Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

The Sugar Queen

By Sarah Addison Allen.

This is a cool book, kind of wistful and interesting. I think I liked it even better than her first.

Josey Cirrini is from the richest family in Bald Slope- her dad founded the local ski resort and was pretty well worshipped while he was alive. Josey was a total brat until the age of nine when her dad died, and she has been trying to make up for it in her behavior to her mother ever since. Josey is pretty much a live-in slave to her mom at the age of 27.

Then she finds a local woman, Della Lee, wet and hiding in her closet, saying she needs somewhere to hide out for awhile and nobody will look for her at the Cirrini house. (This seems to have something to do with her live-in boyfriend Julian, who is both seductive and evil.) Della Lee notes the contents of the closet, which Josey has stuffed with candy, travel magazines, and romance novels. Della Lee wisely notes, "This is not the closet of a happy woman," and decides that she's going to help Josey out, somehow.  She starts this out by requesting that Josey (in between doing errands and waiting on Mommie Dearest) get a sandwich from Chloe, who runs the sandwich shop inside the courthouse.

Chloe's just dumped her boyfriend Jake, who she's really really in love with, when she found out he cheated on her once. He won't tell her who it was with, which drives her nuts. She's brokenhearted and in need of a friend, which Josey rapidly becomes. They have more in common than they know, including that Jake's best friend (and new roommate) is Adam, the local mailman that Josey's had a massive crush on for years. Soon, everyone's lives are intertwining in interesting, and possibly dangerous, ways...

This is an interesting read. The magical elements aren't quite as emphasized as they were in Garden Spells, but I was quite fond of them. Chloe never has to buy a book- they show up when she needs them and they LITERALLY follow her around, which I am horribly jealous of (even though Chloe doesn't like being followed around by books that want her to forgive Jake). There's also the Pelhams, who are genetically forced to always keep their promises. This plays out in a surprising way for Josey's mother, who used to be romantically involved with one of the family.

Four and a half stars from me. I really liked it.

Deja Demon

By Julie Kenner.

I've been into the first three books in the series, but not so much this one. What's going on? Kind of not a lot for most of it.

Allie is working on that whole proto-demon-hunter thing and wanting to spend time with her dad. Eric/David wants overnights with his daughter, which Kate isn't real sure about. Eric/David is acting kind of weird in general- taking off to LA for periods of time, doing a lot of research, he's crankier, and he's acting a bit shifty. This makes Kate wonder if something's going on with him...especially since she still suspects she did something really bad with regards to their immortal souls by saving Eric in the last book. Meanwhile, her current husband Stuart seems to suspect something's a bit funny at home, and is being more attentive than usual. (Yes, isn't it time someone let the man know what is going on?) Oh, and it's Easter time and she needs to do party planning.

On the demon-hunting front, the new batch o'demons in town (with zombies in tow as well) keep making some kind of hints about a prophecy where Kate may be the only one to wield a certain blade that can take down a certain demon. But what demon, exactly? Kate has flashbacks to when she was 15 and she and Eric took down Abbadon with cardinal fire. Does this have anything to do with that? There's also some strange people in town along with the local carnival that may know something about this. And David's out of town a lot, and Eddie's too busy dating to bother with this demon stuff (argh, that kind of annoyed me), so Kate's relying on Allie more whether she wants to or not.

To be honest, until about page 285, this book feels like it's puttering. Not a whole lot is going on until then, when the book really takes off. I can't help but wish the story started there and not when it does, especially since that pretty much cuts me off at the knees when talking about how to review it. Suffice it to say for the first 284 pages, I'm kinda slowly going through it and not feeling all that interested, and then bam! Plot development, plot development, plot development. Yay. There's definitely a point where I was all, "Oh man, they are SUNK" in particular. More than that will be going below the spoiler cut line.

I'm giving it three stars, and hoping the pace picks up in the next book.

Dragon's Teeth

By James A. Hetley.

