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The Pajiba July 2023 Book Recommendations Superpost!

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | August 1, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | August 1, 2023 |

Terry Pratchett Getty 2.jpg

Summer is supposed to be at its peak right now, but in Dundee, it’s poured down for most of July. So, what else am I supposed to do beyond read books? And drink? Here are a few literary highlights for the past month.

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

One of the big things on my pop culture bucket list for 2022 was to finally start reading the Discworld series. I achieved that goal by reading Maskerade and being thoroughly charmed by it. so, when it came time to try another book in the late great Terry Pratchett’s beloved world, I knew where to go: obviously, I had to read the one about vampires!

Carpe Jugulum (which is actually the follow-up to Maskerade in terms of the witches’ continuity, so that worked out nicely for me!) reveals the bloodsuckers of Discworld. They fit all the expected cliches - nice waistcoats, crumbling castles, pretensions of classiness - but now there’s a new breed of vampire in town. They’ve trained themselves to be immune to all the things we expect to hurt them. Garlic doesn’t work, nor do crosses or sunlight or holy water. They want to implement a more dignified reign of terror over humanity, and they’ve set their sights on the kingdom of Lancre.

This is another great example of the ways that Pratchett offered a sly and often scathing satirical view of contemporary politics. Carpe Jugulum might as well be subtitled ‘centrism is shit.’ This new breed of vampires see themselves as compassionate, more dignified than the ghouls of old, but their strategies are somehow more ghoulish than past generations. Modernization is often just a politically acceptable version of destruction. This all makes the book sound heavy and it definitely isn’t. The jokes fly thick and fast, the worldbuilding is detailed (although jumping into a series this dense and out of order made keeping up with it a tad tricky on my end), and I’m thoroughly team witches. It’s exciting to finally get Discworld, I must say. Now, which book do I read next?

Minion by L.A. Banks

Sometimes, you just get struck with a literary craving. This past few weeks, I’ve had a real hankering for a throwback to my adolescence and the pre-Twilight era of urban fantasy. You know the kind: the ones where there’s a hot woman on the cover wearing a halter top, with some sort of tribal tattoo on her back, while she’s wielding a knife. They typically have lots of sex in them, some vampire in leather trousers, and a bunch of wobbly lexicography. I read a couple good ones this month, including Discount Armageddon by the ever-reliable Seanan McGuire and Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel Jose Older. I’m focusing on Minion mostly because it was a book I remembered sharply from my teen vampire lover years even though I never got around to actually reading it. Hurray for eBay discounts and disposable income.

Minion is the first novel in the Vampire Huntress Legend series by the late L.A. Banks, and it’s one of the handful of long-running urban fantasy sagas from this era I remember having a woman of colour protagonist front and centre. The Buffy inspirations were evident, mostly because this subgenre was extremely Buffy-inspired as a whole. Damali Richards is a spoken word artist and huntress who, when she turns 21, will inherit the vast powers of the Neteru. A slew of killings of an unexpectedly violent nature has left Damali and her team flummoxed. Uncovering the truth will reveal a powerful vampire’s dictatorial intentions, and put someone she dearly loves in the firing line.

You know what you’re getting with this era of urban fantasy and Minion certainly achieved those expectations. There’s action, sexy times, high stakes, a conspiracy of worldwide evil, fear over one’s destiny, and weapons. But it was also hard to escape the sense that this is only half a book. It ends on a cliffhanger, preceded by a hell of a lot of info-dumping that made for an unsatisfying singular read. Apparently, the initial draft was far longer and split into two by the publisher, which means I’ll definitely be reading the sequel, if only to get the full story. There is a lot to like here, particularly with a sharp and conflicted protagonist who is surrounded by a loving team with their own set of problems. I’m not sure I’ll commit to all 12 books in the series but I’m certainly here for a couple more adventures.

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon



I like crime novels with a distinct setting, be it cozy small towns full of quirky shops and mass murder or picturesque cities where the rot of sleaze has seeped into their very foundations. Given my penchant for stories set in Venice that delve into the legendary locale’s dark side (see Don’t Look Now, Death in Venice, The Comfort of Strangers), I’m surprised it took me so long to get to the long-running series of books by Donna Leon, centred on the Commissario of Police, Guido Brunetti. And the first book involves a murder at an opera house? Sold.

Death at La Fenice is pretty standard stuff: gorgeous locations, an ensemble of fascinating but shady characters, an ultimately good protagonist who is all too aware of the seedy depths of the world he inhabits, and a sting in the tale to stop you getting too comfortable as a reader. Frankly, every crime series I read will inevitably be compared to my king, Armand Gamache, which I know is unfair because you can’t top perfection (although Guido is a big wife guy like Gamache, which I appreciated.) So, this was solid if not especially groundbreaking, but, like a good romance novel, you go to crime for the tropes and comfort of knowing the murder will be solved by the end of 300 pages or so. I did like being part of this deftly described city, adored by Leon but not blindly so. Since I can’t currently afford to actually go to Venice, this series seems like a nice substitute for the time being.