Welcome to Litsy!

I wanted to like this book. One of my fave genres. But I found that I was forcing myself to pick it up. At 50%, I finally started skimming & even skipping entire sections. Then I read the last couple of chapters.

And I missed nothing. I knew exactly what was happening. In a word, disappointing.

There is a map . . . But not until the very end of the book, right before the glossary. Weird.

Book 2 for #MarvellousMarch
#roll100 roll 2 book

#weekendreads

1. The tagged & Mostly Dead Things

2. Pride & Prejudice – I reread it every so often

3. Several on my TBR bookcase, including Anna Karenina, Treasure Island, Tess of the d‘Ubervilles, Last of the Mohicans, & Crime and Punishment

Mostly Dead Things was too conspicuous with its bright cover to read at work so I had to switch to the tagged with its plain black cover. Nicely camouflaged against the other books and papers on my desk.

I mean, no, I‘m not reading at work. I‘d *never* do that. 😉😆

Does anyone else remember PageHabit? I miss that subscription as I like reading the author‘s annotations.

As of now, the Soviets are the Eastern front; England is the Western front. And the five of us left alive in this castle...are the Midnight Front.

Minutes melted into hours as Adair sat alone in the dark, enveloped in mourning. When at last he arrived on the far shore of his despair, he was left with a great emptiness, a hunger for meaning. His chest heaved with painful sobs for which he had no breath, so his body shook in near silence as he surrendered to his heartbreak.

“Fresh baguettes. Two sausages. And a wedge of triple-cream Brie.”
The spy‘s eyes widened as if he‘d been offered the fortune of Midas. “How? From where? All the food is rationed! The Germans haven‘t left us a bite in weeks!”

•In war time, food IS gold!

A finger of absinthe, then a drizzle of laudanum over a sugar cube. The cloudy mixture in the glass promised Cade black slumbers. In the space of two breaths, his coiled-spring mood unraveled, and he felt his mind sink into the drug‘s blissful fathoms. Demonic whispers followed him into the deep. You cannot escape us, threatened Azael.

Outside the frost covered windows of the Führer Bunker, all of which faced north into the Masurian woods, downy flakes took drunken paths to the snow-covered ground. The perimeter of a compound was ringed with land mines. Inside the camp, hundreds of soldiers stood guard day and night. It would be a winter paradise if not for the Nazis.

The locomotive‘s breaks went quiet to a halt. Doors opened on several of the passenger cars. A few people disembarked. They all hunched their shoulders against the cold and moved with the haste of people seeking warmth on a night when gusts off the Seine were like knives that pierced even the thickest coats.

First, the bad: David Mack's writing style isn't particularly great. Its hard to pick out what exactly is off, but his writing lacks in a way that often gives it a feel of being written by a high school student. Forgiving that, though, this is a great book and should be a great series. The idea and mechanics of magick in this novel is very original and very interesting, and that combined with a gripping story and characters make it worthwhile.

Change of plans. I've been sitting on this for a couple months and haven't gotten around to it until now.