Wulf's Book Reviews

The Dentist by Tim Sullivan My rating: Four out of five stars I have mixed feelings about “The Dentist”. The mystery brings together a fatal accident from long ago, an unsolved murder, and a new killing in the present. With those events connected, some movement between past and present is inevitable. I expected the investigation to circle back and reconsider earlier events. Even so, the retrospective passages sometimes feel longer than they need to be, and the case takes a while to gather pace. I was interested in the pieces, but not always eager to find out what came next. What kept me engaged was DS George Cross. He is on the autism spectrum, in the area once labelled Asperger syndrome, and I felt a real affinity with him. His interactions felt plausible to me. He is not simply eccentric for effect; the effort of navigating the expectations of others is part of his everyday life. When he asks, » Why should a lie have a colour? «, the literal question is funny, but it also captures a...

Broder von Dörte Hansen Meine Bewertung: Vier von fünf Sternen Schon mit den ersten Seiten fühlte ich mich in „Broder“ zuhause. Dörte Hansen nimmt einen überschaubaren Ort und macht daraus einen Mikrokosmos, in dem Familie, Arbeit, Tiere und Veränderung ineinandergreifen. Der Hof folgt einem alten Gesetz: Der Sohn, der bleibt, zählt; die anderen sollen sich einfügen oder verschwinden. Hansen erzählt von dieser Härte ohne Pathos und verklärt die Vergangenheit nicht. Broder Bahnsen wollte Bauer werden, doch der Hof ging an seinen Zwillingsbruder Henning. Er wurde Tierarzt, hielt Abstand und kehrte nach Jahren in die Nähe der Familie zurück. Nun steht er zwischen seinem Gespür für Tiere, alter Kränkung und neuer Verantwortung. Mit James Herriot verbindet ihn höchstens der Tierarztberuf; Hansen verortet ihn in einer viel späteren, technisierten Landwirtschaft. Der Hof ist dabei mehr als Kulisse: Seine auf maximale Milchleistung ausgerichtete Herde macht den Wachstumsglauben greifbar. Hans...

Bilbo's Last Song by J.R.R. Tolkien My rating: Two stars out of five “Bilbo's Last Song” is old wine in a new bottle: Tolkien’s familiar nostalgia, repackaged as an illustrated farewell. The wine, naturally, is excellent. “I sit beside the fire and think” Its quiet reflections on memory and departure have warmth, but, for me, offer no new vintage in a world I already know. Compared with “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil”, I find a slender coda, not a varied collection; compared with “The Hobbit”, it lacks the delight of a journey into the unknown. Newcomers will find an excellent introduction here. For everyone else, this edition is no reason to return. Two stars out of five. Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam https://turing.mailstation.de/bilbos-last-song-by-j-r-r-tolkien/?fsp_sid=2774

But For The Grace by Peter Grainger My rating: 3 of 5 stars I still like Detective Sergeant DC Smith, and I will keep reading the series. That makes this a disappointing instalment rather than a farewell: “But for the Grace” has not changed my affection for Smith, but it has tested my patience. “ An Accidental Death ” ( review ) took time to get going, too, but eventually the investigation acquired force as Smith followed details others had missed. Here, the whole novel feels slow. The plot stays close to one care home and a sustained argument about assisted suicide, but it rarely turns that material into forward motion. We spend a great deal of time in and around a home whose residents receive unusually expensive care. The phrase » not the cheapest place by a long way « is almost a miniature of the book’s enclosed world: comfortable, quiet, and short on urgency. Assisted suicide is not an abstract subject to me, and I do not consider its basic moral status unresolved: it must be a ri...

An Accidental Death: A Novel by Peter Grainger My rating: 4 of 5 stars Peter Grainger and Detective Sergeant Smith first came to my attention through the New York Times article “The Best Literary Detective You’ve Never Heard Of, and the Man Who Made Him” ( Gift link ). It made an excellent introduction to both author and character. In “An Accidental Death”, a young man drowns after a party, apparently leaving Kings Lake police with a routine investigation. Smith, newly back at work, is paired with trainee Christopher Waters, and the case gradually becomes more complicated than the initial explanation allows. I will keep the details there, because the pleasure lies in watching Smith work rather than in having the investigation pre-explained. Smith is an immediate winner for me. He is experienced, observant, stubborn, and quietly funny, but Grainger never turns him into a grandstanding super-detective. His appeal is much more understated. He notices what other people overlook, follows h...

