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A Pile of Books
May. 15th, 2010 09:18 pmKate Forsyth: The Pool of Two Moons and The Cursed Towers
Ms. Forsyth continues her highland inspired fantasy epic. The heavy dialect from the first book, The Witches of Eileanan(apparently named Dragonclaw in the native Australian) continues to grate on me. The characters are generally pretty interesting, but eventually the plot stopped being interesting. The series is written as an epic, so there are many characters, many events spread all over the place and time, and you're pretty much guaranteed that there will be no resolution until many books down the road. This, combined with the deaths of several of the "good" characters and the uncanny ability of the villains to always escape just wore me down. If you find the world or characters more interesting than I did, the books are quite long (over 500 pages), and you'll have plenty of inexpensive reading on your hands. Three stars out of five.
Gail Carriger: Changeless
The second book from Ms. Carriger follows the first one with few surprises. Little to no time is spent in explaining the setting and the individuals, and the style of storytelling and characters pick up right from where they left off in the first book. These books have a more self-contained story structure, which I consider a plus, though this one ends with definite promise of third book. I was curious if the snarky, loquacious pseudo-victorian steam-punk schtick would get old &emdash; to the credit of Carriger's apparently endless vocabulary, it didn't. The major character introduced in this work also happens to push all my buttons in a positive way, so I may have a slightly biased view, but I will certainly put down my name for a pre-order of the next work, though I do so yet again with some trepidation as to the author's ability to keep up her prose to the standards she's set on these two books. Four out of five stars; three out of five for the book in general, the fourth for the linguistic fun. As a bonus to recommend it to steampunk fans, the cover has a top hat, goggles and an airship. (And a pretty slender woman, which the protagonist is repeatedly described as not being.)
Charlaine Harris: Dead to the World, Dead as a Doornail and Definitely Dead
I had my misgivings after the third installment of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, where things seemed to degenerate into harem romance novel territory. Still, they were cheap at Wal-Mart and I needed harmless fluff to read faster than Amazon could deliver, so I picked up books four through six. To my delight, the plot insofar as the romance aspect didn't keep going where I expected it to go; it's probably still in the harem genre, but the protagonist failed to be annoying and waffly and girly about it. Beyond that, Harris keeps writing solid, uncomplicated paranormal mystery romps that do not insult my linguistic sensibilities and seem to have proper dramatic timing and pacing down. Four out of five; no art, but good entertainment.
Ms. Forsyth continues her highland inspired fantasy epic. The heavy dialect from the first book, The Witches of Eileanan(apparently named Dragonclaw in the native Australian) continues to grate on me. The characters are generally pretty interesting, but eventually the plot stopped being interesting. The series is written as an epic, so there are many characters, many events spread all over the place and time, and you're pretty much guaranteed that there will be no resolution until many books down the road. This, combined with the deaths of several of the "good" characters and the uncanny ability of the villains to always escape just wore me down. If you find the world or characters more interesting than I did, the books are quite long (over 500 pages), and you'll have plenty of inexpensive reading on your hands. Three stars out of five.
Gail Carriger: Changeless
The second book from Ms. Carriger follows the first one with few surprises. Little to no time is spent in explaining the setting and the individuals, and the style of storytelling and characters pick up right from where they left off in the first book. These books have a more self-contained story structure, which I consider a plus, though this one ends with definite promise of third book. I was curious if the snarky, loquacious pseudo-victorian steam-punk schtick would get old &emdash; to the credit of Carriger's apparently endless vocabulary, it didn't. The major character introduced in this work also happens to push all my buttons in a positive way, so I may have a slightly biased view, but I will certainly put down my name for a pre-order of the next work, though I do so yet again with some trepidation as to the author's ability to keep up her prose to the standards she's set on these two books. Four out of five stars; three out of five for the book in general, the fourth for the linguistic fun. As a bonus to recommend it to steampunk fans, the cover has a top hat, goggles and an airship. (And a pretty slender woman, which the protagonist is repeatedly described as not being.)
Charlaine Harris: Dead to the World, Dead as a Doornail and Definitely Dead
I had my misgivings after the third installment of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, where things seemed to degenerate into harem romance novel territory. Still, they were cheap at Wal-Mart and I needed harmless fluff to read faster than Amazon could deliver, so I picked up books four through six. To my delight, the plot insofar as the romance aspect didn't keep going where I expected it to go; it's probably still in the harem genre, but the protagonist failed to be annoying and waffly and girly about it. Beyond that, Harris keeps writing solid, uncomplicated paranormal mystery romps that do not insult my linguistic sensibilities and seem to have proper dramatic timing and pacing down. Four out of five; no art, but good entertainment.
