onyxhawke

This one has exactly two entries because between slush of both varieties, and other aspects of real life, I haven't done much reading.

Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner

Excellent. I'm not much of a fan of short fiction, and most anthologies I pick up I end up reading two pages of about a third of the stories and jumping to the next one. This one I read all of them front to back except one. Some of the writers I've read and loved before, Carrie Vaughn's story was a real treat just as I expected. Donna Andrews put in a fun tale, Alan Gordon penned a story about true bonds and J.A. Kornath's story of blackouts and well bowel movements is one of the better ones in the anthology. Patricia Briggs Star of David is another one of the top stories. But my hands down favorite in this collection is Rob Thurmans Milk & Cookies is the product of the type of delightfully demented mind I'm looking for in a future wife.

The other book is Slow Train to Arcturus. Yes I did get to read it in unfinished form half an eon ago, but I just read it in final form for the first time. I love this story.

So for those of you (like me) who haven't finished their holiday shopping, go forth and book!.

Happy whatever you're celebrating!

The following people owe me sleep and should make reparations quickly.


First up is the delightful Carrie Vaughn. I got to meet her in the lobby of one of the three hundred hotels attendees of Denvetion were spread across. I'm possibly the last person on the planet to read Kitty And the Midnight Hour, but if I'm not, and you're among those who hasn't go do so. The characters are very real, the plot is solid and the story is very internally consistent. I was hesitant to pick this one up because well, the werewolf is named Kitty. I'm glad i did finally read it, but i had no intention of reading it all in one night.

Jocelyn Drake writes the other type of fanged fiend of the night, and does so with a few variations that make her vampires distinct. NightWalker follows a vampire who is called upon to confront enemies she thought were dead, by an unlikely enemy of her enemies who is not her friend. After that it gets complicated.

Bill Fawcett's collection of major military blunders How to Lose a Battle is a great read and the type of history i wish people would send me. It covers battlefield blunders including those in the Punic Wars, the Napoleonic wars, and World War Two. One of the highlights is a day by day dissection of Gettysburg. It is not intended to be a bone deep guide to any of the battles it covers, but it is a great place to get a look at how to realistically screw up your characters lives.


Don't forget that Dave Freer's Pyramid Power and Slowtrain are both on the shelves, and that most stores will order at not extra charge if you ask.

I've been reading a lot lately. I've blazed through months of slush. Some of which got rejected in the first three or four pages, some which held me until the end but didn't quite tip the scale to being something I'd pick up. Some of the common problems have been; redundancy, black and white universes, and sloppy language use. Fortunately for me there are these wonderful things called books. Some, much like the slush is decent, some has a very bad case of meh, and some is anti-slush. Some of the latter category that I've been reading is detailed below. Mild Spoilers, i don't expect that anything in the commentary takes place after the first 1/4 of the book.

First up was a YA novel that I'm pretty certain was in my WFC gift bag. Magic or Madness . Justine Larbalestier's is an entertaining yarn about a young girl who had been raised by her slightly loopy mother and moved all over Australia never staying in one place for long. Reason, our young heroine finds herself in the clutches of the person her mother feared most. Reason's Grandmother. All of Reason's young life has been spent avoiding the woman she has been raised to believe is evil incarnate. There are one or two very minor things in this I could live with having been buffed down a bit, but then I'm not the intended audience. All in all this was an excellent read and held up better to a critical adult reader than most of the YA on the market.

Butcher Bird by Richard Kadrey was something i wanted to read since the first time i saw the cover. While the main characters aren't the sort of people some would ever give anything except a nervous glare, they are the right characters for the story and the setting. If you're looking for a typical formulaic fantasy novel, go elsewhere. Butcher Bird is anything but another cookie cutter fantasy novel. Kadrey smoothly take your expectation and slaps you in the head with them in this twisted tale. Fun.

I got the immense pleasure of reading my first Elizabeth Bear book recently. Undertow is really a top notch novel. It has that dim, smoky aura thats right out of a prohibition era speakeasy that has all but gone by the wayside in todays science fiction. Undertow is set on a corporate colony. The levels of tech in the book are a very interesting mix, the culture is very solidly drawn and despite never drawing a single parallel to our world today has relevant things to say and better still relevant questions to ask. One of the things I like best about this book is that Elizabeth wastes not even a single sentence. Undertow, like the dangerous pull under the surface of the water will suck you in so smoothly you won't know it's even happened until its too late.

The last of todays books was C.E. Murphy's Heart of Stone. I was almost afraid to read this book, and its certainly the one I had the highest expectations and hence the largest worries about. Having read all three of the books in Catie's The Walking Papers series, and having read the first three chapters before interviewing her at Pi-Con last August, I knew this was going to be very different. I knew Margrit was unlike Joanne, and that she wasn't gifted with a octogenarian cab driver to remind her to either look before she leaped or sprout wings. The differences between the two ladies were stark, as was the tone. To me, the Walker Papers all have a lighter tone.Heart of Stone is by no means dark, but for those of you who haven't yet read it (go do so) expecting a carbon copy of the other series will lead straight to disappointment. On the other hand this book clearly demonstrates the breadth of Murphy's story telling ability. Magrit is fun in a completely different way than Jo is. The internal monologues are different, the women have no physical resemblance, and lead different types of lives. But the important thing isn't what separates them, its what binds the two together. That tie is simply the exquisite way they are written. This is an excellent read in and of itself and will make Murphy many new fans.