Fran Wilde

This book was very much an impulse purchase at ConFusion, heavily influenced by the fact that it was blurbed by Carlos Hernandez on the back.

It was fine. I read it out loud to the whole family for one of our bedtime story books, and the kids liked it. My sense of justice was strongly violated by all the stealing, and nastiness, and the complete lack of concern for the impacts of their actions on others, on the part of both human and goblin characters. Basically I neither liked nor cared about anyone in this book.

There have been a number of family story time books that one or both of the kids have noted out of because they thought a character was too mean or too negative, but they had nary a complaint about this one, so it could entirely be a matter of I am not the intended audience for this one.

But I was stressed out by this book basically 100% of the time.… (més)

My apologies to the authors for the low rating, which reflects mostly my difficulty with the unusual format. I was reading the e-book version, and clearly it's actually designed as a serial, with each portion of the story delivered separately, and loses something in book format.

That said, I found the setting complex and interesting: a post-war Tokyo divided into a Chinese-occupied half and a US peacekeeper regulated (?) half. The main characters are a Japanese police officer and a US peacekeeper working as partners to deal with a separate crime in each "episode." In the background arc are political machinations and underground conspiracies on all sides.

However, I found the episodic mysteries generally unsatisfying and the background arc confusing and left hanging at the end of the book to await the next "season" for further development. Again, I'm sorry I couldn't have enjoyed this one more because the premise is interesting.… (més)