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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9279869" data-attributes="member: 508">I was on a business trip this past week, which left me plenty of time for reading at airports, on the plane, and in my hotel room.  As a result, I started and finished the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - the 21st book in the "Agent Pendergast" series that began with The Relic.  I enjoyed this one much better than its predecessor, Bloodless, which I had felt was a betrayal to the overall tone of the series; much like "The X-Files" should always have Agent Mulder personally see for himself the evidence of whatever alien/paranormal/supernatural event he's looking into but the evidence should not become apparent to the world at large, Bloodless betrayed the previous tone of the series by having the weird thing Pendergast was investigating (which in and of itself was so out there it felt out of place in the series) out there for the public to see.  This latest book, which also has a plot point that's way beyond the normal scope of the series (which I've always felt had previously constrained itself to "the more believable end of the X-Files spectrum"), was at least well-written, engaging, and had three different plots that merged seamlessly into one.  The worst part about it: the cliff-hanger ending.  The silver lining: it says "To Be Concluded" at the end, so it looks like the next book in the series is to be the last.  I think it may be about time to put the Pendergast series to rest.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Kaiju Preservation Society, by <s>Robert</s> John Scalzi.  [Edit:  I'm not sure where I got "Robert: from - thanks, Autumnal!]  I bought this one at a Barnes and Noble during the trip, as the second book I bought (on-line) didn't arrive in time, and I had heard good things about it.  Having never read Scalzi before, I don't know how it rates with his other novels, but this was a light-hearted read about how nuclear explosions can cause the barriers between alternate worlds to fade, and the "next alternate world over" from ours is an Earth where the dinosaur-killing meteor never hit, allowing dinosaurs to evolve into kaiju: Godzilla-sized creatures who have their own biological nuclear reactors within their bodies and rely upon "parasites" (some of them are actually beneficial to the kaiju) to regulate their body temperatures and so on.  The main character is a last-minute addition to a field team, so we get to learn everything through his eyes as he experiences them, and he's a good sort.  The worst part about this book was I blew through it in a couple of hours (at the airport, start to finish, before I even got on the plane - bummer!)</li> </ul>As a result, with only one book left in my "travel stock," I had to decide whether to start the 500-page book I had with me or spend several hours on a plane reading nothing, so I could start the book waiting for me at home that should have arrived in the mail on the day I left.  I went ahead and started You Don't Want to Know, by Lisa Jackson.  This one's about a woman who spent a few years in and out of mental institutions after the disappearance (and probable death) of her little two-year-old son, and now she keeps seeing him, two years later, still at the same age he was at when he disappeared.  So someone's trying to drive her over the brink or something, which is suspiciously like the plot of another Lisa Jackson thriller I read just in the last few months (only that time it was a cop's dead wife who kept showing up).  But now, having started it, I'll have to finish it before I can read the book I purchased for my trip - oh well.  (It's a self-imposed rule, but a rule nonetheless.)Johnathan</blockquote>

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