lurkerwithout: (Book on bed)
Looking over the non-collected short fiction to start, beginning with N.K. Jemisin's Playing Nice With God's Bowling Ball which is about a police investigation of some super-science gone wrong involving young kids.  Steve White's the Last Secret of Mary Bowser is a sort of side story to what I think is his normal time travel war series.  I think.  What I do know is it doesn't feature near enough Mary Bowser, an African-Amercian woman who served as Union spy in the home of Jefferson Davis during the Civil War.  The Penitent Damned is a prequel to Django Wexler's "Shadow Campaigns" series.  And the Face in the Window and Servant of the Crown are more prequel stories for Brian McCellan's "Powder Mage" trilogy.  Max Gladstone's the Angelus Guns is a high concept story involving many worlds theory, an angelic civil war and a sister trying to save her brother.  Ursula Vernon examines modern living as a supernatural woman with the Day My Grandmother Exploded.  I'm not normally a fan of Adam Christopher, but I do enjoy noir stories involving robots like his Brisk Money.  Jonathan L Howard's Goon Squad stories are a mostly monthly supers serial done all in prose.  Enjoyable government cape squad stuff, and I finished the first three in July...

Sophie Goldstein & Jenn Jordan's webcomic Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell was a wonderful sometimes dark comedy in a world where the mythological and fantastic mixes with the everyday.  And where protagonist Darwin Carmichael has to work constantly to try and improve his karmic balance after accidently giving the reincarnated Dali Lama brain damage.  Glad to have kickstarted and recieved the print collected omnibus...

Greg VanEekhaut's California Bones is a creepy urban fantasy where magicians can gain powers by ingesting the bones of extinct magical creatures.  And others take that further by ingesting the flesh and bones of other magicians.  The book is a heist story with a talented magician having to re-assemble his old crew to rob the vault of the ruthless and deadly ruler of California...

Adrian Tchaikovsky finishes up his "Shadows of the Apt" series with Warmaster's Gate where the Wasp Empire again goes after Collegium, while the Empress investigates an ancient power.  And then it all comes to a giant climax with Seal of the Worm with everyone, Imperial, Collegiate, Apt, InApt falling under the returned threat of the Centipedes...

I'm glad Robots Vs. Slime Monsters popped up on my kindle recommended list.  Because I'd manage to totally miss A. Lee Martinez doing a kickstarter to fund this collection of short fiction sequels to many of his books...

Shattered is the latest in Kevin Hearne's "Iron Druid" series.  The main focus this time is split between Atticus helping his original teacher adapt to the modern age and his apprentice investigating the death of her archeologist father.  Plus Loki.  And a traitor among the Tuath(a) Dé Danann...

John Scalzi's latest is Lock In a near future murder mystery where the lead character telecommutes from their totally paralyzed body to a robot drone to work as an FBI agent...

Probably the best of the short stories in Tanya Huff's He Said, Sidhe Said anthology is the title one, a retelling of Tam Lin involving skate punks and the Fae...

After reading Jim Bernheimer's prequel Origins of a D-List Super Villain, I of course had to go back and re-read his Confessions of a D-List Super Villain...

Django Wexler's second "Shadow Campaigns" novel, the Shadow Throne has Crown Princess with a deadly secret, student revolutionaries, dockside gangs, an evil spymaster and a female soldier disguised as a male disguised as a woman...

Another prequel, this time Twenty Palaces by Harry Connolly, to his "Twenty Palaces" urban fantasy series.  Got this one as a kickstarter reward for his Epic Fantasy With No Dull Bits project...

I liked that short story way up at the top by N.K. Jemisin that I picked up her the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  Great book and great setting.  Big, epic stuff...

Pair of finales.  Ben Winter's finishes up his "Last Policeman" trilogy with World of Trouble.  Which manages to be as uplifting and sad as a series where the Earth gets hit by a comet at the end can be.  C.E. Murphy finishes up her "Urban Shaman" series with Shaman Rising, which has the final confrontation against the Dark God culminating back in Seattle and has call-backs and cameos by pretty much everyone from the whole series...

Weston Ochse's Velvet Dogma is an old school style cyberpunk novel.  With the main twist being that people are essentially born owing their bodies after death for organ donation...

Darryl Gregory's We Are All Completely Fine centers around a support group for the survivors of what are essentially horror movies...

Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales: Africa Edition, is a wonderful collection of comics telling fables and folk stories from various African traditions, edited by Kel McDonald and Taneka Stotts...

