Van has finished reading… Roots Of Corruption by Laura Laakso

 

On the night of Samhain, the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, and ancient magic runs wild in Old London.

When Lady Bergamon is attacked in her Ivy Street garden, Wishearth turns to Yannia for help. Who could have the power to harm Lady Bergamon in her own domain? While Yannia searches for the answer, nature herself appears to be killing Mages in Old London. Yannia and Karrion join forces with New Scotland Yard to solve the baffling Mage deaths. But wherever they turn, all the clues point back towards Ivy Street.

Yannia’s abilities are put to test as she races to save Lady Bergamon’s life and prevent further murders. But with the lines between friends and enemies blurring, she must decide who to trust and how much she’s willing to sacrifice for Old London and its inhabitants…

 

Laura Laakso’s Roots Of Corruption is the third book in the Wilde Investigations series. As with Echo Murder, the second book in the series, there’s no let-up for Private Investigator Yannia Wilde, the pressure to solve the case coming in right at the start – and this one will call into question her closest relationships. The premise allows a deeper probing of what makes Yannia tick, and particularly how Yannia and Karrion fit together. The emotional tension is ever-present and that taut you could probably play a tune on it, and one of the things I really like about Laura Laakso’s writing is the extent to which she’s prepared to put her characters through the ringer. You might go into some books with a sense of everything working out fine in the end but that’s not the feeling I have with the Wilde Investigations series. This is definitely true of Yannia’s friendships, and in Roots Of Corruption they are stressed to breaking point.

 

As with the first two books (Fallible Justice and Echo Murder) the world building is excellent, and aside from a new realm opening up to us in Roots Of Corruption, our knowledge of how magic works also broadens. There’s sense and reason in every decision, and also signs of some very interesting rabbit holes too – it only remains to be seen which ones Laura Laakso will choose to investigate in future episodes!

While the tension levels continue to rise there’s also a good deal of humour in Roots Of Corruption. Karrion continues to say inadvertently hilarious things at entirely the wrong moment (his timing is perfect) but his comedy crown might just be up for grabs in the shape of Mery, a chain-smoking, eye-rolling new edition to the cast that, according to Laura, might well make an appearance in future episodes. I can only hope so!

 

Roots Of Corruption is everything I’ve come to expect from Laura Laakso. Tense, funny, absolutely gripping and ultimately very satisfying. And with three books in the series, there’s never been a better time to meet Yannia and the magical world of Old London.

 

Roots of Corruption is published by Louise Walters Books on the 26^th March 2020 ISBN:

 

You can find Laura on Twitter @LLaaksowriter

 

My especial thanks to Louise Walters for allowing me to review this fantastic book. Support a great Indie publisher and buy it here.

Van has finished reading… The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

 

It’s June, 1931, in colonial Malaya, and it’s a time for strange gifts. A British doctor receives the gift of a young Chinese houseboy as a bequest from an old friend, and Ji-Lin, an apprentice dressmaker and part-time dancehall girl is left with a gruesome souvenir at the dancehall. As fate weaves a web to draw these unlikely allies together, a tiger stalks their trail – though it is said that a man-eating tiger, if it eats enough, can take on the form of a man and walk among us. Perhaps it’s not a tiger after all!

 

Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger is a stealthy tale indeed, drawing the reader into a lush and captivating world. With romance, the supernatural, a bit of whodunnit, a twist and a perfect ending, there’s something for just about everyone along the way, and the further in you go the harder you’ll find it to put down. The blending of the supernatural with the everyday is perfect, Yangsze Choo always giving just enough for the reader to connect the dots, and so feel the chills. While rational explanations might sometimes be the order of the day, there’s always plenty of scope for the unbelievable to be what lingers in the foreground. The writing is vivid and I found myself coming out of some scenes with such a clear image I could almost believe I’d seen it on a screen.

I was particularly taken with the way the range of characters move through the story, and how the fact of colonialism shapes their various worlds. Albeit an ever-present fact, it’s something Yangsze Choo appears to have kept in the background, allowing to be a subtle part of the overall flavour.

The characterisation is excellent. Tied into the idea of the Confucian Virtues with consummate skill, each of the main characters carries the yin and yang of their Confucian names, and none more so than Ji Lin. One of the two narrators, she’s a great protagonist, though impulsive to a fault, and I fully expect you’ll be shouting at the pages every time she takes a fateful turn. The other narrator is the houseboy, Ren. Wiser than his years and sharper than his station, Ren is an absolute gift of a character. He is the heart around which all else revolves, and he’s the one above all others you’ll be wishing, praying, rooting for.

 

Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger is a confection. Vivid and gripping it’s a joy of a book to read.

 

The Night Tiger was published by Quercus in paperback on the 7^th January 2020 ISBN: 9781787470477

You can find Yangsze on Twitter @yangszechoo

My thanks to Ana McLaughlin and Corinna Zifko at Quercus for allowing me to review this book

Van has finished reading… A Long Way Off by Pascal Garnier (translated by Emily Boyce)

Sixty-year-old Marc is on the road. With a cat and his grown-up daughter along for the ride he’s heading for, or maybe running away from…something. Though things start well, as their journey progresses events take increasingly darker turns, and a trail of destruction blazes in their wake.

 

You know it’s Noir when your first instinct is to laugh, and even as you do you know you really shouldn’t. I think it’s the recognition that does it, that connection to the situation, that sense of solidarity – after all, we’ve all been there before to some degree. Though in Marc’s case you’ve got to hope the degree is small. His disconnectedness is acutely drawn, the deadpan being the foil that highlights the ludicrous around him, or perhaps reflects his own. The sense that things are going to get messy is palpable, though I guarantee you’ll be surprised just how messy that is, and Pascal Garnier’s characterisation is perfect. Even the cat never puts a paw wrong.

 

Pascal Garnier’s A Long Way Off (translated by Emily Boyce) is sublime. It’s a slim volume that punches well above its weight. Very dark, very funny and scarily relatable in our increasingly fractured world.

 

A Long Way Off is published by Gallic Books in March 2020 ISBN:9781910477779

My thanks to Isabelle at Gallic for allowing me to review this book