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Hallmarkie "Messy Family Comes Together" Type. This is a Susan Mallery book, and it is Christmas book from Susan Mallery - so you know you're going to get a lot of drama, but in a very Hallmarkie manner where the drama never gets *too* intense and everything wraps up with a nice dose of Christmas magic by the end. Considering the popularity of both Mallery and Hallmark Christmas movies, this isn't exactly a losing strategy... if a bit "been there, done that".

Where Mallery manages to spin things with this particular one are, well, the particulars - and there are a lot of things here that aren't exactly typical. Irritable Bowel Syndrome shown in all of its complexities in a book? Happens some, not exactly overly common in my experience. Female tow truck company owner? I actually am related to one - a cousin - but she's literally the only one I had ever heard of before reading this book. Age gap romance where the *woman* is the older *and* is on the back side of "middle age" to boot? Done, somewhat, but rarely in this particular combination/ age range. On and on it goes.

Oh, and for anyone who says that this gets way too far out there with just how "together" everything gets... if you've read a few of my other reviews over the years, you know about my own family history - same side as the cousin above, actually. You see, both sets of my grandparents were divorced long before I was ever alive. But my mom's parents in particular? My grandmother remarried, also before I could ever remember anything. My step grandfather was my "second grandfather" (the other died 5 weeks after my birth). And yet there was more than one instance of my grandmother and step-grandfather living on my grandfather's land over the years, including at least one stint in his house with him. So my sense of "weird family relationships" may be a bit skewed, having seen this type of thing - along with several of the exact scenarios Mallery includes in this book - in my own (extended) family over the years.

Ultimately a solid book of its type, and one for anyone looking for a good Christmas family drama to check out.

Very much recommended.

Weather Machine : Political Machine :: forge : weave. Hey, first time I've ever used an analogy in that particular format in the title of a review. The answer, of course, is that all four are ways of making different things. Forging is the process of creating metal objects, weaving is the process of creating cloth objects. Similarly, a "political machine" is the process of creating some political outcome, and according to Blum in this text, a "Weather Machine" is the process of creating a... weather forecast.

Blum begins with a history of some of the earliest attempts at forecasting the weather for a given location, moving from the realm of religion and superstition to the realm of science - religion and superstition by another name, but sounding better to the "modern" ear. The history largely culminates with a discussion of the early 20th century concept of the "Weather Machine", a giant warehouse full of human computers using slide rules to run calculations based on observations placed into a mathematical model in order to predict the weather.  

An admiral goal well ahead of its time... but once computers (and particularly supercomputers) became a thing... perhaps an ideal no longer ahead of ours. It is here, in the era of computing, that Blum spends the rest of the text, showing how the first and earliest computer models found success all the way up to showing how certain modern models and teams work to forecast ever further out ever more rapidly... and how all of this now largely happens inside the computer itself, rather than in the suppositions of "trained meteorologists".  

In other words, this is a book not about weather itself, but about the process and, yes, *business*, of creating a weather *forecast* and the various issues and histories tha come to bear in this process.

Ultimately a very illuminating work about the business side of forecasting, Blum could have perhaps spent more time showing how say hurricane and tornado forecasts are formed and how much they have progressed in the last few decades, rather than forecasting more generally - but he also ultimately stayed more true to his general premise in staying more general, showing how forecasting *as a whole* has gotten so much more detailed without diving too deep into any particular area of forecasting itself.

Ultimately a rather fascinating look at a topic few people truly understand.  

Very much recommended.

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

Death by Misadventure is the 18th Lady Emily cozy mystery by Tasha Alexander. Released 24th Sept 2024 by Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint, it's 320 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.

The author is prolific and adept. She does a more than capable job setting the scene and time period with both the dialogue and by wrapping the fiction skillfully around a framework of actual historical occurrences. The mystery itself is cleverly constructed and full of fair play clues which invite readers to figure out "whodunnit" alongside the story, with a closed pool of suspects, a remote chalet in the Alps, and lots of interesting historical trivia about Ludwig II of Bavaria who is a major element of the story told in dual timelines.

The plot is driven on parallel storytelling, with one main subplot set in Ludwig's Bavaria and the other in the "current" timeline (Late Victorian period).

The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 8 hours, 31 minutes and is capably narrated by series narrator Bianca Amato. She has a distinct South African accent, but it's not obtrusive or indeed obvious at all after the first few minutes of narration. She has a pleasantly modulated voice and she's adept at giving all the characters distinct and distinguishable voices. Most of the characters have distinct and varied accents, and she navigates them well.

It's partly an homage to Christie, but Ms. Alexander's writing stands perfectly well on its own merits. Heartily recommended to fans of the series; potentially also recommended for fans of the canonical works. Although the setup, mystery, denouement, and resolution are self-contained, there's a significant amount of development in earlier books which will partially spoil the characters and their relationships if read out of order. With 18 books extant in the series, it would make a great choice for a binge read, especially for fans of golden age and historical mysteries. 

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes. 

Solid Sigma Tale. Unlike a certain reviewer who claimed that this was a standalone book, I'm going to tell you right now that you need to read at *least* books 14-17 (ish) before coming into this one in order to fully understand and appreciate it. But once you've read those other books, you're going to want this one anyway... and you *will* appreciate likely the very same things I liked about this book - namely, certain elements of its ending. Which is all I'll say without going into spoiler territory.  

Beyond those ending elements, this is a standard-ish globe trotting Sigma Force action/ thriller, emphasis on the action. And yes, it is about as plausible as the Fast and Furious franchise at this point, but you don't come into these kinds of tales wanting or expecting the ultra-realism of say Andy Weir's The Martian. You come into these types of books *wanting* to see the motorcycle vs attack helicopter fights, the desperate and last second escapes from traps of various forms, the ultra close quarters action where blades get left stuck between arm bones... and, yes, with now *two* very well trained war dogs, Tucker and Kane and Marco's scenes damn near steal the show every time they come up, ala the "motorcycle ride with the raptors" from the first Jurassic World movie that Universal's Islands of Adventures' Velocicoaster captures so well with its initial launch. Because *that* is the kind of adrenaline rush you want in a rollercoaster and in a tale like this, and by God James Fucking Rollins is going to give you that in *spades*.

Some people like Hallmarkie romance books. Others like This Is Us level dusty-rooms-every-other-scene dramas. Others like more pure scifi ala the aforementioned Weir or the more scifi based Rollins type action of Jeremy Robinson. Some like their fiction to be ghost chili level damn near erotica spicy, others don't like reading the word "fuck" at all in anything whatsoever.  There are all kinds of books for all kinds of readers, in other words, and if you like the type of book that Rollins continues to write, well, you're gonna like this one too.

Very much recommended.