August Book List

Aug 3rd - Butcher/Green/Richardson/Sniegoski Mean Streets: This time around I actually read Sniegoski's story. I guess his book series involves an Angel who tries to be mortal. With this story featuring a humanoid group that was meant to be killed off by the Flood. It was ok, but it wasn't anything that will make me start picking up the author's stuff...

Aug 4th - Jane Lindskold Through Wolf's Eyes: Reread this series mostly to see if the latter three books were ones I still wanted to keep...

Aug 5th - Lindskold Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart: I do like Lindskold's magic obsessed pseudo-Chinese colony, especially as a counter-point to the more traditionally European Hawk Haven and Bright Bay...

Aug 8th - Pratchett/Cohen/Stewart The Science of Discworld: This series still does more to help me actually understand science than any of the college courses I did badly in...

Aug 9th - Janet Evanovich Finger Lickin' 15: So far my book club is 3 for 5 in shipping me my monthly selection at the house. Which meant I had to go and buy this from 1/2Price. This book has Stephanie helping Ranger figure out who is robbing places his security firm has been hired by. And working with Lulu to track down the killers of a celebrity chef...

Aug 11th - Lindskold Dragon of Despair: The two things I probably like best in this 3rd book in the series are the elemental spirit nature of the Dragon and the half-mad child Citrine's struggle to both please her mother and do the right thing...

Aug 12th - Lindskold Wolf Captured: After rereading the whole series again, I'd say this book is the one I like the least. Though I do find the Liglom's culture to be more imaginative than the standard fantasy ones...

Eric Flint (ed) Grantville Gazette V: Of the various short stories in this one I think I like the one about Richelieu working to create his own "4 Musketeers" as his own special missions group best. And the one about the child who dies of lock-jaw and the mining accident one are probably tied for being saddest...

Aug 14th - Andrew Vachss Flood: The first of Vachss Burke series. Burke is a survivor of the foster care and prison systems. A some-time grifter who hits crooks and scum-bags. With an special hate for child abusers. Flood is from the same school and tries to survive by her devotion to the martial arts. She and Burke connect in a hunt for a child-raper who has gone underground. Vachss draws on his personal experiences as a social worker and lawyer for children to create a setting thats brutal and dark even by noir/pulp standards...

Aug 16th - Neal Asher Gridlinked: Asher's far future is one of mostly benevolent A.I. rulers, near instantaneous travel between worlds by Gates, truly alien aliens and crazed killers...

Aug 17th - Lindskold Wolf Hunting & Wolf's Blood: I have to say I enjoyed these two final books in the series a lot more this time around. Firekeeper and her friends are drawn into a renewed contact with the Old World, the remnants of its sorcerous rulers and the Fire Plague. Mostly because of a semi-divine being called The Meddler...

Aug 18th - Vachss Strega: Burke is hired to track down a photo of a child being sexually abused. So that it can be destroyed by the boy and help him recover...

Faye Kellerman Mercedes Coffin: The murder of a small-time music producer prompts a computer technologies billionaire to use her financial clout to get a 15 year old murder case reopened. Lt. Peter Decker's squad is the one assigned to the cold case, with the only new leads being some similarities between the two murder cases...

Aug 19th - Joe Haldeman Marsbound: Teenager Carmen Dula is part of the colonization of Mars. But a moment of youthful rebellion almost leads to her death and instead causes a First Contact situation...

Charles deLint Mystery of Grace: I was actually a little dissapointed by this south-western story of love and ghosts and moving on. But a "bad" deLint modern fantasy is still pretty damn good...

Aug 22nd - Asher The Skinner: More of Asher's far future setting. This one is set on the world of Spatterjay, where damn near everything (including the human colonits) is harder than hell to kill thanks to a native parasite. Which is useful since pretty much everything on the planet is willing to try and eat everything else...

Aug 25th - Camoflage: Two alien shapeshifters, both living in secret and unaware of each other, are drawn to a newly discovered alien artifact found buried at the bottom of the ocean...

