Novels novels novels

Working through the haul from Porter Square Books. First I read one I quite liked except for my feeling that really it had originally been written as second in a series and somehow hastily edited into being first but with references to backstory only awkwardly integrated, then one that I actually had to stop reading, it was so much not my kind of book (I was in a mass-market-paperback dark-fantasy kind of mood, it looked just right, but it was written in these long wordy blocky paragraphs like you would not believe, Tom Clancyesque almost, with such flat characters that I couldn't stomach it).

I have sometimes thought that if I ever have a much larger readership for my blog than I do now (i.e. if I moved from hundreds to thousands), I will have to stop saying bad things about books I don't like; meanwhile I continue to indulge the critical streak, but I have no urge to put a small bad thing into the day of the author idly googling her own name so when I really have nothing good to say I think it is better to hold my tongue. But I link in case you're curious. And I reserve the right to say bad but true things about books that I think have been treated unduly kindly by reviewers and/or throngs of purchasers.

Then just now this evening a really lovely novel, a novel of brilliance and of consolation, Mockingbird by Sean Stewart. I've read one or two of his others & really liked them, but this one blew me away: it's great. It's been reissued by the excellent Small Beer Press, I must get a lot more of their books and read them. (Actually I have a fantasy of them publishing my novel, but I think they only publish a pretty small amount of stuff so that is not likely.) Anyway, here's the link if you want to order it directly from the press which I strongly recommend.