Kim Harrison: For a Few Demons More

Book five in the Rachel Morgan / Hollows series. See any of the previous reviews — you need to be following the series to make any sense out of this book, the protagonist is annoyingly short-sighted, and all the characters and subplots keep getting more detailed and interesting, the writing is between OK and good. Three out of five, though I'm planning to read part six. If only the writing was a bit better, a bit less fanservice, and the protagonist was a bit wiser (more Mary Sue?) the wonderful character development and complex interactions would shine.

Allen Steele: Spindrift

Proper traditional sci-fi with space ships and exploration. There is a previous series of books predating this and setting up the universe, but this one is a stand-alone work with all new characters and timeline. It's written reasonably well, although the characters remain pretty lifeless and the plot is tried and true. Three ouf of five, will read something else from the author if I happen to stumble upon it, but won't seek it out.

Seanan McGuire:A Local Habitation

Book two of the October Daye series. Now, if an author wants to write a book that involves computers and routers and such, they have a hurdle to overcome to get me onboard. It's pretty obvious to me those things aren't Ms. McGuire world. That being said, after my lackluster experience with the first book, I got some comments saying that the series is actually quite good, and this book convinced me, somehow.
It still suffers, a bit, from name-dropping of mythological creatures, though at least here the various beings hang around a bit more, and their presence makes more sense. The whodunnit plot was annoying since it was pretty obvious to me fairly early on what was going on, and the protagonist was clueless until the end, essentially along for the ride and not really able to influence the events around her. I wanted to constantly shake her and tell her something was obvious, or that she's being an idiot for not asking essential questions. Also, it appears the editor never made it to the last chapter, which to me felt amateurish.
Even with all the flaws and annoyances with the book, I really liked it. The protagonist isn't wallowing in self-pity despite everything going wrong, but instead acts like the knight she is. Some of the things and characters that were set up in the first book get built on, and more things get set up. Four out of five, for no obvious reason. Of all these three, this one made me use my Amazon Prime privileges to get the next installment.