book reviews

Yes, another set! So exciting!

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie. I haven't read this one in a long time, but it's of course a familiar childhood favorite. Reading it now, I'm intensely curious as to why they chose to settle in Indian territory on the word of a 'fellow' who'd been to Washington, D.C., and I think of Caroline Ingalls, who didn't have the same wanderlust that afflicted her husband, riding farther and farther into Indian territory, away from the civilization she loved, for him.

Elizabeth Peters, Curse of the Pharaohs. This second installment in the series finds the protagonist male and female back in Egypt on a dig, uncovering a mystery with their good sense and skepticism. The relationship between the two is entertaining, the female protagonist is tart and refreshing, and generally it's a pretty good book. Good enough to move farther into the series, for sure!

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Tempting Fate. I find Yarbro and Saint Germain are a bit hit or miss. There's a fair amount of formula to her works, they're often overly dense, and many of them overdo the famous figures of the time period. This one, however, was none of those things. It moved well, had a lot of different characters and plotlines interwoven, and captured the turbulent years between the ending of World War I and beginning of World War II in an effective and affecting way.

Fran Lantz, Swept Away #8: All Shook Up. This I believe final entry in the Swept Away teen time traveler series of the '80s is definitely a bit on the light side, but it's entertaining and fun, with interesting characters, and I enjoyed the bit of Memphis in the 1950s it offered. I'm a fan of the series, anyway, having read them all (or almost all) when they first came out, so I'm glad to be rediscovering them now.