Reading roundup
8. Lynn Flewelling, Traitor Moon (Nightrunners #3) -- I liked it! I don't have a whole lot more to say, which seems to be the case with these books, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. They are enjoyable, but they resonate with me less than I'd expected them to, and yet don't get me worked up in a "doing it wrong" way either. They are fun. I want to read more of them. But I don't seem to be particularly invested. I guess whatever magic sparks ignite my fannish love, it just isn't really there. Spoilers.
I liked that the plot was no longer a Guardians of Good vs Evil Necromancers as it had been in the first two books, and the antagonists were subtler and motivated by more than being servants of the God of Devouring Babies and Stomping on Kittens, or whatever. That said, I found it really difficult to care about Aurenfaie politics because I couldn't keep track of the clans. (When I brought this up at dinner, lunasariel wisely pointed out that I'm currently keeping Dragaeran houses and histories and plots in my head, which, judging by how quickly I used to forget them before, probably occupies 75% of my brainpower, which may very well be why I can't keep track of other fictional universes anymore.) Nyal was fun and had some very cute moments, especially when he brings Beka some flowers -- because he doesn't know what they're called in Skalan and wants to show her what's in the potion -- or asks "What kind of dolts have you been letting make love to you" after she asks if he's using 'faie magic on her. Ulan the schemer was intriguing. But those were the only 'faie characters I was the least bit interested in -- everybody else just sort of merged together. Of the other new characters introduced in this book, Korathan was the only one I really liked.
I was a lot less enamoured of the direction she was taking Phoria, though. In the first two books, she'd seemed brusque and unbending and capable of poor judgement, but not like someone who would squander valuable resources (like wizards), open up a second front when already pressed hard in a war, or leave her sister to be killed, no matter how jealous she was of how much the smallfolk loved her better. Basically, I hadn't gotten the sense that Phoria was stupid, and she wasn't acting insane in this book, just dumb, so it really felt like one of those, "hey, we need an antagonist back home" things, bending a character's personality to the demands of the plot, which I don't like at all.
I continue to like Seregil and Alec and the dynamic between them, which includes stuff like Alec telling Seregil to "wear your own damn clothes" the next time he goes out to get beaten up, and Seregil acting in ways that were really ill-advised but did make a kind of sense given his worldview. I was happy there was Thero in this book, although I kind of miss the (bigger)-stick-up-his-ass!Thero and the bickery dynamic between him and Seregil in the earlier books -- but at least there were awkward fake!hugs and Seregil making fun of him for the dragon mark. Klia and Beka continue to be boring to me, although Beka no longer actively annoys me (probably because Nyal was hanging around a lot, and he's entertaining).
I guess that's pretty much it? I have the next two books, courtesy of lunasariel, and I'll be reading those, and we'll see what I think.
9. Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot/Rivers of London (and I really do wish the US book had kept the original title, which is much more evocative and interesting) -- OK, now THIS is a book that sparks something. Although I will say that this was a book I LOVED when I started it, and until about 2/3 in, and then the plot hit in earnest and the last third of the book I merely liked rather than loved. Not because I hated the plot or anything, but because the world-building and the flavor of the writing were my favorite things about the book, and come the last third they kind of receded to leave room for the plot. Spoilers
When I first heard about "Rivers of London", which was quite a while ago, I was pretty sure I would love it, and right I was. It is the urban fantasy magic police procedural I've been hoping to find for AGES. In addition to that, it's got the atmospherity of Neverwhere and the science-mindedness of the Kingkiller Chronicles and the feel of the early Dresden Files books in establishing world and relationships and the modern and wry feel of The Magicians, and is thus just chock-full of things I love.
I like Peter Grant, both the protagonist and the narrator, quite a lot. For a while I had a hard time believing that he had really done as poorly as he'd said on his science A-levels, because he clearly had both the curiosity and the methodical approach, and is clearly no dummy. I'm still kind of wondering about that, to be honest, but I've started to wonder if he might not have ADD or something, which would account for him going off to read words written on a lion statue's bum while he should be patrolling, and could also account for poor grades in his science classes (unless the poor grades are the result of going through some tough stuff at home while he was a teen, which I could see, too). Anyway, I really like Peter. He is competent and fallible in just the right measure to be both relatable and also someone to root for. I like that he's a nerd who makes references to Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter, most of which go over the heads of the people he's dealing with or just make them roll their eyes at him some more. I like that upon encountering the "magic messes up technology" effect he doesn't just accept it but tries to figure out why, and the range of the effects, and works out a way to prevent magic from frying his cell phone. I'm kind of ridiculously excited to have magic put through the scientific method/design of experiments approach!
