Safe As Milk

Last year, Ronan asked me if I’d read Wool and I’d never heard of it. At $6 from Amazon it was easy enough to take a chance on.

The omnibus is a series of stories set in a common environment. Howey wrote the first one and the response from readers was so strong that he wrote more in the same world. It’s a smartly-built environment but is not so impossible or unbelievable that you can’t understand the motivations in play. There is a pervasive tension that builds throughout the series but Howey makes plenty of room for some surprisingly sad and tender moments, too.

I liked it a lot. The first is free (for kindle) and if you like it you should definitely keep going. There are cool ideas in there. The stories get longer as you go with the first around 60 pages and the 5th over 250.

You Were Never Really Here is a new kindle single from Byliner by Jonathan Ames. I saw it linked over at Super Punch and bought it for when I’d be in between longer reads. I caught some time this week to read it but forgot what it was about. It turns out that it’s hard-boiled noir, which I have enjoyed, but this was noir that was too dark for me.

I guess this next bit might be a spoiler so I’ll put this sentence here to keep you from reading further unless you want to.

There was a lot of heavy violence in there but that comes with the “hard-boiled” and “noir” territory. What put me off was the fact that I’ve got a 13-year old daughter so the plot points based around the one in this story were disturbing to the point of taking enjoyment away. I’ve got enough irrational fear about my kids out in this world that I’m not looking for more fuel in my recreational reading.

It’s a punchy story that doesn’t slow down for much of anything. I’d recommend it to someone without kids, though.