August '11 Book List
Started the month with a new writer, Stoney Compton. Alaska Republik is his 2nd book, both dealing with an Alaska that is still a Russian possession in 1989. And with Russia still being some kind of monarchy then as well. It was an interesting enough premise for an alt-history that I was willing to risk the price of a used paperback on it. And its not bad. Compton's dialogue is fairly terse and choppy, but hell writing really believable dialogue is fucking hard. Plus I have a hard time with love at first sight stuff, at least outside of fantasy settings. But despite that, not too shabby for a sophmore effort...
Finished up Connie Willis' WW2 based time travel trilogy with All Clear. An enjoyable if a bit slow moving read. I like the way Willis does time travel and how she used the threat of a universe that rejects paradox to create the central conflict for the characters...
Next up was C.E. Murphy's Demon Hunt, one of her Urban Shaman books. My favorite part of this series is still how the lead works to solve the supernatural threat in ways other than by beating on them or blowing it up. Not that the series is non-violent, but its interesting to see an urban fantasy series where gun fu or the like isn't the main option...
Got one of the latter "Myth" series books by Robert Asprin (and Jody Lynn Nye), Myth-taken Identity which has Aahz, Chumley and Maasha working to stop a group of identity thieves that have targeted Skeeve at a multi-dimensional shopping mall. I have a hard time remembering which books I have and haven't read from the period between Asprin's return to the series and his death...
The roommate pushed Sam Gunn Unlimited by Ben Bova on me. Which is a nice piece of near future scifi dealing mostly with space exploration and exploitation. Though the book is more a series of short stories that are woven together by the b-plot. Two of which I've read in older scifi anthologies...
Got to the final Tara Chace book by Greg Rucka, the Last Run, with Chace going on a last field mission to bring back an Iranian defector. And not surprisingly when everything goes off the rails the British government is willing to totally write Tara off. Again...
The roommate also decided to check out a local urban fantasy writer Kevin Hearne, who's books Hounded, Hexed and Hammered are based out of Tempe. So I tried them when he finished. Pretty good, even discounting the enjoyment of having something set in the Valley where the writer gets the locations correct. The third book, where the ancient and somewhat immortal druid hero takes part in a raid on Asgard to take out Thor for the crime of being a gigantic asshole was especially enjoyable...
After that I finished the 2nd book in Daniel Fox's pseudo-China fantasy series, Jade Man's Skin. The almost exiled Emporer begins his counter-attack on the revolutionaries. With complications from the giant, pissed-off dragon in the straight between his island base and the mainland...
Dipped into the roommate's Dan Abnett Warhammer 20k books again. This time for the Eisenhorn collection. The titular character being one of the Inquisitor's of the God-Emperor. Collects together "Xenos", "Malleus" and "Hereticus", plus a couple short stories. Lots of Warhammer-style fucked up wrongness and ultra-violence...
Next up was the Urban Fantasy Anthology edited by Peter Beagle adn Joe Lansdale. The collection is split into three sub-categories for the Urban Fantasy genre; New Mythology, Paranormal Romance and Urban Noir. Lots of good stories here, though I already had several from other anthologies. But if nothing else the short story by Carrie Vaughn got me interested in checking her series out...
Which led to me buying Kitty and the Midnight Hour about a werewolf dj who hosts a late-night radio call in show for my Kindle. And then over the following four days buying Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand, Kitty Goes to Hell, Kitty's House of Horror, Kitty Goes to War and Kitty's Big Trouble. Which, budget wise, wasn't the wisest move on my part. But the series really clicked with me. Lots of great stuff here. All in a world where the supernatural is slowly coming out into the open...
The last two books for August definitely feel like the start of a series. Or at the least, in need of a sequel. Charles Stross' Rule 34 is new school cyberpunk, that extrapolates its near-future from the current economic meltdowns, the concept of being plugged in online 24/7 and the war between spammers and anti-spammers. Steven Gould's 7th Sigma has a United States where a huge section of the American Southwest has been overrun by robotic insects that feed on metal. The book focuses on the society that lives in the area despite the restrictions on technology. My only worry is that Gould's only other sequels to one of his books are the atrocious ones to Jumper...