And finally I was surprised and how well Joe Abercrombie does YA-Fantasy with Half a King.  It still has that distinctive Abercrombie mud & blood flavor but with a lighter touch for a younger target reader...

Total books: 20
lurkerwithout: (Book on bed)
More late than usual on this one.  So let us start with the free-range short fiction for August.  We've got "Cayos in the Stream" by Harry Turtledove.  A somewhat alternate history story with Hemingway hunting for Nazi U-boats in the Caribbean.  Then Meghan McCarron's "Swift, Brute Retaliation" where just being dead doesn't stop a dead kid from being a bullying dick to his little sisters.  V.E. Sawhab's "Warm Up" probably works better as a prequel chapter to her supers novel then as a stand-alone story.  And finally a Narbonic/Skin Horse short from Shaenon Garrity, "By Comitee", where a group of well-meaning activists (including an A.I, a gerbil and a cat) try to plan a surprise birthday party for a helicopter.  A black ops social services helicopter.  I do so love the Narboni-verse...

Carrying over from the previous month is the remaining of David Weber's "Safehold" books, How Firm a Foundation and  Midst Toil & Tribulation.  And I'm still very impatiently awaiting the next book due out next year...

Then we've got Neil Gaiman's the Ocean at the End of the Lane.  An excellent story about childhood terror and wonder and magic.  So like a lot of Gaiman's stuff...

Greg Stolze's Sinner is a supers book.  I think the roommate got this from a Kickstarter campaign.  I liked the world-building bits and the life and crimes of the titular super-villain, told after he turns himself in.  The final climax feels a bit rushed and I'm not sure how well it really holds together.  But Cephalopod, the remotely operated octopus themed super-hero was pretty damn cool...

Unfettered (edited by Shawn Speakman) was a pretty good anthology from a diverse bunch of writers, all to help with the editor's fight against cancer.  Or at least to help defray some of the costs of said fight...

Christopher Moore ruins art forever with Sacre Bleu.  Ok, thats his hyperbole.  But it definitely puts a similar twist on art to what he did with Jesus and vampires.  And King Lear.  And Christmas angels...

Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest by A. Lee Martinez shows that working fast food can really suck and lead to being geased and having to work for cryptic agencies who are lot less helpful than they could be.  Also that its hard balancing being a modern Orc with the urge to follow your ancestral traditions...

Probably the most memorable scene in Illona Andrews' Magic Rises is while on a boat ride to Europe, the band of American shapeshifters (plus Kate) have to fight a band of weredolphin pirates.  Greek weredolphin pirates...

The Russians Are Coming is another story filling in the time gap for K.B. Spengler's <a href = "http://agirlandherfed.com/">A Girl & Her Fed</a>.  With squirrel infestations to go along with sort-of-government cyborgs.  And super-hardcore sex.  Lots of that...

Chuck Wendig's Blue Blazes is basically a urban fantasy story.  But more a criminal syndicates type story.  But also still that elder horror from beneath the earth.  But also a broken family drama.  Plus monsters and magic drugs...

Warbound finishes up Larry Correia's "Grimnoir" trilogy with the neccesary super-sized action sequences and heroic deaths.  All very epic pulp adventure...

Charlie Huston's latest, Skinner, is a near future epsionage technothriller.  With the titular Skinner being the world's scariest bodyguard...

Naomi Novik's most recent "Temeraire" book, Blood of Tyrants, takes her band of dragons and pilots from Japan to China and then to Napolean's invasion of Russia...

Next is Jim Hines' second Libriomancer book Codex Born.  This volume concentrates more on bad-ass dryad Lena Greenwood, in addition to Libriomancer Isaac...

After that was a quick reread of Steven Gould's Helm.  Don't remember what prompted it, beyond the book being one of my favorites...

Then one of Neal Asher's "Polity" books, Line of the Polity.  Worth it for making me wonder what the D&D or GURPS stats would be for a Gabbleduck.  No one does crazy space monsters like Neal Asher...

And finally Austin Grossman's YOU.  Which reminded me a whole lot of Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, in a very good way...

Total Books: 18
lurkerwithout: (Book on bed)
Its still June so this isn't late. Well its tolerably late. Tolerably to me anyway. Shut up, your moms a procrastinator!

Hrrumph

Anyway, started off May with Senrid, a somewhat disapointing Sherwood Smith book set in her main fantasy setting. I'd say I liked about half of this, though that was scattered all thru the book. And the using magic to remain frozen in adolescence because adult rulers shouldn't be trusted? What the hell was up with that? Glad that was an idea she didn't go back to...

