I managed another couple of books in June as it dawned on me that with my summer schedule, I am going to have no more free time than I did during the semester.

ABC Murders

Agatha Christie

I am not going to pretend that I have a lot to say about this Hercule Poirot mystery. Christie plays around with POV a lot in this one, but otherwise it is another of her mysteries. This time someone is apparently killing people based on the alphabet, Alice Ascher of Andover is killed, followed by Betty Barnard of Bexhill. Each time the killer sends a letter to Poirot, taunting him. Poirot, with the help of Hastings and some of the family members of the deceased, sets out to solve the murders. The identity of the killer isn’t readily apparent, though the general status of the culprit is pretty obvious. It is really good.

Guns of the Dawn

Adrian Tchaikovsky

This is really interesting, though I don’t think it quite follows through on its premise. It starts as kind of Austen-esque, or maybe more like Thomas Hardy, story about an impoverished noble family trying to deal with the changing times, including the fact that the eldest daughter has married below her station and war has broken out. Soon, her husband buys a commission and not long after the lone son is drafted. Eventually, women are added to the draft and the protagonist Emily is off to war.

There is a lot going on, with the home drama and the WWI style war that the protagonist is sent off to, and most of it works on its own terms. The problem I had with it is that it doesn’t really manage to meld the two halves together. The war is the war and home is home, while Emily as a character is definitely affected by what she has experienced, I don’t feel like the home portions of the book get adequate resolution. Maybe it is just that I actually found that portion more interesting than the fighting. I wanted to see how the characters personal lives played out, the grand designs of countries are far less interesting to me. It almost feels like the back quarter or so the book need to be the back half for to deliver a satisfactory conclusion.

I still highly recommend Guns of the Dawn, it is doing something different from most books of its ilk and both of its separate threads are worth reading in their own right.