Vacation Reading & Book Reviews
Well, today is the last day of a lovely vacation. We didn’t do much, but we had fun doing it! We had a really nice dinner at my folks’ place, to celebrate our anniversary, and bought ceiling fans with lights for the house, out of our Christmas gift certificates.
We have a fan that matches the one in the pictures to go in the living room, too, and three less expensive but similar fans to go in the bedrooms. I can’t wait to get them all put up, particularly the living room one. We don’t have any light fixtures in there (which means running extra wiring for the fan, but Artavatar knows how to do that), so it’ll be nice to have some.
Mostly, I read on vacation. Last Sunday, I went out to Barnes&Nobel and stocked up on reading material.
Simon R. Green’s Nightside series has been an excellent run of books. The books are a series of supernatural adventure-mysteries, set in a city magically hidden in the heart of London. Nightside, as the city is named, is full magic and horrors, pain and pleasure, darkness and miracles, and a host of creative, powerful beings and creatures, as well as regular folks. Well, as “regular” as they get in Nightside.
The hero of the series is private eye John Taylor, who is pretty much a regular, if highly resourceful and stubborn, guy. He’s got a handful of parlor tricks up his sleeve, a Gift that allows him to find anything, and the ability to take a hell of a beating. He is joined in various tales by a cast of marvelously original sidekicks and partners, like Shotgun Suzie, a big, bad, biker bitch with plenty of ammo, Dead Boy, a dead teenager trying to make up for a poorly-worded deal with the devil, or Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor (and the name pretty much tells you what you need to know there). Together, John and his various companions take on mysteries and monsters, god-like villains and faceless Men In Black, and pretty much anything else the Nightside can throw in their path. Along the way, they quest to save the future of the Nightside from John’s evil mother, and John himself.
These books are fun, stylish, creative, original, violent, chaotic, and wonderful. Seriously, I can’t say enough good things about them. Go forth and buy them, and read them voraciously. They’re marvelous.
George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series has been the kind of writting that sucks you in and pulls you along. It’s a series full of political intrigues, wars, supernatural storms brewing, the rebirth of dragons and magic, and characters you love, or love to hate. In the medieval kingdom of Westernos, the Usurper King Robert has died, and no one much cares for his son and successor, Joffrey, spoiled bratling and burgeoning sociopath. The most powerful Lords and Houses of the country make a mad scramble to seize the Iron Throne, and/or set up their own Kingdoms, sparking off wars, treachery, heroes, and villains.
The world that the stories are set in is extremely well-developed, full of enough details and cultures (many of which are vaguely familiar) to be interesting all by themselves. The characters are interesting, fully developed, easy to know and care about — or hate passionately. Sometimes both at the same time. The plots are numerous, threaded in together to weave the rich tapestry of Martin’s world. These novels have been truly epic in nature, and well worth a read.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series started out strong, offering a strong, intelligent female lead in a world where monsters are real and running the bar down the street. Then, right around the fifth book or so, it went right to hell in a handbasket. Downhill. On greased rollerskates. Really.
Now, it’s pretty much all vampire porn, with occasional bits of plot stuffed in to make her word count. I am so disappointed with this series, and this latest turd, Micah, was a waste of perfectly good trees. Seriously. Don’t buy it. You don’t want to encourage this kind of drivel. In fact, don’t even borrow it from the library — Hamilton might hear about it and write more of this shit.
If you really must know, let me sum it up for you: Anita’s necromancer buddy, Larry, has this wife who ends up in the hospital with pregnancy complications, so he foists his current case off on Anita. Anita and Micah, her wereleopard boyfriend, go to deal with the case in Philadelphia, which involves raising a zombie for a federal court to question. This is interrupted by a lame three-chapter-long sex scene with Micah, wherein he reveals much angst and emotional scarring over the fact that — and so help me, I’m not making this up — all his other girlfriends have complained that his cock is too big. No, seriously. Anita assures him that she is the size queen, some sexing occurs, and then they go raise a zombie. The zombie wants to kill the prosecuting lawyer because he’s a dirty mob bastard, Anita gets knocked out, the zombie goes on a rampage, kills the lawyer, and Anita goes to the hospital. She heals super quick, finds out she’s a carrier for four different strains of lycanthropy, which for some weird reason isn’t manifesting, all of which we already knew or suspected, and pfffft, that’s the end of the fucking book. No, really. I didn’t leave anything out. That was it. Don’t buy it.
Reading Micah stole two hours out of my life that would have been better spent scratching my ass and drooling. Really. That bad.
