Somebody's Daughter by David Bell

 

This is one of those modern thrillers that confuses interminable twists and a surfeit of variously unreliable narrators for cleverness. Somewhere in the back half I was finally able to turn off the part/s of my brain that were trying to figure out what was going on and just read; the book didn't necessarily get better, but it got less unpleasant. It's a little harder to pull off unreliable narrator/s when you stick to third, but the tight third here enables the decision--there's one narrator who's a little more reliable, and they're also the character acting less stupidly than just about all the others. So many people with so little in the way of redeeming characteristics, it's vaguely amazing I finished the novel. I picked this up at the library because I remembered reading another book by the author, I remember being ambivalent about it, but liking it more than this. Oh well.

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

 

A collection of short stories, mostly from the 1950s into the early 1960s (*Slaughterhouse-Five* was published in 1969, so at least most of these would have been before he broke big (ish). Some of them are, of course, better than others--it was a pleasure to renew my acquaintance with "Harrison Bergeron," others did much less--but Vonnegut is always Vonnegut, his voice and his concerns and his viewpoints remain clear throughout the lot of them, in all their various absurdities (and even the most mundane of them are at heart absurd). I should probably read more Vonnegut as I come across him.

The Far Edges of the Known World by Owen Rees

 

A really interesting book, lots of information in it. It's amazing how vast trade networks were in antiquity--and maybe technically earlier. The idea that Han dynasty China and the Roman Empire were trying to exchange messages in the second century CE is ... astonishing. The point overall is that just about anyplace can be the center of life, or a lifestyle, or trading, or learning, or whatever; and that can be orthogonal to larger centers of political power, especially when there are empires around. The book does a convincing job of arguing that the interstices between established polities need more examination by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. I don't have enough stuff in my head about the various cultures to feel confident what's in this book will stick, at this point, but it's very worth reading if the subject matter interests.

Head Cases by John McMahon

 

Apparently this is book one of a series, possibly a trilogy instead of something indefinite (the author has done a trilogy before, though I don't know how planned). This is a decently-written procedural-ish novel, a bunch of FBI agents matching wits with a very smart serial killer (which has a specific meaning in law enforcement, and is used correctly in the novel despite a putative psychologist apparently refusing to accept it as a term) but it's all told from the point of view of an agent who is somewhere on the autism spectrum, though he apparently functions at least mostly OK in society; he's an interesting narrator, both as a character and as an authorial decision. The other characters are pretty clear and relatively believable (given the inherent plausibility problems with the sub-genre); most of the twists and reveals were adequately foreshadowed, so it didn't feel like endless "no it's another twist" thinking it was clever. Pretty decent, but not anything I feel a need to read more about.

Zer0es by Chuck Wendig

 

This is a kinda older Wendig novel--it predates his recent turn to more purely Horror subjects--and it's a little ... weird. There are some real body-horror moments in it, and some bits about loss of control and/or self, but it plays mostly as like a technothriller.  Wendig apparently has a past dealing with people on the technological fringes, and he seems to have enough of a grasp of what the hackers in the novel are doing to convey it without getting supertechnical about it. There's at least one moment that had me smacking my forehead (Wendig should have done a little research ...) but I got past it. I think he's gotten better as a novelist, but this is pretty good.

Killer on the Road by Stephen Graham Jones

 

I found this while I was on vacation a few months ago--it's two short novels in one book, each with its own front cover (the mutual back is in the middle) and I read this side of the book tonight. It's a decent slasherish horror novel--slasher isn't my main jam, but this one works, though some of what happens seems more like something that'd work better in a movie, where there are actual visuals. It's a kinda goofy novel--slasher is often goofy--but there's some stuff going on it, things about being Native American, things about loss, things about friendship and family. There's a little weirdness in the beginning as the POV character/s persist in making things worse for themselves, but bad decisions are also a part of slasher. The ending does kinda grab, and resolves a lot more than one might expect a slasher story to bother with. This is well in Jones's wheelhouse and he delivers well.

Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield

 

Finally DNFed a book, which given some of my recent reads is saying something. It's a crime novel that hinges on the mains (or at least one set of them) making bad decisions, then making bad decisions on top of those in a death spiral. I'm not in a place to dig that, and I'm really not in a place to dig that happening at a fucking snail's pace, in thudding slow prose, with so many POV characters it's nigh-impossible to keep them straight (there are at least seven). Also a slow-motion flashback in-between some of the chapters adding literally nothing to the story. Took like almost half of the 380+ pages for the murder to happen, it didn't look as though the pace was going to accelerate, I bailed.