Weekly Wednesday Reading meme
What are you currently reading
Haunted by Kelley Armstrong. The main character is Eve, the ghost of a half-demon dark witch, who is sent by the Fates to catch an immortal, body-hopping serial killer who has made other people sent after her either disappear or go completely mad. I'm really loving this one, and Eve is hilarious and snarky, but I don't have deep thoughts about the plot yet.
What did you recently finish reading?
I finished Kelley Armstrong's Industrial Magic and liked it a lot. My favorite part was when Paige and Cassandra, a vampire frenemy, are investigating a sserial killer and head to New Orleans to investigate some vampires who take the Anne Rice fad too seriously. I laughed from beginning to end of those chapters, especially when go to the head vampire's dark and gloomy mansion and Cassandra spends the whole time wishing vampires could die of mortification. I tried reading Bitten, the first book in the series, but couldn't get into it. Normally, I don't stick with a series if I can't get through the first book in it, but in this case, I unintentionally started with a book late in the serious and went through a couple others before I was able to get ahold of the first. It's also a shared world series that follows multiple narrators, instead of just one, which helps.
I also finished the manhua Fantastic Tales, and it remained great fun throughout. As implied by the beginning, it was a pretty straight wuxia romantic adventure in manhua form, complete with poisons, tournaments, rebellions messed up family backgrounds, vengeance quests, amnesia, Super Special Swords, people gettin g sidetracked for random adventures on their quests, martial arts abilities that let you change your appearance and bone structure, etc., but with considerably more kissing than in wuxia tv series. I think it could have done with a couple more volumes because there was a bit too much going on to really be completely fleshed out in 5 volumes, but I'll take what I can get.
My favorite part of that series was when Our Heroines, Ling Long and Jie'er, along with Ban Sheng, a male character impersonating a woman at the time, infiltrate a contest where the Evil Emperor will choose his bride as the winner. Several other contestants inform Our Heroines that they'll have to kill them because they've made a pact that whoever wins will kill the emperor in their sleep, and they can't risk anyone spilling the beans. Our Heroines, of course, promptly go "Oh, hey, no TOTALLY OUR PLAN TOO. WE ARE SO DOWN WITH THAT." There's also a pair of adorable twin little girls who have adult twin brothers and, when one brother is needed for something but is away, they go off and abduct the other brother and forced him to impersonate the other twin. Like, this is apparently a thing that happens on a semi-regular basis.
What do you think you'll read next?
I've spent the last few days stressing about what to load onto my kindle during travel over the weekend. Most of the drive to and from family is through the Texas Hill Country, very little of which gets radio, cell phone signals, or wifi, so I need to have about 5 hours of reading material available to me before we set out. You'd think having kindle would make choosing easier, but no...
I will probably take Catherynne Valente's Six-Gun Snow White in case I forget to charge the thing, though. (Not that it's a "last choice backup" book or anything, I'm just planning to keep it light in terms of physical books to lug around.)
Haunted by Kelley Armstrong. The main character is Eve, the ghost of a half-demon dark witch, who is sent by the Fates to catch an immortal, body-hopping serial killer who has made other people sent after her either disappear or go completely mad. I'm really loving this one, and Eve is hilarious and snarky, but I don't have deep thoughts about the plot yet.
What did you recently finish reading?
I finished Kelley Armstrong's Industrial Magic and liked it a lot. My favorite part was when Paige and Cassandra, a vampire frenemy, are investigating a sserial killer and head to New Orleans to investigate some vampires who take the Anne Rice fad too seriously. I laughed from beginning to end of those chapters, especially when go to the head vampire's dark and gloomy mansion and Cassandra spends the whole time wishing vampires could die of mortification. I tried reading Bitten, the first book in the series, but couldn't get into it. Normally, I don't stick with a series if I can't get through the first book in it, but in this case, I unintentionally started with a book late in the serious and went through a couple others before I was able to get ahold of the first. It's also a shared world series that follows multiple narrators, instead of just one, which helps.
I also finished the manhua Fantastic Tales, and it remained great fun throughout. As implied by the beginning, it was a pretty straight wuxia romantic adventure in manhua form, complete with poisons, tournaments, rebellions messed up family backgrounds, vengeance quests, amnesia, Super Special Swords, people gettin g sidetracked for random adventures on their quests, martial arts abilities that let you change your appearance and bone structure, etc., but with considerably more kissing than in wuxia tv series. I think it could have done with a couple more volumes because there was a bit too much going on to really be completely fleshed out in 5 volumes, but I'll take what I can get.
My favorite part of that series was when Our Heroines, Ling Long and Jie'er, along with Ban Sheng, a male character impersonating a woman at the time, infiltrate a contest where the Evil Emperor will choose his bride as the winner. Several other contestants inform Our Heroines that they'll have to kill them because they've made a pact that whoever wins will kill the emperor in their sleep, and they can't risk anyone spilling the beans. Our Heroines, of course, promptly go "Oh, hey, no TOTALLY OUR PLAN TOO. WE ARE SO DOWN WITH THAT." There's also a pair of adorable twin little girls who have adult twin brothers and, when one brother is needed for something but is away, they go off and abduct the other brother and forced him to impersonate the other twin. Like, this is apparently a thing that happens on a semi-regular basis.
What do you think you'll read next?
I've spent the last few days stressing about what to load onto my kindle during travel over the weekend. Most of the drive to and from family is through the Texas Hill Country, very little of which gets radio, cell phone signals, or wifi, so I need to have about 5 hours of reading material available to me before we set out. You'd think having kindle would make choosing easier, but no...
I will probably take Catherynne Valente's Six-Gun Snow White in case I forget to charge the thing, though. (Not that it's a "last choice backup" book or anything, I'm just planning to keep it light in terms of physical books to lug around.)