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Patricia Brigss
Mercy Thompson - Homecoming & Bone Crossed
Honestly? I used to like the Mercy Thompson series, but these two - well, first of all, the prequel comic is ugly. The style is all wrong and characters look odd - besides, is it just me, or shouldn't urban fantasy creatures with a masquerade in effect (and please remember, at this point in the tale, only the fae er out) maybe look a little more human and a little less like, well, monsters. As for BC then it's okay, except it feels, well, rambling. Like the plot never quite gets itself together, if you know what I mean? Ah well...
Lois McMaster Bujold
The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls & The Hallowed Hunt
Not as awesome as the Vorkosigan saga, although I suspect at least half of the fault lies in my having read it and not being quite able to distance myself. Anyway. Really excellent fantasy and the world-building is good, particularly the religion. If you like tricksters, you're going to love the Bastard :-)
Arthur Conan Doyle
His Last Bow & The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
One question - in the description of The Casebook on Amazon it claims that "homosexual incest are some of the psychological tragedies whose consequences are unravelled by the mind of Holmes" - where was that? Did I miss it?
Georgette Heyer
Cotillion & Regency Buck
So, I read C. and it was fun, had a heroine who dared to act and a hero that was quite nice and surprisingly competent, and together with A Civil Contract, I was beginning to think I might enjoy reading more Heyer. Then I read Regency Buck. We have a heroine, and she starts off competent and she's rich and you'd think she'd be awesome and independent, right? Exccept almost nobody ever acts as if she's a person, let alone a person with an opinion - men treat her as a moneybag to be won, her guardian humiliates her and manipulates her, and at the end, we have a young woman who is scared to be free and independent, so she immediately accepts her no-longer-guardian, the same man who basically assaulted her when they first met. And this is supposed to be the hero?! WTF? That's it, no more Heyer for me, she might write well, but I'm not reading stories of slow and careful psychological breaking downs of heroines, thank you very much...
Jasper Kent
Twelve
Vampires in Russia during Napoleon's invasion - that ought to be awesome, right? And it is quite well written and the vampires are quite good. My problem is that the hero, well, he's, well, we have our vampires, and they have found a convenient place for themselves as terrifying mercenaries, which are hired to kill French soldiers by the hero and his fellow Russian officers - except then the hero gradually realizes that they are vampires, and now it doesn't matter that so far in the story they have fought beside him, actually saved his life, and been nothing but polite and on his side - oh no, they are vampires, they are not human, they are monsters, kill, kill, kill. Admittedly, after he starts vampire-hunting, evidence is uncovered to prove that yeah, they are monsters and not really on his side, but the thing is, events in the order they are in, well, they kind of leave me rooting for the vampires, you know? Besides, then the worst vampire turns out to not even be a vampire...
Henning Kure
I begyndelsen var skriget - vikingetidens myter om skabelsen (In the beginning was the scream - Viking myths about the creation)
This is one of the most interesting books about Norse myth I've read in a long, long time. The author is basically trying to reconstruct the Norse mythology as it might have looked before the Christian influence, which of course is a bit of a challenge, seeing as the people who wrote it down were Christians, centuries after the Nordic lands had converted. Focusing on the tales of the creation of the world and the creation of humanity, he basically starts by dismantling the tales as we know them, primarily as told by Snorri, by picking out more or less obviously Christian bits and pointing out where Snorri is inconsistent with the Poetic Edda, and showing parallels, some obvious - oh look, it's the flood! - and some not so obvious, like Surtr parallelling the guardian angels with fiery swords outside Paradise, not to mention showing Snorri's tendency to take everything literally, which might not be the correct way to go with tales as full of kennings as Norse myth is. Having picked the bones clean, he then attempts reconstruction, focusing on the Poetic Edda and using philology as a primary tool, and I don't have anything resembling the knowledge to be able to evaluate that bit, though it is extremely interesting. For instance, the title of the book comes from the fact, that apparently the name Ymir is very close to the Norse word scream, and HK offers a creation myth involving the early gods shaping the scream, the raw material, into the world by naming it, basically, acting as intermediares shaping the potential matter into something hospitable to humans, and nobody killing anybody. Except it's a bit more convoluted and complicated and I'm probably not saying it right, but seriously, extremely interesting, and I really hope he's going to write some more books, tackling more of the myths (like Loki :-) ).
Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill
Beyond World's End & Spirits White as Lightning
I'm kind of sorry I read these books - you see, the thing I liked most about this series was Eric and his relationship with Beth and Korendil, because they were adorable and it was nice seeing them try to find a balance and form a relationship, all three of them. Only, despite the fact that all of the second book in the series got spent convincing Eric that no, Beth and Kory doesn't want to be just the two of them, then, apparently now they do. And a new, superconfident Eric goes off to NY to begin a relationship with the bad girl half-elf that mind-raped him into a sex toy the first time they met... Seriously, these books read more like fanfic than some fanfic I've read, and they're simply drowning in shout-outs to various urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels - makes me wonder how much Ms. Edghill's written, considering the drastic shifts since the first two books, when Ellen Guon was co-writer.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Unnatural Death, Lord Peter Views the Body & The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
Lord Peter Wimsey is fun and I find myself ILL'ing the books in English because I'm scared of even taking a look at the translation. Silly me, right?
Thomas Strømsholt
De underjordiske - gotiske fortællinger og sære historier (The fair folk - gothic tales and weird stories)
This is a very good short story collection, brief tales of the fair folk and ghosts, sprinkled with occasional Lovecraftian-ish bits and spiced with hints of ancient cults and aliens. There's a story of a haunted book collection, several creepy and elegant takes on the supernatural and a very nice werewolf tale. My only complaint is that the author really needs to sit down with a couple of hundred well-written Danish novels and just read - because he has a tendency to, well, to use words and turns of frase that doesn't sound right in Danish or at best overtly academic, but which would be fine in English, and while that is only mildly annoying in poorly translated works, it's very annoying when dealing with something in the original Danish, you know? But that aside, very nice stories and I'm looking forward to seeing more by the writer.
Total books and comics read this month: 29 (I self-diagnoze this a side-effect of unemployment :-( )
Currently reading: George R.R. Martin: A Game of Thrones (does Tyrion remind anybody else of Miles Vorkosigan?)
Mercy Thompson - Homecoming & Bone Crossed
Honestly? I used to like the Mercy Thompson series, but these two - well, first of all, the prequel comic is ugly. The style is all wrong and characters look odd - besides, is it just me, or shouldn't urban fantasy creatures with a masquerade in effect (and please remember, at this point in the tale, only the fae er out) maybe look a little more human and a little less like, well, monsters. As for BC then it's okay, except it feels, well, rambling. Like the plot never quite gets itself together, if you know what I mean? Ah well...
Lois McMaster Bujold
The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls & The Hallowed Hunt
Not as awesome as the Vorkosigan saga, although I suspect at least half of the fault lies in my having read it and not being quite able to distance myself. Anyway. Really excellent fantasy and the world-building is good, particularly the religion. If you like tricksters, you're going to love the Bastard :-)
Arthur Conan Doyle
His Last Bow & The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
One question - in the description of The Casebook on Amazon it claims that "homosexual incest are some of the psychological tragedies whose consequences are unravelled by the mind of Holmes" - where was that? Did I miss it?
Georgette Heyer
Cotillion & Regency Buck
So, I read C. and it was fun, had a heroine who dared to act and a hero that was quite nice and surprisingly competent, and together with A Civil Contract, I was beginning to think I might enjoy reading more Heyer. Then I read Regency Buck. We have a heroine, and she starts off competent and she's rich and you'd think she'd be awesome and independent, right? Exccept almost nobody ever acts as if she's a person, let alone a person with an opinion - men treat her as a moneybag to be won, her guardian humiliates her and manipulates her, and at the end, we have a young woman who is scared to be free and independent, so she immediately accepts her no-longer-guardian, the same man who basically assaulted her when they first met. And this is supposed to be the hero?! WTF? That's it, no more Heyer for me, she might write well, but I'm not reading stories of slow and careful psychological breaking downs of heroines, thank you very much...
