A Journey into...

I finished Kage Baker's Gods and Pawns.  It's a collection of short stories about her Company series.  I haven't read much of her Porfirio character that was introduced in Mendoza in Hollywood, but the one story that was built around his family was very engrossing. 

Joseph is always entertaining.  There were a couple of stories involving that character.  I think Armin Shimmerman would be a great choice to play him, if any of the stories make it into visual media. 

There were also a couple of stories around Lewis.  I wish Baker would write more about his background.  Maybe she has and I just haven't read it yet.  I haven't read Rude Mechanicals yet.  I keep hoping to find a less expensive copy of it. 

 

Next up on the reading list is Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World.  It actually nonfiction, but I've burned out on my normal reading material.  I need a change of pace.

I finished reading Hotter Than Hell.  There are some hits and misses as far as the stories go.  I enjoyed Tanya Huff's.  Others not so much.  I just can't get into that meant for each other mentality.  Too many of the authors have the protagonists instantly falling in love, or just knowing it was meant to be sort of thing.  I was actually a bit disappointed by Kim Harrison's contribution as well.  It didn't seem to have her usual flair.  The protagonist was just too angsty.

At least Tanya Huff acknowledged that sometimes a woman is capable of just wanting a fling.  Not every encounter has to end with they were meant for each other thing.  Maybe after the fling, they may decide that there might be more to it.

I'm reading Gods and Pawns by Kage Baker.  I think I need a break from the paranormal romance category. 

I finished Magic Bites.  The world building was a bit tedious, but overall a good book.  I know that's not much of a review.  I'll try to write more later.

 

I started reading Hotter than Hell.  An anthology put together by Kim Harrison.  So far I've read the stories by Tanya Huff, Marjorie M. Liu and Cheyenne McCray.  I like Tanya Huff's the best so far.  Liu takes a bit of getting into, and although McCray's was well written and engaging the couple falling in love seemed unrealistic.

I finished Tanya Huff's Blood Bank. 

 

I also finished the anthology Misspelled.

 

Currently I'm reading Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews.

At this point I'm so far behind on reviewing books, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll get any done.

I finished The Ghost and the Dead Deb a while back.  I'll try to get to the reviews later.  I know I'm way behind on them.

 

 

I also finish Tanya Huff's Blood Bank.  It's a collection of short stories plus a script for one of the Blood Ties episodes.

 

I haven't decide what to start on next for reading. 

I finished Moonshine by Rob Thurman over the weekend.  I'll review it later.

 

The Ghost and the Dead Deb by Alice Kimberly is next up on the reading list.

Borne in Blood is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's 20th entry in her Saint Germain series.   I've been reading the counts adventures from the beginning.  At this point it feel like I'm catching up with an old friend.  Her meticulous attention to detail really helps to visualize the time period of the book.  Borne in Blood takes place right after the end of the Napoleonic wars.  Saint-Germain has taken as a companion a woman, Hero, widowed by the war.  Hero is in a struggle with her father-in-law to have access to her children.  Yabro highlights just how few rights women have in this time period.  It also shows how women are so used to such treatment that they just accept it without questions.  In a sense this is more a story about Hero, than it is the count.  As such the threat this time is directed toward Hero, and it is up to the count to rescue her. 

The ending was predictable, but that didn't bother me.  As I said in the beginning, the count seems like an old friend, and I don't always want to see him battered at the end of the book.

 

 

Dog Days by John Levitt was a new author for me to explore. 

The story centers around Mason and his afrit, Louie, who happens to appear as a dog.  A new power has come into town, and seems to have it in for Mason.  There are several attempts on his life, and Mason eventually seeks help from those he used to work for.  The world building was efficient and didn't bog down the narrative.  The characters seemed realistic.  I found some over-generalizations annoying.  Not all of California lacks central heat.  Also his description of Louie as a small doberman with floppy ears and tail became annoying.  If he wanted a more accurate description, he could have said that Louie resembled a Miniature Pincher that hadn't had it's ears or tail docked.  A little bit of research on dog breeds would have gone a long way there.  Overall, I enjoyed the story.  The author's characterization of women was lacking in depth.  Luckily there weren't too many around, so it didn't detract from the story too much.  The ending left a lot of unanswered questions, so I assume this is the beginning of a series.

 

Puss 'n Cahoots by Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown was disappointing.  For this outing Fair and Harry are on their honeymoon at a horse show with all of Harry's pets along for the ride.  Gone was the cozy feeling of the Post Office and her usual friends.  The friendships in this book seemed forced.  Too much time was spent on descriptions of horse shows.  The dialog was dreadful and stilted as the author preached her political beliefs through her characters.  I'm sad to say this is probably the last of the series that I'll read.  In the past couple of books the author seems more concerned with preaching her political views rather than telling an engaging story.  I miss the mysteries and fun of the earlier books.  Heck, I even named my corgi, Tucker.

 

Ill Wind by Rachel Caine takes your breath away.

Caine pulls no punches.  You are thrown immediately into the action as Joanne Baldwin in on the run.  We find the back story slowly as she escapes from her fellow Weather Wardens and an unknown entity that seems determine to kill her.  Along the way she picks up a hitchhiker, David, who becomes more than just a casual aquaintance.  The action is almost too relentless.  I kept wondering if this gal was ever going to get a chance to catch her breath.  In spite of the constant action you really get a sense of who Joanne is, and why she's making the choices she is.  My one complaint would be that the romance turned from lust to love a bit too quickly.

I finished The Trouble with Witches by Shirley Damsgaard.

