The Extinction Trials by A. G. Riddle

My partner and I had a recent road trip to meet family in Virginia. As we do, we borrowed an audiobook from the library to enjoy on the road. We chose this one as my partner had read some of the author’s other books and liked them. We didn’t finish it on our trip, but when I had some work to do around the house I finally finished listening to it on my own.

It opens with a prologue describing an idea for how to save humanity from itself. As the novel itself starts, things are going very wrong. Eventually, the two main characters end up in some kind of bunker with a bunch of others. They learn that they are a part of the “extinction trials” and begin to try to figure out what to do.

Much of this book feels like an escape room game that you might play on your smartphone. That feels like a criticism to me, but somehow I actually liked it. There is a lot of action and mystery in this one, making it a thriller (that’s part of why my partner chose it). One giant reveal waits at the end after a series of smaller ones unfold. It was pure entertainment with only a little bit of message. Overall I very much enjoyed it.

My rating: 4/5

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

The genre for the month of August in my book club was mystery/thriller. This is the book that we ended up reading. It is not one that I was familiar with or had heard of before. I found the story deeply interesting and engrossing while the writing left a bit to be desired.

The story begins in 1975 and revolves around a one-eyed preteen young man everyone calls Patch. Young girls about his age are disappearing. When he happens upon this happening in the woods and stops it, he is taken instead. This turns his world upside down. His best friend Saint never stops looking for him even after all of the rest of the town has given up on her friend.

This is a story about many things: love across the years, overcoming tragedy, and deep friendship. The plot has many twists and turns. The writing was a little off for me. For one thing, the author is British telling a story in the US, so some of the writing just feels out of place. Like when he mentions that something “came by post”. And the language at times tries to be so flowery and poetic that the meaning and storytelling become obscured. But overall, this is a beautiful, nuanced story of tragedy and how it can affect a young person for the rest of their life. Though it tries too hard in some places and fails to communicate, when it does communicate, it gets under you skin and hits you in the feels.

My rating: 4/5

Long Time Gone by Charlie Donlea

This was one of those books that I listened to in the car on a long road trip. We like to listen to thrillers that keep our attention and entertain us as the road goes by. This was a good choice.

A young woman is studying to become a medical examiner. As a forensic scientist, she must do a thesis on the topic of her advisor’s choosing. Her advisor chooses genetics as her area of focus. Diving in to get started, she submits her DNA to an online ancestry tool and learns that she is the baby that disappeared almost thirty years ago to national attention. As she tries to delay the inevitable national attention that will again be coming her way, she works to unravel what happened to her and her birth parents all those years ago.

This is a rip roaring adventure tale with many plot turns and twists. There is a bit of explicitly described gore, but largely the story is suspense driven. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing was nothing special for me, but it was excellent in the sense that I didn’t notice it, I was so absorbed in the story.

My rating: 4/5

Run by Blake Crouch

I recently watched on Apple TV+ the new series Dark Matter based on the book of the same name by Blake Crouch. I enjoyed it so much that I went looking to see if he had anything new coming out. I was excited to find on NetGalley, that he has a book coming out in the fall called simply Run. Turns out that this was originally self-published by the author in 2011. It is being published for the first time by Ballantine Books. It’s tentative release date is October 22. I read an advanced reader copy of the ebook provided by NetGalley.

Run is an apocalyptic thriller that takes place in essentially present times. An unexpected and (at first) unexplained pandemic has led many in Jack’s community of Albuquerque, NM to become randomly murderous. TV and radio are down except for the announcement of who those affected will be coming to kill next. When Jack hears his own name on the radio, he swiftly packs his family and camping gear into their SUV and run. The plot follows them as they head north toward Canada, doing their best to avoid those affected in order to stay together and alive.

This is a very dark novel. It is not as well-written as his more recent work, but there are glimpses of what is to come. The challenges and emotions of the family are the strength of this novel. The pace is unrelenting. There are no named chapters and no table of contents. This feels like a purposeful choice to keep you turning the pages. It works. Even the clipped writing, with regular incomplete sentences, feeds the urgency. As I read this book, I was reminded of other apocalyptic novels like The Stand by Stephen King and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Unfortunately, this one does not rise to that level. It is much darker and more grim while not being as well-written. It was an interesting glimpse into Crouch’s early work, but if you are looking for an apocalyptic thriller, I recommend the others I mentioned. If you want to read Blake Crouch, you are better off starting with Dark Matter or Recursion.

My rating: 3/5

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

I can’t recall how this book got on my list of books to read. It sounded interesting but never really grabbed me. Must have been on some “best” list or recommended by someone whose opinion I respect. Unfortunately, I didn’t record that when I added it to my list. I finally picked it up when it was selected by my book for our June read for Pride Month. It was way better than I ever expected.

The story is about a family that finds and protects magic books from a mysterious group of people known only as the Library who are buying up all the magic books they can get their hands on. The focus is on the two sisters, one who can hear that the books are magic and can read their spells into being (Joanna) and the other who can’t hear the magic but has a special role to play nonetheless (Esther). The action opens with Esther, who moves every year, in Antarctica as she decides to stay for another year for her girlfriend who she is falling in love with. At the same time Joanna is still at home renewing the wards every year that protect her home and the magic books in the basement vault, having taken over for her father who died when he read a spell from a magic book that drained all his blood. Esther finds some worrying things happening in Antarctica that leave her questioning her decision to stay. Things simply take off from there.

This is the best book I have read so far this year. The storytelling is cinematic and propulsive. There are numerous twists and turns that I never saw coming. I may have been able to but the story had me turning the pages so quickly I didn’t have time to think or analyse too deeply. The family relationships, which are a big part of the story, pull you in while still feeling real enough to happen. This is truly a tale well told that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good thriller.

