Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Language of Bees

by Laurie R. King


WARNING: Do Not Read This Book, until you can read #10. This book has a real cliff hanging ending, leaving you craving another serving, and unfortunately it will be some time before THE GREEN MAN appears. According to the Laurie R. King website
http://www.laurierking.com/ Sometime in 2010.

But what about THE LANGUAGE OF BEES? It has been quite awhile since I read any Mary Russell. The last book LOCKED ROOMS was published in 2005. That is one thing that amazes me. How she can continue with such long breaks between stories, the problems of continuity are overwhelming. I am amazed that the story continues on so strongly, pulling you in, and wrapping you in the familiar.

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes return home after almost a year away. They have traveled around the world solving crimes, some devastating to themselves personally and to their relationship. They come home rather wounded, to discover not the peace and haven they thought, but that Sherlock Holmes has a grown son, whose wife and daughter have gone missing. Their search for Yolanda and Estelle leaves them following a trail of bloody sacrifices and a religious madman. Can they decipher the clues and reach the trail’s end in time to save an innocent child from the sacrificial knife?

This book pulled me in. I couldn’t put it down, reading all day Sunday. Still not finished I did the unthinkable and skipped to the end. But it did allow me to go to bed and return to reading the next day. This time I read more slowly because I didn’t want to abandoned that world. I want to keep reading. Laurie R. King is such a great writer and her portrayals of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes brilliant. But LANGUAGE OF BEES was like Star War’s “Empire Strikes Back”. While it comes to a satisfactory end, there is so much is left unanswered that I’m impatient for the next in the series. Probably to satisfy my hunger, I will have to go back and read the whole series from the beginning. Now that’s a good idea, each book is well worth reading again, and maybe by then the next book will be out.

Reviewed by Linda Suzane www.midnightblood.com June 16, 2009

The Language of Bees
by Laurie R. King
Publisher: Bantam Books
Pub. Date: April 2009
ISBN-13: 9780553804546
Series: Mary Russell Series, #9