Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Mystic and Rider

By Sharon Shinn.

I normally like Sharon Shinn books, but this one is....really slow. Well, she tends to pace things anyway, but this one is really pretty slow. I stuck with it because I like the characters, but it really needed to have more plot than a Lord of the Rings book (i.e. mostly traveling), and it really doesn't end in any resolved fashion other than "this plot is gonna go on, I guess." I completely agree with this review.

Anyway: Gillengaria is a land where some people have magical powers, probably based on deities or something like that, called "mystics." Mystics Senneth (fire powers), Kirra (shapeshifting, healing), and Donnal (shapeshifting) are riding out with King's Riders Tayse and Justin, on a secret vague mission for the king that involves essentially traveling around and seeing if war is fermenting, which of course it dang well is. A nun (more or less) and her nunnery seem to be spearheading an anti-mystic campaign and the party keeps encountering mystic bigotry and murders wherever they go. They also adopt a six member of the party, Cammon (mind-reader), who's been taken as a slave, and a roaming raelynx cat that Senneth and Cammon can somewhat mentally keep under control after they remove the cat from the village it's menacing. As things go on, they have encounters with the creepy family that want to take the throne--the lady who's a nun is hoo-boy awful, and her brother who wanted to marry Senneth as a teenager and unfortunately hasn't gotten over that desire.

Senneth's tragic past is that she's from a noble family, did NOT want to marry Halchon Gisseltess--whatever his powers are, they seem to totally negate hers--and thus she got herself knocked up in hopes of calling off the engagement. Things got uglier from there and Halchon, when onscreen, is terrifying. Tayse, her love interest, on the other hand, is a pretty simple guy. He always wanted to be a Rider, he's a Rider, everyone respects him and he's nice. He has some issues with mystics but slowly falls in love with Senneth because she's powerful and awesome and takes care of people, but is all, "I can't get involved with a noble!" and Senneth is all, "Sure you can, dude." It's not a huge conflict there. Tayse is pleasant enough, and his romantic feelings are described very juicily, but dude needed more personality than friendly stoic guard for me to care more about them as a couple. We have to be told by Justin that they're meant to be together, and I'm pretty much like, "all right, I guess." 

The person I really liked in this was Kirra--even though she's a side character in this, she was awesome, gorgeous, charming as heck. She's kind of a pampered princess of sorts from a noble family, but isn't a jerk about it and she was just Fun every time she was around. Cammon's powers are intriguing as well. Donnal doesn't seem to have much um, presence, but he seems nice enough, respectful of women, and will get into fights over that if he has to. Justin comes off as a snotty jerk who grew up rough, but even he mellows out through the course of the book, which is nice.

Anyway, I enjoyed hanging out with these people, and there are some great moments in this book. "Senneth and Kirra help a pregnant woman," the removal of the raelynx, the deployment of the raelynx in a different context (that part cracked me up), rescues...those were great. I also enjoyed meeting the friendly king and his very neutral, mysterious wife that not even Cammon can figure out. 

However...all this book is just very slow prologue and a lot of traveling and while the few moments of Cool Plot were legitimately cool, this was so slow I could imagine a new reader losing interest. I've heard rave reviews about this series and I did check out almost all of the books from the library already so we'll see, but it really, really needed to move up the action and pace by a lot. 

Two and a half stars. 

Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House

By Cormac O'Brien.

This is a fun, snappy, snarky book featuring fun drawings* and fun (or not so fun) facts about First Ladies. I've been reading presidential books for awhile and some of these I hadn't even heard of. There's a lot of fun lines and quips in this, albeit I was too lazy to bookmark them and frankly, there were many. Some ladies had sad lives, others were too ill and/or depressed to do much. Then you compare those to the go-getter ladies who were awesome...and usually followed up by a more "traditional" first lady, sigh. But regardless of who's being covered, it was a great fun read. Wives who never made it to the White House also get a brief page apiece.

• albeit the First Lady who crocheted a lot is shown knitting....I gotta mention that.

Four stars for me. Fun read!

System Collapse

By Martha Wells.

Previous book here in terms of writing, but this book comes immediately after this one.

This is one it took me a long time to figure out what was going on and to get into it. I admit I postponed reading it because I was quite confused, though it got better for me in the latter half. Not sure if it's just me, though apparently someone else at Reactor had the same issue. I just felt too tech-overwhelmed to get what the hell was going on for such a long time. It also could use a little more people-ness in the plot, though more of that comes on later. 

Anyway: Murderbot, ART, and company are on a planet, trying to save some colonists from being convinced to sell themselves to a shitty corporation, and Murderbot has had Some Kind Of Incident in which its brain circuits were unexpectedly blown for a bit, which has quietly freaked it out. (I hear ya, Murderbot, been there more times.) In the end, Murderbot comes up with an excellent way to convince the colonists not to sell themselves into indentured servitude, and it's a perfect suggestion that goes along with well, its favorite hobby. So that was adorable and made the book a lot better. That said, it was hard for me to get through it and I say this having forced myself to read it all in one go today.

This is not a very good review and I don't seem to be able to write a good one of it, read this instead, though the Reactor one is more how I felt about it.

Two and a half stars. I hate to rate Murderbot so low, but just plan getting into and comprehending this book was hard for me, and if a book starts out confusing or rocky, the odds of finishing it get a lot worse.