Book Review:

I think It's time for another book review post. I've gotten through a few books in the last few weeks.

Wake
The first book in a trilogy by Lisa McMann was a rather strange book. The premise is pretty interesting, it's about a girl who gets pulled into peoples dreams any time she's near someone sleeping. The dreams themselves are strange, as dreams often are. As usual, there were a couple themes that made me uncomfortable, but all in all it was a decent story. The really strange part was the book was written in present tense. At first I thought it was just for the dreams, and hte rest of hte book would be in the more common past tense, but I was wrong. It made it awkward to read, and gave the whole thing a very surreal feel.
Waking the Witch
Waking the Witch is the latest book in Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series. I think this is the only author I can think of who maintaines my interest in her as much in the latest book as in the first one I read, and this is the 15th book of hers I've read (11th in this series). The ending is a cliffhanger/ huge surprise, which isn't something she usually does in her books. It made me feel like the story wasn't finished, which is very strange, but apparently this is a 2-part story, and I have to wait another year to find out what's happening. Personally, I think it'll be worth the wait.

Jealousy
The third book in Lilith Saintcrow's Strange Angels series. The mythos is really interesting here, and I wish I knew if it was based on something or not. Secrets start worming their way out, and we find out a lot more backstory in this one. She weaves the two stories together well. To me, more of this book felt about the backstory than the current one, whereas the previous two were more tied to the current timeline. But there's still plenty of story to be pursued.

Elantris
I mentioned a little about this book in a previous post, because it made me think of undead. Written by Brandon Sanderson, it's a very political story, which I don't always like. This one, however, made me wonder if there was a sequel. There were times when it was predictable, though it had it's share of surprises. Some of them were because we had no way of knowing some features about the world, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Shamans Crossing
First in the Soldier Son's Trilogy by Robin Hobb, this was another pretty political book. It's set in a colonial-era fantasy world, and centers around a conflict with Civilization vs the more primal wild. There's some strong feminist leanings in there too, but it felt kinda heavy handed at times. This is probably one of the few books that made me actually hate characters that weren't an outright enemy. The characters were cast to be annoying, and I really felt it. I mostly picked up this book because the sequel kept catching my eyes in bookstores, and I never realized it was one. We got a free copy at Comic Con in NYC last year, so I've been trying to read it. I'm unsure of how I feel about it, but I'll probably give another book a chance, it wasn't that awful.

The Purple Emperor
As I mentioned with Faerie Wars, I had read this book a few years ago, but couldnt' remember anything about it. The 2nd in a series by Herbie Brennan, the book picks up pretty much where the previous one left off. I thin the series is a Trilogy, but I'm not sure. Truth is, I'm not sure what else to say about it.

Artemis Fowl
Another series I had read a few years ago is Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. The newest one is about to come out, and I grabbed this to read with Krystal when we were driving around. I'd forgotten much of it, and it ended differently than I remembered. Maybe I was remembering a later book. In this world, Leprecon is actually LEPRecon, so rather than a race it's a group of police officers. The mythos is pretty interesting, and while the 10 yr old supergenius is a bit far fetched, it's still an intriguing tale.

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.