This month's reading: Magician: Apprentice (Feist) and The White Lioness (Mankell)

Hopefully not the only two books I'll read this month, but I'm satisfied either way.

(via Inspector Wallander.org)

When Inspector Kurt Wallander is called in to investigate the execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife, it initially seems like a routine case. He uncovers a suspicious stalker who may have committed the murder out of brutal passion. But when the suspect's alibi turns out to be airtight, Wallander must look deeper into the case, and what he discovers is far more complex -- and dangerous -- than he ever imagined: He soon uncovers an assassination plot and finds himself in a tangle with the secret police and a ruthless ex-KGB agent. Combining compelling insights into the sinister side of modern life with a riveting tale of international intrigue, The White Lioness keeps you on the knife edge of suspense.

I love the Kurt Wallander books. Never did see any episodes of the BBC adaption because I always missed them since PBS isn't exactly at the top of my watch list. What's funny is that Kenneth Branagh isn't who I picture as Wallander whenever I read one of these books. You know who does? Martin Freeman. No idea if it's because of time on Sherlock or what, but he just strikes my imagination as a better fit for Kurt Wallander.

To the forest on the shore of the Kingdom of the Isles, the orphan Pug came to study with the master magician Kulgan. But though his courage won him a place at court and the heart of a lovely Princess, he was ill at ease with the normal ways of wizardry.

Yet Pug's strange sort of magic would one day change forever the fates of two worlds. For dark beings from another world had opened a rift in the fabric of spacetime to being again the age-old battle between the forces of Order and Chaos.

I've read Magician: Apprentice once before in 2012 and I had a sudden urge the other day to reread it. For those who don't know, Apprentice and it's sequel/companion, Magician: Master are two halves of the same book, titled simply Magician. For whatever reason, when it was published in the U.S., the book was split in two, making the original Riftwar Saga a quartet instead of a trilogy. I never got around to reading the rest of the saga, but I want to and a re-read is the way place to start.