![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
March '13 Book Report
May. 2nd, 2013 06:41 pmSo more than a bit late on this one. Ah well. Starting out with the uncollected short stories for the month. Seanan McGuire's Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust is part of a series of e-stories re-imagining the Oz setting. Hers is a noir-ish murder mystery where political agitator and some-time diplomat Dorothy Gale is tasked with solving a murder by her ex, Ozma. The was Weston Ochse's Border Dogs, part of his Seal Team 666 series, about chupacabres, drug cartels and coyotes. The people smugglers not the wild canines. Liked this one I eventually got around to picking up the book. Then we've got a Hemingway homage by Harry Turtledove, Running of the Bulls. Might have more to comment on that one if I'd ever been into Hemingway. And finally a steampunk Western, Terrain, by Genevieve Valentine. Which just serves as another reminder that I should try and track down some of her full length work...
A big portion of March's books come from me deciding to pick up a giant stack of Lone Wolf books. Like a lot of D&D nerds I was big into Joe Dover's & Gary Chalk's choose-your-own-adventure series as a kid. Books are still pretty good and tempt me towards seeing if I could get a group together to run the rpg version. Anyway, re-played Flight from the Dark, Fire on the Water, the Caverns of Kalte, the Chasm of Doom, Shadow on the Sand (which covers the regular Kai books), Kingdom of Terror,Castle Death and Jungle of Death (starting the MagnaKai books)...
Malindo Lo's Huntress is a fairy tale style fantasy, serving as a prequel to her Ash book...
On the collected short story side, had several anthologies for March. Grantville Gazette vol. 46, edited by Paul Goodlett, continuing the e-collections for the Ring of Fire series.Tales of the Far West, edited by Gareth-Michael Skarka is a collection of Wuxia/Western mash-ups. The quality of the stories in the Mad Scienctist's Guide to World Domination will likely vary on how tolerant you towards various level of bad guys win type stories. But its got a good selection of writers. Austin Grossman, Seanan McGuire and DIana Gabaldon among others. All editied by John Joseph Adams. And I finally got around to finishing up Vol. 29 of the Year's Best Science Fiction. This was the 2011 edition, edited as always by Gardner Dozois. Literally took me a year to get thru this, despite the very high quality of the contents...
Midnight Bluelight Special is the second in McGuire's Incryptid novels.with Verity Price, ballroom dancer and cryptonaturalist and her ex-Covenant boyfriend having to deal with a Covenant team. One of whom is family...
Patricia Brigg's latest Mercy Thompson book is Frost Burned. Picking up where her last Alpha/Omega left off, a rogue group has kidnapped Mercy's husband and nearly all of his werewolf pack. Plus some Fae assassins...
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters starts with a pretty great high concept. A cop looking to solve a murder when the whole world is under a death countdown from a closing asteroid. Happily its a well written book on top of that...
The Cold Commands is the second of Richard Morgan's grimdark fantasy books. More brutal violence and terrible good guys fighting worse bad guys...
Jay Lake's Green is an excellent fantasy series. One with a nice off-brand setting, magic-system and mythology. Also an intriguing and entrancing lead in the much-piled-upon Green...
Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Rocks the House is the latest in her Kitty Norville books. With werewolf radio host Kitty having to deal with a power grab by an outsider in her pack. And vampiric ally and Master of Denver, Rick, being tempted away by a secret order of Catholic vampires...
Michael Brandman was one of the co-writers on the Jesse Stone tv series. Which explains why he was picked to continue the late Robert Parker's books. At least the Jesse Stone ones. And he does an..adequate job of it with Killing the Blues. Not enough to get me to continue with non-Parker Robert Parker, but ok...
And lastly Joe Schrieber's Red Harvest another of his Star Wars + Zombies books. This one set at a Sith academy during the Old Republic era...
Total Books: 22
A big portion of March's books come from me deciding to pick up a giant stack of Lone Wolf books. Like a lot of D&D nerds I was big into Joe Dover's & Gary Chalk's choose-your-own-adventure series as a kid. Books are still pretty good and tempt me towards seeing if I could get a group together to run the rpg version. Anyway, re-played Flight from the Dark, Fire on the Water, the Caverns of Kalte, the Chasm of Doom, Shadow on the Sand (which covers the regular Kai books), Kingdom of Terror,Castle Death and Jungle of Death (starting the MagnaKai books)...
Malindo Lo's Huntress is a fairy tale style fantasy, serving as a prequel to her Ash book...
On the collected short story side, had several anthologies for March. Grantville Gazette vol. 46, edited by Paul Goodlett, continuing the e-collections for the Ring of Fire series.Tales of the Far West, edited by Gareth-Michael Skarka is a collection of Wuxia/Western mash-ups. The quality of the stories in the Mad Scienctist's Guide to World Domination will likely vary on how tolerant you towards various level of bad guys win type stories. But its got a good selection of writers. Austin Grossman, Seanan McGuire and DIana Gabaldon among others. All editied by John Joseph Adams. And I finally got around to finishing up Vol. 29 of the Year's Best Science Fiction. This was the 2011 edition, edited as always by Gardner Dozois. Literally took me a year to get thru this, despite the very high quality of the contents...
Midnight Bluelight Special is the second in McGuire's Incryptid novels.with Verity Price, ballroom dancer and cryptonaturalist and her ex-Covenant boyfriend having to deal with a Covenant team. One of whom is family...
Patricia Brigg's latest Mercy Thompson book is Frost Burned. Picking up where her last Alpha/Omega left off, a rogue group has kidnapped Mercy's husband and nearly all of his werewolf pack. Plus some Fae assassins...
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters starts with a pretty great high concept. A cop looking to solve a murder when the whole world is under a death countdown from a closing asteroid. Happily its a well written book on top of that...
The Cold Commands is the second of Richard Morgan's grimdark fantasy books. More brutal violence and terrible good guys fighting worse bad guys...
Jay Lake's Green is an excellent fantasy series. One with a nice off-brand setting, magic-system and mythology. Also an intriguing and entrancing lead in the much-piled-upon Green...
Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Rocks the House is the latest in her Kitty Norville books. With werewolf radio host Kitty having to deal with a power grab by an outsider in her pack. And vampiric ally and Master of Denver, Rick, being tempted away by a secret order of Catholic vampires...
Michael Brandman was one of the co-writers on the Jesse Stone tv series. Which explains why he was picked to continue the late Robert Parker's books. At least the Jesse Stone ones. And he does an..adequate job of it with Killing the Blues. Not enough to get me to continue with non-Parker Robert Parker, but ok...
And lastly Joe Schrieber's Red Harvest another of his Star Wars + Zombies books. This one set at a Sith academy during the Old Republic era...
Total Books: 22
Tags:
