When you’re a reader, there’s nothing like finding a new series.
It’s even better when, by the time you stumble upon it, there is already a bunch written that you can plow through with relish.
That’s what happened with A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) George RR Martin’s wildly fascinating sword and sorcery epic. I got to it as Volume Three, A Storm of Swords, was released. As each book is well over 1,000 pages, I had at least three weeks of uninterrupted delight.
But then, I had to wait along with all the other geeks for Martin to continue the agonizingly slow process of churning out numbers 4 and 5. Still to come, number 6 and 7, and who knows when they’ll be ready? Martin has apparently never met a book tour, fantasy conference or editing project he can resist. With any luck, we’ll both be around for The End, but the odds are growing increasingly long…or is that short?
Which is why, if you haven’t encountered Flavia De Luce until now, this is your lucky day. You have something to do while waiting for The Winds of Winter.
Flavia De Luce is an 11-year-old girl who lives in a rundown manor house in the English village of Bishop’s Lacey in 1950. She solves murders, assisted by a fully-stocked chemistry lab left by her uncle, her bicycle Gladys, and an 11-year-old’s still-fresh curiosity.
Yeah, I know. But, world of wonders, these books, starting with The Sweetness at The Bottom of Pie, currently culminating in Volume 4, I Am Half-Sick of Shadow, are good.
Better than good.
Even crazier? They are written by a 74-year-old Canadian man, Alan Bradley, originally from Cobourg, Ont., who spent 25 years as the director of TV Engineering in Saskatoon. He retired to Kelowna, where he expected to go gently, etc. when a cataclysmic 2003 forest fire that nearly engulfed his house caused him to re-examine his scorched priorities and start writing like an 11-year-old girl.
He’d never even been to England until 2007, when he went to pick up the first of Flavia’s multitude of awards but that didn’t prevent him from nailing the Agatha Christie English Village murder mystery.
Of course, there aren’t a lot of 74-year-old men who can write like an 11-year-old girl either, but Bradley seems to have little trouble channeling his inner Flavia, who is in turn funny, solemn, wise petulant, insightful, kind, and above all, curious. The kind of curious that killed the cat, essential in a murder mystery.
Hermione Granger meets Sherlock Holmes.
The good news gets even better. Unlike George Martin, Bradley has discipline and reliably finishes one of these a year. And the final volume in the series of six (say it ain’t so!) arrives in early 2014.
Oh, and Hollywood director Sam Mendes has bought the TV rights, so stay tuned…