Spellbreaker

Charlie Holmberg's fantasy novel Spellbreaker (#1,355) proved to be a much more entertaining traveling companion.  

Spending her days as a general factotum for an artist who has taken her in from the workhouse, Elsie Camden has powers of her own - to break magic spells cast on objects.  She feels she is doing good, but there is a problem; Elsie is not licensed to break the spells, so if she is caught, there can be severe consequences, including a death sentence.

She is content to work in the shadows until she comes up against Bacchus Kelsey, a handsome Jamaican about to complete his own magical mastership in Victorian London.  Elsie is afraid of the power he holds over her, yet she senses that he is bound up by a spell cast unbeknownst to him.  Can they work together to defeat the cabal busy murdering magicians and stealing their priceless spell books?

We won't know until we read the sequel Spellmaker!

The Tale of Genji

I thought I would read Japan's first recognized novel The Tale of Genji (#1,354) by Lady Murasaki Shikibu.  Funnily enough, it popped up in Kate Quinn's recent best seller The Astral Library as the literature of choice for a reader to permanently escape to.  Sorry to say, but it would never be mine.  My Kindle version (I was traveling to Japan while reading it.) stretched to more than 1500 pages.  I made it through almost 300 pages before I lost interest in The Shining One and moved onto something much more interesting.

Genji turns out to be the illegitimate son of the emperor by the concubine he could never forget.  In consequence, Genji was supernaturally beautiful, and each and every trial and tribulation in his relatively calm life rendered him even more so, and irresistible to men, women and children.  Genji was happy to seduce one and all.  It was all just a game to him.  He took his poetry more seriously than his sex life.  For me the endless seductions grew exceedingly tedious.  Although The Tale of Genji is stored on my Kindle, I doubt I will ever finish it.  Maybe you will have better luck.