Book #175 of 2025: Royal Gambit by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #4) I think this 2025 title is my favorite installment of its urban fantasy series yet, and like the others, it can essentially be read as a standalone piece. The Checquy are a British intelligence agency tasked with protecting the realm from supernatural …
Continue reading “Book Review: Royal Gambit by Daniel O’Malley”
Book #138 of 2024: Blitz by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #3) I have a lingering fondness for the Checquy, author Daniel O’Malley’s fictional and exceedingly dysfunctional British intelligence agency tasked with containing all threats of a magical nature, and I’m glad that this novel stands so apart from its predecessors, as it’s been over …
Book #70 of 2016: Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #2) Stiletto, the second book in Daniel O’Malley’s Checquy Files series, is that choicest of sequels that improves upon its predecessor in every way. That first novel, The Rook, had a lot to accomplish between the introduction of its unique setting and magical system …
Book #47 of 2016: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #1) The Rook begins like a Jason Bourne story, with its main character surrounded by assailants she has apparently killed but with no memory of anything before that moment. In execution, it’s more like Octavia Butler’s excellent vampire novel Fledgling, since our amnesiac …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more