Total books: 23
Finished up Connie Willis' WW2 based time travel trilogy with All Clear. An enjoyable if a bit slow moving read. I like the way Willis does time travel and how she used the threat of a universe that rejects paradox to create the central conflict for the characters...
Next up was C.E. Murphy's Demon Hunt, one of her Urban Shaman books. My favorite part of this series is still how the lead works to solve the supernatural threat in ways other than by beating on them or blowing it up. Not that the series is non-violent, but its interesting to see an urban fantasy series where gun fu or the like isn't the main option...
Got one of the latter "Myth" series books by Robert Asprin (and Jody Lynn Nye), Myth-taken Identity which has Aahz, Chumley and Maasha working to stop a group of identity thieves that have targeted Skeeve at a multi-dimensional shopping mall. I have a hard time remembering which books I have and haven't read from the period between Asprin's return to the series and his death...
The roommate pushed Sam Gunn Unlimited by Ben Bova on me. Which is a nice piece of near future scifi dealing mostly with space exploration and exploitation. Though the book is more a series of short stories that are woven together by the b-plot. Two of which I've read in older scifi anthologies...
Got to the final Tara Chace book by Greg Rucka, the Last Run, with Chace going on a last field mission to bring back an Iranian defector. And not surprisingly when everything goes off the rails the British government is willing to totally write Tara off. Again...
The roommate also decided to check out a local urban fantasy writer Kevin Hearne, who's books Hounded, Hexed and Hammered are based out of Tempe. So I tried them when he finished. Pretty good, even discounting the enjoyment of having something set in the Valley where the writer gets the locations correct. The third book, where the ancient and somewhat immortal druid hero takes part in a raid on Asgard to take out Thor for the crime of being a gigantic asshole was especially enjoyable...
After that I finished the 2nd book in Daniel Fox's pseudo-China fantasy series, Jade Man's Skin. The almost exiled Emporer begins his counter-attack on the revolutionaries. With complications from the giant, pissed-off dragon in the straight between his island base and the mainland...
Dipped into the roommate's Dan Abnett Warhammer 20k books again. This time for the Eisenhorn collection. The titular character being one of the Inquisitor's of the God-Emperor. Collects together "Xenos", "Malleus" and "Hereticus", plus a couple short stories. Lots of Warhammer-style fucked up wrongness and ultra-violence...
Next up was the Urban Fantasy Anthology edited by Peter Beagle adn Joe Lansdale. The collection is split into three sub-categories for the Urban Fantasy genre; New Mythology, Paranormal Romance and Urban Noir. Lots of good stories here, though I already had several from other anthologies. But if nothing else the short story by Carrie Vaughn got me interested in checking her series out...
Which led to me buying Kitty and the Midnight Hour about a werewolf dj who hosts a late-night radio call in show for my Kindle. And then over the following four days buying Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand, Kitty Goes to Hell, Kitty's House of Horror, Kitty Goes to War and Kitty's Big Trouble. Which, budget wise, wasn't the wisest move on my part. But the series really clicked with me. Lots of great stuff here. All in a world where the supernatural is slowly coming out into the open...
The last two books for August definitely feel like the start of a series. Or at the least, in need of a sequel. Charles Stross' Rule 34 is new school cyberpunk, that extrapolates its near-future from the current economic meltdowns, the concept of being plugged in online 24/7 and the war between spammers and anti-spammers. Steven Gould's 7th Sigma has a United States where a huge section of the American Southwest has been overrun by robotic insects that feed on metal. The book focuses on the society that lives in the area despite the restrictions on technology. My only worry is that Gould's only other sequels to one of his books are the atrocious ones to Jumper...
Total books: 23