Month: June 2011

Review – Heat Wave

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Heat Wave

By Richard Castle

Hyperion

EAN: 9781401394769

3.5 stars

Nikki Heat is one of New York’s finest with a new case on her hands — a millionaire real estate developer found dead on the sidewalk in front of his exclusive Manhattan apartment.  Saddled with Jameson Rook, a celebrity journalist who somehow managed to get himself on a ride along, she begins her investigation at the same time a heat wave hits the city.

Sometimes all I want is a good old fashioned crime novel full of clichés, bad dialogue, and a criminal that sticks out from the first time you meet him/her on the page.  I got what I wanted out of this one.  It was all the above and more.  Parts of it made me laugh, cringe, and not once did any of it make me want to stop reading.  I know these books are the basis for the TV show Castle (or the other way around, I don’t know) which I’ve never seen, but now I may watch an episode just to see what it’s like.  It probably would have been helpful to have seen the show before reading this book too but I looked past a few things and went with it when I came to something that a person who watches the show probably would have known.

At its heart, Heat Wave, is a cop book.  It moved fast and entertained and that was what I needed at the time.  I have a soft spot for Lee Child novels but I think I may add a few Castle books to my crime thriller list for when the need strikes.

Today’s Book – Prophecy of the Sisters

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Usually I reserve Thursdays for talking about the book I’m currently reading but I thought I’d do something different today and talk about a book I want to read.  OK, there are a lot of books I want to read so this was actually slightly difficult in terms of narrowing the list down but you will all be happy to know I managed to succeed.

The book is the Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink.  The book was released in 2009 so it’s not a new addition to my list but one I have glanced over a few times and wondered about.  I did a little searching…young adult book about sisters, one good, one evil and a looming prophecy that involves tattoos, death, and secrets.

More about the book is here and below is a book trailer I found.  I think this one may make its way up the list.

Short Story Quick Reviews – The Gauntlet and The Queen’s Witch

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The Gauntlet: A Kit Marlowe Short

By Karen Chance

Smashwords Edition – Free Nook download from Barnes & Noble

3.75 stars

Kit Marlowe is a vampire working for Queen Elizabeth I.  He’s sent to the Queen’s prison in search of a witch to help with his work.  He finds the woman he needs at the prison, a powerful witch named Gillian, and decides she’s fit for what the Queen wants but before he can get out with her, a magical battle takes place between coven witches and mages, and Kit is forced to fight alongside Gillian to get out alive.

Witches, mages, and covens battling it out for the right of survival and throw in a vampire for fun and well, just call it fun.  Why not?  When I read this book I was on a fantasy bender and also a short story run which is not my usual preference but something was really appealing about this.  An hour’s worth of reading for a magical battle was just what I needed.  Chance didn’t skimp on the magic and while it would have been great to have more information on how the magical system worked, there wasn’t much time for that but I was OK with it.  Kit and Gillian carry it off and though much is left unexplained, it was still entertaining.

 

The Queen’s Witch: A Kit Marlowe Short

Karen Chance

Smashwords Edition – Free Nook Download from Barnes & Noble

3.75 stars

The Gauntlet’s follow-up.  Having recently escaped from a prison stronghold with a vampire named Kit, Gillian is now a witch with a price on her head.  Kit, however, needs her once more promising to take Gillian and her daughter to safety after she helps him procure a jewel meant to poison the Queen.

I have a Nook and while browsing the Barnes & Noble online store one day I found these free downloads.  Both looked interesting enough so I took advantage.  Really, free books, how could one not.  🙂  This one is short, only 37 pages, but it was fun.  Gillian and Kit have an entertaining relationship and it being so short there isn’t much background here — more is in The Gauntlet which preceded this one — but I found myself liking the two characters more and more and wondering if I could find more shorts.  And then I thought I would even be willing to pay.  Gillian and Kit feel like fully developed characters and while the story does feel as if there should be more, it was a good few page for me.

The Sunday Salon – Got Nothing

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I had several ideas this week all of which had potential for a Sunday Salon post.  All of which I didn’t write down since they mostly popped up while I was in meetings which means that I spent a large amount of time staring at the screen this morning attempting to resurrect one of the ideas into something workable.  It didn’t work.  My husband walked by a few moments ago…

“Sunday Salon time?” he asks.

“I don’t know what to write about today.”

“Write about the heat,” he says.

“What does that have to do with books?”

“Nothing,” he replies as he walks into the kitchen.  “I think your tea is done.”

“Yep.”

I’m still sitting here with nothing to write about but now I have a cup of tea.  Lesson learned about writing things down.

This week was stellar in terms of reading even if I still feel as though I’m not back mentally from my vacation, especially since it’s been about 100+ this week in the city which makes it hard to think.  (There, a weather reference.)

This week’s books:

Before Versailles: A Novel of Louis XIV by Karleen Koen — Entertaining historical fiction and the French setting was perfect for me.  It started out slowly but once I settled in, it fulfilled the promise of court intrigue and kingly affairs that I adore in books about the French monarchy.

The Dark Enquiry (A Lady Julia Grey Novel) by Deanna Raybourn — It’s book five in the series and I don’t read books out of order but I went with it this time and all worked out.  I loved it and will definitely be reading the four previous books.