I like Leslie May and Peter's relationship with Leslie, which reminds me of Harry and Murphy while I liked them best. I'm intrigued to meet his parents, and to meet more people in this world in general. My favorite, though, is Detective Thomas Nightingale, with his fancy walking stick and allusions to Blake's "Jerusalem" and quoting from Newton's biography. I want to see more of him, and to know what the deal is between him and Molly, and just more about him in general. I have to say the supernatural characters, the rivers and the bad guy, have been less impressive to me so far -- not anything I disliked about them, just nothing that grabbed me.
One of the things that jumps out about these books is, of course, the diversity of the cast, from Peter being biracial to a number of secondary and tertiary characters who are various things other than white and straight -- Mama Thames and her daughters, of course, Dr Walid, the lesbian detective, the concession clerk at the theater is (IIRC) Sri Lankan, one of the early victims is gay. It doesn't feel like Diversity Bingo so much as modern life in a big city, and it's the sort of details that would naturally come out over the course of narrative or police investigation. I will say, though, that I kept being surprised by how overt these references were, and I think I finally figured out why -- the setting kept making me think of Neverwhere and so I think I kept defaulting to Gaiman-style subtle when it comes to things like the diversity of his characters -- which is there, just, subtly, and so I kept being surprised when the fact that Peter is black wasn't just something that was inferrably mention with the ghost's remark about his curly hair but actually kept being mentioned, explicitly and implicitly. Just, a spot of cognitive dissonance.
I like the magic system, I like the principal characters, I like the setting and the writing style, which is just right for a police procedural. The plot was, eh. Both plots, actually, the conflict with the rivers and the Punch possession, though I do have a soft spot for murders that follow a script like this one does. This makes me a bit apprehensive for future books, because I expect they will be less about world- and character- and magic- establishing and more about plot, and those were my favorite parts. But hopefully I'm worrying for nothing. I'm definitely eager to start the next book, which I have in my possession. And, note to self, the next two are: Whispers Under Ground and Broken Homes coming later this year, although Amazon doesn't have it for preorder yet, boo.
Also: http://www.the-folly.com/
10. Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken -- When I first heard about the book's premise, I wasn't expecting to like it much. Sadly, unlike with the Demon's Lexicon books, where I was also skeptical based on the demon premise, here this actually proved true. I wasn't expecting it to be my think because Gothics, meh (even though I did enjoy sarahtales's m15m-like write-ups of classic Gothics quite a lot), and plucky girl reporters are also not a particular thing I'm into, having managed to miss both Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars. But I was expecting more from the characters, the plot, and the banter, anyway. Spoilers from here
My biggest problem with the book turned out to be not the Gothic-ness, as I'd expected, but the two principals, which was a complete surprise, given how much I liked the characters in DL. Jared felt a lot like Nick but without all the bits that made Nick interesting to me -- his genuine inhumanity and his relationship with Alan. (And Rosalind felt a bit like Olivia, but with a lot less reason for being so; or maybe not less reason, just a less interesting one.) Having closed the book, I'm still not convinced why I should care about him. Kami, small and bossy and independent minded, felt like Mae dialed up to 11, but while it took some time for my impression of Mae to develop from "she's alright I guess" to actually liking her, having Kami's POV didn't help in this regard as I might have expected. Maybe it's my lack of familiarity with the plucky girl detective genre, but Kami mostly felt irritating to me -- it felt like the character was supposed to be cute and quirky and charming, but she missed the mark for me. At one point early on Angela calls her a "hyperactive midget", which immediately put me in mind of Miles Vorkosigan, and eventually that crystallized into a distinction for me. I understand why Miles is driven and does the things he does. I never did get a clear feel for what Kami's deal is. She feels differenr, yes, both because she stands out from the population because she's Asian/bi-racial and because of the bond with Jared that makes her stare off into space a lot, and she sort of even feels like the odd one out in her family, with her younger brothers each "owning" a parent -- but I didn't really feel how that jived with her other traits, curiosity and plucky girl reportiveness and such. And it's not that people need to fit together like puzzle boxes with every bit connected to every other bit. It's not even that characters do. But I never got a cohesive sense of character from Kami, the way I did from Alan and Nick and Mae and Sin and Jamie in DL; she just kind of felt like a collection of traits. I guess it all boils down to a "why should I care" again. I couldn't be less invested in Kami and Jared individually or their relationship if I tried. I will say that there was one scene during which I actually did feel interested in Kami -- when she kind of loses it because everybody is keeping secrets from her and she is suspecting Holly and/or Angela of being the sorcerers, because that was a moment that was funny and even poignant and made sense for her character.
