What Song the Sirens Sang (Gideon Sable #3) by Simon R. Green

​This is somewhat outside of my genre range, but the thing is I was so charmed by book one in this series, I continue expecting the author to repeat the trick. So far, he hasn’t. And sure, it’s smart – draw the readers in and then milk the formula out for the entire series. Many writers are doing it, Green is just one of them. But it does leave a lot to be desired.
Maybe it’s impossible to recreate the whimsy and cleverness of the original, since the characters are already established. Maybe it’s simply too much work to be that god every single time. Either way, this book, the third Gideon Sable adventure, was perfectly fine, and possibly even a step up from its predecessor, but a far cry from the original.
This time around Gideon Sable is trying to do the happily-in-the-relationship thing, the magic-store-owner-thing, but, of course, something comes up. Something as unignorable as a stone purported to contain the famed song of the sirens. And of course, a thing like that has many greedy eyes on it, so Gideon gets involved with yet another job that’ll test his skills and his bag of tricks.
So yeah, time to get the gang back together and do their thing. And sure enough it’s fun enough and a quick read. And every so often there’s a glimpse of that original cleverness and charm too. Thanks Netgalley.