In the sequel to Dragon's Eye, what everyone thinks has been laid to rest turns out not to have been. Mutilated corpses are turning up around Stonefort, and are being dumped in places such as on the not-quite-dead Morgan graves, and in a stone circle that belongs to the Rowley family.  Speaking of Kate, various people have seen her dead daughter Jackie (with nasty I-got-shot-in-the-head scarring) roaming around town. Eventually, people come to the conclusion that uh, that brujo seems to have survived after all...and the Haskells and Morgans have to go up against him again. This ties in with a very deadly doll that Caroline's been sent to search for, a nasty flint that Ben's been hiding, and Gary's new girlfriend Jane, who has so many issues that she's practically born to join the sneaky-ass Morgan family.

What's different in this one is that all the characters are pretty well split up from each other. I'm not totally thrilled with that- the splitness continued for longer than I would have liked- but eventually at least some people reunited to fight together.

I'm not sure what to make of Caroline's story in this one- she's torn between the Native American way of life (both the life she got raised to and the life she's been making in Arizona) and the life she has in grad school. Her dying mentor tells her to leave grad school, and Caroline can see the point of why she says it...but on the other hand, it's darned useful to have the access that grad school gives her. There's also her (barely mentioned, but heck, where woudl you put him in the plot) boyfriend, who's very similar to Caroline, but is just as bound to his location as she is to hers in Stonefort. This is a little more...drifty...of a plot compared to the rest of the plots in this book, but it's not bad. Not resolvable in this book, though.

I do like Kate's slowly "coming into her own" with regards to her own family magic, though there's not quite as much of that as I might have liked.

And the story of Gary and Jane was awesome. Jane was abused all to hell her entire childhood, has had to kill to protect herself, and thus lives her life on the edge, expecting to be betrayed and having to flee at any second. Gary's family is probably the only one who would understand and consider her traits assets...even though Ben would rather see her dead. (Fatherhood has not made him trusting.)

There doesn't seem to be another book in this series, but I would be interested in reading more about these folks. At the very least, I'd like to see how Jane integrates into the Morgan/Haskell family wacky.

I do wish we'd gotten to see more moments of the book. I am downright frustrated that a few moments were NEVER shown in the book, but were only alluded to. (Which moments go below the cut.) I also have some comments regarding the quibbles I had in the spoiler space in the last review, which will again be talked about behind the spoiler cut.

Three and a half stars.

Chosen (House of Night, Book 3)

By P.C. and Kristin Cast.

Previous book here. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to put the rest of this below the cut because of heavy spoilage for previous books.  I will just say, four stars and HOLY CRAP.

Betrayed (House of Night, Book 2)

By P.C. and Kristin Cast.

Wow, this book is a step UP from the previous one. Which I loved, so that's saying something. This book flips a lot of things on its head. Enemies lean towards becoming allies, an idiot doesn't seem so much of an idiot any more, and allies are turning into enemies.

Holy damn crap!

A month after the last book, Zoey's planning out what to do with the Dark Daughters organization, i.e. turn it more into a service organization rather than vampire Pi Beta Alpha. She gets a (one last) visit from her jackass parental figures, who continue to be jackasses. And then there's Aphrodite, the queen bitch from the last book who's certainly fallen on hard times in this one. After her own parental blowup, Zoey overhears Aphrodite's parents belittling the shit out of her...and later overhears their mutual mentor Neferet claiming that Aphrodite's Goddess-given visions are no longer real. Zoey doesn't buy this, having seen Aphrodite have a vision before. So when Aphrodite comes to her saying that she's had a vision of Zoey's grandma dying on a bridge, Zoey buys it and works to make sure nobody else dies either. Other deaths are going on that so far nobody's prevented, though. Some of her ex-boyfriend Heath's football friends have been abducted and killed in a vampiric-looking way recently, and it's freaking everyone out.

