handed their first cold case: the disappearance of Margot Bamborough back in 1974. This book takes place in 2013-2014 and it's almost 40 years since she disappeared. Strike and Robin are given a year to try to find out what happened to Margot, and it becomes a case that has them delving deep into astrology and psychopathy, with lots of unsavoury men and women who aren't what they seem. There are so many plot points, so many side plots and all of them come together brilliantly in the end. It's extremely satisfying to see the author tie together everything in a way that makes complete sense. The only thing that brings the overall rating down is the fact that it sometimes gets a bit too preachy with the feminist stuff.

2. Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood, by James Malcolm Rymer. This is a compilation of a penny dreadful, so it's trash literature, but it's trash literature that has somehow lasted almost 200 years so that's got to count for something. This penny dreadful predates Dracula by half a century and I was so excited to get into another gothic vampire tale. But penny dreadful authors were paid by the word and damn it shows. After 210 pages I just couldn't anymore. In those 210 pages we've had the initial vampire attack and then just 200 pages of reiterated dialogue and back-and-forth actions that didn't lead anywhere. 200 pages in and we're still in the same situation we were 200 pages ago. And it isn't even halfway. As to not completely kill my reading mood I decided to DNF this and potentially come back to it at a later time. There are glimpses of a complicated and interesting character in Varney, but it's all so densely buried in all the useless dialogue and non-actions. The editor's footnotes in this edition are a highlight though, as it seems they might've been a bit passive-aggressive towards Rymer and the Victorian society overall. It's so frustrating because I can see there's a story underneath all the useless words, it just takes an age to get through all the words to find the story. 

3. The Ink Black Heart, by Robert Galbraith. These two characters has to be the slowest slow-burn in the history of slow-burns. I need them to stop being so goddamn polite and considerate and just talk to one another! The story in this one revolves around the dark side of fandom, and it's eerily accurate sometimes. Honestly, the most unbelievable thing is that Robin didn't know tumblr or Twitter before she started working on this case. It's 2015, she just turned 30, which makes her only five years older than me, she would've known about both of those sites. Or it's just implied she has spent the last 12 or so years living under a rock while social media evolved online. I get Strike not knowing, but not Robin. I had all sorts of theories throughout reading this as to who the killer was, and once or twice those theories touched upon the truth, but I could always find reasons why someone else was more probable. As someone who spends a great amount of time chatting online while staying mostly anonymous, this was a great and pretty chilling story. One of the best ones in the series!

4. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. A few years ago everybody talked about this book so I decided to read it. It started out interesting enough, but within 100 pages it was getting obvious that this was all there was to it. This is the story of their lives which are absolutely ordinary aside from the little thing that Henry is so-called chrono-impaired, meaning he sometimes just time travels for no reason at all. Sometimes just for minutes, sometimes for days. It never becomes a conflict and the only major issue it presents is that it makes it difficult for them to have a baby. Throughout the story there's this looming shadow of something that's going to happen when Henry is 43, but when it does happen it's completely underwhelming and I just face-palmed when I read it. It was a very disappointing end to an otherwise bland book. Not my thing.

5.Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. I've been meaning to read this series for years. I love Greek mythology. This book was just as fun as I expected, albeit a bit predictable. I didn't expect Percy to be twelve though, I thought he'd be at least fifteen, but it ended up not being such a big deal. Despite the book being a lot of me figuring things out way ahead of time and me just waiting for the characters to catch up, I had a lot of fun reading it and I'm excited to keep going with this series. Despite having heard of this series I knew nothing about it going in. I knew there was Greek mythology and that was about it, really. I figured out Percy's father long before the rest of the characters. I figured out who was going to betray Percy as soon as the Oracle told him the prophecy. I figured out who the ultimate bad guy was long before they started speculating, but it's a kids book so it was fine. I love all the characters and the story was fast-paced and fun. I'm into it.