The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell My rating: 5 of 5 stars “ The Burning Land ” is exactly what I wanted from the fifth book in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series : another fierce, fast-moving Uhtred adventure that keeps all the strengths of its predecessors while avoiding the weaknesses that occasionally slowed them down. I liked it very much indeed. More importantly, I enjoyed the entire journey. Every page gave me something: a battle, a sharp exchange, a political manoeuvre, a religious hypocrisy, or one of Uhtred’s wonderfully blunt observations. The setup is familiar but still effective. Alfred is ageing and ill, his heir remains untested, and the Danes see an opportunity to press their advantage. Uhtred’s position between Saxon and Dane, loyalty and independence, remains the engine of the story. Cornwell understands that Uhtred is most interesting when nobody can quite claim him, least of all Uhtred himself. His decisions feel personal, practical, and gloriously dangerous wi...

My rating: 1 of 5 stars “The Way We Play” is a miserable reading experience, not because its tropes are inherently objectionable, but because they replace characterisation, logic, and genuine chemistry. The premise has workable ingredients: a cautious thirty-year-old caring for her younger brother, and an injured former kicker with a repairman’s trade. Yet the novel turns every element into a contrivance designed to prove that Rachel and Zane are destined for each other. The book practically announces this problem itself: » Zane Bradford appeared at the perfect time. « That is not foreshadowing. It is the author waving a large sign labelled “plot convenience”. Nothing feels credible. Rachel’s responsibilities exist mainly to make Zane indispensable, while Zane alternates between wounded alpha hero, miraculous rescuer, and muscular plot device. Their supposed conflict never develops into convincing friction. They announce attraction, trauma, and eternal devotion at one another, and the ...

Meine Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen Ein Krimifestival in Roscoff, eine ermordete Zwiebelbäuerin, Konflikte bei Celtic Ferries, Drohparolen an Hauswänden und eine obskure Zwiebel-Bruderschaft: „Bretonischer Glanz“ bringt zunächst alles mit, was einen Dupin-Krimi ausmacht. Roscoff ist stimmungsvoll, die bretonische Küste leuchtet, Kaffee und regionale Spezialitäten werden mit der gewohnten Hingabe serviert. Dupin bleibt als grantiger, eigenwilliger, zugleich menschlicher Ermittler erfreulich stabil; auch Riwal und Kadeg sorgen für vertraute Komik. Dann aber beginnt der Roman, sich auf eine Weise mit Autor_innen und Autorentum zu beschäftigen, die nicht ironisch, sondern vor allem selbstgefällig wirkt. Bannalec lässt eine Autorin sagen: » Was viel heißt, die große Mehrheit der Autoren leidet an schwerem Narzissmus, nicht selten in pathologischem Ausmaß. « Der Satz wäre ein hübscher Seitenhieb, wenn der Roman nicht umgehend selbst den Beweis antreten würde. Robert Rouxel schreibt über einen K...

Something Wilder by Christina Lauren My rating: 2 of 5 stars “Something Wilder” wants to be a second-chance romance, a treasure-hunt caper, and a desert survival thriller. Lily Wilder stages fake treasure hunts through Utah using the hand-drawn map she has from her father. Leo, her first love, returns with friends, and Lily’s map pulls them towards a real treasure hunt. The route back to the ranch and to each other soon becomes a violent scramble involving guns, knives, death, greed, and a suspiciously reusable set of villains. Attractive premise, poor execution. » An explosion detonated in his blood. « That sentence appears twice, in Chapters Thirteen and Fifteen; Chapter Twenty-One repeats the same blood-and-fire image twice more. The pattern feels less like a developing motif than a shortcut: whenever desire peaks, the prose reaches for combustion instead of letting the characters carry the scene. Romantic-adventure capers need momentum, danger, and protagonists whose choices becom...

The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce My rating: 3 of 5 stars I did not hate "The Ex Vows", but I found Georgia and Eli so persistently irritating that the novel never became more than a frustrating, middling read. Jessica Joyce still knows how to write atmosphere, banter, and emotional history, and the wedding-disaster setup gives the book enough momentum to stay readable. But the romance itself kept getting in its own way, and after a while I was less invested than exasperated. Georgia is frustrating in a very specific manner. She is so afraid of her own feelings, and so terrified that another attempt at this relationship might fail, that her caution gradually hardens into monotony. I understood where that fear came from, but understanding it did not make it any less irritating to watch her retreat from feeling over and over again. The novel clearly wants that fear to read as emotionally rich, yet for me it mostly read as repetitive. Eli annoyed me even more, because the book insis...

