Books Read - November 2010 (spoiler protected)
William George Ferguson
comments after a small spoiler space. I've also included a personal
rating, on a 0-10 scale, 10 being best.
Web of Lies Jennifer Estep Elemental Assassin-2 6
Venom Jennifer Estep Elemental Assassin-3 6
A Galaxy Unknown Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-1 6
Valor at Vauzlee Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-2 7
The Clones of Mawcett Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-3 6
Trader Vyx Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-4 7
Trio of Sorcery Mercedes Lackey anthology 8
--Arcanum 101 Diana Tregarde 7
--Drums Jennifer Talldeer 9
--Ghost in the Machine Ellen McBride Techno-Shaman 9
Heaven's Spite Lilith Saintcrow Jill Kismet-5 7
Coronets and Steel Sherwood Smith ruritanian romance 9
The Truth of Valor Tanya Huff Valor-5 8
Firespell Chloe Neill Dark Elite-1 7
Grave Witch Kalayna Price Alex Craft-1 8
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Web of Lies Jennifer Estep Elemental Assassin-2 6
Venom Jennifer Estep Elemental Assassin-3 6
The continuing adventures of former assassin (or at least she wants to be
former) Gin Blanco. In both stories, she gets involved with one of main
minions of series uber-villain Mab Monroe. In Web, she deals with a mine
owner who is squeezing a local store owner who is an old friend of her
late mentor and father-figure. Along the way she ends up finally breaking
up Donovan Caine, the uptight, snow-white, do-right cop she was involved
with in the first book. In Web, she has to deal with Mab's security
chief/enforcer and reaches a turning point in her attempt to keep a low
profile. Also the new police detective that fills Caine's old job, turns
out to be Bria Snow, Gin's baby sister who Gin had thought had been
murdered along with the rest of her family 18 years earlier (Bria, who is
several years younger than Gin, doesn't recognize Gin). I said about the
first book that I liked it better than I probably should, and that remains
true. They're not really that good, but they hold my interest, and I'll
almost certainly read the 4th one when it comes out.
A Galaxy Unknown Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-1 6
Valor at Vauzlee Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-2 7
The Clones of Mawcett Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-3 6
Trader Vyx Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-4 7
And speaking of liking books more than I probably should... These are more
or less classic space opera. The heroine, Jen Carver comes from a family
(two families, since it's true of both her mother and father's side) that
are career navy. Jen, the youngest of the large Carver clan, and the only
female, wants nothing more than to follow her parents and brothers into
space as a naval officer. She gets her wish, but on her first assignment
after graduation from the naval academy, as Science Officer ona
quartermaster ship making a routine supply run, a catastrophic engine
failure forces an abandon ship and Jen's escape pod suffers an equipment
failure that leads to more damage and a warped flight path when the
quartermaster ship blows up. adrift in a escape pod, unable to signal
would be rescuers to her location (because of the damage) and facing years
before her food runs out, Jen, after six months adrift, elects to enter one
of the pod's stasis bed (which acts like a hibernation chamber, keeping her
unconscious and slowing her body processes extremely, so that it would take
years to age even a day or so) and will sleep until the pod is found or the
power finally runs out (she expects the latter).
Sixteen years later, a freighter finds the escape pod wandering into its
flight path, identify it as an escape pod, and pick it up. Jen wakes up
into a massively changed universe (this is where the series title comes
from) where an organization of pirates has risen to pose a massive threat
to space travel and the space navy is stretched to thin to protect ships
from them. Jen almost immediately starts doing the things that space opera
heroes do, and over the course of the four, so far, books, goes from being
chronologically the oldest ensign in the navy to the youngest Commander in
the navy, pulling off victories worthy of a gray lensman along the way.
These are more or less mindless fun (and I do find them fun), but the
author does have a few quirks. He finds reasons to set up situations
forcing Jen to wear bondage chic, and there's a fair amount of sex
innuendo, but there is no actual overt sex. He also has a liking for using
unusual words adverbially, and not always in their standard connotation. I
frequently found myself quoting Fezzik from APB. A notable example, in the
first book at several points, he had different people say things
'obstreperously'. I don't think it means what he thinks it means.
Trio of Sorcery Mercedes Lackey anthology 8
I strongly suspect that at least the Tregarde, and possibly both the
Tregarde and the Talldeer, have been sitting in a drawer for a few years.
