Book Review: Mistwood

In the interest of full disclosure, let me mention that I'm friends with the author of this book. Until about 16 months ago, we were part of the same online writing group, and I've helped critique other works in progress (not this one).  However, I don't think that skewed my opinion of this work at all.

Isabel is a Shifter, a magical creature created to protect the kings of Samorna.  But something happened years ago, and she fled back to her home, Mistwood, until Crown Prince Rokan, days away from becoming king, comes to find her and re-recruit her to guard him. Without her memory of what happened the day she left, Isabel must work her way through intrigues, secrets, and her inexplicable inability to use her Shifter powers in order to decide who to trust . . . and who to protect.

This was a fascinating book.  Cypess does not skimp on the surprises or twists, and every time I thought I had the situation figured out, she'd throw in something new that kept me guessing.  The characterizations and pacing were wonderfully constructed; at no point did I think the story was moving too fast or too slow, or that the characters were acting oddly (other than when they were supposed to be, of course).  Also, although this is a YA novel, it did not talk down to its audience through simplified language or ideas.  It's one of the best books I've read in a long time.

5/5

Book Review: The Battle Sylph

This is the last Nook Free Fridays book I had in my virtual pile. Phew!

Solie, a young woman who's been taught to take care of herself, is kidnapped by the king's men and taken to be a virgin sacrifice in a ritual designed to ensnare a battle sylph to the crown prince's service. But Solie is having none of it and manages to bind the sylph to her, instead. As the first woman in living memory with a battle sylph, and since the crown prince was killed in her escape, she's a target for the king and all the king's men with battle sylphs of their own. As she and her sylph, Heyou, escape, they find themselves part of a community of people with elemental sylphs who have no home and nowhere to go. In helping to rebuild the community, they become allies and Solie becomes the queen of the adoptive hive of sylphs, including three more battle sylphs. So when the king and his sylphs attack, the Community is ready for them.

This wasn't a bad book, though it wasn't quite what I was expecting.  I had expected pretty straightforward fantasy but got fantasy-romance.  It was jarring at first, but once I adjusted my expectations it was fine.  However, for a novel set in a high fantasy, medievalesque world, it contained quite a few modern slang words, phrases, and colloquialisms, which were also jarring and harmful to my immersion in the world and story.

Otherwise, the novel was entertaining, definitely brain candy. I enjoyed it, but it's generally not my thing, and I most likely won't pick up the rest of the series.

3.5/5

Blog Maintenence Update

First, I'd like to welcome several new followers, who all suddenly piled in during the last 48 hours or so. Welcome! Hopefully I don't bore you too badly.

Second, I've added a little polling thing to my posts. I'd be interested to see what you think of the individual posts, even if you don't feel like commenting. And no, there's no button for "this is crap," because such things might hurt my delicate baby feelings. (Points if you recognize that quote. Maybe a prize. We'll see.)

Right. As you were. Carry on.

Book Review: Code Blue

This was another book I received via the Nook Free Fridays program, and another that I would not have picked up to read on my own.

When Cathy Sewell moves back to her hometown after a rough breakup with her fiance and attempts to open her own general practice, she discovers that someone is holding a grudge, going so far as to try to kill one of her patients in order to discredit her. Battling depression and the fear that she is developing a mental illness, Dr. Sewell is determined to discover who is trying to kill her, her patients, and her practice.

Something I've noticed in novels written by those who work in fields such as medicine, law, law enforcement, etc. is a very matter-of-fact, straightforward style of narration that has a tendency to tell, not show, as well as a tendency to expect the reader to pick up jargon and such from context.  This book was not too bad on the latter (though there were a few instances where I was thinking, "I understood 10% of that sentence"), but fairly typical on the former. While this is a mystery, the prose never seems to convey the sort of tension or confusion I've found in other mysteries I've read.  I continued reading mainly out of curiosity to discover who was causing Dr. Sewell's troubles, not a driving need to know.

