There were several good stories in the latest issue of S2B2. My favorites were:

The King of Eternal Flame, by kiyala (樹夜蘭) * This took a bit to get into because everyone is called by their title, but soon I didn't notice the distancing anymore.

Strange Lexicons, by Ogiwara Saki (荻原咲) * Just enough world building (magic in the real world). Four ( Read more... )

 I read (listened to) a book this week with a stalker as the male lead: Murder in Thrall by Anne Cleeland. The main character is a first year cop in London and her boss (DCI?) is a well breed (repressed) Lord. She is a huge enough character (and interesting in all the right ways) that she can carry the story. It's all from her POV except for a ( Read more... )

Are the Seven Essences of Man even a thing? I can't google it because I don't know what it's really called. The seven [something]. It's the seven... liquids that make a spell/ceremony/something more powerful in fantasy novels/stories/something: bile, blood, saliva, semen, sweat, tears, and urine. Has anyone heard of it before? I can't have come ( Read more... )

I read the numbered novels by Janet Evanovich a while back. ( book rant )

I was going to make a post on two books about writing, Revision & Self-Editing by James Scott Bell and Wired for Story by Lisa Cron, and compare and contrast them (one is more of a work book, but the other tells you why you should do or not do without telling you how), but then I had to turn Wired for Story in, so I’m going to review the thing I ( Read more... )

I am listing to a book and I’m not sure I want to commit to the last few hours. It’s a day (week) in the life (or something similar) where we follow a group of people who all live or associate with people who live (or are related to someone who associates with someone who live) in a building in London. But they have this gay character who thinks ( Read more... )

I’m listening to Death Match by Lincoln Child on disk (mp3 actually). It’s a non serial mystery, I think, by someone I’ve never heard of which tend to be hit or miss. ( pan )

Last night I finished Casket of Souls by Lynn Flewelling. I found the first chapter (which I'd read online a month or so ago) to be rushed, but the story slowed to a reasonable pace after Alec to took a second to miss his little boy. (I love Sebrahn and hope the author has some way of reintroducing him.)

I don't think this counts as a spoiler: ( Read more... )

Books like the Aliens ones by Gini Koch (Touched by an Alien, Alien Tango, Alien in the Family, et al) should be illegal. You’d think only working two days this last week, I’d have caught up on Harmonies and typed in some more of my stories, but no. These books are addictive.

Now I could write paragraphs about what I don’t like or that don't make ( Read more... )

Someone like Steven might just exist. Hyperpolyglots are people who know more than eleven languages. But most of these men (almost all are men) do battle with languages like they are playing Risk. They want to win the world. Some guy who worked for the Vatican back in the early nineteen hundreds knew between 60 and 114 languages with master of ( Read more... )