And then there's the ghost spottings. I didn't get around to mentioning it in the first book review, but Zoey has seen what appears to be the ghosts of dead fledglings (those who died before making the full change) around a certain area of the campus. One of whom turned out to be disturbingly fleshy when her cat attacked it. She sees more of these...and Aphrodite appears to be aware of these as well. Even worse, they seem to be under Neferet's control. Looks like ol' Nef isn't nearly the cool lady that she seems to be...and what a shame that is.

As for Zoey's love life, what a mess. She's still dating the lovely actor Eric Night, flirting with the poetry professor Loren in the library (UH-OH), and then after she runs into Heath one day...well, "ex-boyfriend" doesn't seem to be so much of a factor any more. Though Heath denies being Imprinted (mutually linked via blood) by Zoey the last time they saw each other ("I've had a thing for you since third grade!"), he's been carrying around a razor blade just in case he runs into her again, she drinks his blood...and Imprint happens.

And then something really horrible happens....and Zoey finds out more than she might have wanted to know about the football deaths and the campus ghosts. It's a big gasping blow, and she literally has to "ride to the rescue." But not everyone can be saved...and how's she going to fix this?

Incidentally, so far I have to give the authors props for dealing with a superhero, Goddess-gifted-powers heroine that so far doesn't seem to have Anita Blaked-out. Which is to say, while Zoey is obviously uh, precocious in her vampy development, and has powers nobody else has, she doesn't get any kind of power-up (though her friends do- yay sharing!) in this one. Any bonus points she gets seem to play out in extra magical tattoos. Coolness. I hope the authors keep that up rather than super-soaking her with giftage.

Four and a half stars. Wowza. Hopping on reading the next one at the first opportunity.

Marked (House of Night, Book 1)

By P.C. and Kristin Cast.

Wow, I whipped through this one FAST. It's a quick, absorbing read.

In the world of this book, vampyres are born, not made. More specifically, the signs of being a fledgling vampire (spontaneous magical forehead tattoos) come upon you when you're a teenager, and then you'll immediately have to go to the nearest House of Night to go to school. (It's really amusing how various celebrities, and Shakespeare, are vampires in this world.) If you don't make the transition to vampyredom, you drop dead spontaneously. Whoa.

When Zoey gets tagged as a future vampire, it's almost a relief because her mother has married a religious wacko and has pretty much abandoned her in favor of the stepfather. Her Cherokee grandma, on the other hand, takes it all in stride because magic runs in the family. It especially seems to run strong in Zoey, as she is personally chosen by the vampyre goddess of night, Nyx, to "be her eyes and ears." After having a vision of Nyx after hitting her head, Zoey's forehead mark goes from being an outlined crescent moon to being a filled-in moon. This isn't normal fledgling vamp behavior, so everyone notices her right off the bat. Zoey also seems to uh, vampirically mature faster than everyone else, which is awkward. Yup, guess who's a future high priestess.

Vampyre (god, I hate having to spell it with a Y, btw) school is pretty damn awesome though. Instead of taking math classes, you take fencing, Tae Kwon Do, and horseback riding- I guess that's much more useful for vampyres. You go to school at night, and the teachers are pretty awesome. Zoey's mentor, Neferet, is the high priestess of the school. Oh, and you can have a cat if it wants to have you. And the friends she makes instantly are great, and a hot actor guy is interested in her.

What's not so cool at this school are the Dark Daughters, a group at the school run by total snotbag and potential HP Aphrodite. She's clearly one of Those Girls, only with twists like her having visions of future disasters that she won't bother to prevent because they involve humans. And of course, she treats people like crap, sexually harasses her ex, etc. Zoey soon decides to take action against her...

Kickass book. I will immediately begin the next one to see what happens. Some loose ends are definitely left here, and I want to see where that goes. Four stars.

Orphans of Chaos

By John C. Wright.