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire My rating: 3 of 5 stars Not the heartbreak of coming back, but the origin story I did not really need I opened my review of the first instalment, “ Every Heart a Doorway ”, with the line “Not the fantasy of going through the door, but the heartbreak of coming back.” “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” turns that idea inside out. This time, Seanan McGuire gives us the fantasy of going through the door, tracing the origins of Jack and Jill in a story that reaches for the shape, logic, and menace of a fairy tale. For me, though, that shift is precisely where the novella loses some of what made its predecessor so affecting. » On the day our story truly starts « That line captures one of my main frustrations with the book. By the time the story “truly” starts, more than a fifth of the novella has already passed, and I felt that delay. I understood what McGuire was trying to do by showing the damage inflicted on the sisters before they ever ...

The Fiancée Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur My rating: 4 of 5 stars After the disaster that the latest “Bruno” turned out to be, “The Fiancée Farce” was exactly the palate cleanser I needed: warm, funny, queer, and far more wholehearted than its knowingly ridiculous premise might suggest. On paper, a marriage of convenience is one of the oldest romance contraptions in the book. In practice, Alexandria Bellefleur makes it feel fresh because the romance is built not on trope, but on trust. What charmed me most was not simply that Gemma and Tansy want each other. It was that they begin, almost instinctively, to tell each other the truth. » these days, she was nothing if not brutally honest with herself « That matters. A lot of contemporary romances, including very good ones, still run on people withholding the one thing that would make the relationship real. “The Fiancée Farce” takes the more generous route. Tansy begins from a lie, yes, but the emotional shape of the novel comes from t...

A Murder in Springtime by Martin Walker My rating: 2 of 5 stars Less murder mystery than background noise in St. Denis. “A Murder in Springtime” ought to have been a return to what these Bruno novels used to do well: a local crime, a lived-in village, familiar people, and a mystery that actually matters more than the garnish around it. Instead, I found myself trudging through a novel that seemed oddly embarrassed by its own murder plot, forever wandering off into side-business, social clutter, stale emotional nonsense, and the usual namedropping of recurring figures who barely justify their presence. The international spy absurdity may be gone, and that is a mercy, but Walker has not replaced it with focus. » It might not have been quite like the old days « No kidding. That line lands almost like an accidental confession. The book keeps gesturing towards the older, better Bruno formula, but it never really recovers it. The murder feels secondary for far too long, and by the time the ...

Sturm im Mumintal von Tove Jansson Meine Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen Ich kenne die Mumin-Bücher seit meiner frühen Kindheit, und ich liebe sie wie kaum etwas anderes, das ich je gelesen habe. Gerade deshalb war ich froh, Sturm im Mumintal nicht bloß nostalgisch wiederzusehen, sondern neu zu erleben: als wildes, warmes, komisches Abenteuerbuch, das seine Zärtlichkeit nie von seiner anarchischen Lust am Chaos trennt. » Falls ein Sturm kommt«, sagte sie vor sich hin und seufzte glücklich. « Die Geschichte um die Mumins in einem unfreiwillig schwimmenden Theater ist nicht einfach nur originell. Sie ist eine grandiose Idee, weil sie Bewegung, Verwandlung und Spiel in die eigentliche Form des Romans einschreibt. Alles gerät ins Treiben, Häuser, Rollen, Familienordnungen, sogar die Frage, wer auf welcher Bühne gerade wen spielt. » Am nächsten Morgen stand alles unter Wasser. Kinderwagen, Fischkästen und Zäune segelten vorbei – und sogar ein Haus. « Es hat etwas von einem ständigen Neubeginn....

Make Democracy Great Again!: Worte gegen den Weltuntergang by Sarah Bosetti Meine Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen Sarah Bosetti ist aus meiner persönlichen Sicht eine der brilliantesten Kommentatorinnen unserer Zeit. Die Kombination aus ethisch-moralisch unglaublich treffsicherem Inhalt mit einer großartigen, scharfzüngigen Darstellung in ihren Video-Kolummnen hat mir für manches die Augen geöffnet und meine Meinung verändert. Eine Person, der das bei mir gelingt, muss schon besonders gute Argumente haben. ;) Die hat Bosetti auch in diesem Buch und auch der Inhalt trifft, wie immer, exakt ins Ziel. Aber es fehlt etwas für mich Entscheidendes: Die Persönlichkeit, die Stimme, die Mimik - wie verfrachtet das auch in ein Buch?! So tue ich etwas Ungewohntes: Ich lege dieses Buch ungefähr zur Hälfte gelesen beiseite und gebe ihm doch fünf Sterne. Denn wenn Bosetti reden will, höre und schaue ich sehr genau zu - lesen reicht in diesem spezifischen Falle einfach nicht aus. All meine Review auf Goo...

