I purchased the Ellis Peters book, A Morbid Taste for Bones. It's on my to read list for September.
In the meantime I read:
The Passage (book 1 of the Passage Trilogy), 785 pages
by Justin Cronin (2011)
A rambling epic of good against evil, a post-apocalyptic novel in the backdrop of a genetically designed viral disaster initiating an unplanned vampric evil upon the world.
Reminds me a lot of Stephen King’s novel, The Stand, with the prominence early in the book of a militarily designed and accidentally released deadly virus combined with a draw to evil or good through dreams.
The epic nature of the novel also brings to mind Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune, in the way the author evokes futuristic historical recollection to describe the important events unfolding.
At times I was disturbed at the undisciplined way the author conveyed the story. Long rambling passages describe almost meaningless events, such as using page upon page to describe a character’s needs to urinate; by the time his extensive descriptions are finished it was often difficult to recollect where the story was going. It wasn’t hard to skip over long passages to find some more meatier sections.
Despite this shortcoming by the end of the novel I was willing to purchase the second book in the series, The Twelve.
Rob
