Recent reading
I've been working on this post every now and then for about a month now, but I think the list of books to comment on has just grown too massive :P. I guess I'll just do abbreviated entries on most of this stuff...
During my holiday (June 23 - July 8) I read several books that might be categorized as 'light summer reading':
(67.) P. N. Elrod (ed.): My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding was a supernatural romance anthology set around various weddings. It was a nice and quick read though none of the stories really stayed in my mind. (69.) Carolan Ivey, Gia Dunn, and Sela Carsen's Love & Lore fits the same category, as does (70.) MaryJanice Davidson, Lori Handeland, Cheyenne McCray, and Christine Warren's No Rest for the Witches.
So does also (75.) J. D. Robb, Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas's Dead of Night, though in this case I can clearly say that the J. D. Robb story was the only one I really liked. I'm not that big on time travel romance and the rest of the stories belonged to that genre, while Robb's Eve Dallas story was the usual stuff and was as entertaining as the rest of that series.
(71.) C. E. Murphy's The Queen's Bastard had a lot of little things that annoyed me and which made me decide not to seek out the rest of the books in this series (unless I manage to get them for free through Bookmooch).
Like the fact that the story is clearly set in an alternate Elizabethan Europe, but all the names have been changed (Europe is Echon, England is Aulun, France Gallin, Russia Khazar, Catholic Church = Ecumenic Church and Protestants = Reformationists, etc.).
The main character, Belinda Primrose, is Aulunian queen's unacknowledged bastard daughter (her father is Lord Robert Drake, the queen's spymaster) and has from childhood been trained to become a spy and to use her body and her wits to help her achieve her country's goals.
But then she goes to the Gallin court to figure out a way to thwart the dowager queen Sandalia and her son, Prince Javier, and discovers that she has magical abilities with which she can influence people. This is a result of her seducing Javier, the heir to Gallin throne who also has magical powers, though not quite like hers.
One of the things I disliked was Belinda. She is tough and manipulative, but under the influence of her power she can turn downright cruel. And then there is the inevitable tying up of sex with the power she has. I've read plenty of Anita Blake already, thank you very much...
There are some hints of some bigger plan on her father and some of his friends' part, but I don't think I'm interested enough to find out.
I much preferred (66.) Marie Brennan's Midnight Never Come which I read before I left for my holiday. It is also set in Elizabethan times, but with fairies as major players. meganbmoore has made a better post on the book, so read that.
I mostly agree with her, but I think I liked the politics and the setting up of the story a bit more than she did (i.e. it didn't seem that slow to me). I think sassiefin might really like this :).
I read the next volumes on several manga books as well:
68. Matsuri Hino: Vampire Knight 4.
The Maria Kurenai arc is very interesting both on Zero's part, and on how Kaname reacts to it.
72. Tomoko Hayakawa: The Wallflower 15
Sunako finally meets again the guy who called her ugly. Of course things don't go quite as expected, but her new friends show themselves to be real friends, however much they might grumble about things.
73. Mick Takeuchi: Her Majesty's Dog 9
Enjoyable, though they need to move on from the distance for the other's sake type of situations. Return to the island should move things along...
74. Diana Wynne Jones: House of Many Ways
This was just as delightful as ever. A lot of "muddled" stories that come together in the end. I could totally empathize with Charmain just wanting to curl up with a good book and not deal with all those distractions... :)
76. Somerset Maugham: The Painted Veil
I saw the movie before I read the book and it was interesting to compare the similarities and differencies in the stories. I enjoyed both very much despite, or maybe thanks, to the differencies.
SLIGHTLY SPOILERY for both the movie and the bookThe book seems to be more about Kitty's growth as a person, while the movie is a tragic romance where she does love her husband in the end, but at that point it's too late. In the book she never really loved him.
77. Jeri Smith-Ready's Wicked Game was a fun take on modern vampire genre. I especially liked her notion that vampires are stuck in their "life time" (the time when they were alive). They can't really process new things and learn about them.
The main character gets a job at a radio station that is in threat of being taken over by a major corporation. She decides to turn the quirks of the DJs (they are all vamps stuck in their times) into an advantage and starts marketing the station as a vampire DJ station.
Of course nobody really believes this, but her campaign is a big success. Not everybody in the vampire community likes this kind of publicity, however. And then there is her budding romance with one of the DJs...
I very much liked this. She actually managed to do something original in the vampire genre with the notion that they were stuck in their life times, though quite a lot of the stuff was familiar as well.
78. China Miéville's Un Lun Dun is an ecological YA fantasy mostly set in an alternate London (unLondon) where most unwanted stuff from London turns up. But one of the major pollutions has become sentient and a real threat to the people of unLondon. It is up to two Londoner girls to save things.
This was highly readable though the subject matter might have turned up awfully preachy very fast. I very much liked the diversion of the hero myth and how the story turned out in the end.
At the moment, I'm rereading LMB's first Sharing Knife book in preparation to reading books 2 & 3, and savouring Vera Nazarian's short stories in the collection Salt of the Air. I've actually read at least some of these stories through Fictionwise or various anthologies (Sword & Sorceress) before this, but it's great to have them all collected into one book with some original stories as well.
