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This blog was started as a place to post book reviews. The books reviewed here will be mixed. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, General Fiction, NonFiction and more. Both positve and negative reviews will be posted, as well as reviews for books written for all ages and all reading levels.

Many of the books reviewed here are ones that I have purchased for my own reading pleasure. Some, I receive free in exchange for reviews. Beginning in December, 2009 you will know which are the free ones if you read the final paragraph of my reviews.

Also of note: I choose what I will read, attempting to avoid the books on which I would end up writing a negative review... but I have been known to make mistakes. Thus you see some one and two star reviews here. Since I don't enjoy writing negative reviews, I only write them if the review was promised, or if the book was so exceedingly bad, I just had to say so. Regardless of the percentage of positive to negative reviews on this blog, I give my honest opinion each and every time, and have never received financial compensation for posting my reviews.

Note that, except for fair use portions quoted from some of the books reviewed, all copyright in the content of the reviews belongs to Lady Dragoness.


Wednesday, August 8, 2007

A Different Side of Asimov

A Whiff of Death
Isaac Asimov
Publisher: Lancer (1958)
Mass Market Paperback: 210 pages
Rating: 5 stars of 5 possible

Some of you may know that Isaac Asimov was famous for his science fiction novels and short stories and that he wrote other books, also mostly science related. A Whiff of Death is both different and not different than Asimov's usual books.  It's different because it is not science fiction, nor is it straight science as were so many books he wrote. It is a murder mystery.

It's not too different though because, like most of what Isaac Asimov wrote,
A Whiff of Death has a background in science too; in this case, chemistry.  Now, I've never studied chemistry myself so I don't know how solid, how accurate the science is in the book; but it seemed very plausible to me.  There is a lot of suspense and many of the typical red herrings buried in this story.

I was rather surprised at the end because I had believed someone else was the culprit.  All in all, I have to say I liked A Whiff of Death.  It was refreshingly different than most of what I've been reading lately.  Though it is old (published in 1958) it was a worthy addition to my reading list.

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