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cromulentbookreview · 6 years ago

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Binge!

It makes sense why we use a term normally associated with food like “binge” to describe that day where you do nothing but watch every episode of that one TV show. You don’t really hear someone say that they’re going on a book binge, though. When referring to a media “binge,” it’s usually always TV, and, to some extent, movies (I once binged all three Extended Editions of Lord of the Rings - it took a day and a half and it was amazing). I think we need to have more book binges in our lives. In fact, there’s even a book review site way more organized and put together than mine will ever be that’s actually called Book Binge.

Anyway, for me a book binge is when you pick out a series that already has several books out and you read them all, one after the other. I did this earlier this year with Naomi Novik’s amazing Temeraire series. I’m pretty sure it’s why I had to get new lenses for my glasses this year. I’ve been on a historical mystery kick lately - I think it has to do with the season changing from Summer to Fall where I immediately go “get me some 19th Century British Detectives!!”

Which was how I ended up tearing through all 10 of Will Thomas’s Barker & Llewelyn books.

I’d never heard of the Barker & Llewelyn series until I was traipsing around Goodreads looking for some 19th century mystery fiction. Like my strange obsession with 19th century British dudes on boats, I loves me some 19th century British mystery stories. Initially, I didn’t start out to binge the entire series. 10 books is a lot. I had a hard time with Temeraire, which is also kind of 10 books (9 and a bunch of short stories). There were times with my Temeraire binge where my attention wavered, where I wanted to just put the books down and go read something else, but I pressed on. And I discovered one of the great joys of a true book binge: no agonizing wait for a sequel. No having your interest piqued by book one and then sitting and waiting for a year and a half for the next book. With a book binge, you can put down book two and immediately pick up book three because BOOK BINGE.

There are a few 19th century British mystery series out there that I’m almost too afraid to start with because they consist of roughly ten thousand books and counting (looking at you, Anne Perry) and there’s no way I’d be able to focus on (or care about) a single series for that many books. So when I saw that the Barker & Llewelyn series consisted of nine books, like Temeraire, (plus a tenth book I’d gotten on Netgalley), and that all of them were under 350 pages, I was like “OK, I’ll give the first book a go, and see what happens.”

Yeah, I may have immediately gone from the first book to the second one. And then the third. And then the fourth and the fifth...I couldn’t stop.

The series is all about our audience surrogate, Thomas Llewelyn, and our substitute Sherlock Holmes, detective private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker. At the start of the series, Llewelyn is 22 and a widow who just spent eight months in Oxford Prison for theft. He’d been set to go places, having gotten a scholarship to Oxford, but the whole prison-sentence thing derailed all his plans. So he ends up in London (where else?) looking for work. After months of failed attempts to get a job (not a lot of job opportunities for ex-cons out there, even in the 1880s), Llewelyn decides to try for one last job before throwing himself into the Thames: an assistant position with a prominent private detective enquiry agent, Cyrus Barker. Barker, like all Great Detective Private Enquiry Agent types, is a Scottish eccentric with a mysterious past who knows everything about anything and anything under the sun. He’s got all sorts of weird scars and gang tattoos. He grew up in China and speaks like, eleventy-one languages. He wears sunglasses all the time. Like, all the time. Apparently he does so even when he sleeps. (Yes, they had sunglasses in the 19th century. No, they’re not called sunglasses in these books, but they’re referred to as his “dark spectacles”). Barker is, of course, filthy rich, and upon hiring the poor, unfortunate and 1000% broke Thomas Llewelyn, immediately provides him with room, board, and a whole new suit of fancy clothes. He also sets about correcting Llewelyn’s behavior and manners, a pretty tall order since Llewelyn is a super snarky Welshman. As far as Watsons go, Llewelyn is definitely one of the more amusing, which makes these books so goddamned fun to read.

Also, Barker has a butler called Jacob Maccabee, who rivals Llewelyn in his deadpan snarkiness. I ship Llewelyn/Mac so hard - every time they’re in a scene together they just have so much chemistry. I don’t care if Word of God is they are both straight. I just want them to be together and snark at each other all day long..

Uh.

Ahem.

Anyway.

Yes, this series is very much your standard, buddy-detective private enquiry duo present in basically all movies, TV and books, but they’re fun. And you know what we all need right now? Fun. Pure, unadulterated fun where the good guys triumph over the bad guys, where the mystery is solved and you’ve got your Sherlock Holmes and your Dr. Watson. Because have you seen the news lately? Yeah, I need some stories where pure good triumphs over evil, where people freak out at the concept of rubber tires and the telephone, and where the story of the day isn’t doom and gloom and horror. Just, you know, murder. But fun, because it’s not real. And because it was the 19th century. In Britain. And not real. Well, except Jack the Ripper, those were real but...you know.

Here’s a summary of the first nine books in the sereies:

BOOK 1 - Some Danger Involved: Your average detective enquiry agent-duo origin story featuring brilliant detective and his new snarky Welsh sidekick!

BOOK 2 - To Kingdom Come: Barker & Llewelyn go undercover and build bombs for the Irish!