My rating: 5/5

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

Last weekend, my partner and I drove up to southern Ohio/northern Kentucky to visit friends. As we always do on a long car ride, we downloaded a few audiobooks to listen to. We do that in case the first one we pick isn’t to our liking. Well, we never got passed our first choice, *Killers of a Certain Age* by Deanna Raybourn.

This is the story of four dear friends, all women, who worked together for forty years and are about to retire. What is most unusual about these ladies is that they were all assassins for an extra-governmental agency. As they gather to celebrate their retirement, they discover that they have become targets themselves. The rest of the book explores how they work together to deal with this surprising turn of events, the hunters becoming the hunted.

This book is a romp! It is fantastic fun for those of us over fifty and learning all the challenges that go with getting older. These sixty-year-old women discuss everything that aging women go through while trying to stay alive and clear their names. While the dialog is snappy and engaging, the plot is propulsive and clever. My phone automatically restarted the book each time I plugged it into the car as we drove around last weekend. And no matter how short the drive, we couldn’t turn it off.

My rating: 4/5

Going Zero by Anthony McCarten

I am of two minds with this book. The story is a fascinating and propulsive thriller, but the editing in the first half of the book is abysmal. I learned about this book from a blog post. The blogger read and recommended it. The premise is right up my ally, so I got it from by library and started reading.

The story is about a beta test run by a company called Fusion who have partnered with the CIA. Together they have developed a program that is designed to track down any individual no matter how much they try to hide. The book begins as the test starts. There are ten people selected from those who applied. They each have thirty days to “go zero” and avoid capture. If they succeed, they win three million dollars. While the book follows each of the ten, one of them in particular is the focus. She is a librarian who no one expects much from. But she is much more than she seems.

As I said, this a great thriller. The author is a Hollywood screenwriter, and the book has the feel of a blockbuster summer movie. Unfortunately, there were times where editing mistakes just yanked me right out of the story. Here is one example. A character is crossing Lake Ontario from Oswego, NY to Canada. The book explains that a helicopter out of Buffalo is crossing Lake Michigan on its way to intercept. But Lake Michigan is far west of Buffalo on the other side of Michigan, in the opposite direction. Then later the same helicopter is said to be out of Detroit.

Aside from these unfortunate interruptions, the book is fantastic. It explores ideas around privacy, relationships, doing the right thing, and the corruption of power. And all of this in a page turner with twists throughout it. Without the errors, this would be five stars from me.

My rating: 4/5

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

The author’s previous novel Red Shirts plays off the trope that every time in Star Trek a team goes on an away mission, a red shirted security officer dies. The characters slowly realize this is happening to them, and they need to figure out what to do about it. I read this book and enjoyed it very much. It was clever, funny, and propulsive. So when Scalzi came out with his latest novel Starter Villain, I was excited to read it.

The main character is Charlie, a down on his luck divorced substitute teacher trying to buy a pub and change his life. After learning that his estranged Uncle has died, one of his employees shows up with an unusual request. She wants him to “stand up” for his uncle at his funeral. While doing so, things get even weirder. Eventually, he learns that his uncle was a villain, complete with a volcanic island lair and genetically altered sentient cats.

Despite the absurd premise, this novel actually works in the same quirky way that Red Shirts works. Charlie is an every man that is easy to root for as he begins to learn the family business and attempt to hold his own against his competitors. Naturally, not everything goes to plan and the ending is one that I feel like I should have seen coming, but I didn’t. I was simply too busy enjoying the ride to try to figure out where it was going.

My rating: 4/5

The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow

I got an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley.com in return for offering an honest review. This book is the sequel to the author’s previous novel Red Team Blues. Like in that book, forensic accountant Marty Hench is the protagonist. And despite the seeming dullness of his career, this book is a thriller that had me from the start.

The plot takes place in the past of the first novel. In other words, this is technically a prequel. He is telling someone about how he came to learn so much about prisons while never having served time in one. The story opens on Catalina Island with Marty repeatedly joining a friend named Scott there for vacations. They come across something odd going on there that propels the plot forward. A driving aspect of the plot is the friendship between Marty and Scott. The relationship is deep and affectionate and one I’ve rarely seen in modern novels—deep male friendship.

The story is even better than in the first book. There was a lag in that one. This book is maybe a little slow to start, but once the initiating action takes place, it takes off. The story does come around to a selfless sacrifice that may be surprising but is completely relatable and realistic. If you enjoyed the first of this series, you owe it to yourself to pick up this one soon.

My rating: 4/5

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

I listened to this on my home from a recent trip. I was very much looking forward to reading this book. The premise of a mysterious language learning school that would teach its students to be fluent in any language in ten days really intrigued me. Unfortunately, the author didn’t deliver on that promise.

Ayesha is a young woman who feels lost in her life, not sure of which way to go. She is a translator who writes subtitles for movies but wants desperately to break into translating literature. After an altercation with her boyfriend who is a very successful translator in many languages, he tells her about the secret school called The Centre. He is only allowed one referral and must otherwise never speak of the school. Ayesha attends the school multiple times and becomes more and more interested in how they do what they do. The revelation is shocking and opens up questions of patriarchy and feminism.

I am sorry to say that I was very disappointed with this book. It developed excruciatingly slowly. It was described as a “thriller” by my library. It was most definitely not a thriller. There was too much quotidian detail that seemed completely unrelated to the plot. I like character driven novels, but this was neither character driven nor plot driven. It was as if the author couldn’t decide which kind of book to write. The subject matter and even the reveal offered a lot of interesting content to explore. But it was muddled by the author’s poor handling and needed a better editor.

My rating: 2/5