Saturday, March 27, 2010

Book 11: Lord Loss

Darren Shan's opening novel for this Demonata series makes the Vampire's Assistant series look like the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Shortly into the book Grubb Grady loses his family when they are slaughtered by a demon named Lord Loss. He descends into nightmares, madness and grief. His Uncle Dervish comes for him and they retreat to the old family estate. This is the opener in a series. I don't think I have the stones for it. It's just too bleak. And I am on a non-bleak-self-medicating-books sort of kick. I actually finished this months ago and didn't even want to review it. I didn't dislike it, and I do think it's a good offering in the arena of tween-fantasy. It's just . . . not for me.

Book 10: A Girl's Guide To Vampires

Katie MacAlister writes some funny books in the contemporary arena. One of my coworkers gave me this one because she is all about the paranormal. This one was funny but the plot was sort of all over the place. Vampires, serial killers, crazy witches. My real peeve with the book was the hero's propensity for calling the heroine "baby". I hate that shit. The ending is pretty clearly a set up for a series. Sigh. It's all about the branding and the series I suppose. I don't know if I want to read the others in this particular series, but I may check out MacAlister's steampunk books. I do love the weird vintage engineering.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Book 9: Playing With Fire

Belle Jamison is a young woman with no career to speak of, practically no social life, and only 1 living relative who depends on her for material support. Clearly, what such a woman needs is uncontrollable superpowers, an idiot sidekick, and a hot boyfriend with a LOT of baggage. Fortunately, the scenes of Belle acting like a total moron are evenly spaced by two of my favorite things: sex and ass-kicking. It's a C-level book. On a beach I would have loved it. Before and after work during some truly awe-inspiring levels of PMS, meh.