Book List May '12
Its still June so this isn't late. Well its tolerably late. Tolerably to me anyway. Shut up, your moms a procrastinator!
Hrrumph
Anyway, started off May with Senrid, a somewhat disapointing Sherwood Smith book set in her main fantasy setting. I'd say I liked about half of this, though that was scattered all thru the book. And the using magic to remain frozen in adolescence because adult rulers shouldn't be trusted? What the hell was up with that? Glad that was an idea she didn't go back to...
After that was some David Weber rereading of his "Safehold" series. Thats the one where humanity is just one colony, that thanks to creepy brainwashing is semi-stuck in a Dark Ages theocratic society. But is breaking free of that slowly and painfully thanks to a really, really corrupt Church leadership and a secret cyborg trying to get the humans back to their high technology levels so they can deal with the xenophobic aliens that almost wiped our species out in the prologue. So Off Armaggedon Reef, By Schism's Rent Asunder, By Heresies Distressed, A Mighty FOrtress and How Firm a Foundation. As normal for Weber lots and lots of exposition and piles of secondary and tertiary viewpoint characters...
Then it was the newest "Iron Druid" book from Kevin Herne, Tricked. With our demi-Immortal ancient druid hero repaying a favor to Coyote that is supposed to involve creating a gold mine on a reservation. Which of course leads to some unmentioned Skinwalker problems. I swear I keep seeing Skinwalkers pop up lately as everyone's new favorite monster. Also more fall-out from the last book's whole Get Thor adventure...
Murder in Lamut by Raymond Feist and Joel Rosenburg basically involves picking up the late Rosenberg's Not the Three Musketeers soldiers from "Guardians of the Flame" and dropping them into Feist's "Midkemia" series. Right in the middle of the first RiftWar and sticking them with solving a noble's murder...
Emperor Mollusk vs. the Sinister Brain is the latest from A. Lee Martinez. Its a pulp-ish bit of scifi with the Evil Overlord as the hero who saves the day. I especially like how every planet in our Solar System has its own dominant intelligent species. And how all of them seem to hate the "hero"...
B. Justin Shier's "Zero Sight" series is a pretty good urban fantasy series. Its a mix of Magical Academy that falls in between "Harry Potter" and Grossman's The Magicians in tone with a taste of Military Ops feel thrown in. The two books in the series so far are Zero Sight and Zero Sum...
Next up I tried out David Drake's "Lt. Leary" series with With the Lightning and Lt. Leary, Commanding. Which is another "Horatio Hornblower"/"Master and Commander" inspired scifi series. Though its more of a direct lift of Napoleonic Wars British Navy in Space than, say Weber. Fun if you like that kind of setting, with an interesting way of doing the whole sailing ships to star ships thing...
Then I finished up Dan Wells' "John Cleaver" series with I Don't Want to Kill You. Liked it more than the second one. The whole psycopath/sociopath part of the Serial Killer Who Kills Demons bit is toned down. And it ends in a way that might make future books more appealing for me. But I still decided that the current three books weren't for me and dropped them into the trade-in box. Wells writes well, but his Dexter/Buffy mash-up didn't click with me...
I was more pleased with John Scalzi's rewrite of the classic scifi story Fuzzy Nation about planetary exploration and exploitation that turns into a first contact situation. Like "Avatar" if it involved Ewoks and wasn't really, really stupid...
Another new and enjoyable find was C.E. Grundler's Last Exit in New Jersey, a nice modern mystery/noir piece involving smuggling and boats and crazy people in love...
Also in the happily good new read Marion G. Harmon's supers books Wearing the Cape and Villains Inc. Good world building, well-written characters and a pair of stories that are both fun and tense...
Finally was Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded edited again by the VanderMeers again. There were a few gems in this one, though I'm baffled by the decision to start off the book with Gibson's "the Gernsback Continuum". Also whoever decided to code the Kindle version without including a fucking table of contents needs a kick in the ass...
Total books: 19
Hrrumph
Anyway, started off May with Senrid, a somewhat disapointing Sherwood Smith book set in her main fantasy setting. I'd say I liked about half of this, though that was scattered all thru the book. And the using magic to remain frozen in adolescence because adult rulers shouldn't be trusted? What the hell was up with that? Glad that was an idea she didn't go back to...
After that was some David Weber rereading of his "Safehold" series. Thats the one where humanity is just one colony, that thanks to creepy brainwashing is semi-stuck in a Dark Ages theocratic society. But is breaking free of that slowly and painfully thanks to a really, really corrupt Church leadership and a secret cyborg trying to get the humans back to their high technology levels so they can deal with the xenophobic aliens that almost wiped our species out in the prologue. So Off Armaggedon Reef, By Schism's Rent Asunder, By Heresies Distressed, A Mighty FOrtress and How Firm a Foundation. As normal for Weber lots and lots of exposition and piles of secondary and tertiary viewpoint characters...
Then it was the newest "Iron Druid" book from Kevin Herne, Tricked. With our demi-Immortal ancient druid hero repaying a favor to Coyote that is supposed to involve creating a gold mine on a reservation. Which of course leads to some unmentioned Skinwalker problems. I swear I keep seeing Skinwalkers pop up lately as everyone's new favorite monster. Also more fall-out from the last book's whole Get Thor adventure...
Murder in Lamut by Raymond Feist and Joel Rosenburg basically involves picking up the late Rosenberg's Not the Three Musketeers soldiers from "Guardians of the Flame" and dropping them into Feist's "Midkemia" series. Right in the middle of the first RiftWar and sticking them with solving a noble's murder...
Emperor Mollusk vs. the Sinister Brain is the latest from A. Lee Martinez. Its a pulp-ish bit of scifi with the Evil Overlord as the hero who saves the day. I especially like how every planet in our Solar System has its own dominant intelligent species. And how all of them seem to hate the "hero"...
B. Justin Shier's "Zero Sight" series is a pretty good urban fantasy series. Its a mix of Magical Academy that falls in between "Harry Potter" and Grossman's The Magicians in tone with a taste of Military Ops feel thrown in. The two books in the series so far are Zero Sight and Zero Sum...
Next up I tried out David Drake's "Lt. Leary" series with With the Lightning and Lt. Leary, Commanding. Which is another "Horatio Hornblower"/"Master and Commander" inspired scifi series. Though its more of a direct lift of Napoleonic Wars British Navy in Space than, say Weber. Fun if you like that kind of setting, with an interesting way of doing the whole sailing ships to star ships thing...
Then I finished up Dan Wells' "John Cleaver" series with I Don't Want to Kill You. Liked it more than the second one. The whole psycopath/sociopath part of the Serial Killer Who Kills Demons bit is toned down. And it ends in a way that might make future books more appealing for me. But I still decided that the current three books weren't for me and dropped them into the trade-in box. Wells writes well, but his Dexter/Buffy mash-up didn't click with me...
I was more pleased with John Scalzi's rewrite of the classic scifi story Fuzzy Nation about planetary exploration and exploitation that turns into a first contact situation. Like "Avatar" if it involved Ewoks and wasn't really, really stupid...
Another new and enjoyable find was C.E. Grundler's Last Exit in New Jersey, a nice modern mystery/noir piece involving smuggling and boats and crazy people in love...
Also in the happily good new read Marion G. Harmon's supers books Wearing the Cape and Villains Inc. Good world building, well-written characters and a pair of stories that are both fun and tense...
Finally was Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded edited again by the VanderMeers again. There were a few gems in this one, though I'm baffled by the decision to start off the book with Gibson's "the Gernsback Continuum". Also whoever decided to code the Kindle version without including a fucking table of contents needs a kick in the ass...
Total books: 19