While I honestly have no use for the principals in this book, I did like some of the secondary characters. Holly was the first one I felt was more than a collection of amusing traits and quirks, and I'm quite curious to see more of her. Rusty and Kami's father both felt at first like they were trying too hard to be funny and charming, but they did ultimately succeed in charming me, Mr Glass in the scenes of bonding-through-humour with Ten, and Rusty when he answered the phone; ultimately, I think Rusty is my favorite, followed by Holly. And Angela seemed like fairly flat comic relief until she picked up the chains she'd been bound in and proceeded to beat on Rob Lynburn, but I do like her more now. (And I am kind of hoping for Angela/Holly to be canon; I was shipping them before Angela tried to kiss Holly, and have to say that SRB has an uncanny ability to make me suspect and root for femmeslash which normally never happens -- like, I'd felt Mae and Sin had more chemistry together, too, than any of the canonical/potential relationships on the table). The Lynburns en masse were not nearly fascinating enough to be the centerpiece of a series called "The Lynburn Legacy", but I did like Ash and want to see if there's more to him, and Lillian also grew on me by the end, when she confronted Rob.
Like the main characters, the plot didn't feel terribly coherent. I figured Rob was the bad Lynburn pretty much around the time Kami was revealed to be Jared's source. The whole source business being an option wasn't foreshadowed well enough, I thought, and thus didn't have the impact of the revelations in DL. I was expecting there to be more subversion or deconstruction or something of the Gothics genre, but if I hadn't known that one of the ideas was to make the Gothic heroine a guy, it never would've occurred to me that Jared was meant to be a Gothic heroine. Or is it Ash? Ash at least looks the part, but is not prominent / innocent victim-y enough. I had expected there to be more subersion or deconstruction, period. Like, I remember SRB talking about the Jared/Kami "we should date" "let's see how you feel when I take off my clothes" conversation, and I'd been convinced that the outcome of that scene was that both of them concluded dating someone who'd been in your head since birth (or even earlier) was creepy and moved on to relationships with other people, which would be both sensible and novel. But I'm guessing not so much, endgame-wise? I mean, I do like the way some of the downsides of the psychic bond thing are brought up here where they would normally be just swept under the rug in paranormal romance, or touted as, well, romantic -- the lack of privacy, the whole thing where they're not used to each other's corporeality -- but I guess I didn't feel any particular closeness over the bond, and so their new, corporeal relationship didn't make much sense to me.
There were some things I did like about the book. The supernatural aspect turned out to be more interesting to me than I'd expected. I liked Sorry-in-the-Vale, the quaint English town (as I told ikel89, it could be because I'm easy for Cotswolds stone), and I especially liked the revelation that "Sorry-in-the-Vale" and "Sorrier River", which sounded like those odd but picturesque British place names, had come from "sorcery" and "sorcerer". I liked the way Kami's Japanese heritage was handled -- the stories, the children's names (which were her mother's idea and something her half-Japanese father and Japanese grandmother thought was silly), the way she liked not standing out in London. I liked that even though there was more romance/prelude to romance in this that I didn't care for, there was also friendship -- the friendship between Kami and Angela, and Kami and Rusty, and the developing friendship between Kami and Holly and Holly and Angela. Friendship is something SRB does really well, and I liked her execution here. There were some funny lines, though none that struc me as memorable as the super-quotable Demon's Lexicon books. Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention the cover! The cut-cover paper is GORGEOUS, and I'm very sad that the series will be going away from the cut paper gorgeousness and to photographic covers that look like every other paranormal YA book out there (except for the fact that the female part of the couple is Asian, which is already something, I guess).
I suppose I'll keep on reading the series as I come across it (and have, at ikel89's suggestion, gone and read the snippets sarahtales has posted, which just reinforced my feelings that I don't care about Jared or Kami at all. But I did think it was telling that both K and I felt the book felt more Cassandra Clare-like than SRB-like, and that we both felt it read like a less mature book than the DL trilogy...