BOOK 3 - The Limehouse Text: Barker & Llewelyn face big trouble in London’s 19th Century Chinatown!

BOOK 4 - The Hellfire Conspiracy: Barker & Llewelyn fight human traffickers, secret societies and such!

BOOK 5 - The Black Hand: Barker & Llewelyn fight the Italian mafia!

BOOK 6 - Fatal Enquiry: Barker & Llewelyn fight Barker’s almost comically evil arch-nemesis!

BOOK 7 - Anatomy of Evil: Barker & Llewelyn fight Jack the Ripper!

BOOK 8 - Hell Bay: Barker & Llewelyn Present: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None!

BOOK 8.5 - An Awkward Way to Die: Barker & Llewelyn solve a case in, like, 20 minutes!

BOOK 9 - Old Scores: Barker & Llewelyn Present: Japonism in Late-19th Century England!

BOOK 10 - Blood is Blood: Barker is put temporarily out of commission by an explosion! Llewelyn must solve the case himself! Who should show up to help but Barker’s long lost brother??

A little more about Blood is Blood:

So Thomas Llewelyn is only a couple of weeks away from happily marrying his lady love, Rebecca Cowan née Moccatta. Everything is hunky-dory. And then someone tries to blow up his and Barker’s office. Barker is badly injured, leaving Thomas to investigate who tried to kill them by himself. Oh, and, same day the offices are blown up, Caleb Barker, Cyrus Barker’s long lost brother, first mentioned way back in Limehouse Text, I think, shows up. Caleb had been a major plot point in Fatal Enquiry, but then was never mentioned again until this book. He’s been living in the lawless American West, acting as a Pinkerton agent. But can he be trusted? Also, Rebecca’s family is super against her marrying a detective private enquiry agent who isn’t Jewish. Upon seeing just how dangerous the job can be, Rebecca starts having doubts. Will Thomas be unlucky in love yet again? Tune in November 13 for Blood is Blood, same bat-time, same bat channel.

Yes, this series can, at times, be formulaic and tropey, but...fuck it, I love it. Sometimes there’s comfort to be had in a story where you know the good guys will solve the mystery, maybe picking up a few scrapes along the way. I tore through all of the books of the Barker & Llewelyn series in about two weeks, and finished Blood is Blood in about a day. I should’ve gone slower, because I need more. I need at least five more books, Will Thomas, and I needed them YESTERDAY. Aaaackgh. This is what I get for binging. How long until book 11? Will we be getting another novella soon? And when are we going to meet Thomas's family?! 10 books and we've never met his parents or any of his nine siblings! I want a whole book dedicated to Thomas reconciling with his family and he and Barker and Mac running all around Wales. I NEED IT.

Write faster, Will Thomas.

Predictably, after a book binge such as this, my eyes now hurt pretty badly. Time to invest in those fancy eye drops my optometrist keeps telling me to buy.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone needing an escape from the awful world we live in now.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: People who think everything’s fine for some reason. You know. This guy:

OVERALL SERIES RATING: 4.5/5

TOTALLY UNBIASED VICTORIAN MYSTERY / MURDERINO FANGIRL RATING: 5/5

BLOOD IS BLOOD RATING: 4/5

RELEASE DATE: November 13, 2018

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES: Olympus Mons

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bangkokjacknews · 4 years ago

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How Lockdown has ENDED your freedom for ever

The black leather party masks that performers May and Som wear for their fetish shows in Bangkok will not stop the coronavirus from spreading.