--Arcanum 101 Diana Tregarde 7
A prequel, set in Diana's freshman year at Harvard, and detail how she met
the group of Harvard students she refers to fondly through the original
three books. The threat is pretty straightforward, and this being a
novellette, zips along.
--Drums Jennifer Talldeer 9
Set a few months after Sacred Ground. Jennifer is hired by a Navajo man
from the Four Corners. He had moved to Oklahoma to be with his girlfriend,
an assimilated Choctaw (I was born in the middle of Choctaw country in
central OK, they are mostly assimilated). She became involved in seeking
her roots, then started acting weird. Jen investigates, and finds that she
is being haunted, and manipulated by an Osage sort-of-ghost. Jen calls up
her Aspect, wields her Attribute, and goes after him. Again, the novelette
nature of this works nicely against bloating.
--Ghost in the Machine Ellen McBride Techno-Shaman 9
Ellen McBride is a new character, and this book is set in the modern day.
Ellen's worldview is a combination of animism and consensus reality.
Everything is alive to some extent, and how 'alive' things are is related
to how much, and how many, people believe they are (I do believe in MMOs, I
do, I do). Ellen has built a consulting business based on her ability to
defuse and/or redirect 'bad' anima that have infested electronic systems.
She is called in when a particularly bad anima has infested the new WoW
type MMO module of a Blizzasrd-like company.
Heaven's Spite Lilith Saintcrow Jill Kismet-5 7
The penultimate Kismet book, with the situation with Melisande, the Sorrow
who had killed her mentor resolved, and with Pericles (Perry's) plans
finally coming to fruition, but not to his satisfaction.
Coronets and Steel Sherwood Smith ruritanian romance 9
Once upon a time (1894) Anthony Hope wrote a book about identical cousins
and the rulership of a backward country called Ruritania. After two
sequels, several movies, and uncounted imitators, this type of story has
come to be called a Ruritanian romance.
This book is not only a Ruritanian romance, the characters are actually
aware to that. Our Heroine is Aurelia Kimle Murray (called Kim). She is a
senior on the UCLA fencing team, and has been invited to tryouts for the US
Olympic team. Her grandmother Lily (Aurelia Lily) has suddenly had her
health degrade, apparently fueled by despair for some unknown reason. In
an effort to re-inforce her will to live, Kim travels to Europe to research
her gran's personal history and geneology (Kim is a History major and
competent to do this). All Kim and her mother know is that her mother was
actually born in Vienna, but her grandmother moved to Paris while her
mother was still an infant, and lived there during WW2, getting a place on
one of the refugee ships and moving to America after the war. In London, a
debonair Studly Beefcake named Alec mistakes her for someone else, and
later, in Vienna, arranges to kidnap her, still thinking she is this other
person. It turns out she is virtually identiacal to another Aurelia (who
goes by Ruli), who is a princess or a postage stamp Central European
kingdom named Dobrenica. Both Alec and Kim immediately see the resemblance
to A Prisoner of Zenda, although Kim mistakenly calls Alec 'Rudolph
Rassendyl' (clearly Kim is Rassendyl, and Ruli would be Rudolph III, Alec
is Princess Flavia).
Kim is an interesting character. She always thinks the best of others
until proven otherwise, which serves to get her into predicaments. She is
determined and creative, which serves to get her back out most predicaments
without waiting around to be rescued. At the end of the book in classic
Rassendyl fashion, Kim goes back to LA, after telling Ruli that, for the
good of the country, SHE needs to marry Alec, although both of them would
prefer that Kim marry him. It should not be the least shocking that
there's going to be a sequel
The Truth of Valor Tanya Huff Valor-5 8
The continuing adventures of Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr (now resigned from
the Marines). Torin is trying to make a life as Civilian Salvage Operator
(CSO) with her lover Craig Ryder. This is complicated by the fact that,
after all her exploits, as chronicled by muckraking journalist Presit a Tur
who are recognizing a major gravy train of sensational stories when she are
seeing it, Torin is probably the best known marine in known space. It is
also complicated by the fact that CSOs are extrene individualists who tend
to view things happening to others (including other CSOs) as SOP. For
Torin, everything that mader join the marines in the first place, everythng
that she has been trained for as a marine, and everything that made her a
Gunnery Sergeant is antithetical to the concept of SOP. When pirates start
attacking CSO ships, she has to act (and Huff hangs a lampshade on the fact
that in Huff's Confederation universe, piracy can't really be economically
feasible, with Torin's reaction to the idea of pirates) Torin has to do
something. When Ryder is grabbed by pirates, it becomes personal. As a
marine representative says, late in the book, "The corps holds that there
is no such thing as an 'ex' Gunnery Sergeant".