Still reading Dickens, too. Sloooowly. And my mother gave me Novyj Dozor/New Watch last night, yay!
I liked that the plot was no longer a Guardians of Good vs Evil Necromancers as it had been in the first two books, and the antagonists were subtler and motivated by more than being servants of the God of Devouring Babies and Stomping on Kittens, or whatever. That said, I found it really difficult to care about Aurenfaie politics because I couldn't keep track of the clans. (When I brought this up at dinner, lunasariel wisely pointed out that I'm currently keeping Dragaeran houses and histories and plots in my head, which, judging by how quickly I used to forget them before, probably occupies 75% of my brainpower, which may very well be why I can't keep track of other fictional universes anymore.) Nyal was fun and had some very cute moments, especially when he brings Beka some flowers -- because he doesn't know what they're called in Skalan and wants to show her what's in the potion -- or asks "What kind of dolts have you been letting make love to you" after she asks if he's using 'faie magic on her. Ulan the schemer was intriguing. But those were the only 'faie characters I was the least bit interested in -- everybody else just sort of merged together. Of the other new characters introduced in this book, Korathan was the only one I really liked.
I was a lot less enamoured of the direction she was taking Phoria, though. In the first two books, she'd seemed brusque and unbending and capable of poor judgement, but not like someone who would squander valuable resources (like wizards), open up a second front when already pressed hard in a war, or leave her sister to be killed, no matter how jealous she was of how much the smallfolk loved her better. Basically, I hadn't gotten the sense that Phoria was stupid, and she wasn't acting insane in this book, just dumb, so it really felt like one of those, "hey, we need an antagonist back home" things, bending a character's personality to the demands of the plot, which I don't like at all.
I continue to like Seregil and Alec and the dynamic between them, which includes stuff like Alec telling Seregil to "wear your own damn clothes" the next time he goes out to get beaten up, and Seregil acting in ways that were really ill-advised but did make a kind of sense given his worldview. I was happy there was Thero in this book, although I kind of miss the (bigger)-stick-up-his-ass!Thero and the bickery dynamic between him and Seregil in the earlier books -- but at least there were awkward fake!hugs and Seregil making fun of him for the dragon mark. Klia and Beka continue to be boring to me, although Beka no longer actively annoys me (probably because Nyal was hanging around a lot, and he's entertaining).
I guess that's pretty much it? I have the next two books, courtesy of lunasariel, and I'll be reading those, and we'll see what I think.
9. Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot/Rivers of London (and I really do wish the US book had kept the original title, which is much more evocative and interesting) -- OK, now THIS is a book that sparks something. Although I will say that this was a book I LOVED when I started it, and until about 2/3 in, and then the plot hit in earnest and the last third of the book I merely liked rather than loved. Not because I hated the plot or anything, but because the world-building and the flavor of the writing were my favorite things about the book, and come the last third they kind of receded to leave room for the plot. Spoilers
When I first heard about "Rivers of London", which was quite a while ago, I was pretty sure I would love it, and right I was. It is the urban fantasy magic police procedural I've been hoping to find for AGES. In addition to that, it's got the atmospherity of Neverwhere and the science-mindedness of the Kingkiller Chronicles and the feel of the early Dresden Files books in establishing world and relationships and the modern and wry feel of The Magicians, and is thus just chock-full of things I love.
I like Peter Grant, both the protagonist and the narrator, quite a lot. For a while I had a hard time believing that he had really done as poorly as he'd said on his science A-levels, because he clearly had both the curiosity and the methodical approach, and is clearly no dummy. I'm still kind of wondering about that, to be honest, but I've started to wonder if he might not have ADD or something, which would account for him going off to read words written on a lion statue's bum while he should be patrolling, and could also account for poor grades in his science classes (unless the poor grades are the result of going through some tough stuff at home while he was a teen, which I could see, too). Anyway, I really like Peter. He is competent and fallible in just the right measure to be both relatable and also someone to root for. I like that he's a nerd who makes references to Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter, most of which go over the heads of the people he's dealing with or just make them roll their eyes at him some more. I like that upon encountering the "magic messes up technology" effect he doesn't just accept it but tries to figure out why, and the range of the effects, and works out a way to prevent magic from frying his cell phone. I'm kind of ridiculously excited to have magic put through the scientific method/design of experiments approach!