Jasper Kent
Twelve
Vampires in Russia during Napoleon's invasion - that ought to be awesome, right? And it is quite well written and the vampires are quite good. My problem is that the hero, well, he's, well, we have our vampires, and they have found a convenient place for themselves as terrifying mercenaries, which are hired to kill French soldiers by the hero and his fellow Russian officers - except then the hero gradually realizes that they are vampires, and now it doesn't matter that so far in the story they have fought beside him, actually saved his life, and been nothing but polite and on his side - oh no, they are vampires, they are not human, they are monsters, kill, kill, kill. Admittedly, after he starts vampire-hunting, evidence is uncovered to prove that yeah, they are monsters and not really on his side, but the thing is, events in the order they are in, well, they kind of leave me rooting for the vampires, you know? Besides, then the worst vampire turns out to not even be a vampire...
Henning Kure
I begyndelsen var skriget - vikingetidens myter om skabelsen (In the beginning was the scream - Viking myths about the creation)
This is one of the most interesting books about Norse myth I've read in a long, long time. The author is basically trying to reconstruct the Norse mythology as it might have looked before the Christian influence, which of course is a bit of a challenge, seeing as the people who wrote it down were Christians, centuries after the Nordic lands had converted. Focusing on the tales of the creation of the world and the creation of humanity, he basically starts by dismantling the tales as we know them, primarily as told by Snorri, by picking out more or less obviously Christian bits and pointing out where Snorri is inconsistent with the Poetic Edda, and showing parallels, some obvious - oh look, it's the flood! - and some not so obvious, like Surtr parallelling the guardian angels with fiery swords outside Paradise, not to mention showing Snorri's tendency to take everything literally, which might not be the correct way to go with tales as full of kennings as Norse myth is. Having picked the bones clean, he then attempts reconstruction, focusing on the Poetic Edda and using philology as a primary tool, and I don't have anything resembling the knowledge to be able to evaluate that bit, though it is extremely interesting. For instance, the title of the book comes from the fact, that apparently the name Ymir is very close to the Norse word scream, and HK offers a creation myth involving the early gods shaping the scream, the raw material, into the world by naming it, basically, acting as intermediares shaping the potential matter into something hospitable to humans, and nobody killing anybody. Except it's a bit more convoluted and complicated and I'm probably not saying it right, but seriously, extremely interesting, and I really hope he's going to write some more books, tackling more of the myths (like Loki :-) ).
Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill
Beyond World's End & Spirits White as Lightning
I'm kind of sorry I read these books - you see, the thing I liked most about this series was Eric and his relationship with Beth and Korendil, because they were adorable and it was nice seeing them try to find a balance and form a relationship, all three of them. Only, despite the fact that all of the second book in the series got spent convincing Eric that no, Beth and Kory doesn't want to be just the two of them, then, apparently now they do. And a new, superconfident Eric goes off to NY to begin a relationship with the bad girl half-elf that mind-raped him into a sex toy the first time they met... Seriously, these books read more like fanfic than some fanfic I've read, and they're simply drowning in shout-outs to various urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels - makes me wonder how much Ms. Edghill's written, considering the drastic shifts since the first two books, when Ellen Guon was co-writer.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Unnatural Death, Lord Peter Views the Body & The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
Lord Peter Wimsey is fun and I find myself ILL'ing the books in English because I'm scared of even taking a look at the translation. Silly me, right?
Thomas Strømsholt
De underjordiske - gotiske fortællinger og sære historier (The fair folk - gothic tales and weird stories)
This is a very good short story collection, brief tales of the fair folk and ghosts, sprinkled with occasional Lovecraftian-ish bits and spiced with hints of ancient cults and aliens. There's a story of a haunted book collection, several creepy and elegant takes on the supernatural and a very nice werewolf tale. My only complaint is that the author really needs to sit down with a couple of hundred well-written Danish novels and just read - because he has a tendency to, well, to use words and turns of frase that doesn't sound right in Danish or at best overtly academic, but which would be fine in English, and while that is only mildly annoying in poorly translated works, it's very annoying when dealing with something in the original Danish, you know? But that aside, very nice stories and I'm looking forward to seeing more by the writer.
Total books and comics read this month: 29 (I self-diagnoze this a side-effect of unemployment :-( )
Currently reading: George R.R. Martin: A Game of Thrones (does Tyrion remind anybody else of Miles Vorkosigan?)
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