Ginormous list o' books I've finished
I read a lot while I was gone, since I didn't have the Internet to distract me during my downtime. I'll see if I can remember everything.
Young Miles by Lois McMaster Bujold: I really did love reading about Miles Vorkosigan. He's a compelling character, and so far his stories have been wonderful.
Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey: I'd heard so much about how wonderful this book was that I was a little wary of reading it. After some initial irritation with the prose style and the faux French, I found myself captivated by the story, and once Phedre went off on adventures, things really picked up and I was hooked.
Kushiel's Chosen by Jacqueline Carey: Once more, a great book. Again, I found the beginning slow, but I finished it in one sitting after I got about halfway through.
Storm Front by Jim Butcher: I'd started this one ages ago, but never finished it. I loved the combination of urban fantasy with a detective story, and I stayed up ridiculously late one night to finish it.
Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson: Chick lit meets vampires? I really didn't expect to like this as much as I did, but I love Betsy, our vain, shallow, shoe-obsessed protagonist who is also the queen of the vampires.
Undead and Unemployed by MaryJanice Davidson: Thye sequel to the previous book. I didn't read these back to back, or I might have been annoyed that Betsy really isn't very bright. But nonetheless, still a good read.
Hot Spell by Emma Holly, Lorra Leigh, Meljean Brook and Shiloh Walker: I've been reading this anthology for months as well. I loved the Emma Holly story, and the Meljean Brook story, though a bit of a slow start, was great. The Shiloh Walker was meh, and the Lorra Leigh was... a bit of a mess, although it did have a great premise. (It's just that our male protagonist had a barbed penis. Yes. A barbed. Fucking. Penis.
Bewitched, Bothered and Bevampired by MaryJanice Davidson, et. al.: A much better anthology. The stories were all varying degrees of funny, but they were all cute, and I can't say there were any I hated.
Fine ?Flickering Hungers by Alesha Brio: Wonderful, well-written erotica. The only drawback to these stories was that I needed help navigating the publisher's website, and letting the 60-year-old woman you're staying with find out you want to read erotica is definitely embarrassing.
Pirate's Price by Darlene Marshall: I was expecting a historical romantic comedy. And the book was funny in places, but the story was good enough that I wasn't disappointed it wasn't more hillarious. And it was a refreshing change to read about a kick-ass female lead in a romance story.
Promises Keep by Sarah McCarty: I adored Promises Linger but this sequel was meh. Mostly because I got the impression Sarah was writing the same story, only with duller characters. Plus, unlike the heroine in the previous book, Mara Kincaid, our erstwhile heroine here, was dropped on her head occasionally as a baby, which is the only excuse I can come up with for what a moron she was in places.
Guardian of Honor by Robin D. Owens: I shouldn't have liked this book, because it was utterly cheesetastic, but I did. I can't explain its appeal, either. I just know it was highly satisfying and I can't wait to read the sequels.
The Year of the Unicorn by Andre Norton: I'm not sure that I like Norton's writing style, either, as it was quite overblown, and it took me a while to understand where the plot was going, but in the end, it was a fairly good story. I would read more Witch World books.
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle: I guess this counts since it was a reread. I adore the adventures of Meg and her friends, and have read almost everything L'Engle has written about them.
The Riddle of Pencroft Farm by Dorothea Jenson: The couple I was staying with and I read this together. It's a children's book, and would be great for a fifth or sixth grader studying about the Revolutionary War. For me as an adult, it was didactic and a little boring.
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb: I read a recommendation for Hobb's books on a George R. R. Martin message board and decided to try her for myself. I loved it. Fitz is an interesting and compelling character, and I'm curious to see where the story arc goes from here.
> Tales of the Shareem: Rhees by Allyson James: I did finish this eventually, but it wasn't really all that exciting. James's erotic romance formula was patently obvious from the beginning, and I wish she'd paid more attention to her world-building and less to smexing up her characters.
I think those are all the books I actually finished. At the moment, I'm in the middle of several other books.
Oh, and I have to mention that a couple of ebook authors made it onto my never read list again:
Young Miles by Lois McMaster Bujold: I really did love reading about Miles Vorkosigan. He's a compelling character, and so far his stories have been wonderful.
Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey: I'd heard so much about how wonderful this book was that I was a little wary of reading it. After some initial irritation with the prose style and the faux French, I found myself captivated by the story, and once Phedre went off on adventures, things really picked up and I was hooked.
Kushiel's Chosen by Jacqueline Carey: Once more, a great book. Again, I found the beginning slow, but I finished it in one sitting after I got about halfway through.
Storm Front by Jim Butcher: I'd started this one ages ago, but never finished it. I loved the combination of urban fantasy with a detective story, and I stayed up ridiculously late one night to finish it.
Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson: Chick lit meets vampires? I really didn't expect to like this as much as I did, but I love Betsy, our vain, shallow, shoe-obsessed protagonist who is also the queen of the vampires.
Undead and Unemployed by MaryJanice Davidson: Thye sequel to the previous book. I didn't read these back to back, or I might have been annoyed that Betsy really isn't very bright. But nonetheless, still a good read.
Hot Spell by Emma Holly, Lorra Leigh, Meljean Brook and Shiloh Walker: I've been reading this anthology for months as well. I loved the Emma Holly story, and the Meljean Brook story, though a bit of a slow start, was great. The Shiloh Walker was meh, and the Lorra Leigh was... a bit of a mess, although it did have a great premise. (It's just that our male protagonist had a barbed penis. Yes. A barbed. Fucking. Penis.
Bewitched, Bothered and Bevampired by MaryJanice Davidson, et. al.: A much better anthology. The stories were all varying degrees of funny, but they were all cute, and I can't say there were any I hated.
Fine ?Flickering Hungers by Alesha Brio: Wonderful, well-written erotica. The only drawback to these stories was that I needed help navigating the publisher's website, and letting the 60-year-old woman you're staying with find out you want to read erotica is definitely embarrassing.
Pirate's Price by Darlene Marshall: I was expecting a historical romantic comedy. And the book was funny in places, but the story was good enough that I wasn't disappointed it wasn't more hillarious. And it was a refreshing change to read about a kick-ass female lead in a romance story.
Promises Keep by Sarah McCarty: I adored Promises Linger but this sequel was meh. Mostly because I got the impression Sarah was writing the same story, only with duller characters. Plus, unlike the heroine in the previous book, Mara Kincaid, our erstwhile heroine here, was dropped on her head occasionally as a baby, which is the only excuse I can come up with for what a moron she was in places.
Guardian of Honor by Robin D. Owens: I shouldn't have liked this book, because it was utterly cheesetastic, but I did. I can't explain its appeal, either. I just know it was highly satisfying and I can't wait to read the sequels.
The Year of the Unicorn by Andre Norton: I'm not sure that I like Norton's writing style, either, as it was quite overblown, and it took me a while to understand where the plot was going, but in the end, it was a fairly good story. I would read more Witch World books.
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle: I guess this counts since it was a reread. I adore the adventures of Meg and her friends, and have read almost everything L'Engle has written about them.
The Riddle of Pencroft Farm by Dorothea Jenson: The couple I was staying with and I read this together. It's a children's book, and would be great for a fifth or sixth grader studying about the Revolutionary War. For me as an adult, it was didactic and a little boring.
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb: I read a recommendation for Hobb's books on a George R. R. Martin message board and decided to try her for myself. I loved it. Fitz is an interesting and compelling character, and I'm curious to see where the story arc goes from here.
> Tales of the Shareem: Rhees by Allyson James: I did finish this eventually, but it wasn't really all that exciting. James's erotic romance formula was patently obvious from the beginning, and I wish she'd paid more attention to her world-building and less to smexing up her characters.
I think those are all the books I actually finished. At the moment, I'm in the middle of several other books.
Oh, and I have to mention that a couple of ebook authors made it onto my never read list again:
- Jordan Summers: Her stories are about five close female friends who all stupidly go off to the jungle for haut smexing. I never made it to the hot smexing part, because I couldn't get past the fact that the heroine of the first book freely admitted she knew nothing about the outdoors, yet was happily galavanting around the jungle.
- Charlotte Boyett Compo: In the book of hers I tried, her male character refers to a woman's secretions as tasting like boiled potatoes... which took me out of the story and made me collapse into hysterical laughter for a long time. Seriously... WTF, boiled potatoes? Not romantic.