Saturday, December 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Books - Timeless Moon by CT Adams and Cathy Clamp
I will admit that I really need to spend the time to write down family trees or something similar for some of these series. While I had the main characters down pretty well there were many names that I just couldn't place from the other books because they were just too similar of names and the inter-relationships were too hard to keep track of. The She is mated to him but that didn't work so she is now married to him and he used to be married to her but now the other her is married to the ex-mate of the first one but has feelings for the other guy. That really is what I felt like many of the times when they were going through the relationships. So I just started to ignore them and concentrated on the story.
It is a solid twisty turny who is behind the actions story with some interesting if static characters. They had their faults but those tended to define them and be something they were okay with and had come to terms with as you would have to after hundreds of years.
320 Pages
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Books - A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
And we join Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace very shortly after they returned from their adventures in A Wrinkle in Time. This installment really had much more meat to it than the first outing and I have to say that I was pleased to see more climaxes in the book. Having three tasks to complete set it up to have three turning points in the story as opposed to the two that were in Wrinkle (though really the second one was much too short in the first book)
We get to experience some new friends and expand the personalities of Meg primarily and Calvin to a lesser degree. Meg really becomes a more likable character as she goes through this book with far less whining and more doing. It made me smile to follow a strong lead character. I look forward to the next installment.
256 Pages
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Books - A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
So as the story goes I was reading a post on slashdot and there was a reference to the tesseract. I read it but wasn't putting it into context but remembered that it came from a children's book. After a bit of googling and links on wikipedia I then knew the definition but couldn't remember how it played into the original book. I looked at the price of the book on Amazon for either paper or digital and just didn't want to pay $7 for a book that was so short. Luck would have it shortly there after we ended up at the local library for a cub scout meeting and they had a copy on the shelf.
What I have realized is that it really is a short book for children. As I rolled into page 150 or so and they had just gotten to the CENTRAL Central Intelligence building I was just getting into the build up of the story and it came to a really crashing halt at the end as I really wanted it to keep going and give me a bit more of the give and take of a more mature story. I admit that there are 4 more books in the series so everything didn't need to be wrapped up in this book but I would have loved to have more.
That being said she really did a wonderful job of creating interesting and deep characters. While they play to their stereotypes they have more depth than many modern characters. (yes I'm talking about you Bella and Edward) Amazingly she managed to paint a world that more so than not has stood up the the test of time. Instead of getting hung up on the technology of the day such that it feels dated after even a few years we have a story where the details are about the characters rather than the cell phone they carried or the particular gun the were packing, not that there were either in this book.
205 pages (Children's Hard Cover)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Books - Blood Cross by Faith Hunter
It is an interesting twist with a much harder "who-done-it?" but with fewer twists. It did bring much more depth to the characters this go 'round. While the vampires do not 'change' during the book's time they do have the chance to tell more of the history and explain more how they ended up where they are. The action section at the end really was a nail bitter but at the same time I was left asking "why" a lot with Jane's actions. I accept that if your only tool is a hammer you look at everything as a nail. But in Jane's case while the hammer may be her biggest and best tool she does have a screwdriver and pliers in her toolbag that might be able to deal with the screw and bolt more effectively. I will just chock it up to the fact that she doesn't really sleep during most of this book and can't make good decisions.
336 Pages
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Books - Skinwalker by Faith Hunter
This book was an interesting twist on the paranormal genera. It is typical for the supernaturals to be in hiding from the public or to be out in the open but to have the main character be a kind of supernatural that no one knows about and trying to keep that way while being so close to vampires that are totally out to the public was a new dynamic.I will say that at times when the inner monologues happen it was a bit hard to read though that may have been due to the different formatting of the kindle ebook and would have looked better on paper and been more distinct. But baring that it was a very well put together "who done it?" with enough twists that you really don't know who it is until the moment the killer is unmasked.
336 pages
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Books - Host by Faith Hunter
This is the 3rd book in the series. After finishing the series it really feels like she wrote a single long book and then with a few edits broke it into 3 individual volumes. The advantage to it is that unlike most books in a series there isn't 100 pages of "and this happened in the last book" to have to dig though. She does give some little reminders but they are thrown in as a single sentence or at most a paragraph. I did find it hard to follow at points because of differing states of reality and "dream sequences" that had to be taken as symbolic as opposed to the primary reality of the story.
Overall you are looking at ~1000 pages for the series and the writing is very vivid while not being excruciatingly verbose. Anyone who has read anything by Laurell K. Hamilton will understand that sometimes it can just be too much detail. Spending 2 pages to describe the new character can turn the reader off them instead of endearing them. It is twice as bad if the character is introduced in a suspenseful time and you have broken the reader's drive to see what is going to happen. Much as Tripod asks for in King Kong Ms. Hunter "gets to the monkey".
336 pages
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Daily Snapshot Thursday, January 13, 2011
I probably haven't taken pictures this week because I have been fighting a cold and been wearing my glasses that tend to glare in the web camera.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Books - Seraphs by Faith Hunter
I read the first book in the series over the Christmas Holiday. The basic word is ~100 years in the future after the Christian style Apocalypse happens. A very large part of the population die and the world has some major shifts in weather. There is also the side effect that there are now Angels (Seraphs) on earth along with Darkness (devils/demons) and neomages and a few other cross breeds.The story is about Thorn who is a stone mage who was outed in the last book. Over all they are well written and in the family of Female written sci-fi/fantasy books these would not qualify as smut. While there are many relationships and character interaction plays a main role in the plot it is a very solid story that spins through the first book and fully into the second one with less of an end and more of a pause at the finish of each book.
368 pages
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Books
I realized that last year I read a large number of books due to the kindle app but that I didn't really have a quantified list of them and I didn't spend any time reflecting on them. Admittedly many of them are not worth reflecting on and were just for the fun of the story there were others that could have benefited from a bit of reflection or at least forcing myself to create my own summary to see what I took away from the books. So you dear reader (of which there is probably only one or two of since I removed this blog from my google buzz) will get to see what stories I have been reading and follow me on my quest to see how many books I read this year.
You also get to see my photo a dayish posts. Those also being for my own amusement and reflection more than providing something substantial to the world at large.
You also get to see my photo a dayish posts. Those also being for my own amusement and reflection more than providing something substantial to the world at large.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
