So, last night I was reading Madhouse by Rob Thurman. First I gotta say that I love, love, lovethis series. So much so that it’s taken me this long to read the book because, once sucked in, it’s near impossible to pull back out, which means I have to find long stretches of time in which to sit and read. Of course, once the Cal craving hits, it doesn’t much matter that it’s the beginning of the week and I don’t really have the time to spare, I’m picking up the book. Though I did manage to talk myself out of re-reading the series. Hurray for the modicum of self-control.
But while I read the last two books in one sitting each, I managed to set Madhouseaside for the night. Not because I wanted to read on, but because a damn stormfront that had me fighting fatigue and aching eyes. I knew I wouldn’t last past a few chapters but–silly me–I chose the wrong place to stop.
Well, the right one in that I knew from Thurman’s previous works that this section marked the beginning of an action-packed sequence that would capture me pretty much for good, but definitely bad in that I chose to stop at the beginning of a chapter where Cal and his brother Niko come across bloody bones hanging from the ceiling of an empty warehouse. Yep, I stopped there while lying in bed on a dark and stormy night right before I went to sleep.
Sometimes I’m not too bright.
I spent the rest of the night periodically waking up from various nightmares, all hazy recollections in the cool quiet of the bedroom, the light from the streetlamps outside filtering through the curtains. Cal Leandro’s world ain’t a pretty one, and Rob Thurman sucks you into it as surely as Charybdis. Yet despite the horror and the tension, she manages to thread humor through it, some dark, some bawdy, some even light-hearted, all carried by characters both flawed and beautifully three-dimensional. While not a series I’d recommend to those with weak stomachs, definitely one I’d be willing to give up a few hours sleep.
