I'm going to take this time to remind my lovely readers as to why I generally tend to not read urban fantasy. There isn't a diversity of plots. There isn't a diversity of character tropes going on. I get bored very easily. However, I've a sibling who is a connoisseur of this particular fantasy sub genre who kept pestering me to read this. Since the ( Read more... )

In my effort to constantly battle ennui, I picked up the Affinity Bridge because something about the older style of prose struck my fancy.

The story centers around one Sir Maurice Newbury and his assistant Miss Victoria Hobbes as they investigate the cause of an airship crash and its missing automaton pilot. As with many investigations, things take ( Read more... )

Well I know that one of my big complaints about a large chunk of the fantasy genre has to do with how Eurocentric it seems to be most of the time. Sometimes one gets tired of elves, pixies and trolls, and especially vampires and lycanthropes in places like the Americas, which have their own set of supernatural creepy crawlies... that hardly ever ( Read more... )

Trolls, selkies, pixies, hags,
Urban fairies, such a drag?
PI Toby hits a snag.
I bought this book in a paper bag.

( A Suessian impression of the book )

I'm usually not much for straight whodunnit books, but I found this to be a very droll quick read.

( Read more... )

I'm of a very divided mind about this book ( Read more... )

As somewhat shady as it is, I love cryptozoology. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, that means people who hunt down critters known to locals but not to science.

Yes, some of the creatures of legend that people hunt for are extremely unlikely to exist. Some surely do hide out there, but haven't been seen by anyone "trustworthy" (ie holding a ( Read more... )

So, jazzed by the unexpected success (however mixed it was) of my reaction to Greywalker and having an excess of spare time, I decided to get and read Poltergeist.

This book seemed much more cohesive in the plot department. Harper only had one for the whole of the book rather than the three from last time. I found the case interesting. I could have ( Read more... )

To start off, I routinely have bad luck with female authors of the "urban fantasy" subgenre. They usually involve vampires or lycanthropes in some kind of pseudo romance with the heroine (and it is always a heroine), the main character has some kind of destiny/special inate talent that has been there a while to allow her to meet with the ( Read more... )