Sadly, the goddess in here isn't Oshun or Erzulie

 Again, running behind with updates, but I did get my hands on book 4 of Greg Herren's Scott Bradly series, Vieux Carré Voodoo. 

Now, as I mentioned previously, I started this series with book 3, then ran back and reread the first two. Given it looks like Mr Herren switched publishers between books, this one picks up a few years after the event in Mardi Gras Mambo, and deals with life maybe a year after Katrina. While Franks is now retired, he's off in SW Ohiop attending Pro-wresting school, leaving Scotty alone in the Big Easy. Sory of. We're around Easter here, as Scotty is headed to the Gay Easter Parade. We meet an old family friend, who gives Scotty back a stuffed bunny he barely remembers. Said friend takes a header off the balcony a chapter later, and we find out Colin, who we last saw as a wanted fugitive, is back in town. 

So, we essentially get treated to the redemption arc of Colin/Abram, who now didn't murder Scotty's uncles. We also get a mystery involving an artifact from a small theocracy on the India/Bangladesh border where Kali the destroyer is worshiped. (Despite the book title, when the goddess appears in Scotty's vision, she first appears with several arms holding skulls and a bunch of blood. Given the missing artifact is Her Eye...)

Any rate, most of the book becomes a race between Colin and Scotty trying to solve riddles left by the dead guy leading them to the eye while dodging a few other factions trying to recover the eye for their own reasons.  

While I enjoyed this one, I was expecting something closer to Louisiana Voodoo/Conjure than Indian dual goddess lore. Also trying very hard to figure oiut why the hell Colin is such a yo-yo character, coming in and out of the larger narrative. 

Last train to Clarksville

 Once again, summer has arrived and the pseudonymous Riley Sager has released another thriller. 

With a Vengeance has a simple enough set up. Anna Matheson and her compatriot Seamus have invited 6 people she has evidence caused the downfall of her father and the deaths of her family. The trian leaves Philadelphia at 7PM and arrives in Chicago at 7AM, giving Anna 13 hours to confront those who did her wrong until they can be arrested by the FBI when the train arrives. 

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. First up, the son of one of the invitees shows up instead of his dad, who was behind the conspiracy in the first place. That Anna and Dante dated before the fall only complicates things further. Then, during Anna's initial confrontation with the 6 conspirators, one dies of poisoning. And it turns out that, despite the train being otherwise empty, there is one other guest on board with a story of his own. Plus an engineer locked in the locomotive. 

So, we essentially have two Agatha Christie novels going on here as conspirators start dropping like flies. And the There Were None and of course, Murder of the Orient Express are both obvious inspirations in here. On the positive side, Sager's pacing continues to improve, and the twists and surprises are so much better spaced than they have been in previous volumes. On the other hand, I called one of the major twists fairly early, but at least this time ALL the twists make much more logical sense than they have in previous volumes. 

While once again not exactly undying literature, it remains good popcorn fodder, sucking you in for a while.  

MAsquerades, plagues, and kidnapped by pirates!

 I bought Penric's Labors by Lois McMaster Bujold a while back, but it's taken me a while to get to that section of my TBR pile. (Honestly, the last book left on that part of the Pile is Frank Herbert's Dune, and I'm kind of saving that for winter when my annual reading challenge is done, since I know that it's going to be a slog.)

 Anyway, we have three collected Penric novellas here, which, while in series timeline chronological order, kind of fit between other novellas in the series. Indeed, her note at the end discusses how she tends to write out of order, and then kind of affix it to the story timeline later. Which is why our initial offering, Masquerade in Lodi, has Penric unmarried. By the time we hit the last story, The Physicians of Vilnoc, he's married with a daughter. (The middle story, The Orphans of Raspay, he's married with no kids yet.) 

 So, the initial story is set in an analogue of Medievalish Venice. (Maybe a bit closer to the Renaissance?) Penric and Desdemona (his demon) get called out to a hospice to check a rescued drowning man for signs of possession. Turns out, the man is possessed, but how he got there winds up being a whole other mystery, one which Penric and the local Saint of the Bastard have to solve while running around canals at night during a festival not unlike Carnivale.

In the middle story, Penric is sailing back to his home with  an obscure manuscript, gets purloined by pirates and winds up getting held captive with two Quadrene orphans. Which of course leads to nautical fun times.

 And finally, we wind up with a bloodborne plague infecting the local fort, and it falls on Pen and Des to figure out the pathogen and how to stop it.

 As usual, these are entertaining and well written.  

Oops

 So, in Installment Immortality, Mary Dunleavy, formerly a Crossroads ghost, now a Caretaker ghost,. and always the babysitter to the entire Price-Healy clan and also now in service to the Anima Mundi...

Well, let's just say the world soul is a bit annoyed at the Covenant of St. George, who are busy locking up ghosts in bottles with things that hurt spirits, thereby effectively making ghost grenades. MAry gets suckered in to going East to stop them. Mary winds up taking Elsie and Arthur with her (the latter, who is falling apart after being reconstructed mentally from other people's memories, the former just pissed off at losing her mom and her brother). 

This leads the to Worcester, Massachusetts, where they find the Covenant, and a large society of ghosts who's roles are out of whack. 

Thankfully, none of our mains die by the end, but we do get some rather hard looks at ghost society and what's happened to the Covenant since the family blew up the training hall. 

And as a personal TW, there's an entire section on ghost dogs that really broke my heart. 

 I love this series very much.