Tuesday, January 31, 2012

This is such a cool story!

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-five-elements-of-the-heart-mind/#comment-4343

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Review of The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill

This book is only the second book set in Laos that I have ever read. The setting is fascinating. The suspense is high. The coroner is sweet, except when he is sarcastic, but his victims deserve it, and being sarcastic endangers his life, so you admire his bravery.

He is a communist and had fought for Laos to become communist. At age 72, the communists finally won and he assumed he could retire from being a physician. The party screws him over and makes him the country's only coroner. He learns how to be one as he turns the pages of a French pathology textbook. His assistants are a nurse who reads gossip magazines at work and a man with Down's Syndrome.

When three bodies are found in a lake with marks of torture on them, the incident threatens to cause a war between Laos and Vietnam. He works to find the truth of the deaths, hoping the truth will avert the war. He is also working on the cause of the death of an official's wife, and then the death of the woman who allegedly confessed to the crime.

And then somebody starts shooting at him. He wonders how to keep himself and his assistants alive while he keeps on ferreting out the truth.

Hmong spirituality is treated seriously. I never know what the tribal beliefs of the Hmong were, so that is also fascinating.

I am going to buy a lot more books by Colin Cotterill.

Review of Dragons of the Watch by Donita K Paul

I won this book at a Christmas writer's meeting.
Some books I take to the used book store for credit; some I like enough to pass on to others. This book will be given to my nieces who like fantasy. It has some romance in it which did not offend me!!!! Only if you know how much I hate romance will you know what a remarkable statement that is. I liked the romance because the characters involved took their time to get to know each other and fell in love because they admired each other's character.  I liked the puzzle solving and bravery of the protagonists. I even liked the little dragons. If you know a girl who likes fantasy, this would make a good present for her.