During my holiday (June 23 - July 8) I read several books that might be categorized as 'light summer reading':
(67.) P. N. Elrod (ed.): My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding was a supernatural romance anthology set around various weddings. It was a nice and quick read though none of the stories really stayed in my mind. (69.) Carolan Ivey, Gia Dunn, and Sela Carsen's Love & Lore fits the same category, as does (70.) MaryJanice Davidson, Lori Handeland, Cheyenne McCray, and Christine Warren's No Rest for the Witches.
So does also (75.) J. D. Robb, Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas's Dead of Night, though in this case I can clearly say that the J. D. Robb story was the only one I really liked. I'm not that big on time travel romance and the rest of the stories belonged to that genre, while Robb's Eve Dallas story was the usual stuff and was as entertaining as the rest of that series.
(71.) C. E. Murphy's The Queen's Bastard had a lot of little things that annoyed me and which made me decide not to seek out the rest of the books in this series (unless I manage to get them for free through Bookmooch).
Like the fact that the story is clearly set in an alternate Elizabethan Europe, but all the names have been changed (Europe is Echon, England is Aulun, France Gallin, Russia Khazar, Catholic Church = Ecumenic Church and Protestants = Reformationists, etc.).
The main character, Belinda Primrose, is Aulunian queen's unacknowledged bastard daughter (her father is Lord Robert Drake, the queen's spymaster) and has from childhood been trained to become a spy and to use her body and her wits to help her achieve her country's goals.
But then she goes to the Gallin court to figure out a way to thwart the dowager queen Sandalia and her son, Prince Javier, and discovers that she has magical abilities with which she can influence people. This is a result of her seducing Javier, the heir to Gallin throne who also has magical powers, though not quite like hers.
One of the things I disliked was Belinda. She is tough and manipulative, but under the influence of her power she can turn downright cruel. And then there is the inevitable tying up of sex with the power she has. I've read plenty of Anita Blake already, thank you very much...
There are some hints of some bigger plan on her father and some of his friends' part, but I don't think I'm interested enough to find out.
I much preferred (66.) Marie Brennan's Midnight Never Come which I read before I left for my holiday. It is also set in Elizabethan times, but with fairies as major players. meganbmoore has made a better post on the book, so read that.
I mostly agree with her, but I think I liked the politics and the setting up of the story a bit more than she did (i.e. it didn't seem that slow to me). I think sassiefin might really like this :).
I read the next volumes on several manga books as well:
68. Matsuri Hino: Vampire Knight 4.
The Maria Kurenai arc is very interesting both on Zero's part, and on how Kaname reacts to it.
72. Tomoko Hayakawa: The Wallflower 15
Sunako finally meets again the guy who called her ugly. Of course things don't go quite as expected, but her new friends show themselves to be real friends, however much they might grumble about things.
73. Mick Takeuchi: Her Majesty's Dog 9
Enjoyable, though they need to move on from the distance for the other's sake type of situations. Return to the island should move things along...
74. Diana Wynne Jones: House of Many Ways
This was just as delightful as ever. A lot of "muddled" stories that come together in the end. I could totally empathize with Charmain just wanting to curl up with a good book and not deal with all those distractions... :)
76. Somerset Maugham: The Painted Veil
I saw the movie before I read the book and it was interesting to compare the similarities and differencies in the stories. I enjoyed both very much despite, or maybe thanks, to the differencies.
SLIGHTLY SPOILERY for both the movie and the bookThe book seems to be more about Kitty's growth as a person, while the movie is a tragic romance where she does love her husband in the end, but at that point it's too late. In the book she never really loved him.
77. Jeri Smith-Ready's Wicked Game was a fun take on modern vampire genre. I especially liked her notion that vampires are stuck in their "life time" (the time when they were alive). They can't really process new things and learn about them.
The main character gets a job at a radio station that is in threat of being taken over by a major corporation. She decides to turn the quirks of the DJs (they are all vamps stuck in their times) into an advantage and starts marketing the station as a vampire DJ station.
Of course nobody really believes this, but her campaign is a big success. Not everybody in the vampire community likes this kind of publicity, however. And then there is her budding romance with one of the DJs...
I very much liked this. She actually managed to do something original in the vampire genre with the notion that they were stuck in their life times, though quite a lot of the stuff was familiar as well.
78. China Miéville's Un Lun Dun is an ecological YA fantasy mostly set in an alternate London (unLondon) where most unwanted stuff from London turns up. But one of the major pollutions has become sentient and a real threat to the people of unLondon. It is up to two Londoner girls to save things.
This was highly readable though the subject matter might have turned up awfully preachy very fast. I very much liked the diversion of the hero myth and how the story turned out in the end.
At the moment, I'm rereading LMB's first Sharing Knife book in preparation to reading books 2 & 3, and savouring Vera Nazarian's short stories in the collection Salt of the Air. I've actually read at least some of these stories through Fictionwise or various anthologies (Sword & Sorceress) before this, but it's great to have them all collected into one book with some original stories as well.