After that was some David Weber rereading of his "Safehold" series. Thats the one where humanity is just one colony, that thanks to creepy brainwashing is semi-stuck in a Dark Ages theocratic society. But is breaking free of that slowly and painfully thanks to a really, really corrupt Church leadership and a secret cyborg trying to get the humans back to their high technology levels so they can deal with the xenophobic aliens that almost wiped our species out in the prologue. So Off Armaggedon Reef, By Schism's Rent Asunder, By Heresies Distressed, A Mighty FOrtress and How Firm a Foundation. As normal for Weber lots and lots of exposition and piles of secondary and tertiary viewpoint characters...

Then it was the newest "Iron Druid" book from Kevin Herne, Tricked. With our demi-Immortal ancient druid hero repaying a favor to Coyote that is supposed to involve creating a gold mine on a reservation. Which of course leads to some unmentioned Skinwalker problems. I swear I keep seeing Skinwalkers pop up lately as everyone's new favorite monster. Also more fall-out from the last book's whole Get Thor adventure...

Murder in Lamut by Raymond Feist and Joel Rosenburg basically involves picking up the late Rosenberg's Not the Three Musketeers soldiers from "Guardians of the Flame" and dropping them into Feist's "Midkemia" series. Right in the middle of the first RiftWar and sticking them with solving a noble's murder...

Emperor Mollusk vs. the Sinister Brain is the latest from A. Lee Martinez. Its a pulp-ish bit of scifi with the Evil Overlord as the hero who saves the day. I especially like how every planet in our Solar System has its own dominant intelligent species. And how all of them seem to hate the "hero"...

B. Justin Shier's "Zero Sight" series is a pretty good urban fantasy series. Its a mix of Magical Academy that falls in between "Harry Potter" and Grossman's The Magicians in tone with a taste of Military Ops feel thrown in. The two books in the series so far are Zero Sight and Zero Sum...

Next up I tried out David Drake's "Lt. Leary" series with With the Lightning and Lt. Leary, Commanding. Which is another "Horatio Hornblower"/"Master and Commander" inspired scifi series. Though its more of a direct lift of Napoleonic Wars British Navy in Space than, say Weber. Fun if you like that kind of setting, with an interesting way of doing the whole sailing ships to star ships thing...

Then I finished up Dan Wells' "John Cleaver" series with I Don't Want to Kill You. Liked it more than the second one. The whole psycopath/sociopath part of the Serial Killer Who Kills Demons bit is toned down. And it ends in a way that might make future books more appealing for me. But I still decided that the current three books weren't for me and dropped them into the trade-in box. Wells writes well, but his Dexter/Buffy mash-up didn't click with me...

I was more pleased with John Scalzi's rewrite of the classic scifi story Fuzzy Nation about planetary exploration and exploitation that turns into a first contact situation. Like "Avatar" if it involved Ewoks and wasn't really, really stupid...

Another new and enjoyable find was C.E. Grundler's Last Exit in New Jersey, a nice modern mystery/noir piece involving smuggling and boats and crazy people in love...

Also in the happily good new read Marion G. Harmon's supers books Wearing the Cape and Villains Inc. Good world building, well-written characters and a pair of stories that are both fun and tense...

Finally was Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded edited again by the VanderMeers again. There were a few gems in this one, though I'm baffled by the decision to start off the book with Gibson's "the Gernsback Continuum". Also whoever decided to code the Kindle version without including a fucking table of contents needs a kick in the ass...

Total books: 19
lurkerwithout: (Book on bed)
Sept 1st: Andrew Vachss - Only Child & Down Here: Books 14 and 15 in the Burke series. In the first Burke is hired to find out what happened that caused the death of the bastard daughter of a Mafia boss. In the latter former D.A. turned information broker Wolfe has been accused of an attempted murder. So Burke and his people team up with her crew to prove her innocence...

Sept 2nd: Vachss - Mask Market: The 16th Burke book has the anti-hero lead trying to find out why a client was killed minutes after hiring him. And if its anything that could threaten Burke or his family. Leading him back into his past and one of the runaways he rescued off the street years ago...

Sept 3rd: Vachss - Terminal: In this 17th book Burke is approached by a terminally ill ex-con. One with a possible scam that could net them all a huge score. But it involves an old murder of a 13-year old girl...

