The Reckoning

For a birthday present, Stense recently bought me a year's membership to the Random Book Club. The idea is, each month, this bookshop in Scotland sends you a random book to read.

Stense had a word with them as she was buying my year's subscription, explaining that I'm a total Darwin groupie. So you can imagine my delight when my first so-called ‘random’ book was a novel about the Voyage of the Beagle. I'm saving that one for my holidays.

The Reckoning
‘The Reckoning’ by Alma Katsu this morning.

My second random book arrived this morning: The Reckoning by Alma Katsu.

To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced the bookshop put quite as much thought into this selection. For a start, The Reckoning is the second book of a trilogy. What are the odds that someone who is given this book at random will have already read part 1? Not very likely, if you ask me. And, even if they had, and even if they enjoyed it, part 3 hasn't actually been published yet, as far as I can tell. Talk about cliff-hangers!

Still, the book was described as ‘Dark and super sexy’ by no less an authority than Cosmopolitan, and it seems to involve an immoral woman with a sword, which can't be a bad thing. Oh, scrap that, my mistake—apparently, she's immortal.

Here's a sentence plucked at random from my random book (from p.190):

I turned, smiling despite my anxiety about seeing him again. “Alejandro!”

Gripping stuff! And here's another (from p.221):

“She had decided in advance how she would put me in her service, and…”

…oh, no, I can't print that on Gruts. This is supposed to be a family website!

Stense, I am frankly shocked! (But I'll let you know if there are any other good bits!)

Richard Carter

A fat, bearded chap with a Charles Darwin fixation.

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