Nor will any of the other face-nappies people are being shamed into wearing throughout the free world. Yet behind closed doors, May and Som still practise for the day when health restrictions in Bangkok are lifted and tourists return, but they have no idea when and worry that the city's infamous red-light district will be very different by then. 'This kind of place will be the last to re-open,' said May 31. Like Som, she goes only by her Thai nickname. 'Even when it does re-open, customers will be worried about their safety.' May and Som have, understandably, failed to realise that it is already over for them. There may be a re-birth of the bar and sex industry in Bangkok, in a sort of fashion. But it will only be in the image their government permits. Their freedom to do what they like and to think for themselves has gone now. That's over - if they allow it. Thailand continue to shut bars and clubs and then permit them to re-open at random, apparently without any real evidence that 'lockdown measures' actually work. In fact the real evidence points to them not working at all. It is hard to say under the current government of Thailand who lie about absolutely everything and there is no reliable information at all. But evidence from other countries reveal 'lockdowns' as disastrous for people's health and well-being. (continues below) https://bangkokjack.com/2020/09/12/dying-lockdown-restrictions/ Even so, lockdowns and other restrictions appear to have put an end to Thailand's lucrative sex industry. For some people this is a good thing, but for those who were part of it, and earning the sort of money never available back in the villages, this has been a disaster. Not only the sex industry. Have a thought for the tens of thousands of tour-guides whose money has long since run out. Hotel workers, taxi drivers and just about everybody else in the service industry catering for Thailand's forty-million tourists each year have also run out of savings. This can only lead to desperation, suicide, starvation and a rise in crime. How's that for an outlook? And all this is for a minor flu virus with a 99.4% survival rate. Have you not figured this out yet? Last April I asked everybody I knew if they knew anybody at all who had died from COVID-19. I definitely did not mean somebody they had heard about through the media or from a government statistic. I asked if they personally knew anybody who had been affected. The answer was nobody. This April, one year on, and the answer to the same question is that still nobody knows anybody at all who they can reliably say has died FROM COVID - personally. Not with it, but FROM it. Words matter. I will give you an example. An acquittance of mine, when I asked that question openly in a bar, replied, 'yes, my mother died of COVID last month.' 'I am very sorry to hear that,' I told him. 'How old was she?' It turned out she was 93-years-old and they thought she contracted COVID-19 in an ambulance. 'Why was she in the ambulance?' I thought that was a obvious question. 'Ahh, she was very ill and being taken to hospital. She tested positive on arrival and died later that day. So she must have contracted it in the ambulance because she hadn't been out anywhere for months.' Now, I am very sorry for him. Losing your mother at any age must be horrible, and a reminder that we are next in line. But, a 'very ill' 93-year old who is being rushed to hospital in an ambulance then tests positive for a flu virus and passes away..? Why are you closing the airports...? Dengue Fever is worse. Malaria is more deadly. Drink Driving in Thailand claims more lives every two days than COVID-19 has in a year. For all I know Chicken Pox is a more dangerous virus, but I cannot be bothered to look up the figures. Now, of course, as I predicted one year ago, the experts in government will tell you that their response to COVID has been the reason the death rate is so low. And so, by this crooked logic, we can all expect suffocating restrictions and lockdowns to keep us all safe every rainy season from now onwards - can we? Are we to be locked in every Songkran, during the so-called seven deadly days in terms of road accidents?' I should be careful in what I ask. Perhaps they haven't thought of that yet. Perhaps they have. How long will it be before the pressure builds and for people to revolt against all this childish nonsense? I am amazed it has taken so long. I am disappointed in my fellow countrymen who remain locked up and shackled, too afraid to stand up for themselves and even protest the restrictions so randomly imposed and without any merit. Just to remind you - the death rate in Great Britain did not increase last year from any of the previous forty years. It remained at roughly the same level it always has, per 1000 people. What did change is the number of COVID-19 related deaths. They appeared from nowhere. And the regular number of influenza deaths dropped to zero. Why has nobody asked why this is? Why have so few people in the media failed to point out that there is a big difference between dying with COVID-19 and from it. Well, the reason for that is to have millions of people locked-down, in fear inside their houses and watching the modern 24-hour news roll-outs is good for them. It increases their audience and, in turn, increases their subscription base and advertising revenue. These people really are this cynical. Trust me, I know some of them personally and they are laughing at you. Have you seen or heard the current TV and Radio adverts in the UK pushing this COVID message and that. Buy this mask or that item for your house that will make staying inside for months on end that much easier. It doesn't bear listening to. Sales of toilet rolls and preserved foods have gone through the roof. Kerching..... Who are we, what have we done to ourselves and why aren't we outside, in the tens of millions, protesting the COVID lockdown nonsense? As a friend of mine says, 'there are more of us than there are of them. We could drown these people in our urine.' Then why don't we? Why aren't we all out there pissing all over them until they go away and leave us alone? When will people start to realise that sleazy politicians, such as the UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, who is behind the awful UK COVID control measures, has friends who are winning contracts to the tune of TENS OF MILLIONS OF POUNDS, as a direct result of him shutting down the UK economy through the fear of the flu he is helping to create. And how long will it be before everybody comes to their senses and realises the media and their 'elected' representatives are doing this to you for their own profit. How long will it be until citizens of the free world genuinely understand they have committed the health, welfare and livelihoods of their families to a bunch of incompetents who are so drunk on their power and influence that they have no idea what to do next. I have to think like that. I want to believe this. Because the alternative is that they all know exactly what they are doing and that would be nothing short of sinister. Then I would have no idea what to do next. But, the only fear I have is that the general public in modern times have been educated down to a level where they do not, will not, and even cannot think for themselves anymore. In which case the answer to my own question is NEVER. We are stuck with this sort of government interference now and it is only going to get worse. Before long you will be showing your 'papers' every time you want to buy a pint of milk or board a bus. And your taxes are about to dramatically increase too. Within a few years you will be paying 70% of everything you earn to the government, which is just going to grow bigger, more powerful and wealthier. They even call this themselves a New Normal. And it will be your own fault. A wise man once said that societies always elect the governments they deserve and this is proven to be true. If you are not paying attention, if there is no opposition, then from this point onwards you are going to get exactly what you deserve. And that will come with all the face-masks, temperature checks, police road-blocks, ID carrying, health passports, unemployment and taxation you can handle. You have already bent over for your dear-leaders, now it's time to take your trousers off too. - Albert Jack Albert Jack AUDIOBOOKS available for download here

How the future looks for you now...... Last Man in London and the New World Order Buy Now Audio Books Other Platforms Assorted eBooks Read the full article

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