books

[hawkwing_lb]

Books 2008: 50-54

50. Jim Butcher, Small Favour.

Harry Dresden has grown on me quite a lot since I first picked up - was it Grave Peril? It's a long time ago now. I find Butcher's characters more interesting, these last five novels or so. There's some good crunchy plot stuff happening, some small amount of character-development stuff, and a pretty good story. I liked it.

51. Mary Rosenblum, Horizons.

Interesting SF about near space, orbital platforms, and evolution. It is, ultimately, a very optimistic book, perhaps more so than I have a habit of preferring in my hard SF.

52. Anne Bishop, Tangled Webs.

This is a story about a haunted house, and the people who get stuck there. It is not complex. It is not layered. It is, however, a pretty good read, though it suffers from several of the same flaws as Bishop's other work - evil guys who are Evil for the sake of it is the one that really irritates me.

But, since I liked Surreal a good bit in the other Black Jewel books, this made for a pleasant diversion.

53. Karen Miller, Stargate SG-1: Alliances.

Train reading. Diverting enough.

54. Caitlin Kittredge, Night Life.

I sort of liked this book. Sort of. It felt like it should've been noir, and got splattered with a bit of romance by mistake.

I would've liked it better as noir. I am so. damned. tired of finding hot sexy werewolves getting in the way of interesting characters and interesting plots. At this point, they all look the same. Act the same, too.

The boy werewolf was the one sour note among the characters. All the rest of them, I would've liked more of. And the ending felt ever so slightly rushed.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion I am not the audience for books with Hot Boy Werewolves in, though. (Hot Boy Vampires, neither, although that trope seems to be subverted a little more often and a little bit more successfully. Or maybe I've just read more books where the Boy Vampires had some personality outside a)aggression, b)lust, and c)territoriality.)

Sigh. I wanted to like this book much more than I ended up doing. But... boy werewolf. Do not want.

Comments

[blackaire.livejournal.com]

I don't usually respond to reviews, but I found myself laughing at the image of my novel going "Augh! The romance got all over me!"

Unfortunately, the Boy Werewolf has a long-form character arc and he didn't get as much time in Book 1 as the Plot. But if you weren't too put off, the subversion is coming. Oh yes. :D

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I've recently been discovering I have very definite opinions on the book I would have liked to have read vs. the book I actually read.

I'll stick with a lot if I'm promised subversion, though. :)

[blackaire.livejournal.com]

It starts in Book 2 and really takes hold in Book 3...I write standalone A-plot stories so the characters get tortured--er--developed over the entire series.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'll look forward to seeing this subversion, then. And torture. :)

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

I think I'll have to bother to get hold of Horizons :-). Tell us more. I'm afraid sex with werewolves has less appeal to me than it might to others. I think it ranks alongside a yet another post-human sf (You can tell these are written by gamer geeks who really, really need to get out more. Preferably onto a construction site, or a strip mine or a commercial farm. It's not a software problem!) or God-its-so-awful-humans/males-are-so-vile-lets-all-die sf. I thought optimistic hard sf was almost extinct. I'm pleased it is not :-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Horizons has empaths, Taiwanese and Chinese future politics, and the next step in human evolution. Also, cool characters.