I recently read The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledscoe.  It was a fun read.

This is a fantasy noir detective novel.   The author doesn’t cheat – the answers fit the story and the mysteries are answered from the clues given.

The main character is an older man with a dark past, as is pretty much  required in these stories.  He’s hired to investigate missing princess and gets pulled into a deeper mystery that has ties to what he’s left behind.  At the end of the story the mysteries are resolved, but I can definitely see a potential for sequels.  Based on this book, I would definitely read more of this author’s work.

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I recently read Scott McCloud’s

Understanding Comics.  A bunch of people were really impressed with it, so I finally decided to check it out from the library.  It was informative but I feel that a lot of it went over my head.

The most interesting idea I got from reading it was that the abstract qualities of comic characters make them easier for us to identify with them.  Because we don’t see our own faces directly, we have a cartoon-like image of what our faces look like.  By keeping the characters features relatively non-realistic, we project ourselves into them.  It’s at least an interesting theory.

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If erotic urban fantasy might appeal to you, give Kiss of Shadows a look.  It’s free for the next little while on Suduvu, so try it out!

Kiss of Shadows is the first book in a series about Merry Gentry, a faerie princess.  It’s less blatantly erotica than the later books in the series.  (Remember: I peruse erotica, you read porn, and he slavers over filthy smut.)

This book introduces the characters and gives you the first glimpse of their world.  This world’s history is based loosely on Celtic Mythology.  The faerie courts had to flee Europe after a great war and have been refugees in the United States for the last few centuries.  Magic is not quite a part of everyday life, but it is a recognized power and is heavily regulated.

I really enjoyed this book and the rest of the series.  Laurell K. Hamilton’s writing is very sensual.  At the same time, this series is very heavy on the sex, sometimes wandering into PWP (Porn Without Plot / Plot? What Plot?) territory.

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I recently read the first book in Morgan Howell’s Queen of the Orcs trilogy.  I really enjoyed it.

Here’s the author’s one sentence synopsis, "A young woman, enslaved to serve the king’s orc army, discovers the orcs’ nobility and leads them in revolt."  I found Dar, the young woman, a surprisingly likeable character.  She is a strong female character without being a man with breasts.  Her strengths and weaknesses flow from who she is. 

The orcs manage to look and act like your typical fantasy orcs but as the book goes on, the reasons for their actions come from an admirable culture and not an evil one.  I’m looking forward to finding more about their culture in the next two books.

This book is definitely worth reading.  I think there will be more romance elements in the subsequent books and I’m looking forward to those.

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I recently read Anything You Can Do by Randall Garrett.  This is a classic science fiction novella.

It was interesting to read something older again.  There is a different feel to older books – you can definitely tell that there were big changes in Western culture after this book was written.  I don’t think it’s so much that people or values have changed, it’s that our attitudes have shifted.  For example, telepathy was seen as something that was just around the corner from being proven and psychology and anthropology were seen as exact sciences.

In this story a single alien has crash-landed on Earth. He goes into hiding and the cultural differences between humans and the alien come into play. A government department is set to hunting down the alien behind the scenes but not in an X-Files way as everyone knows the alien is out there, they just don’t know where.

superhuman by ~superhuman on deviantART

I really enjoyed the story and it’s free to read, so if this sounds at all appealing give it a shot!

(found via Internet Review of Science Fiction)

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Jason Henninger has a good post on Outrage and Art – how does disagreeing with an author’s views color your reaction to their work?

When an author has views I disagree with vehemently, I find it difficult to enjoy their work as much.  Instead of just reading the book and enjoying it, I second-guess the characters and their motivations.

The positive side of this is that it has taught me to be a somewhat more critical reader.  When I am reading a book and swept up by the righteousness of the main character’s actions, I’m more likely to pause and think about what they are doing.   Do I approve of this character’s actions because they are in a world that’s set up to prove them a shining exemplar of righteousness, or would I  approve of their actions if I encountered them in a real world situation?

I do read authors whose views I disagree with.  Usually it’s not out of any egalitarian principle, it’s because I still enjoy their stories.  The bright side of this is that sometimes I get insight as to why they think the way they do.  In a way, I’m getting two worlds for the price of one, the world of the story and the worldview of the author.

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Romeo’s Ex by Lisa Fiedler tells the story of Romeo and Juliet from the perspective of Rosalind, the young lady Romeo is in love with at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play.  I really enjoyed it.

If you’ve ever read or seen Romeo and Juliet, you know what the storyline of this book is.  In this retelling, Rosalind is a fairly sensible, slightly older cousin of Juliet’s.  Her story weaves around the plot of Romeo and Juliet, looking at things from a different angle but not changing the plot.

There are some faults with this book.  The biggest one is a repetition of a particular plot device, but I’m not sure if that’s due to a deliberate tongue in cheek take on Shakespeare or a fault of the author.  Rosalind is a little too modern in outlook, but that’s a common fault of historical romances.

I enjoyed this book and I plan on tracking down the author’s other book – "Dating Hamlet".

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I read Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels a few days ago.  I really enjoyed it.

Lord of Scoundrels is a regency romance.  Dain is the lord of scoundrels, determined to show up his father by being a social disgrace while being able to buy and sell the old man.  Jessica wants to get her brother out of trouble then get on with her goal of being self-sufficient businesswoman.  Jessica comes to get her brother away from Dain’s influence, and their attraction plays out from there.  I really liked both characters.  Their actions made sense.  There was no point in the plot where I wanted to smack the characters for stupidity.

I often find that in romance novels that the hero is just too perfect.  Any faults that exist are there simply to give him a dark past which is instantly redeemed by the touch of the heroine’s hand.  In this novel, Dain is flawed but his flaws are a natural outflow of who he is and they are not cured by Jessica’s tender touch.  Jessica sticks to her goals and does not become a brainless twit to be rescued.  The characters complement each other and neither is subsumed by the other.

I’m looking forward to reading more books by this author. 

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I finally tried reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson last night and that graph matches my impressions.  I’m not going to continue reading it.  It looks as though Neal Stephenson is one of those authors whose writing I really like or really dislike depending on the book.  I’ll wait around for his next novel and try again.

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