The Book Plank

Poison City by Paul Crilley The name's Gideon Tau, but everyone just calls me London. I work for the Delphic Division, the occult investigative unit of the South African Police Service. My life revolves around two things - finding out who killed my daughter and imagining what I'm going to do to the bastard when I catch him. I have two friends. The first is my boss, Armitage, a fifty-something DCI from Yorkshire who looks more like someone's mother than a cop. Don't let that fool you. The second is the dog, my magical spirit guide. He talks, he watches TV all day, and he's a mean drunk. Life is pretty routine - I solve crimes, I search for my daughter's killer. Wash, rinse, repeat. Until the day I'm called out to the murder of a ramanga - a low-key vampire - basically, the tabloid journalist of the vampire world. It looks like an open and shut case. There's even CCTV footage of the killer. Except... the face on the CCTV footage?...

A Kiss With Teeth by Max Gladstone    Vlad has grown distant from his wife. His son has trouble at school. And he has to keep his sharp teeth hidden. By now you all should know who Max Gladstone is and that he is currently one of my favorite authors. His Craft Sequence series is just pitch perfect. Though he has already written 4 full length books in the series there aren't yet (hint) any short stories set in this universe. Instead Max Gladstone has written two stand alone short stories, The Angelus Guns, which I reviewed a month orso back and one that came out just last week A Kiss With Teeth . For me it is by writing such a diverse set of stories that Max Gladstone does mark himself to be a very all-round author. So without going all fanboyish on his Craft Sequence story here are my thoughts on A Kiss With Teeth . I was always very averse to vampires until I read the story James Lovegrove which showed them in a pretty cool light. In A Kiss With Teeth , Max Gladsto...

Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl by David Barnett , Gideon Smith #1 Nineteenth century London is the center of a vast British Empire. Airships ply the skies and Queen Victoria presides over three-quarters of the known world—including the East Coast of America, following the failed revolution of 1775. London might as well be a world away from Sandsend, a tiny village on the Yorkshire coast. Gideon Smith dreams of the adventure promised him by the lurid tales of Captain Lucian Trigger, the Hero of the Empire, told in Gideon’s favorite “penny dreadful.” When Gideon’s father is lost at sea in highly mysterious circumstances Gideon is convinced that supernatural forces are at work. Deciding only Captain Lucian Trigger himself can aid him, Gideon sets off for London. On the way he rescues the mysterious mechanical girl Maria from a tumbledown house of shadows and iniquities. Together they make for London, where Gideon finally meets Captain Trigger. But Trigger is little m...

Deadly Curiosities by Gail Z. Martin, Deadly Curiosities #1 Cassidy Kincaide owns Trifles & Folly, an antique/curio store and high-end pawn shop in Charleston, South Carolina that is more than what it seems. Dangerous magical and supernatural items sometimes find their way into mortal hands or onto the market, and Cassidy is part of a shadowy Alliance of mortals and mages whose job it is to take those deadly curiosities out of circulation. Welcome to Trifles & Folly, an antique and curio shop with a dark secret. Proprietor Cassidy Kincaide continues a family tradition begun in 1670—acquiring and neutralizing dangerous supernatural items. It’s the perfect job for Cassidy, whose psychic gift lets her touch an object and know its history. Together with her business partner Sorren, a 500 year-old vampire and former jewel thief, Cassidy makes it her business to get infernal objects off the market. When mundane antiques suddenly become magically malicious, it’s time fo...

A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick 'I've chased him for over twenty years, and across countless miles, and though often I was running, there have been many times when I could do nothing but sit and wait. Now I am only desperate for it to be finished.' In 1944, just days after the liberation of Paris, Charles Jackson sees something horrific: a man, apparently drinking the blood of a murdered woman. Terrified, he does nothing, telling himself afterwards that worse things happen in wars. Seven years later he returns to the city - and sees the same man dining in the company of a fascinating young woman. When they leave the restaurant, Charles decides to follow... Every once in a while you come across a book that has a very catchy synopsis and readily invites you to pick it up and devour it I had just this feeling when I read the synopsis of A Love Like Blood. It in someway tells what the main idea of the story is but already promises so much more, especially the ...

Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines, Magic Ex Libris #1 Isaac Vainio is a Libriomancer, a member of a secret society founded five centuries ago by Johannes Gutenberg. As such, he is gifted with the magical ability to reach into books and draw forth objects. But when Gutenberg vanishes without a trace, Isaac finds himself pitted against everything from vampires to a sinister, nameless foe who is bent on revealing magic to the world at large... and at any cost . How cool is this? Please read the second sentence of the synopsis: " gifted with the magical ability to reach into books and draw forth objects" if this doesn't get you excited to read Libriomancer as an SF/F fan I frankly have no idea what will! Libriomancer is the first book in the Magic Ex Libris series written by Jim C. Hines who is well known for his other series that include Jig the Goblin and Princess. The Magic Ex Libris is his latest series that takes place in an urban fantasy setting with an element...

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead #1 A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart. Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot. Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith. When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival. The are few book that leave me speechless and Three Parts Dead is once of them. What Max Gladstone managed to pull of is just amazing. Three Parts Dead is remar...

Stray Souls by Kate Griffin, Magicals Anonymous #1 London’s soul has gone missing. Lost? Kidnapped? Murdered? Nobody knows – but when Sharon Li unexpectedly discovers she’s a shaman, she is immediately called upon to use her newfound powers of oneness with the City to rescue it from a slow but inevitable demise. The problem is, while everyone expects Sharon to have all the answers – from the Midnight Mayor to Sharon’s magically-challenged self-help group – she doesn’t have a clue where to start. But with London’s soul missing and the Gate open, there are creatures loose that won’t wait for her to catch up before they go hunting. Urban Fantasy is becoming ever more popular in the recent years and the first UF series that I started reading was Kate Griffin’s Matthew Swift and was utterly amazed by what she had put on paper. I liked the whole ordeal with Matthew Swift very much. Kate Griffin wrote the first book Stray Souls in a new series called Magicals Anonymous last y...