Sunday, July 5, 2020

The House on Widows Hill (Ishmael Jones #9)

The House on Widows Hill is the 9th book in the Ishmael Jones series by Simon R. Green. Released 2nd July 2020 by Severn House, it's 192 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

These books, about a generally altruistic alien trapped on earth since 1963, are genre crossing speculative fiction at its absolute best. This one is a worthy addition to the series and combines an array of literal locked door mystery, historical noir, urban fantasy, humor, and supernatural governmental espionage.

The insanely prolific author is well known to urban fantasy fans for his 200 works over 12(+) series including The Nightside. Despite being the 9th book in the series, it works very well as a standalone and readers new to the series won't have any trouble keeping up with the action. One thing that didn't appeal to me as much with this book as the previous works in the series was that this one literally takes place in the rooms of one house, and the action is *entirely* dialogue driven. Yes, it's a  murder mystery with a spooky house and a "locked room" cast of suspects, but the pacing is weirdly off. It's still eminently readable, but (for me) wasn't quite up to the level of the others. The denouement was rapid, completely deus ex machina, and made me roll my eyes, but it did provide some interesting backstory for the titular character.

Very entertaining and a quick and humorous read. The author has a definite gift with repartee and I found myself smiling often whilst reading. This series will likely appeal to fans of Charles Stross' Laundry Files, Jasper Fforde, and similar.

Four stars. Well worth a look.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

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