Book Reviews

I've read 3 books since my last book review post. Most of them were finished this past weekend, so I'm not *that* far behind.

Fool Moon
First one is Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. It had been a while since I had read the first book in this series, Storm Front. While some aspects of the plot stuck in my head, very few of them were very important. The truth is, I liked Fool Moon much better than I remember liking Storm Front.

There were a few hints dropped that sucked me more into the world, and a few hints about the characters past that had my head spinning. It reminds me, in some ways, of Kim Harrison (see next review), but all the things I like best about it. Magic seemed a little more grounded and explored in this book as well, giving me some fuel (and interest) for another blog post.

It's worth noting that I listened to this on an audio book. It was read by James Marsters, which was a hoot to listen to. He used his "Spike" voice for Bob, which made me laugh. If you're an urban fantasy fan, I recommend the series. He takes a lot of hits, and for those of you who enjoy watching the hero get beat to a pulp before he manages to push back the darkness, give it an especially careful spin.

Black Magic Sanction
Wow, 8 books already. I started the series 4 years ago, on the suggestion of Lumie. She always gives me a good book to read. Anyway, the latest installment takes place more or less where the last one left off. There's been a lot of back-and-forth in the character, over the course of hte first 7 novels. One of my friend Rachel's major complaint about book 7 was that the character ended in more or less teh same place as the first one, but for different reasons. I think she's just frosted that two of the characters didn't get together.

The plot investigates some new aspects of the world, that hadn't really come into play before. The cool antagonist-y guy came back, and it was good to see him again. I feel like he didn't have as big a part in the previous book, but I could be misremembering. Either way, this book did seem to fit into the overal arc better than the previous, and it was a fun, quick, read.

Strange Angels
The last book I'll talk about today is Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow (AKA Lilith Saintcrow). This is a YA novel, but was very interesting. The premise is this girl and her father hunt things that go bump in the night: vampires, werewolves, daemons, everything. And then her father doesn't come back, and she's trying to survive. She finds out plenty of interesting secrets about herself, makes a couple of friends, and meets a couple enemies. All in all, decent story. Aspects of it are remnant of Cassandra Claire's Mortal Instruments, thought without the cool runic magic.