Friday, April 22, 2011

I haven't had much to say lately.

I'm in a kind of a reading slump, although I enjoyed


Spiral Hunt (Evie Scelan, #1)Spiral Hunt by Margaret Ronald

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A thoroughly enjoyable urban fantasy.  I hadn't read any for a while and found this one a refreshing change.  No strange creatures, just Celtic magic and mythology and a heroine with a sense of smell like a hound.  Definitely a nice twist with no huge romances or wild sex.  Characters well rounded and real enough to keep my interest.  I found the beginning a little choppy and had some trouble getting into it, but after it hit its stride it was a definite page turner.  Looking forward to the next one.



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and

Heavy Time (Company Wars, #4)Heavy Time by C.J. Cherryh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars






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And

The Blood of FlowersThe Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A charming tale of a girl talented in knotting and designing rugs in 17th century Isfahan, Iran.  Very enjoyable.



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and

One Good DogOne Good Dog by Susan  Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars






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And

BurndiveBurndive by Karin Lowachee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Outstanding.



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And I LOVED

Daughter of the Forest  (Sevenwaters, #1)Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Beautifully readable, well drawn characters, well woven plot.  Loosely based on the old tale of the six brothers turned into swans by their evil step mother, Marillier enriches the tale with a likable heroine and six well defined brothers as well as other interesting people along the way.

Lyrical descriptions of the enchanted forest with its magical creatures enrich the tale, beautifully woven to draw us in and surround us with this world.


Straight forward without layers and hidden meanings, it is easy to read.  While some brutality is present, including a rape that had me heart sore, it is presented with authenticity and heart.

All in all a very good book.  After a certain point I couldn't put it down and stayed up way too late to finish it.

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And

With No One As Witness CD (Thomas Lynley #13)With No One As Witness CD by Elizabeth  George

My rating: 5 of 5 stars






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And I HATED

Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen Series #2)Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


OMG you say!  Where does she get the nerve to give this only two stars?  Well, I had to screw up all my courage to do so.  First, this is a group read for a group that I moderate, so I feel some obligation to read the books and give them a good try and the benefit of the doubt.  Also, one of my favorite reviewers, whose taste I admire, said one shouldn't give up on this series until reading to Memories of Ice, so I've hung in there through Book 1 (which I gave 3 stars) and more than halfway through this one.

Here are my status updates.   For some reason Goodreads lists them most recent first, but that one was the deciding factor:

04/10        page 451    
    64.0%     "The Toblakai bared his teeth, a hand plunging through the slit in the lizard's belly to re-emerge with slick entrails. I'm sorry, but this strikes me as something nine year old boys might enjoy. I try to avoid seeing things like that in my life. Why am I reading about it? I think I'm going to have to give up."
04/10     page 431   
    61.0%     "Two quotes: We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. And: It's the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of siginificance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance...all the bastion of fools. Cheery stuff, eh?"
04/10     page 431   
    61.0%     "Having just finished Marillier's Daughter of the Forest, thought I'd head back into the blood, gore, and pure disgusting filth of Erikson, :)."
04/02     page 429   
    61.0%     "Well there was a great battle, but now it's gotten all weird again."
03/26     page 388   
    55.0%   
03/25     page 360   
    51.0%     "O M G. This is SO depressing."
03/24     page 321   
    46.0%     "Finished Part Two"
03/23     page 261   
    37.0%     "Chapter nine"
03/23     page 241   
    34.0%     "I found some good guys!"
03/22     page 222   
    32.0%     "Proceeding through the gore, hoping to get to the other side. :)"
03/21     page 195   
    28.0%     "Well, we've made it through blood, rape, slaughter, babies with crushed skulls, impaled on pikes, blood flies, wolves, demons, sand storms, and more."
03/20     page 155   
    22.0%     "Starting Book two. A whole lot of unrelenting violence and gore so far."
03/20     page 135   
    19.0%     ""Foul snot of rabid dogs! Anal crust of dysenteried goats!" - lol. A bit of creative cursing. Sounds Arabic." 2 comments
03/20     page 84   
    12.0%     "Felisin is nothing if not practical, eh?"
03/20     page 29   
    4.0%     "Good lord."

Call me squeamish, but a guy slitting open a lizard's belly and withdrawing slick entrails for a meal is just plain disgusting.  I think it's given me PTSD because I was having flashbacks this morning eating my eggs.

Fans of Erikson call it 'brillaint', 'layered with meaning', 'complex', 'tragic', 'funny', and on and on.  I have to grant them most of those accolades are true.  But there's only so much childish slime I can find my way through in order to enjoy it.  I understand some of the characters display courage in the face of adversity, honor among thieves, and so on and so forth, but there are many fine books I can read to find those characteristics.  And those are written by very fine writers indeed.  Cormack McCarthy, Dorothy Dunnett, Colum McCann, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Guy Gavriel Kay, Carol Berg, Janny Wurts to name only a few.

One of my main objections while reading these books is that few react to what would be horrific trauma if experienced in real life.  True, soldiers in battle numb out emotionally in order to go on.  Most of them pay a huge price later.  This is pointed out here and there, but I don't see much of it in action.  Perhaps it's not necessary in this world, as people's wounds are instantly healed by mages, people die only to come back to life.  I guess I wouldn't mind seeing my friend's head chopped up by a propellor blade if all the pieces could be put back together by magic.  In real life people who suffer this trauma sit in my office and bleed.  And patch themselves back up with cocaine or by abusing their loves or by going crazy.

So, sorry to be such a wimp, but I'm letting this series go.  I'm old and semi-retired.  I want to enjoy life in my leisure time.  Or if I read about tragedy I want the author to show me it's authentic with more than endless images of horror and gore.


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LOVED

Betrayer (Foreigner, #12)Betrayer by C.J. Cherryh

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Unputdownable!  Non-stop action, political tension, all out war, and suspense.  I just love this series.  No one does political suspense or weaves a plot like Cherryh.

This series has to be read from the beginning.  And it's worth it.  In each book we learn more about the atevi world, about their thinking, their customs.  And Bren Cameron, the human negotiator/ambassador sticks out harrowing situations and broadens his own understanding of atevi politics and increases his value to atevi leaders.  Most engrossing and gratifying.

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So there you have something of a summary of my recent reading.  I'm taking a long vacation from Black Sun Rising and am attempting to get into Carol Berg's The Spirit Lens.  Listening to Dragonfly in Amber as it was on sale at Audible.com.  It's about 100 years long, though.  Maybe my indifference about the Friedman is due to burnout on ugly monsters in Deadhouse Gates, I don't know.  Maybe I'll get back to it later and love it, but I doubt it.  Maybe I'm too old to be scared by scary monsters.

A friend has a mom and an uncle in hospital so I guess I'm lucky.  Am meeting eldest daughter et al in Sturbridge, MA for Easter dinner Sunday.  An advantage of working for a Catholic hospital is Good Friday off, so am piddling around today.  Am on vacation officially until May 3!  Hope I have fun.  Am going to Sarasota, FL to visit a friend, so it should be very good.