Vachss - Shella: A non-Burke novel that is a love story between two broken humans...

Aug 26 - Robert Parker Night & Day: Police Chief Stone has a problem. A serial peeping tom who calls himself the Night Hawk has moved into committing more dangerous crimes. And he's corresponding with Stone while he does it...

Vachss Blossom: An old friend of Burke's asks for help. His nephew is accused of murdering "parked" teens. They need Burke's help in finding out if the boy is actually innocent and if he is, in finding the real killer...

Aug 27th - Vachss Sacrifice: Burke is asked to help a 9-year old boy whose history of abuse has left him with a shattered mind. And one of those shattered pieces is a killer who has already murdered twice...

Aug 29th - Donald Westlake Get Real: A post-humous final Dortmunder book from crime fiction legend Westlake. Thief Dortmunder and his crew are recruited to do a reality show of them committing a crime. They go along, all the while looking over the corporate owners of their producer for a bigger score...

Aug 30th - Elmore Leonard - Road Dogs: Leonard brings back bank robber Jack Foley from Out of Sight as well as "psychic" Dawn from Riding the Rap and Cuban crime boss Cuando Rey from La Brava...

Kellerman Blindman's Bluff: A multiple homicide at the ranch home of a construction billionaire lands on Lt. Peter Decker and his squad. And a blind translator his wife Rina meets while serving on a jury looks to have a crucial lead...

Aug 31st - Joe Hill Heart-Shaped Box: A decent ghost story and I liked the "spirit" dogs that protect the lead from the vengeful ghost. Still I ended up tossing it in my trade box after finishing...

Total Books: 26

Teenagers From Outerspace

This week we return to high school. Anime high school. Full of aliens and mutants and super-science and clueless guys being chased by scary women...

I'll be making a Near Human alien, Prince Neko deGato VonKatze. 187th in line for the throne of of the world of H'lokiteah. Near Humans just have a few alien traits. In this case fuzzy cat ears and a tail. Next TFO characters have eight statistics; Smarts, Bod, Relationship With Parents, Luck, Driving, Looks, Cool and Bonk. That last one is essentially how much damage you can take before passing out. For each you roll 1d6, and then you can swap points around, provided nothing goes above six or below one...

Smarts: 6, Bod: 3, R.W.P: 5, Luck: 3, Driving: 6, Looks: 6, Cool: 3, Bonk: 5. I'll move a couple points from Smarts to Cool and one from Driving to Luck. Of course in TFO the gamemaster is encouraged to screw with characters with high stats...

Next up are Knacks. Essentially bonuses to add to a stat for certain situations. Each Knack is connected to a specific Statistic. Like Hot-Rodding might go to Driving or Cool. Or Hit With Mallet would link to Bod. To determine Knacks you roll another d6. Then you divide that between as many Knacks as you want, to a maximum of 3 points. So for Prince Neko I roll another 6. I'll give him the Knacks of Sad Eyes of Doom+2 to RWP, Super-Adorable Innocence+1 to Looks, Kitty Kat Kung-Fu+1 to Bod and Go Too Damn Fast+2 to Driving...

Now we have alien powers. For this I roll 1d6 again on three of the alien powers tables. A roll of 4 gets Super Speed, 1 gets Nothing and 4 gets Temporal Funk. So he moves faster than a Cheetah AND can freeze time for up to a minute...

In the home stretch are Traits, Allowance and Wheels, Goodies & Gadgets. Traits are three habits, ways of looking at things or tendancies that further define the character. For my Cat Boi Prince I go with Easily distracted by shiny objects, Sleepy (he'll always be napping) and Goes both ways. Of course in TFO the characters are ALWAYS interupted before going All The Way. Because its funnier. For allowance Prince Neko only gets $25 a week. Stupid stingy royal family. And he's got $150 saved up. You start with a free vehicle, so Prince Neko will have a space-going flying motorcycle. Because it matches his leather jacket and mirror shades...