The novel was, however, paced well and contained a surprise (to me) ending that neatly wrapped up all of the threads of the narration, including those I didn't expect to see tied into the overall mystery.

3/5

Warning: I'm Annoyed

I've been doing some achievement hunting in Fable III over the last few days while I read Das Nibelungenlied for my qualifying exams.  Today I discovered that I'm down to the last few achievements, all of which involve interacting with other players.  I know only one other person who plays this game, and he's always busy with Halo Reach, so I hopped on this nifty little feature that lets you randomly join someone else's game.  I figure I'll do what I need to do to get one specific achievement, then leave. No fuss, no muss.

It doesn't work like that, unfortunately.  Rather than each person having their own screen and each person being able to pretty much do their own thing, it's exactly like couch co-op in that if you need to go into your menus and get a new weapon or something, the other player is forced to wait for you.  I can see how, if you're suddenly playing with someone you don't know, that could get annoying.  However, there is a way to set your game so that people can't come in, or they can come in if you give permission, or you can set it so anyone can join at any time.

The first time I hopped into the little portal labeled "Join Random Game," I heard "Hey! Get out!" So I got out. FINE. Geez.  The second time, the other person immediately kicked me.  FINE.  I don't have an issue with people not wanting other people in their games. I get it. You want to do your own thing and not be tethered to this person you don't know.  But if you don't want that happening, why in the world wouldn't you set your game settings so it wouldn't happen?

I'm also annoyed that there are so many achievements that require you to play online. With people you may or may not know. Who may or may not be complete jerks.

So eventually I'll get my hands on a headset and stand in the middle of a major town and solicit people to let me join their games so I can get these achievements, but for right now I'm going to sulk on the couch and be bitter about how so many gamers are buttheads.

Book Review: Sandman Slim

This is not a book I would likely have picked up to read on my own.  I got it via the Nook Free Fridays program from Barnes & Noble, and hey, free books.

This was a very gritty, very urban fantasy set in LA/Hollywood.  The main character has been in Hell (alive) for eleven years and has come back seeking revenge on the people who sent him there.  But of course, there are lots of people who don't want him to succeed--or want him to work with them in order to succeed--so it's not as easy as it sounds.

The work reminded me quite a bit of the Dresden Files novels, except not quite as family-friendly.  I was a bit confused (and still am, actually) about the title; the words "Sandman Slim" don't appear until nearly halfway through the book, and at that point the main character has no idea why people are calling him that.  He never does find out why this is his nickname in Hell, though he uses it as leverage since it seems to make people nervous.  I assume that some explanation will be forthcoming in the next book, though I have no immediate plans to read it.

3.5/5

A Whiter Shade of Busy

It may be winter break, but I'm still working.  Here's the daily agenda I wrote up this morning so I remember to do everything and not slack off like I did last winter break:

• Outline 1-2 chapters of novel
• Read Beowulf OR study for prelims (read Beowulf 1x/week)
• research for upcoming papers
• laundry
• dishes

My thinking is that if I get started on the papers for my classes NOW (since I already know what I'll have to do), I won't feel quite so much like I want to kill something at the end of the semester.  Also, Dr. Viking gave us homework over break to read Beowulf 5-6 times so we're intimately familiar with it before we start translating it in class.  Since I had no time to read for prelims during the semester, I have to do that, too.  And I let the house go to hell cleanliness-wise during the end of the semester, so I need to take care of that, also.

BUT.

I get to do all of this at home, watching TV or playing video games.  I spent today achievement hunting in Fable II, Fable III, and Left 4 Dead while reading Beowulf and taking notes during cut scenes and loading breaks.

Is it horrible of me to hope that at least one of my classes doesn't fill to minimum capacity next semester so I can do half my hours in department service instead of teaching? That would make all of this much easier.