This is a very interesting tale, though I really don't think it's for everyone. It is very complicated stuff, especially since (a) there's a lot of different character names, (b) the fourth dimension is very big in this, and (c) even though this is based on Greek myths, there is some danged obscure Greek mythery going on in this that is vitally important to the plot. So, not what I'd recommend to a noob wanting to take up sci-fi (though a friend of mine who isn't into the harder sci-fi has started this book and so far doesn't seem too baffled).

Anyway: five orphans (or so they've been told) have been brought up in a school in England. Nothing is quite normal for them- they all were called number-based names at first and then eventually picked their own names to go by, and they're not at all sure what their actual ages are. They never get to leave school, and indeed are kind of treated like they're in jail. Oh, and they strongly suspect that they're not mortal humans...and that goes for their instructors as well. The kids start figuring out that things are not as they seem, and that they have powers, and that they're hostages in a war...and their current state of neutrality might not last too much longer.

So the kids start working on trying to escape, but there's a lot they don't know. Especially that some people's powers trump others...and memories can be taken away.

Our narrator is Amelia (a.k.a.. Phaethusa, daughter of a Titan), and her fourth-dimensional abilities help her out in certain ways...and they can be thwarted in others. There's some definite weirdness going on around her, especially when the headmaster and the school's caretaker (who is Grendel!) develop skeezy interests in her.

This is a fascinating story, albeit complicated in some ways to keep track of. I highly recommend checking out the Wikipedia entry on this book, as well as the Dramatis Personae, which I wish I had printed out before reading. You'll be able to figure out the main Greek gods you've heard of despite the less common names being used for them, but the kids's original heritages are some pretty obscure stuff. And it is one of those books where there has to be a lot of long expository conversation going on just so that you get the point of what's going on. So if you hate that, this may not be for you.

The romantic stuff in it is a bit weird. For one thing, Amelia seems to have a bit of interest in her cohort Colin, gets her first kiss from Quentin, but later says she wants to marry Victor. This is all a bit weird, though not exactly the main angle of the plot so it's all right. But pervy old men liking Amelia (who's a shapeshifter and apparently chose quite a comely, more advanced than her age hot body) is definitely a part of the plot. I can't say those were my favorite aspects of the book, but given the setup of it I can't be bothered too much.

Still, fascinating stuff. Four stars.

Kushiel's Mercy

By Jacqueline Carey.

Well, since Kushiel's Justice is now one of my top three favorite books ever, this one had a lot to live up to. It does a good job of that. Though I will warn you: it's NOT the book you thought you were going to be reading, not by a long shot.

I'm having a hard time writing this because I generally like to spoil plotwise until around the halfway mark of a book (I think that's fair to judge as to whether or not you'd be interested in reading it), but with this book I kind of want to stop around the first hundred pages because the turn it takes is SO dramatically different. It becomes a different book to me altogether, and keeps having twists and turns aplenty.

So....what to say?

Things start slowly as Imriel and Sidonie return to Terre d'Ange. The populace is in an uproar at the two of them being romantically involved, and the queen herself is divided. She eventually makes a decree: Imriel and Sidonie can continue to be romantically involved, but she will disinherit Sidonie if they wed or she makes Imriel her consort. Unless Imriel hunts down his missing mother and brings her back to Terre d'Ange for her long-awaited execution. Imriel isn't exactly feeling yippie-skippie about bringing his mother to her death, but (a) he's barely met her, (b) she is guilty, and (c) when compared to his beloved having to lose her inheritance, well... But Sidonie doesn't want him to go away again quite yet, so he gets a restful period of time to search via proxy, and get laid a lot :)

Meanwhile, political intrigues continue to abound, with the ruler of Carthage being very obvious about wanting to conquer Terre d'Ange's ally country (where some of the Queen's family lives) Aragonia. Imriel finds out that if he wants to find out his mother's whereabouts, they should let a Carthaginian delegation, led by General Astegal, in and accept their tribute. General Astegal is perfectly courtly and polite, and pays his tribute, and indicates that he'd like Terre d'Ange's alliance and a wedding to Sidonie. Terre d'Ange politely turns him down. And Imriel discovers his mother's whereabouts- but soon after that, everything goes to hell. And I mean that fairly literally.* The game changes, the goals change, and Imriel soon finds himself very alone in a very bad situation. His quest changes....

