I had a hard time concentrating on reading during the first part of the month. I kept picking up books and putting them down—not generally through any fault of the books themselves, just life and things. So, I’ve only got two books to report on as finished this month:
Finished in May
- and Falling, Fly by Skyler White
This is a different kind of paranormal romance, lushly written and densely plotted, with a distinct literary bent. The story and worldbuilding are quite compelling—they drew me in and kept me reading. The characters, on the other hand, seemed rather flat through much of the first half of the book: representations of types rather than rounded people. But they found their feet about halfway through and grew some dimension. The ultra-lush prose got in the way of the narrative at times, I thought, but when Ms. White settled down and just wrote her story, this was a great read. I never thought of putting it down, so I’d say she did her job quite well.
- Medicus by Ruth Downie
I loved this book. Told with heart and a great deal of humor, it had me buying the sequel before I’d even finished the first book.  Gaius Petreius Ruso, the hero of the story, is a doctor, known as a medicus, for the Twentieth Legion stationed in Deva (current day Chester) in Roman Britain ca 178 AD. He’s a wonderful, well-rounded character: a man burdened with debt from his profligate farm family back in Gaul who is trying to earn a living as best he can and get the family out of trouble. He’s a good man who tries earnestly to do the right thing, with maybe more curiosity than is politically expedient for him. He’s something of a schlemozzle—not the guy who’s always spilling the soup on people (the schlemiel) but the guy who is always having the soup spilled on him. He can’t get a break. Like the time he just wants to drown his sorrows with the few coin he’s got left in his purse, but on his way to the bar/brothel, he sees a native girl being badly mistreated by a slave trader. She’s in bad shape—starved, beaten, her arm badly broken—but when she looks up at him with semi-comatose but beautiful eyes he uses the last of his money to buy her. He comes to call her Tilla because he can’t pronounce her complex Celtic name, and nurses her back to health, but it’s always a close call as to who is the master and who the slave in this relationship. Tilla is a beautiful force of nature. She may have been beaten half to death, but she never really submitted to being a slave and lives for the day she can escape. The interplay and growing relationship between Tilla and Ruso, the glimpse of the seedy side of the Roman empire, and Ruso’s attempts to solve the murder of two prostitutes—even though every official in town wants him to leave it alone—are the core of this book. It’s well-written, well-researched, and endearingly entertaining.
Begun in May
- Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson
- and Falling, Fly by Skyler White
- Terra Incognita by Ruth Downie
- Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. Too early to tell.
Continued Reading in May
- Spider-Touched by Jory Strong
- Yesterday’s Sky by Steven Forrest
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung
- Notebooks, 1942-1951 by Albert Camus, tr. Justin O’Brien
- Medicus by Ruth Downie
