Review: The Uskoks of Senj

Hello dear reader(s) and welcome back to another instalment of Nessa reads and reviews. I’m really excited about this review because this is the 50^th book I’ve read this year for my Goodreads challenge! 🙂 It’s also the book that took me the longest to finish! I started it on May 1^st and finished it on November 21^st! That’s over 6 months! >_< The reasons it took me so long to finish wary from: I didn’t have time… I wasn’t in the mood… I got lost in the footnotes… However, that doesn’t imply that the book is dull or drudgery; on the contrary the subject is fascinating, well researched and marvellously written. Academic books simply take me longer to read because of the richness and complexity of the work. I’ll touch on that subject a bit later.

 

Review: The Black God’s Drums

Hello dear reader(s) and welcome back to the blog! I know it’s been a long time since I reviewed something for you… I have been reading and catching up on my reading, but I’ll write more about this in a dedicated blog post. However, this October I participated in another Dewey’s Readathon (the next one is on April 6^th 2019) and that helped me get back in the reading saddle so to speak. 😀 Anyway, for this instalment of Nessa reads and reviews I present P. Djèlí Clark’s The Black God’s Drums. If the author’s name sounds familiar to you, I’ve already reviewed his novelette A Dead Djinn in Cairo on the blog so you can check out that post. If you haven’t read that, well it’s as good a time as any. I’ll wait, we have all the time in the world. 🙂

 

Review: Edwin Weaver series

Hello dear reader(s)! I hope you are doing well and that you’ve somehow managed to cope with the heat. If like me you just want this heat wave to be over, hold fast. As they say: this too shall pass. Until then distract yourself with another summer instalment of Nessa reads books and writes reviews (NRBWR). I really should come up with a better title for this, or at least a shorter one… Nessa reads and reviews? What do you think about that? Well it’s short and to the point, so I should keep it. But onward to the review.

As is the case with almost any book that I read, I stumbled into Catherine Hanley’s Edwin Weaver series by accident. If I remember correctly historian Greg Jenner retweeted Hanley’s tweet about the publication of her latest Edwin Weaver novel, and down the Google hole I went. 🙂 Intrigued by the synopsis I downloaded a free chapter of the 1^st book in the series The Sins of the Father on my e-reader (Kobo Aura H2O 2^nd edition if you were curious) and started reading just to see if it would interest me enough to start the series. Spoiler alert: it did. 🙂 I bought the whole series and dug in.

 

Review: Detective Sean Duffy series

Hello dear reader(s) and welcome to another (belated) summer instalment of Nessa reads books and writes reviews (NRBWR). 🙂 Everyone’s concept of an enjoyable beach read is different; some folks like romances, others fantasy, or science fiction. A friend of mine likes to read history books on the beach. Some stick to glossy magazines ‘cause the sun is shining so brightly, the temperatures are above 35⁰C and your higher thought processes start shutting down. For me personally the ideal summer and beach reads are crime novels; they’re the perfect combination of a puzzle, thriller and tour guide, especially if you’re reading a series.

 

Review: Deadman’s Crossing

Hello dear reader(s) and welcome to the summer instalment of Nessa reads books and writes reviews (NRBWR). 🙂 I’m kicking off the summer reading & review session with a Weird West short story collection by the master of the genre Joe R. Lansdale. If this is your first encounter with Mr. Lansdale you’re in for a treat! Lansdale is a prolific writer, and he’s written novels and stories in various genres from western, horror, mystery to science fiction and suspense. His Hap and Leonard book series was adapted into a TV show (which was sadly cancelled after 3 seasons). You can read more about the author and his works here, and you can find him on Twitter too.