(At this point I'm going to talk about what else goes on below the spoiler cut, and leave spaces between that section and the usual "spoiler" cutoff discussion point.)

This is an epic book. It may be the most epic of all to me (and that's saying a lot having read the Phedre books). The parallels between many old and new plot elements add a certain symmetry as the series winds up.  Imriel and Sidonie are an awesome pairing, and happily I still got a lot of them in this one, which I had my doubts was going to happen. I was rather sad that a lot of our old favorite characters, for reasons of plot, aren't seen on screen for most of the novel and are having major issues when we do see them. I also wish that the Melisande plot had been in it more, though it's understandable why this isn't a major plot point. But given the story she's telling, all of that is necessary.

I am very sad to bid this age of Terre d'Ange (the author plans to write in the world still, but a few hundred years in its future**) a final farewell. Sigh.

Five stars. Very, very well done.

Making Money

By Terry Pratchett.

In the sequel to Going Postal, our postmaster Moist has grown bored. The Post Office is cleaned up nicely, his fiancee's out of town unearthing golems, and he's turned to Extreme Sneezing and breaking into his own office to stave off boredom. The Patrician, aware of what happens when Moist gets bored, offers him a new challenge: clean up the Royal Mint.

Moist, however, does NOT automatically hop on board with this. The family that runs it, the Lavishes, are a bunch of vipers when it comes to personality. The current Lavish in charge, the good-judge-of-character Topsy, has two crossbows mounted on her desk. She immediately pegs Moist for a big ol' con artist...and likes him immediately. Enough to leave him her dog, Mr. Fusspot, in her will before she dies.

Oh, and to leave Mr. Fusspot her 50% of shares in the bank.

Mr. Fusspot already had 1%.

Oh, and if Mr. Fusspot dies, she's given a fat amount of money to the Assassins Guild to take out Moist.

And thus, Moist takes up a new job and new wackiness. He also gets to deal with the Lavishes, one of whom is obsessed with becoming Vetinari. And one of his old con artist cronies, who isn't at all shy about broadcasting the name of "Albert Spangler" about in public. And then there's his fiancee, Adora Belle "Spike" Dearheart, who's found a bunch of ancient golems...and bank + golems turns out to cause Moist a whole lot more trouble.

It's a good read, and certainly goes to places I didn't expect it to go. Four stars.

The Dead Girls' Dance (Morganville Vampires, Book 2)

By Rachel Caine.

In the sequel to Glass Houses, things pick up where they left off- in big crisis. Shane's father (and the biker gang he brought along with him) has stormed into town, swearing vengeance and death to the vampires that killed half his family. Too bad he's batshit crazy, his gang wouldn't mind raping Claire and Eve, and his actions are likely to get Shane killed. When someone does gets killed, Shane gets caught and is going to be burned alive for the crime, unless Claire can find some way to prove that he didn't do it. So she runs around trying to get help from her supposed Protector Amelie (this REALLY only goes so far), debates forming alliances she shouldn't, and generally gets herself up in the shit.

I mentioned before that I liked Claire's roommates better than her. Sadly, they all pretty much get short shrift in this one, which meant that gee, I got to read more about Claire. And Claire being an idiot. THIS GIRL IS NOT A GENIUS, OKAY?! Unless she's got a secret death wish, her actions are generally pretty dumb and it's amazing that she doesn't die. It irritated the crap out of me. And frankly, the ending of the novel just made me want to smack Claire. "How bad could it possibly be?" are the last words in the novel, as she does something with major consequences that she can't get out of, hasn't bothered to learn much about, and...well, that's just not something you hop into willy-nilly, ya dingbat.

I don't think I can stand to keep on reading this series because I can't take Claire any more. Her stoopid just can't be ignored. Argh.

Two stars.