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Book reviews
Jul. 23rd, 2014 10:46 pmAnother quick post, before I forget everything.
Inferno by Dan Brown
I haven't read any other Dan Brown novels. His use of ellipses and italics is hilarious - M and I read this out loud to each other for a while and it was awesome and probably entirely inappropriate for the book. Although I enjoyed it well enough, the oddity of this book was that the main character was utterly unimportant to me: if he'd been replaced with an art history textbook or an internet connection for the secondary character to figure out the "mystery", I'd have been just as pleased.
Also, I was utterly pleased with the twist / resolution of the book, except that it kinda messed up everything that happened before. Spoiler: it really screws up your narrative if it turns out that the crazy guy who was releasing a plague to reduce human population is actually a pretty sane guy with a really reasonable solution considering his ideals and talents. I got to the end and was like "huh, that's the best way he could have handled this" and then went "wait, so why did he make this crazy art treasure map thing and commit suicide? Dude had a legit solution and could even have just lived on as normal."
It didn't sit right in retrospect, 'cause I'm pretty sure the guy had to be sane. I need an explanation for why he did this nutty thing, and I can't resolve it in my brain. If you have one, I would like to hear it and stop thinking about it myself - all I've got is "ego", but ego doesn't usually commit suicide.
Promise of Blood by Ian McClellan
This is an industrial age fantasy series, which was pleasantly unusual: although there are traditional mages in it, the main characters are powder mages - mages who use gunpowder and guns. It's the first in the series (and only, at the moment), and I liked it surprisingly. You know I'm not much for series where I don't like the characters as people, but this one didn't bother me. They seemed like legitimate people doing what seemed reasonable in their situations, and the setting and writing were quite good.
The plot started strong as a political drama - the cover of the book itself will tell you that it starts with a coup - and stayed well paced despite having to introduce me to new magic concepts. It honestly gets a bit weird, with gods and big magic... but the characters also think it's weird, so I stayed in the zone while reading it. Looking forward to another in the series.
Hexed [short story anthology] by Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn, Allyson James and Jeanne C. Stein
This book was a set of four tie-in novellas for urban fantasy (/romance) series. Two of the series I have read (highly recommend Ilona Andrews series, would not generally recommend Yasmine Galenorn's because I'm uncomfortable recommending heavily romance series to people, but it's there if you want it). Here's my thoughts on the stories:
Magic dreams / Ilona Andrews
I really thought I'd read this one before, but it turned out I hadn't! It follows a weretiger (who I didn't remember, but was probably there in passing in the main series) and also the werecat Alpha (who has been a prominent, if still secondary character). I didn't love it the way I do the main series. It felt too much like it was just a tossed off story because the authors wanted to hook up the Alpha and I didn't really feel like the relationship was genuine since I had no impression of them having previous interactions. This was not a story from that universe that I cared about.
Ice shards / Yasmine Galenorn
This was why I actually picked up the anthology: this novella went before the last book I read in this series, and it was seriously annoying not having its back story. It resolves the story of Iris, who has always been a secondary but interesting character in the main series. Predictable (maybe because I'd read the book after it... but I think regardless), but pleasant.
Double hexed / Allyson James
Oh my god. This was a tragic look into what appears to be a terrible series. Half mystic indian / half goddess (literally) main character! Sexy weredragon boyfriend! Reformed vampire! Sexy Coyote (yes, the trickster god) who hits on her as well! Magic mirror who also hits on her / is a super perv! Big magic curse making them all lose control at the same time!
Yeah, it was bad. I can only imagine the series is the same, but probably with more sex scenes.
Blood debt / Jeanne C. Stein.
Vampire bounty hunter, who has human partner bounty hunters (who she is not sleeping with and who also don't know she's a vampire). Still some gratuitous moments, but overall pretty enjoyable. I'm going to try one of the books in the series and see if it's any good - seems like there's some potential, at least.
Inferno by Dan Brown
I haven't read any other Dan Brown novels. His use of ellipses and italics is hilarious - M and I read this out loud to each other for a while and it was awesome and probably entirely inappropriate for the book. Although I enjoyed it well enough, the oddity of this book was that the main character was utterly unimportant to me: if he'd been replaced with an art history textbook or an internet connection for the secondary character to figure out the "mystery", I'd have been just as pleased.
Also, I was utterly pleased with the twist / resolution of the book, except that it kinda messed up everything that happened before. Spoiler: it really screws up your narrative if it turns out that the crazy guy who was releasing a plague to reduce human population is actually a pretty sane guy with a really reasonable solution considering his ideals and talents. I got to the end and was like "huh, that's the best way he could have handled this" and then went "wait, so why did he make this crazy art treasure map thing and commit suicide? Dude had a legit solution and could even have just lived on as normal."
It didn't sit right in retrospect, 'cause I'm pretty sure the guy had to be sane. I need an explanation for why he did this nutty thing, and I can't resolve it in my brain. If you have one, I would like to hear it and stop thinking about it myself - all I've got is "ego", but ego doesn't usually commit suicide.
Promise of Blood by Ian McClellan
This is an industrial age fantasy series, which was pleasantly unusual: although there are traditional mages in it, the main characters are powder mages - mages who use gunpowder and guns. It's the first in the series (and only, at the moment), and I liked it surprisingly. You know I'm not much for series where I don't like the characters as people, but this one didn't bother me. They seemed like legitimate people doing what seemed reasonable in their situations, and the setting and writing were quite good.
The plot started strong as a political drama - the cover of the book itself will tell you that it starts with a coup - and stayed well paced despite having to introduce me to new magic concepts. It honestly gets a bit weird, with gods and big magic... but the characters also think it's weird, so I stayed in the zone while reading it. Looking forward to another in the series.
Hexed [short story anthology] by Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn, Allyson James and Jeanne C. Stein
This book was a set of four tie-in novellas for urban fantasy (/romance) series. Two of the series I have read (highly recommend Ilona Andrews series, would not generally recommend Yasmine Galenorn's because I'm uncomfortable recommending heavily romance series to people, but it's there if you want it). Here's my thoughts on the stories:
Magic dreams / Ilona Andrews
I really thought I'd read this one before, but it turned out I hadn't! It follows a weretiger (who I didn't remember, but was probably there in passing in the main series) and also the werecat Alpha (who has been a prominent, if still secondary character). I didn't love it the way I do the main series. It felt too much like it was just a tossed off story because the authors wanted to hook up the Alpha and I didn't really feel like the relationship was genuine since I had no impression of them having previous interactions. This was not a story from that universe that I cared about.
Ice shards / Yasmine Galenorn
This was why I actually picked up the anthology: this novella went before the last book I read in this series, and it was seriously annoying not having its back story. It resolves the story of Iris, who has always been a secondary but interesting character in the main series. Predictable (maybe because I'd read the book after it... but I think regardless), but pleasant.
Double hexed / Allyson James
Oh my god. This was a tragic look into what appears to be a terrible series. Half mystic indian / half goddess (literally) main character! Sexy weredragon boyfriend! Reformed vampire! Sexy Coyote (yes, the trickster god) who hits on her as well! Magic mirror who also hits on her / is a super perv! Big magic curse making them all lose control at the same time!
Yeah, it was bad. I can only imagine the series is the same, but probably with more sex scenes.
Blood debt / Jeanne C. Stein.
Vampire bounty hunter, who has human partner bounty hunters (who she is not sleeping with and who also don't know she's a vampire). Still some gratuitous moments, but overall pretty enjoyable. I'm going to try one of the books in the series and see if it's any good - seems like there's some potential, at least.
