Dies – DaneCobain.com

Title: Dumb Witness

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 416

Rating 3.75/5

This was a pretty fun little Agatha Christie mystery, although I will also admit that my attention started to wander in a few places and so by the time that I got to the end, I’d lost all of the different threads and couldn’t really make a guess at what had happened. But with Christie, that’s almost not the point for me anyway – the journey is just as much fun as discovering the destination.

In this one, an old lady has a fall down some stairs, changes her will as she’s recovering and then dies soon afterwards. Of course, Hercule Poirot happens to be on hand and ends up poking his beaky little nose into things, and even though the doctor swears blindly that she died of liver disease, Poirot thinks otherwise. Of course, there’s always a chance that the doctor’s involved, too…

This book has everything that I’ve grown to know and love about Agatha Christie, and I really don’t think I can fault it other than the fact that it’s missing that vital little spark that turns an Agatha Christie novel into an Agatha Christie classic. It’s not too far off the mark though, and I also think it’s pretty accessible and not a bad place to start if you’re new to Hercule Poirot.

Of course, I’m not such a fan of Hercule Poirot as opposed to Miss Marple, and I’ve always found him a little annoying to read about. Here, though, he was bearable, and even though this copy of the book was over 400 pages long, it only took me a couple of days to whizz through it. It probably helped that I had a beautiful Harper Collins edition of it too.

There’s not too much more that I can say about this one, because it’s pretty bog standard for Christie and just what I’ve come to expect from her in the first place. It’s the kind of book where if you see it in a charity shop and you can pick it up cheap, I say go for it. It’s not a bad little introduction to Christie and her style, and it would work just as well as a standalone as any of her other novels.

All in all then, a pretty successful read and just what the doctor ordered. I like to read Christie books as palette cleansers. Hurray!

British writer of crime and detective fiction, Dame Agatha Christie (1891 – 1976). (Photo by Walter Bird/Getty Images)

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Cassandra Clare – Clockwork Prince | Review

Title: Clockwork Prince

Author: Cassandra Clare

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 512

Rating: 2.5/5

Cassandra Clare – Clockwork Prince

Yeah, I’m still not a fan of this series. The Mortal Instruments has been okay so far, but both of The Infernal Devices books that I’ve read have been so dull and lifeless. I don’t like Clare’s depiction of Victorian London, mainly because I don’t think she actually bothers to do it too much, and I feel as though these books could just as easily be set anywhere else in the world at any time period given that they spend most of their time inside Shadowhunter institutes or whatever anyway.

I was also under the impression that this was supposed to be urban fantasy, whereas the two books so far have just been romance novels with maybe ten pages of fantasy thrown in. This one has a love triangle in, a trope which I’ve always hated, and Will Herondale is such an asshole that it physically pains me to read about him. I hope he dies in the next book. This book tried to explain why he’s such a douchecanoe, but I don’t think it’s any excuse.

Not that I really care for the other characters, either. Tessa is a wet blanket, Jem is okay but again, because such a big deal is made about the fact that he’s dying, I hope that he does actually die so that it’s not all a big cop out at the end of the next one. I’m pretty sure that some cure will be found or something, though. In fact, if her other books are anything to go by then he’ll die and be brought back to life, which is another thing that I hate. Death isn’t a joke and shouldn’t be used so lightly, and Cassandra Clare isn’t the only author to devalue it by constantly killing and resurrecting her characters.

Cassandra Clare

But I’m going off on a tangent. Part of the problem for that is that I just don’t have too much to say about this book. Nothing much happened because like I say, it was all about romance. A bunch of different people hooked up and then hooked up with other people like some giant game of pass the parcel where you don’t want to see what’s inside. Then it ended, and I already can’t remember what actually happened. And I only finished it a couple of hours ago.

Granted, I’m not necessarily the target audience for this book, but The Mortal Instruments series is at least tolerable. With this one, I’m just so over it and the thing I liked about it the most was the fact that it had massive print. When your favourite thing about a book is the size of the print, you have to start asking yourself questions about why you’re even reading it, and I’m actually not sure. I’d have given up on Clare’s books by now if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m buddy reading them with some friends. Eh. Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t re-read.