This is actually the third book in the series.  I haven't read the previous two.  It was never explained why Ophelia referred to her grandmother as Abby rather than gradma or something like that.  That bothered me a bit.  In this tale a journalist friend of Ophelia's asks her and her grandmother, Abby to help him find a missing girl.  The last known location of the girl was with a cult.  Ophelia and Abby are not only psychic, but they are witches as well.  Taking a vacation they head to the lake to check out the cult and try and get some idea where the missing girl, Brandi, might be. 

Although there were several references to things that had gone on in earlier books, I didn't feel I was missing out with starting at the third one.  Told from Ophelia's point of view, I didn't get a good feeling for the depth of Abby.  Abby seemed to be the all-knowing wise woman, and I would like to have known more of what was going on in her head.  The perky, cheerleader type, best-friend, Darci was a little over the top.  Perhaps if I'd read the other books, I might have made more of a connection with the character.  Although, lacking that, she seemed superfluous to the plot.  The plotting and pacing were good.  I didn't feel the story really bogging down at any point.  Overall, I liked it.

 

I also finished Unshapely Things by Mark Del Franco.

The story centers around Conner Grey, a powerless druid.  Someone is killing Fairy prostitutes in Grey's neighborhood, and his friend on the police force asks his help in investigating the crime. 

I found the world building tedious.  There was a lot of exposition in the beginning laying down the rules of the world and how they got that way.  It was necessary information, but it was put out in a somewhat plodding way.  I kept wondering when the action was going to start, and at that point I was already half-way through the book.  Once the action gets going the book finally comes to life.  There are several unexpected twists, and by the end I enjoyed the experience. 

 

 

Currently reading Moonshine by Rob Thurman.

The Machine's Child by Kage Baker follows along her popular Company series.  It's probably one of the weakest in the series.  The character of Alec has never really been a favorite of mine.  In this book, Alec seeks to recover his long lost love, the cyborg Mendoza.  He continues to plot the downfall of the company, while Josef, now a rogue cyborg disconnected from The Company, reconstitutes his father, the cyborg that recruited him.  Plus other appearance by cyborgs we've met along the way. 

Baker's projection of the future is unfortunately foreseeable given today's climate of political correctness and governmental tyranny over environmental issues.  In this book, however, her usually crisp characterizations fall short.  The Alec/Nicholas/Edward all in Alec's body just becomes wearing.  Mendoza has completely lost her cynical edge.  Josef has traded in his careful plotting for impulsive actions.  Suleyman and Latiff seem to be just cameo appearances.

I can see why this book is necessary to set things up for the final confrontation.  I just wish the characterizations hadn't had to suffer for the effort.  If you haven't read the other books in the series, this is not the book to start with.

 

American Gods by Neil Gaiman is at times utterly fascinating and mind-numbingly boring.  The story follows the adventures of ex-convict Shadow.  Shadow is released from prison a day early, because his wife has died.  Along with his wife's death is a death to all the plans he had when getting out of prison.  With no real direction in mind he hooks up with Mr. Wednesday.  Wednesday is on a quest to stir up all the old gods for a battle against the new gods.  This is where Gaiman is his most inciteful.  His examination of American culture's obsessive ways creating in essence a type of religion of it's own.  For a good portion of the book Shadow just seems to blunder around trying to figure out what it is that Wednesday wants him to do.  This book works in little vignettes of exploration of American culture, but as a whole it becomes jumbled.  I found those slices of brilliance were enough to get me through the plodding portions.

 

Year Zero by Jeff Long follows along one of the genre's I find fascinating - post apocalyptic fiction. 

In this book a plague erupts from an artifact supposedly from the time of Jesus.  

The story centers on a promising anthropologist, Nathan Lane, who falls in with a crooked professor and his promise turns to dust.  His only hope in life now is in his daughter.  Abandoned in the Himalaya's and left to rot in a Tibetan jail, he miraculously is set free as the prison guards flee the oncoming plague.  His only thought is to reunite with his daughter as he flees Asia and heads through the increasingly hostile North American continent. 

The other main character is Miranda, a child prodigy of an obscenely wealthy and influential industrialist.  She's developed a technique to not only clone people, but also incorporate their memories and knowledge.  This is probably the most far-fetched of concepts that needs to be suspended to enjoy the story.  In an attempt to find a cure for the plague Miranda clones people from year zero, the time of Jesus.

Nathan and Miranda meet up as his search for his daughter leads him to the fortified facility at Los Alamos where Miranda is working.   Nathan begins to work with the clones Miranda has created trying to find clues about the plague as it was in their time.

Long falls short on his characterization of Miranda.  Her character seems so devoid of emotional responses that the love story between Nathan and Miranda seems unrealistic.  The strong points of the story are when Long is following Nathan's journey.  The horrors humanity will visit upon itself are more terrible than anything a plague could do.  The side story of religion could have been more poignant.  He used it as a plot device, but seemed to give it just a glancing touch. 

I finished The Ghost and Mrs. McClure by Alice Kimberly over the weekend.  It was a cute mystery.  Although, I had the culprit pegged from very near the beginning, it was still an entertaining read in a light fluffy way.  I just couldn't really feel much depth to the characters.  There was a lot said about their past and feelings, but it didn't follow through to create a real sense of the character.  The interaction between Mrs. McClure and the ghost were amusing, but I think more depth to the ghost would have gone a long way to giving more depth to the entire book.  The supporting characters seemed more like set pieces than characters.

 

The Trouble with Witches by Shirley Damsgaard is next on the reading list.  Apparently, this is about the third book in a series.  I haven't read the earlier ones, so I'm hoping this one can stand on it's own.