Frozen Heat, by Richard Castle

The Castle books continue to deliver. The plot here is richer than previous novels, but the humor and pop culture references are the reason for reading. There are several winks to the TV show throughout, from cracks about a bulletproof vest labelled WRITER to an Elvis convention in Atlantic City. This being a book by a fictional mystery writer I appreciated the meta humor of having the characters eat at Grill 23 in Boston, simply because that is where Spenser—a fictional detective from another series—enjoyed dining. My favorite bit of humor, though, was when the main character Jameson Rook says, "I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something I like about Malcolm and Reynolds." The dizzying nature of a line from a character that is a direct analogue for the fictional author Richard Castle who is played on television by Nathan Fillion that is in turn a reference to another character Fillion played I find enormously amusing.

As I mentioned earlier the story is stronger than other entries in the series, concerning a bizarre murder linked to the death of Nikki Heat's mother years before (another nod to the show) but the conclusion was a bit clichéd. A coda provides a cliffhanger that promises an interesting next novel, though, and gives a hopeful moment to an otherwise downbeat ending. I suspect this series will only be truly appreciated by fans of the show, but I'm certainly enjoying it!

First Sentence:

"Oh, yeah, that's it, Rook," said Nikki Heat.

Princeps, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

The sequel to Scholar, Princeps picks up a few months later with Quaeryt and Vaelora recently (and happily) married. This book felt like Modesitt had ideas for two other books that he couldn't quite flesh out enough, so he combined them into a single volume. Quaeryt becomes governor of a land decimated by a natural disaster and has to lead it through recovery, and then abruptly is fired and sent to the front lines of a war and expected to create an elite unit of imagers from scratch. The shortness of the two story lines doesn't make them any less interesting though, but I think I would have preferred reading a longer version of Quaeryt's adventures as governor.

Modesitt often dives into political and philosophical issues, and this is no exception. While rebuilding a city partially destroyed by a volcano we examine the balance between rich and poor. Here the rich are largely portrayed as greedy, wanting to use price-gouging to increase their own wealth at the expense of the poor. The poor, though, are also shown as extremely greedy wanting to be given food and shelter without any effort on their part. I found it interesting that both ends of the spectrum are shown as shallow rather than the more typical good versus evil (a la Rand or Moore). The moral here is to walk the middle ground: charity is required at times of hardship, but people shouldn't be given all of everything or they'll come to expect it forever. I find it hard to argue with that, but the threshold of "hardship" is hard define.

I've read a lot of Modesitt novels and enjoyed virtually all of them. Princeps is no exception.

First Sentence:

Quaeryt peered out from underneath the thick—and warm—comforter toward the nearest bedchamber window, its inner shutters fastened tightly.