Trabia Garden

Fire and Bones by Kathy Reichs: This is a Temperance Brennan novel, also of Bones TV show fame, chosen with no regard for series order but simply because it's the one my library happened to have available for immediate ebook download when I wanted it. This didn't seem to matter, as it usually doesn't in this kind of long-running crime series. There was some stuff about a relationship in the background that was clearly part of a longer-running arc, but it was pretty self-explanatory and neither took up much page space nor made any difference to the main mystery plot. That said, it was a very odd reading experience, in ways I don't think are accounted for just by not knowing Temperance's full backstory.

( No spoilers, just thoughts )

Naked in Death by JD Robb (AKA Nora Roberts): JD Robb is the penname Nora Roberts uses for her near-future, lightly sci-fi tinged crime/romance genre mashup novels. I did start this series in the correct order, at the strict urging of my mother, who has been dying to have someone to enthuse with about these books for ages and who pounced the moment I mentioned being in the mood for something quick, formulaic and exciting. This certainly fit the bill, although it also went to some dark places that I had definitely not osmosed to expect from Nora Roberts.

The protagonist Eve Dallas is a police lieutenant working in New York in the late 2050s. Guns have been outlawed; sex work has been legalised and heavily regulated for safety; despite these facts, sex workers are getting killed with guns in a string of clearly related homicides. Eve is assigned to the case as primary investigator, but her professionalism soon comes under threat from two directions: the nature of the case dredges up old wounds related to her own childhood trauma, while the romantic overtures of a mysterious, handsome, absurdly wealthy entrepreneur named Roarke start to win her over despite her best efforts to stay distant.

( More thoughts )

Deliver Me by Ashley Hawthorne: My adventures in pull-to-pub Reylo fic continue, and...oh, man. How do I even begin to review this one? I haven't had such warring feelings about a book since The Hurricane Wars. I think there's a common theme here where I have so much fannish goodwill towards these books that I give them leeway on flaws that would otherwise be an instant DNF, and then I end up enjoying them so much that I'm glad I gave them that leeway, but the flaws are still very much there and ARGH...

Let me start by saying that I unreservedly adore what this book is trying to be. It's about Mia, a Texan college student and devout (but very socially progressive) Christian who joins her Bible study's prison pen pal initiative and gets paired with Gabriel, who at 28 years old has been incarcerated since his mid-teens for the murder of his father. Mia soon comes to understand that Gabriel did not get a fair trial: abandoned by his remaining family, too young and traumatised to self-advocate, he was left to the mercy of an overworked, disinterested public defender and a media circus that the courts took no measures whatsoever to manage. His history of harrowing abuse and the desperate circumstances surrounding the altercation with his father were all excluded from evidence, and he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole when his mitigating circumstances should have reduced the conviction to second degree. He and Mia fall in love and begin a relationship through their correspondence; Mia becomes passionate about the brokenness of the Texas justice system and changes her major with the goal of becoming a lawyer; she also convinces a nihilistically resigned Gabriel to appeal his conviction in the hopes of a fairer retrial.

( Thoughts, technically with spoilers, though nothing you wouldn't guess from the first few chapters )

[VID] Bloody Creature Poster Girl by satanicnightjar: A tribute to monster/demon/slasher/psycho girls in film. Content warnings for blood, gore, violence, and general R-rated content.