Sept 4th: Vachss - Another Life: The final Burke novel, with Burke and his family getting an offer from a secretive federal agent. If they can recover the kidnapped baby son of a visitign Saudi noble then they can all have the record's cleaned and altered so they can come into the light and onto the straight life...

Sept 5th: Paula Goodlett (ed) - Grantville Gazette 31: Most recent of the Ring of Fire anthologies e-book editions. Still no new updates on Russia sadly...
Naomi Novik - Empire of Ivory: Captain Laurence & Tremaire travel to Africa to seek out a possible cure for the epidemic laying low England's dragon corps...
- Victory of Eagles: After choosing honor over duty, Laurence and Tremaire are considered traitors and are imprisoned seperately when Napoleon's armies invade England...

Sept 6th: Charlaine Harris & Toni Kelner (ed) - Death's Excellent Vacation: An urban/modern fantasy anthology based on around a theme of vacations...

Sept 7th: C.E. Murphy - Hands of Flame: The currently final volume of Murphy's "Negotiator" series. With former defense attorney Margrit caught in the middle of what could become an all-out war between the Five Races...

Sept 8th: Dan Abnett - Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero: A parody of both steampunk and Victorian fantasy that manages to be mostly amusing and also an excellent adventure story...

Sept 10th: Naomi Novik - Tongues of Serpents: Tremaire and Laurence have been essentially exiled to the British colony of Australia. And are soon racing across the Outback in pursuit of a stolen dragon egg...

Sept 12th: Rob Thurman - Trick of the Light: A new series from Thruman, loosely tied to the original. This one concentrating on Demons and Angels and the powerful artifact both sides are seeking. With an odd lady bartender and information broker stuck in the middle...

Sept 13th: Simon R Green - Just Another Judgement Day: John Taylor returns and he's been hired by the new bosses of the Nightside to try and stop God's Righteous Wrath aka The Walking Man from bringing down the Nightside and all its wickedness once and for all...

Sept 14th: Tamora Pierce - Protector of the Small: I really do love rereading Keladry's saga to become a knight and then live up to the ideals of that idea...

Sept 16th-21st: Harry Turtledove - The Misplaced Legion, An Emperor for the Legion, The Legion of Videssos & Swords of the Legion: Another reread. This time Turtledove's sereis about a lost Roman legion in a fantasy world. I still get a start every time I see the two leads from Rome pop-up as minor characters...

Sept 22nd: A. Lee Martinez - Automatic Detective: I'm a fan of both mad science settings and noir detective stories. And here I get both. AND a talking gorilla...

Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Misenchanted Sword

Sept 24th: Watt-Evans - Blood of a Dragon: I had planned on rereading all of the Esthar books I owned. But I quickly realized, that while I couldn't always recall names of people, I could easily recall the major plot points and scenes from all of them...

Sept 26: Faye Kellerman - Hangman: The police procedural parts of this were good. But the other half, following the teen-age son of a contract killer left in the care of police Lt. Decker left me cold. I just did not like that kid...

Sept 28th-29th: Terry Pratchett - Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky & Wintersmith: Just catching up with Tiffany and the Feegles before the final book in the sub-series...

Sept 30th: Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight: Which was wonderful and sad and touching and great. And yes it does feel a bit overstuffed with characters. With several new characters and cameos by Granny Weatherwax an Nanny Ogg and the Ankh-Morpokh Watch (though it was good to see that Angua has made Captain) and a truly awesome moment involving Wee Mad Arthur and the Feegles and an even AWESOMER cameo from an early character. But I can understand Pterry's desire to try and touch base with so many of his creations while he still can...

Fuck. I'm going to miss the man so damn much and he's not even gone yet...

Total Books: 29
lurkerwithout: (iRead)
Dear A. Lee Martinez,

Lets be friends forever.


"Don't worry. I don't plan on any smiting, though itis well within my rights. But I'm not that kind of god. Never was a casual smiter. Sure, I've smote a few mortals in my day. I'm not proud of it, but it was back in the old days. Everyone was doing it, and I just wanted to be cool. But I'm past that sort of heavy-handed disciplinary action. It's good for a laugh occasionally, but I don't want to be your god because you're afraid of me. I want us to be buddies, compadres. Heck, we're practically family.

"But I'm not going to force myself on you. I don't need to. You'll see the benefits of having me around soon enough. You don't want to put me up for the night, that's cool. Though I did notice you have a very nice guest room. But I'll leave. No smiting. No wrath. Providing you make me a sandwich at least."

Teri made a bologna-and-ham offering for their new god.

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