Reliquary by Douglas Preston My rating: 2 of 5 stars “Reliquary” is what happens when a sequel mistakes escalation for improvement. Where “ Relic ” ( review ) was a fast-paced thriller that, for me, got the basics right and delivered genuine suspense in a tightly contained setting, “Reliquary” sprawls, overexplains, and keeps piling on lurid ideas until the whole thing starts to wobble under its own weight. It still has energy, and now and then it lands a scene well, but mostly I found myself watching it become more absurd with every new revelation. Its old-fashioned impulse to go big, dirty, and nasty is not a strength here but one more reason the whole thing feels overcooked and heavy-handed. Preston and Child clearly want the New York underworld here, literal and figurative, to feel mythic, diseased, and overwhelming. At moments, that works. There is proper propulsion in some of the descents into the underground, and the book can still generate suspense on a scene-by-scene level. O...

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire My rating: 5 of 5 stars Not the fantasy of going through the door, but the heartbreak of coming back. Every portal fantasy asks what lies beyond the door. What Seanan McGuire asks instead is what happens after the door shuts behind you, and that shift gives “Every Heart a Doorway” its bruised, peculiar power. » Children have always disappeared under the right conditions. « I went in expecting something wistful and whimsical. What I found was weirder, sadder, and much sharper about loneliness, belonging, and the violence of being told that your deepest truth is nonsense. » Narrate the impossible things. « That line feels like the novella’s method in miniature. McGuire writes with the economy of a fable, but not the emotional simplicity of one. The prose is lean, clean, and surprisingly cutting. Eleanor West’s school is not a cosy sanctuary for charming misfits so much as a halfway house for children who have already found the worlds that suite...

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer My rating: 4 of 5 stars I found "Annie Bot" deeply unsettling, and I mean that as praise. This is not a comfortable novel, nor should it be. Sierra Greer builds Annie’s world around a premise that is immediately cruel, a sentient artificial woman designed to please a man who wants obedience, reassurance, and sexual availability without ever having to recognise the full personhood of the being in front of him. Doug is monstrous not because he is extravagant in his evil, but because he is so recognisably entitled, selfish, and certain that Annie exists for him. I loathed him from the start, and the novel is strongest whenever it forces that revulsion into the foreground. What made the book painful to read, in the best sense, was Annie’s growing awareness of her own lack of choice. Every decision she makes is constrained by systems of control, punishment, and dependence, which means even small acts of thought or resistance carry emotional weight. Gr...

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager My rating: 2 of 5 stars I picked “Middle of the Night” up because a Goodreads friend recommended it. In hindsight, I really should have known better. Riley Sager has been wildly uneven for me, and this novel lands firmly on the wrong side of that divide. At first, the setup works. A vanished boy, a suburban cul-de-sac, a traumatised adult returning to the scene of childhood horror, sleepless nights, uneasy neighbours, dark woods. That is exactly the sort of material from which a properly creepy thriller can be made. Sager knows how to build that initial itch of dread, and for a while I kept reading in the hope that the book would cash in on its atmosphere. » The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle… « The problem is that the novel gradually mistakes strangeness for depth. What begins as eerie and potentially poignant becomes weird in a way that feels more contrived than unsettling. The story grows increasingly complicated without becoming ri...

Platform Decay by Martha Wells My rating: 3 of 5 stars Platform Decay should have felt like a homecoming. Instead, it feels like being shoved out of an airlock and told to keep up. I absolutely loved Murderbot at its best. The early books worked because the action was never really the point, or at least never the whole point. The point was the anxious, avoidant, furious, funny, traumatised self hiding underneath the armour. Murderbot was compelling because every mission doubled as self-exploration: what does freedom mean, what does personhood mean, what does friendship mean when even admitting you have friends feels like an exposed nerve? "Platform Decay" knows that version of the series still exists, but it only lets us see it in flashes. » ”SecUnit.” « That one word, from Mensah, carries more emotional weight than whole stretches of the surrounding plot. Likewise, the late moment where Murderbot acknowledges being surrounded by friends is exactly the sort of subtle, painf...