Mid-June 2018 books
I have several series that I hope to replace with ebooks. I managed to find two series were released relatively recently as ebooks. Sometimes they are available but seem too expensive--more than it would cost to replace my existing copies.
One is a mystery series set in El Paso by Nancy Herndon. I picked up the first one but haven't re-read it yet.
I also found that the Peter and Kori Brichter series by Mary Monica Pulver had been released as ebooks. Prices were okay so I bought the first one to see if the suck fairy had visited. The story is about a police detective and a sheltered young woman who becomes his wife.
The first book is Murder at the War AKA Knight Fall. Peter and Kori are at the Pennsic War, a Society for Creative Anachronism convention. A man gets killed during a forest battle. Kori finds him just as he’s dying while Peter is roped in to do a parallel investigation with the actual police. Kori and Peter had had a run-in with him earlier and the dead man had made plenty of people unhappy with him. If you want to know what SCA and SF&F conventions were like in the '80s, it'll give you a view into that. Definitely before SJW and #MeToo, etc. There's a lot of exposition on what everyone's wearing, how armor's put together, etc.
The second book, The Unforgiving Minutes, tells how they met. Kori's parents were killed when she was a child and she's been kept in seclusion ever since by her guardian. Peter is friends with her private tutor.
I like these books a lot, but they are a product of their times.
The third book, Ashes to Ashes, deals with arson while the fourth book, Original Sin, is a bit of a locked room / country house party. The final book, Showstopper, takes place at an Arabian horse show--Kori is a breeder.
I also managed to get an ARC of the fourth novella in the Murderbot series, Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells. I hope she gets an opportunity to write more stories in this series. Murderbot is a SecBot / Security Robot, made from a mix of artificial and cloned human flesh. This society also has ComfortBots and Combatbots. All are considered nonhuman tools and can even be tortured or otherwise abused or ignored by humans. Murderbot hacked its Governor Module after a massacre occurred at one of its jobs. It never wanted that to happen again. It's been trying to figure out what exactly happened (most of its memories of the incident were wiped). It's on its way back to Dr. Mensah when it finds out that she's disappeared. Murderbot is a wonderfully snarky character just trying to figure what to do with the rest of its life.
While waiting for the novella, I commenced a reread of the first 3 Raksura novels...again.
One is a mystery series set in El Paso by Nancy Herndon. I picked up the first one but haven't re-read it yet.
I also found that the Peter and Kori Brichter series by Mary Monica Pulver had been released as ebooks. Prices were okay so I bought the first one to see if the suck fairy had visited. The story is about a police detective and a sheltered young woman who becomes his wife.
The first book is Murder at the War AKA Knight Fall. Peter and Kori are at the Pennsic War, a Society for Creative Anachronism convention. A man gets killed during a forest battle. Kori finds him just as he’s dying while Peter is roped in to do a parallel investigation with the actual police. Kori and Peter had had a run-in with him earlier and the dead man had made plenty of people unhappy with him. If you want to know what SCA and SF&F conventions were like in the '80s, it'll give you a view into that. Definitely before SJW and #MeToo, etc. There's a lot of exposition on what everyone's wearing, how armor's put together, etc.
The second book, The Unforgiving Minutes, tells how they met. Kori's parents were killed when she was a child and she's been kept in seclusion ever since by her guardian. Peter is friends with her private tutor.
I like these books a lot, but they are a product of their times.
The third book, Ashes to Ashes, deals with arson while the fourth book, Original Sin, is a bit of a locked room / country house party. The final book, Showstopper, takes place at an Arabian horse show--Kori is a breeder.
I also managed to get an ARC of the fourth novella in the Murderbot series, Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells. I hope she gets an opportunity to write more stories in this series. Murderbot is a SecBot / Security Robot, made from a mix of artificial and cloned human flesh. This society also has ComfortBots and Combatbots. All are considered nonhuman tools and can even be tortured or otherwise abused or ignored by humans. Murderbot hacked its Governor Module after a massacre occurred at one of its jobs. It never wanted that to happen again. It's been trying to figure out what exactly happened (most of its memories of the incident were wiped). It's on its way back to Dr. Mensah when it finds out that she's disappeared. Murderbot is a wonderfully snarky character just trying to figure what to do with the rest of its life.
While waiting for the novella, I commenced a reread of the first 3 Raksura novels...again.