I like Leslie May and Peter's relationship with Leslie, which reminds me of Harry and Murphy while I liked them best. I'm intrigued to meet his parents, and to meet more people in this world in general. My favorite, though, is Detective Thomas Nightingale, with his fancy walking stick and allusions to Blake's "Jerusalem" and quoting from Newton's biography. I want to see more of him, and to know what the deal is between him and Molly, and just more about him in general. I have to say the supernatural characters, the rivers and the bad guy, have been less impressive to me so far -- not anything I disliked about them, just nothing that grabbed me.
One of the things that jumps out about these books is, of course, the diversity of the cast, from Peter being biracial to a number of secondary and tertiary characters who are various things other than white and straight -- Mama Thames and her daughters, of course, Dr Walid, the lesbian detective, the concession clerk at the theater is (IIRC) Sri Lankan, one of the early victims is gay. It doesn't feel like Diversity Bingo so much as modern life in a big city, and it's the sort of details that would naturally come out over the course of narrative or police investigation. I will say, though, that I kept being surprised by how overt these references were, and I think I finally figured out why -- the setting kept making me think of Neverwhere and so I think I kept defaulting to Gaiman-style subtle when it comes to things like the diversity of his characters -- which is there, just, subtly, and so I kept being surprised when the fact that Peter is black wasn't just something that was inferrably mention with the ghost's remark about his curly hair but actually kept being mentioned, explicitly and implicitly. Just, a spot of cognitive dissonance.
I like the magic system, I like the principal characters, I like the setting and the writing style, which is just right for a police procedural. The plot was, eh. Both plots, actually, the conflict with the rivers and the Punch possession, though I do have a soft spot for murders that follow a script like this one does. This makes me a bit apprehensive for future books, because I expect they will be less about world- and character- and magic- establishing and more about plot, and those were my favorite parts. But hopefully I'm worrying for nothing. I'm definitely eager to start the next book, which I have in my possession. And, note to self, the next two are: Whispers Under Ground and Broken Homes coming later this year, although Amazon doesn't have it for preorder yet, boo.
Also: http://www.the-folly.com/
10. Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken -- When I first heard about the book's premise, I wasn't expecting to like it much. Sadly, unlike with the Demon's Lexicon books, where I was also skeptical based on the demon premise, here this actually proved true. I wasn't expecting it to be my think because Gothics, meh (even though I did enjoy sarahtales's m15m-like write-ups of classic Gothics quite a lot), and plucky girl reporters are also not a particular thing I'm into, having managed to miss both Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars. But I was expecting more from the characters, the plot, and the banter, anyway. Spoilers from here
My biggest problem with the book turned out to be not the Gothic-ness, as I'd expected, but the two principals, which was a complete surprise, given how much I liked the characters in DL. Jared felt a lot like Nick but without all the bits that made Nick interesting to me -- his genuine inhumanity and his relationship with Alan. (And Rosalind felt a bit like Olivia, but with a lot less reason for being so; or maybe not less reason, just a less interesting one.) Having closed the book, I'm still not convinced why I should care about him. Kami, small and bossy and independent minded, felt like Mae dialed up to 11, but while it took some time for my impression of Mae to develop from "she's alright I guess" to actually liking her, having Kami's POV didn't help in this regard as I might have expected. Maybe it's my lack of familiarity with the plucky girl detective genre, but Kami mostly felt irritating to me -- it felt like the character was supposed to be cute and quirky and charming, but she missed the mark for me. At one point early on Angela calls her a "hyperactive midget", which immediately put me in mind of Miles Vorkosigan, and eventually that crystallized into a distinction for me. I understand why Miles is driven and does the things he does. I never did get a clear feel for what Kami's deal is. She feels differenr, yes, both because she stands out from the population because she's Asian/bi-racial and because of the bond with Jared that makes her stare off into space a lot, and she sort of even feels like the odd one out in her family, with her younger brothers each "owning" a parent -- but I didn't really feel how that jived with her other traits, curiosity and plucky girl reportiveness and such. And it's not that people need to fit together like puzzle boxes with every bit connected to every other bit. It's not even that characters do. But I never got a cohesive sense of character from Kami, the way I did from Alan and Nick and Mae and Sin and Jamie in DL; she just kind of felt like a collection of traits. I guess it all boils down to a "why should I care" again. I couldn't be less invested in Kami and Jared individually or their relationship if I tried. I will say that there was one scene during which I actually did feel interested in Kami -- when she kind of loses it because everybody is keeping secrets from her and she is suspecting Holly and/or Angela of being the sorcerers, because that was a moment that was funny and even poignant and made sense for her character.
