The Devil You Know

The Devil You Know, by Mike Carey *****


I received this book from a wonderful person. This is the first book in Mike Carey's Felix Castor series. I thoroughly enjoy this book. there are zombies, ghosts, werwolves (a form of undead spirits in Felix's world) and demons inhabiting London alongside regular humans. Felix Castor is a ghost exorcist. Some people don't like him, some people do. He is hired to exorcise a ghost from a building that holds archives, but things don't go so smoothly. Felix ends up in danger, and finds that he wants to solve the mystery of why this ghost is a ghost afterall. Mike Carey is an extremely good writer. The dialogue is snappy, there are many twists and turns, and the main character is not a perfect male speciman, but a guy who makes mistakes and can admit them.
The book has very strong mystery elements, and is one of the few books that didn't have me saying, come on! figure it out already! to the character. I liked his original take on the undead, and the way the characters interact with each other.

I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this series, which was also provided to me by a very sweet person.... (thanks sweet person!).

If I wasn't so tired I would put up links- I still might at a later date.

If you like paranormal mysteries, thick books, and down to earth characters...even the undead characters, you'll enjoy this one. One challenge I had (being an American) was reading the British idioms - which I plan to look up for a wider understanding. This wasn't an irritating challenge, just something that made me want to learn a little more about British slang and word usage- it's rare that a book makes me want to actually learn something, so this is a plus for me.

Thanks to Very Sweet Person, and to winning a book from the SciFiGuy blog, I also own the second and third book in the Felix series. I know there are more, and based on this book I'm very sure that I will at some point be buying the others.

Early Review Books

I tried this new to me site called The Library Thing; a place where you can make a list of your books read, reading and to read. I noticed that they have a section called Early Reviewers where you can sign up for a book from the publisher to read and review. Some of the books have over 1,000 people requesting with 30 copies to give out, some have 200, with 15 copies to give out. For July there were over 65 different novels up for giveaways. Apparently they take a look at reviews that are submitted, how many people are requesting a certain book, what kind of books you have listed, etc and make a decision based on all of that. Well, I tried to request quite a few of the books, figuring I might get at least one book. I received nothing so far for the July requests. Not one book.

On the last day of July, I found that Goodreads also provides giveaways. I had already made an account there, but didn't realize that they held giveaways. It's a little hard to find that page. Within a week of putting in some requests, I got notice that I will be getting a book called Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin. I normally read urban fantasy, but I remember reading a book by Gail Godwin a long time ago. I remember it being a pretty good book, so I'm glad to get a newer one by her. For the life of me though, I don't remember if I read A Southern Family or A Mother and Two Daughters. Cannot remember at all. I do remember that it was very interesting.

Other books coming up for me to read are The Devil You Know and Vicious Circle (which a certain very sweet person sent to me) as well as Dead Man's Boots (which I won from the SciFiGuy's contest).

So I have a few more books to look forward to reading, as well as the books already on my TBR pile/shelf.

I hit book no. 30 out of my 30 book reading goal for the year. I have since read Night Child by Jes Battis and Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris which brings my total of books read for the year 2009 at 32. My new goal is 40 books , or 10 more books from now to December 2009. I should make it 50 books for the year, but I'll see how it goes with 40. I have to start back to work next week and that takes huge chunks out of the reading time.