But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Book reviews’ Category

A Dance with Dragons

Because I’m a pathetic little shit who needs to have her opinions validated, about halfway through the monstrous tome that is A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin, I went looking for reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and was relieved to see that I wasn’t the only one who was less than impressed with the latest installment in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. (One reviewer, rather hilariously, refers to it as Twenty-Four Characters in Search of a Story.)

Well, okay, maybe I’m not that insecure. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s hairy little ass about other people’s opinions. At the same time, I’m self aware enough to feel a smidgen distanced from humanity, when said humanoids all worship at the altar of what I think is a mediocre book. Rather than “pathetic,” call me…”curious.”

FWIW, A Dance with Dragons is entertaining, but at the midpoint, I renamed it Public Administration for Lords and Ladies in Westeros and Beyond, because the bulk of Jon and Daenerys’s chapters consist of endless haggling with the bureaucracy. Alternately, it could be A Guide to Dining in Westeros, The Free Cities, and Valyeria, given the amount of verbiage spent on eating. (Note to self, when in Mereen, don’t eat the meat, because, *cough*, dog. Also, avoid long marches through the snow with Stannis Baratheon unless you develop a craving for horse meat.)

Many readers’ complaints can be summed up as (more…)

Wheel of Dreams

Okay. So this is a cheat; in the interest of getting the blog fired up after a few weeks of hiatus. I’m still writing. And writing. And writing. And somehow, the effort of doing the “maintain an online presence” thing lost its shine.

Anyway, a few days ago, my muse runs off, refuses to take my calls, and generally acts like an asshole. He does that–the bastard. (Yes, muse is a he. “That’s Mr. Muse, to you, ” he snipes.) In order to entice him back, I pulled a few of my keepers from the bookshelf. One, Emma Bull’s, War for the Oaks, which never fails to inspire. Next to it, I found Wheel of Dreams by Salinda Tyson, which is the topic of today’s post.

The cheating part is because most of this is a review I posted at Goodreads several months ago. But Wheel of Dreams is one of the best romantic fantasy novels I’ve ever read. Sadly, it’s the only book the author ever wrote and I think it slid into obscurity about five minutes after it was published. Maybe it was the uglier than the back end of a garbage truck cover that doomed it, but Wheel of Dreams definitely make a case for don’t judge a book by its cover.

I read Wheel of Dreams several years ago. I remember being (more…)

The Iron Duke

In which China conquers the known world not with cheaply priced chachkes to be sold in Wal-Mart, but with nanotechnology and mind rays….

Kidding. Sort of.

In the alternate history of The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook, an Asian culture known has the Horde, conquered vast swaths of Europe by infecting their opponents with nanoagents, teeny little machines, aka, “bugs,” that swim about in the infected’s blood.

The infection had two variants. The first variant turned people into zombies, because you simply can’t have a good story without zombies. The second was a mixed blessing since it provided enhanced strength and healing ability while also including a susceptibility to mind-controlling rays. Via a specific radio frequency, the Horde was (more…)

Unholy Ghosts

In which I actually like an urban fantasy novel….

I first heard about Unholy Ghosts over on Dear Author, where a mild kerfuffle (very mild, by Internet standards) went down in the comments over the protagonist’s drug use. I remember it being a matter of the Hugs Not Drugs crowd showing up and getting their pearls in a twist. Looking at the thread now, the bulk of the “controversy” seems to be over author’s comments on her book, her “warnings” not to read it if drug use is a trigger for the reader. Oh, boy, my Swiss cheese memory. At any rate, it caught my attention despite my growing (and ironic? hypocritical?) aversion to urban fantasy (UF).

As I’ve said before, I’m just not feeling the love for the cookie-cutter, ass-kicking, swaggering, loner heroine who typifies a lot of UF titles. I find I can’t relate to them at all.

Consequently, I’ve left a long trail of “Did Not Finish” urban fantasy novels in my wake lately. One exception being Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City and now, Unholy Ghosts. Naturally, as a reader and a writer, my question is (more…)

Stone Arabia

“You all wanna be looking very intently at your own belly buttons.” ~Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity.

The above quote kept running through my head as I read Stone Arabia, a novel with a protagonist given to the kind of introspection that is best described as navel gazing.