Firespell Chloe Neill Dark Elite-1 7
Welcome to Hogw... St. Sophia's Academy. Lily Parker's life is uprooted
when her college professor parents get a rare opportunity for a sabbatical
in Germany researching some normally unavailable works of philosophy. They
decide that, rather than taking Lily with them or arranging for her to stay
at home to finish high school in upstate NY, they will enroll her in an
exclusive girl's boarding academy in Chicago, St. Sophia's. Over her first
week at her new school, Lily finds out that things are not as they seem,
her new roommate Scout is not what she seems, and things that go bump in
the night really do go bump in the night. Unlike that school in Scotland,
St Sophia's isn't a school teaching wizardry, it is a school which some
wizards happen to attend, along with mostly unsuspecting non-wizards. Magic
power in this world typically manifests at puberty, and fades in the
mid-20s. The only way to avoid the magic fading is to become a spiritual
vampire, sucking the life force from others.
The book is a good read, although not really making 'twists' work. Most
readers will figure out that there's something about her parents before the
book makes it clear, and I think most readers will even figure out what it
is (that hasn't been explicitly revealed by the end of the book, but I will
be amazed if <rot13>ure cneragf nera'g sbezre jvmneqf jub ner erfrnepuvat n
aba-fbhy-fhpxvat jnl gb ergnva zntvp cbjref cnfg gur ntr bs 25</rot13>.
Certain things about the headmistress are equally obvious from early on,
including at least one thing that hasn't been revealed by the end of the
book.
Grave Witch Kalayna Price Alex Craft-1 8
Alex Craft (not her real last name) is a wyrd witch, specifically a grave
witch. In this world, consensus reality is strong, and the fae depend on
the belief of mortals. Through the centuries, people have believed less
and less, and the fae have faded. Finally, forty or fifty years before
this story, the fae came out and demonstrated their existence (basically,
to get humans believing in them again) and shortly thereafter witches and
other magical types followed them out into the public eye.
A witch is a human (male or female) who has the ability to do magic. They
come in many flavors, but can generally be divided into two categories, the
normal witches who can learn to do magic, what type varying some from
individual to individual, and the wyrd witches who can do magic without
learning. Wyrd witches generally have a specific ability (telekinesis,
precognition, whatever) that they can do without training. In fact, they
have to train to not do it, that is, to control when and how they do it.
Alex Craft manifested her power as a grave witch very early. By the time
she was 12, she could no longer hide it, because (again, she can't Not use
her powers, she has to go to school to learn control when to uses them. At
this time her father (whose identity is revealed fairly early in the book)
sends her to a 'Wyrd School', and basically out of his life. As a grave
witch, Alex can see into the world of the dead, and can raise 'shades'.
Shades are not zombies or ghosts, they are a representation of the dead
persons memories, without emotion or volition.
As magic powers go, this one has a limited upside, and extensive downside.
One of the most pernicious bad side effects is that every time she uses her
grave sight, her regular eyesight is massively degraded for a time period
afterward, and over time, this cause cumulative damage to her regular
vision. It's clear, though not talked about, that eventually she's going
to go completely blind as far as her normal eyesight goes (and she can't
Not use her grave sight). She sets out to make lemonade by getting a PI
license and helping police and private clients by raising shades for them.
In this first book of the series, Alex's world and companions are set up,
we learn some things that Alex didn't originally know about herself, and we
get a couple of Studly Beefcakes for Alex to play around with, one of whom
is Death.
--
I have a theory, it could be bunnies
Jack Tingle
> The books, just the books, listed first, with slightly more detailed
> comments after a small spoiler space. I've also included a personal
> rating, on a 0-10 scale, 10 being best.
>
> A Galaxy Unknown Thomas DePrima Galaxy Unknown-1 6
> Trio of Sorcery Mercedes Lackey anthology 8
> The Truth of Valor Tanya Huff Valor-5 8
The DePrima and the Huff are on my TBR list. The Lackey will be added
directly. Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Jack Tingle