While I honestly have no use for the principals in this book, I did like some of the secondary characters. Holly was the first one I felt was more than a collection of amusing traits and quirks, and I'm quite curious to see more of her. Rusty and Kami's father both felt at first like they were trying too hard to be funny and charming, but they did ultimately succeed in charming me, Mr Glass in the scenes of bonding-through-humour with Ten, and Rusty when he answered the phone; ultimately, I think Rusty is my favorite, followed by Holly. And Angela seemed like fairly flat comic relief until she picked up the chains she'd been bound in and proceeded to beat on Rob Lynburn, but I do like her more now. (And I am kind of hoping for Angela/Holly to be canon; I was shipping them before Angela tried to kiss Holly, and have to say that SRB has an uncanny ability to make me suspect and root for femmeslash which normally never happens -- like, I'd felt Mae and Sin had more chemistry together, too, than any of the canonical/potential relationships on the table). The Lynburns en masse were not nearly fascinating enough to be the centerpiece of a series called "The Lynburn Legacy", but I did like Ash and want to see if there's more to him, and Lillian also grew on me by the end, when she confronted Rob.
Like the main characters, the plot didn't feel terribly coherent. I figured Rob was the bad Lynburn pretty much around the time Kami was revealed to be Jared's source. The whole source business being an option wasn't foreshadowed well enough, I thought, and thus didn't have the impact of the revelations in DL. I was expecting there to be more subversion or deconstruction or something of the Gothics genre, but if I hadn't known that one of the ideas was to make the Gothic heroine a guy, it never would've occurred to me that Jared was meant to be a Gothic heroine. Or is it Ash? Ash at least looks the part, but is not prominent / innocent victim-y enough. I had expected there to be more subersion or deconstruction, period. Like, I remember SRB talking about the Jared/Kami "we should date" "let's see how you feel when I take off my clothes" conversation, and I'd been convinced that the outcome of that scene was that both of them concluded dating someone who'd been in your head since birth (or even earlier) was creepy and moved on to relationships with other people, which would be both sensible and novel. But I'm guessing not so much, endgame-wise? I mean, I do like the way some of the downsides of the psychic bond thing are brought up here where they would normally be just swept under the rug in paranormal romance, or touted as, well, romantic -- the lack of privacy, the whole thing where they're not used to each other's corporeality -- but I guess I didn't feel any particular closeness over the bond, and so their new, corporeal relationship didn't make much sense to me.
There were some things I did like about the book. The supernatural aspect turned out to be more interesting to me than I'd expected. I liked Sorry-in-the-Vale, the quaint English town (as I told ikel89, it could be because I'm easy for Cotswolds stone), and I especially liked the revelation that "Sorry-in-the-Vale" and "Sorrier River", which sounded like those odd but picturesque British place names, had come from "sorcery" and "sorcerer". I liked the way Kami's Japanese heritage was handled -- the stories, the children's names (which were her mother's idea and something her half-Japanese father and Japanese grandmother thought was silly), the way she liked not standing out in London. I liked that even though there was more romance/prelude to romance in this that I didn't care for, there was also friendship -- the friendship between Kami and Angela, and Kami and Rusty, and the developing friendship between Kami and Holly and Holly and Angela. Friendship is something SRB does really well, and I liked her execution here. There were some funny lines, though none that struc me as memorable as the super-quotable Demon's Lexicon books. Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention the cover! The cut-cover paper is GORGEOUS, and I'm very sad that the series will be going away from the cut paper gorgeousness and to photographic covers that look like every other paranormal YA book out there (except for the fact that the female part of the couple is Asian, which is already something, I guess).
I suppose I'll keep on reading the series as I come across it (and have, at ikel89's suggestion, gone and read the snippets sarahtales has posted, which just reinforced my feelings that I don't care about Jared or Kami at all. But I did think it was telling that both K and I felt the book felt more Cassandra Clare-like than SRB-like, and that we both felt it read like a less mature book than the DL trilogy...
Still reading Dickens, too. Sloooowly. And my mother gave me Novyj Dozor/New Watch last night, yay!