Dresden, Writing, and the End of the Semester

Now that I've finished all of the available Dresden Files books, I think I can put together a coherent reaction to all of them.  As I was reading, I didn't want to do individual reviews of the books, partly because they'd been out for so long and partly because I just wanted to get to the next book, dammit.  Now, I'm awed by Butcher's ability to put together a "long game" type of plot; absolutely everything that happens in each of the books and even the short stories is important to the overall running plot.  And despite the finality of the end of Changes and the Murphy short story immediately following it, I'm anxious to see what happens in Ghost Story and how everything's going to eventually wrap up.  I have it from a friend that Butcher plans 20 books plus an "apocalyptic trilogy," so I know I'm nowhere near the end of this adventure. That makes me happy, because reading 12 books nearly back-to-back over 5 or so weeks left me feeling empty when it was done. I couldn't decide what to read next and floundered for a bit, trying a few of the books I got from Nook Free Fridays (Crush by Alan Jacobson and Homeland by R.A. Salvatore, neither of which I could get into, despite some serious I'm-a-nerd-so-I-should-read-the-Drizzt-books).  I finally settled on Sandman Slim, and I'm enjoying it so far, probably because it's a lot like the Dresden books.

Now that the semester is over, I'm hoping I'll have time between planning for spring and studying for my preliminary exams (which I have to take next fall) to do some writing for me.  I've put "Devil's Pit" on a back burner for now, waiting for some cool idea to stir so I can make it a novel rather than a novella, and I have an idea for two other novels, one a soft-SF/high-F blend, one a high-medieval fantasy. I've gotten all sorts of ideas for battles and such from the Old English Language and Literature class I took this semester.  But school stuff still comes first, so we'll see.

If nothing else, I hope to do more blogging and not neglect you, Gentle Readers, as badly as I have.

Let's Blame the Neighbors

I'm curious if anyone knows anything about the effects of secondhand smoke on sleep patterns.  Most of the stuff I'm turning up online deals with children and asthma, not adults who are (mostly) lung-healthy (my lungs aren't perfect, but they're better than I was as a kid; I no longer have chronic bronchitis, as far as I know).

I ask because, as the weather has gotten colder, my neighbors are smoking indoors a lot more frequently, and our plumbing is connected, so our house often reeks of smoke to the point that my throat hurts and my eyes burn.  At the same time, sleeping has gotten more difficult.  I'd been blaming it on everything from the cats to stress, but it occurred to me this morning that the smoke might have something to do with it.

I've asked the landpersons, and there's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing in the lease about not smoking indoors. We have an air filter and I'm going to start running it in the bedroom at night, but I wondered if anyone out there in Internet-land knew anything more about this than my vague suspicions that my neighbors are really at fault for my nightly struggle to hang on to blessed unconsciousness.

Book Review: Pegasus

FTC Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads program.

Pegasi are beautiful, fantastic creatures that unfortunately have come to be associated with young girls in the middle of their horse-craze phase and not with any serious fantasy literature. I think this is a shame. Luckily, McKinley manages to avoid the potential infantilization inherent in her choice to write about these creatures by making them more than horses with wings; her worldbuilding extends to pegasus anatomy and biology and makes them believable, if fantastic, creatures with a life and society of their own.

Pegasus starts out a bit slow as McKinley provides backstory and history for her world, but as soon as the necessaries are out of the way, the story takes off. Sylvi, youngest daughter of the king, is ceremonially bound (as are many other high-ranking or important humans) to a pegasus, the son of the pegasus king. Unlike other human-pegasus bondings, however, Sylvi and Ebon can speak to each other using the mind-to-mind speech the pegasi use among themselves instead of needing a magician-translator as a go-between. Not everyone is happy with this turn of events, and many people seek to have her banned from pegasus company altogether. Sylvi has grown to love Ebon, the pegasi, and their culture and land deeply, and fights to keep from being separated from her friend.

Unfortunately, Pegasus is only the first half of the work; the rest is due out in 2012. Waiting that long will definitely be a struggle. Pegasus is nearly as compelling as Sunshine and the world as beautifully written and described as Damar or any other world that McKinley has written.

If you enjoy fantasy and fantastic creatures that don't usually get their due in literature, I strongly recommend this book.

5/5