The protagonist, Denise Kranis, is a forty-something woman living in Los Angeles. The story focuses on her relationship with her brother Nik, a talented (?) but failed musician/artist. If the book’s blurb is to be believed, the pivotal moment in the story–inciting incident if this were genre fiction, perhaps–occurs when Denise’s daughter, Ada, decides to film a documentary about her reclusive uncle (Nik). Except, Ada doesn’t show up until late in the novel. Instead, most of the narrative is taken up by Denise’s thoughts on family, memory–memory being the theme–and her peculiar obsession with certain current events.

The latter being Denise’s most irritating characteristic because (more…)

Son of a Witch

A caravan traveling through an isolated part of the Land of Oz comes across a corpse.  This isn’t the first they’ve seen on their journey, but the others have been “scraped,” the faces of the dead removed with surgical precision.

Except this body isn’t dead. Yet.  Though badly beaten, Liir Thropp, a young man who may or may not be the son of the infamous Elphaba Thropp, Wicked Witch of the West, is still alive.  The caravan delivers him to a convent where he is coaxed back to health by a mute young woman name Candle.

His recovery, seen through the eyes of Candle and the maunts (nuns) of the convent, is juxtaposed with (more…)

The Spirit Thief

The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron is terribly derivative.

And therein lies its charm.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a massive reading slump, slogging through my pile of library books, finding mild entertainment, but no real joy. But The Spirit Thief, with its unabashed “D&D gaming session put to paper” approach is an awful lot of fun.

The novel’s protagonist, by the author’s own admission, is a D&D character concept. Eli Monpress, the thief protagonist, is cut from the mold of many a TSR novel, as are his companions, Josef, the warrior, and Miranda, the wizard (spiritualist). The only non-archetype is Nico, the demonseed within (more…)

You Liked It? Are You … A Crazy Person?

Over on Facebook, Smart B*tches Who Love Trashy Novels posed the question:

I have many readers who email rants about books they wanted to like but didn’t. Am pondering category of “book rants.” What do you think? Interested?

The response could be summed up as “Yes.”  If you haven’t hated a much loved and ballyhooed book, then either you don’t read or your opinion switch is stuck on “Pollyanna loves everything.”

When I look at my responses to novels (and movies), it’s obvious that my nastiest are leveled at bestsellers and critics’ darlings whose charm utterly escaped me.  (Like No Country for Old Men and Let the Right One In.  There are a few, miserable, lugubrious hours, I’ll never get back.)

But this kind of rant negative review really isn’t about the book (or its author). It’s about the reviewer’s relationship with the book’s fans.

Let’s wind the clock back, nearly two decades ago, when (more…)

Magic Bites

Some spoilers for  Magic Bites and The Hunger Games, herein.

In which the curse of high expectations strikes. I’ve really been looking forward to Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews.  While I found the novel readable, it was ultimately disappointing.

The problem?  I was hoping for something more than the standard, tough-as-nails, chip-on-her-shoulder, loner heroine that typifies the urban fantasy(UF) genre. Magic Bites’s heroine, Kate Daniels, unfortunately, is not a departure from the trope.  I love strong female characters, so my disinterest in tough girl UF protagonists puzzles me.

To get to the heart of my aversion, I first looked at one my newest, favorite fictional strong woman: the Hunger Games Trilogy’s Katniss Everdeen. Katniss is no girly girl.  She is the ultimate (more…)

Careful What You Ask For

Sometimes I think the Internet should come with training wheels.

Well, for starters, the reviewers were not professional. They were not objective in what they had to say. I found their comments to be subjective and sometimes downright malicious. Two such blogs that have set themselves up as reviewers of books are “[Blog Name Redacted]” and “[Blog Name Redacted]”. Now, I don’t expect everybody to like my books, but what really gets me is when amateur reviewers use words like “predictable” and “one dimensional”, but they don’t quantify this. They don’t back up their comments with facts.

The above being a blog posting by an author who, having asked for an opinion (review), is unhappy with said opinion.  It’s the writerly version of “Does this make my butt look big?”

It would seem that the unfortunate author is (somehow) unaware that the Author vs. Critic controversy has been flogged over and over on ye ole Interwebs.  The end result is always the same.  The critic comes out the victor with the author looking like a consummate asshat.

Bad reviews, like taxes and death, are inevitable.

My question to the aggrieved author would be this:  What if the blogger(s) had posted a glowing, but simplistic review where she described your book as “wonderful?”  Would you still have written a scathing indictment of her reviewing abilities, demanding that she back up her praise with facts?

I’m-a guessin’ the answer is, “No.”