Reader’s Notebook, 9/11/25

The Magdalen Martyrs, The Dramatist, Priest – Ken Bruen
Books three, four, and five of Bruen’s Jack Taylor series. I read them in five or six days. They are that good.

Like many series there are multiple repeating themes and plot devices. Bur Bruen was a good enough writer that he made each book completely compelling and just different enough where they did not feel like three versions of the same story.

A big part of that is that Jack Taylor himself is such an interesting character. Always bouncing between addiction and sobriety. Violence and peace. Healthy and destructive relationships.

In The Dramatist, after the latest set of mysteries have been resolved, almost too easily, Bruen casually threw out one of the biggest plot bombs I’ve ever read. So casually I had to back up and re-read a paragraph to make sure I understood it properly. That devastating detail hung heavily over Priest, and I assume over future volumes that I will eventually get to.

Proper Irish noir.

The Sicilian Inheritance – Jo Piazza
After that run of dark mysteries, I needed a palate cleanser. This ended up being a little heavier than anticipated, but in a very different way from Bruen’s books and with a healthy counter of lightness.

It is told in two, overlapping sections. In the first an Italian-American woman’s life (Sara) is falling apart. Her restaurant has failed and she’s declared bankruptcy, her marriage has crumbled, and her favorite great aunt has died. She and that aunt planned on traveling back to their ancestral home in Sicily but Sara’s troubles pushed that off until it was too late. Among her aunt’s final wishes was that Sara take her ashes back to Sicily and spread them, while trying to figure out what happened to Sara’s great grandmother, who stayed in Italy when the rest of her family moved to the US.

The other half of the story is about that great grandmother, Serafina, and her wildly interesting life in the early 20th century. She was a remarkable woman, far ahead of her time, something that in rural, early 1900s Sicily, aroused great suspicion and scorn.

Sara’s time in Sicily is hilarious, maddening, and a little frightening as she confronts various forces that don’t want her to discover the truth of her family’s history. In the end, of course, she uncovers the real story and things work out fine. But there are some dramatic revelations along the way. And the ending of her great grandmother’s story is remarkable.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. It was on my list because I had read multiple glowing reviews of it. Yet I was still worried it was a little light for my tastes, even if that was what I needed at the moment. This was a terrific read, with just the right amount of seriousness, humor, and mystery.

Moonbound – Robin Sloan
Sloan also wrote Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, which I read a few years back and very much enjoyed. This came with glowing recommendations and started off incredibly. It takes place in a future earth, 11,000 years in the future to be exact, which is recovering from a series of calamities over the years. Thus Sloan mixes both sci-fi and fantasy, and sends his main characters on an old-school quest to discover a way to fight an evil wizard. Oh, and “dragons” who have taken over the moon. I put dragons in quotes because they aren’t dragons in the fantasy sense, but rather a name given to a group of humans who went off on their own and, well, it’s complicated. There are also talking animals. It would be a clumsy mishmash if Sloan wasn’t so adept at blending these elements.

This book is incredibly funny. It is touching. It is engaging. But for the first two-thirds or so it was setting up to be perhaps the first step in a longer quest, which kept me thinking it was the first in a series. Maybe Sloan was headed that way, realized partway through his writing he didn’t want to get tied down to a trilogy, and adjusted. The ending is fine, I was just expecting more. Hell, maybe that’s just on me and I let my expectations and misunderstanding Sloan’s aims get in the way of a terrific book. I still really liked it, just was left wanting more when it reached its conclusion.