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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2393 KP) rated Forbidden City in Books

Mar 2, 2022 (Updated Mar 2, 2022)

Forbidden City

James Ponti | 2022 | Children

9.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Spying and Chess

While on a recent mission, Paris discovered some bonus intel, and that turns out to be a valuable find. It leads MI6 to believe that the evil organization Umbra is going to kidnap one of North Korea’s nuclear scientists. If MI6 wants to get him to defect first, they need to find a way to approach him. Given North Korea’s secrecy and security, that won’t be easy. However, the scientist’s son is a top chess player, and he is planning to enter a couple of international tournaments. So Paris tries to upgrade his own chess skills so he can join the tournaments. Will Paris and the rest of the team be able to make contact with the scientist? Is he even interested in defecting?

Having enjoyed the first two in this series, I was looking forward to this book, and I wasn’t disappointed. This book is Paris’s time to shine, but all the other characters get their own smaller moments, and I continue to love their relationships. We get some surprising advancement on one series plot thread, although others are only mentioned in passing. I do feel like the other books in the series had a bit more action, but with all the angles the teams uses to approach their mission, I was never bored. We get a few laughs along the way, and even when we aren’t laughing, it’s just fun to be around the characters. Fans will enjoy this latest book. I’m already looking forward to their next mission.

Kudos

The Darkslayer II: Torment & Terror

Craig Halloran

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

Scorched ... The bizarre eternal being, Scorch, rears his mischievous head, placing Venir and...

The Queen's Poisoner (Kingfountain, #1)

Jeff Wheeler

8.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Book

The first book in the million-copy, Wall Street Journal bestselling Kingfountain series from Jeff...

The Seven Good Years

Etgar Keret

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Book

Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in...

More Teachings - The Harvest

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Podcast

This is the Torah Observant "Shomer Mitzvot" series. In Judaism, safeguarding and keeping the Torah...

Veronica Pena (690 KP) rated Criminal Minds - Season 1 in TV

Mar 30, 2020

It's so weird to rewatch this series and have seen all these episodes before, but now, watching as a college student, studying criminal justice, history, and political science, along with legal studies and American studies, everything just clicks a little more.

It's so fun to see all the baby characters, the original team, the various plot lines that they pursued. I think this will always be one of my favorite seasons to watch and I don't think there's anything I don't like about the show. Other than the small inaccuracy they had when Haley first gave birth. They called her a girl in the first episode the baby is in and most everyone knows that Hotch ends up having a son named Jack. Small story discrepancies really get me like nothing else.

Other than that, great season. Baby Reid is so cute.

Kudos

David McK (3600 KP) rated The Last Camel Died at Noon (Amelia Peabody, #6) in Books

Jan 30, 2019

Book number 6 in Elizabeth Peter's Amelia Peabody (think female Victorian Indiana Jones) series, which sees Amelia, her husband Radcliffe and son Ramses back in the dusty climes of Egypt following their adventures in the previous ([b: The Deeds of the Disturber|32139|The Deeds of the Disturber (Amelia Peabody, #5)|Elizabeth Peters|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388887764s/32139.jpg|2176252]).

I have to say, though, that the plot of this one is more-than-slightly reminiscent of [a: H Rider Haggard|4633123|H. Rider Haggard|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1298296700p2/4633123.jpg]'s [b: King Solomon's Mines|108914|In Search of King Solomon's Mines|Tahir Shah|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348655880s/108914.jpg|4188], pretty much just swapping the African setting and characters of that novel for the dusty climes of Egypt - a similarity that Emerson, in a bit of meta-fiction, himself complains about.

Throw in a dash of [b: She|5203|She's Come Undone|Wally Lamb|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1408313457s/5203.jpg|1003370] (also by H Rider Haggard) with a soupcon of intrigue and more entertaining byplay between the Emerson's (with Ramses his usual precocious self), and the result is another entertaining read in the series.