{"id":2121,"date":"2016-08-25T13:20:25","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T17:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=2121"},"modified":"2016-08-25T13:20:25","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T17:20:25","slug":"book-review-dreaming-spies-by-laurie-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=2121","title":{"rendered":"Book review:  Dreaming Spies by Laurie King"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/22318363-dreaming-spies\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net\/books\/1401917932m\/22318363.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"Dreaming Spies (Mary Russell, #13)\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/22318363-dreaming-spies\">Dreaming Spies<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/6760.Laurie_R_King\">Laurie R. King<\/a><br \/>\nMy rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1738683017\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I really enjoy this mystery series and its unique and interesting take on Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, the past few books have been the weakest of the lot, so I was delighted that #13 in the series proved to be such a delightful read.<br \/>\nThe book takes place in 1920s Oxford with a flashback to 1920s Japan. I&#8217;ve been to Japan several times and am reasonably familiar with Japanese culture, and the author did an excellent job describing pre-Westernized Japan as perceived through the eyes of the British. Her descriptions were quite accurate and perceptive and made for an enjoyable read (especially when you don&#8217;t have to throw the book figuratively against the wall and yell, &#8220;That&#8217;s simply not how it works.&#8221;).<br \/>\nIn addition, the plot was extremely clever and well done. While I accurately picked out the major villain, there were several unexpected (at least to me) plot twists. I loved coming to the end of the book and having to do a re-read to pick up on all the clues that I missed the first time. That&#8217;s my favorite kind of mystery.<br \/>\nAs always in these books, the characters are well drawn, and Mary Russell&#8217;s narrative is full of personality and character.<br \/>\nIf you haven&#8217;t read this series yet, run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore or library, and start reading. (It&#8217;s best to read it in order.) And if you&#8217;ve stopped reading the series, I highly recommend picking it up again. &#8220;Dreaming Spies&#8221; is a highly worthy addition!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/1396812-may\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really enjoy this mystery series and its unique and interesting take on Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, the past few books have been the weakest of the lot, so I was delighted that #13 in the series proved to be such a delightful read. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40],"tags":[336,428,115,205,207,108,273],"class_list":["post-2121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-dreaming-spies","tag-historical-mysteries","tag-laurie-king","tag-mary-russell","tag-mysteries","tag-sherlock-holmes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-yd","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2122,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121\/revisions\/2122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}