1581 ( )

Four stories in this book. The Black Pearl is cute, but it feels a little too scripted - partly because of the karma thing but mostly because the lama knows what's going to happen next. Several cute bits, mostly involving Willie being dumbfounded, but nothing wonderful. The Magnified Man is, again, good but nothing special. Willie blowing the girl's cover is interesting mostly because it's Modesty that does it - to someone else - in the books. The rest is a reasonably simple Modesty and Willie caper. Then The Jericho Caper - I don't quite get the title, they didn't bring down any walls, but it's a cute name. And when I read what happened to Torres' sight, I knew what would happen at the end. Oh, another echo - there's a short story about an artist doing a Modesty statue and worrying about the line of her head and neck. Good but not wonderful. And the last one is the short bit that was interpolated in The Galley Slaves to cover the strike in London - the only strip story that got translated completely into a book (short story, actually). The Killing Ground. Not bad, but I wonder how they made it come out right for time - Modesty wonders why the game was set up to be short, I wonder the same thing. Did they know how long the strike would run when they (he) wrote the story? Interesting. The story itself is quite minor, in several senses - physically short, little depth to it, not much of a challenge. Again, not bad but nothing much. ( )