The Postmortal by Drew Magary — I started this yesterday and so far it’s phenomenal.  It’s told through blog posts, stories, and articles.  It’s amusing but also believable in a way I didn’t think it would be.  It’s set in a future US were aging has been stopped by gene therapy and the consequences are just beginning.

Well, happy Sunday.  Hopefully, I’ll manage to get in a little blog reading later today along with finishing up The Postmortal.

Review – Un Lun Dun

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Un Lun Dun

By China Miéville

Del Rey Books

E-ISBN: 978-0-345-49723-9

4.5 stars

Cute — describing Un Lun Dun in one word.  Cute would fit but it probably wouldn’t suffice. While there were so many things in this book that I loved (Curdle the milk carton for instance) there was even so much more to sink into that I feel I’m almost at a loss to write this review because I want to share absolutely everything which would ruin it so I will try for some restraint but I won’t promise it completely.

Deeba is the best friend of Zanna and as it turns out Zanna is supposed to save UnLondon but she doesn’t know it yet.  You see, Zanna is the Schwazzy, the savior of UnLondon and when strange things begin to happen to her, she investigates and her curiosity leads her to, you guessed it, UnLondon with Deeba tagging along.  Deeba, well, all she wants to do is get home and when she and Zanna are finally returned to their London, all she can do is think of UnLondon and how she can get back there.  Determined to help now that Zanna “the Schwazzy” can’t, she finds a way to not only find UnLondon, but also to save it — or at least she hopes to.

Miéville has an acute refined ability to take something so simple, the world we live in for example, and turn it around so it becomes something almost unrecognizable.  I say almost because he lets us glimpse the unusual but then pulls it back just far enough so we start to wonder what he’s really after.  Is that another world I just saw, or I am dreaming, fallen into a mental state, or maybe, just maybe that world is out there, waiting…waiting for the right time and place to show itself.  In Un Lun Dun, he does that along with taking the everyday mundane (umbrellas and milk cartons) and making them the most spectacular of characters.  Yes, characters.  He takes a milk carton living in UnLondon and gives it the personality of a lap dog that only wants to be loved and trot around about your heels.  He elevates umbrellas from simple rain protection to ultimate smog repellant then transforms them into a rebrella that will help to defeat evil.  It’s this ability to take the everyday and take it to the unbelievable that keeps me reading and coming back for more.

The City and the City was my first Miéville book and I was hooked from page one.  Kraken was an absolute treat and I couldn’t wait to find out what treasure was hidden in Un Lun Dun.  I can say it was absolutely full of gems and I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on more of his writing.  For the curious, he has a new book out, Embassytown, which takes place on an alien planet.  Ask me if I’m buying that one.  Yes, the answer is yes.

If you haven’t read any Miéville, one, start, and two, start with Un Lun Dun.  It’s fun, cute if you’ll indulge me, but also a way to meet a writer that will take you places you never imagined possible within the confines of the page.  It may be considered young adult, and completely different than his other books but that’s something to love about his writing — incredible diversity.

 

 

Today’s Book – The Dark Enquiry by Deanna Raybourn

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This is my first Lady Julia Grey book, and yes, it’s book five.  I’m not, absolutely not, the type of person to read books out of order and I kept meaning to get myself to the library to pick up the first in the series and then, obviously, I didn’t or I wouldn’t be here this morning talking about book five…  While browsing NetGalley, I saw this one and decided to jump in and live with the annoyances that come with starting a series late.

It’s been all good.  I read The Dead Travel Fast last year and liked it but everyone kept saying her Lady Julia Grey novels were the best.  I have to agree.  This is a fun read.  I was worried about missing backstory but there’s enough here to keep me from getting confused but it is making me want to read more of the series so maybe that trip to the library will happen after all.

I made an attempt to find a book trailer but one hasn’t been done for this book yet, however, I did find this December 2010 interview where she talks about the series.  It does focus on the book Dark Road to Darjeeling but she makes some interests comments about her work in general I thought it worth sharing.

Review – A Clash of Kings

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A Clash of Kings

By George RR Martin

Bantam Books

eISBN: 978-0-553-89785-2

5 stars

Spoilers abound so feel free to skip this review if you want to read the series yourself and experience it without my opinions.  No feelings will be hurt in the process.  And, honestly, I don’t know how else to write this review without spoilers considering so much is going on in this series.

If you’re interested, my thoughts on A Game of Thrones can be found here.

In reading about these books, one thing that always comes up is that Martin if not a writer afraid of killing off main characters.  I love this and hate it at the same time — I become attached and he takes away just like that.   A shame but it’s also wondrous.  He’s writing about a medieval world where people are constantly fighting and in most cases, one or more lose their heads.  The death of main characters in his books makes total sense when you look at on the whole.

Beginning A Clash of Kings exactly where A Game of Thrones left off, Eddard Stark has lost his head, taken off by the new boy king, Joffrey, who spends his days being cruel to Stark’s daughter, Sansa, who was promised to be his wife.  All of Westeros is at war with no less than four men proclaiming themselves king including Robb Stark who now calls himself King of the North.  The capital, King’s Landing, is in flux with Joffrey as king, her mother Cersei playing Queen’s Regent, and her dwarf brother, Tyrion, acting as the hand to the king.  Chances for peace low, fighting goes on with everyone dying at a rate one has trouble imagining.  Daenerys, a young widow but still refusing to accept the loss of her power now that she’s tasted it, is still contemplating how to return and Jon Snow, Stark’s bastard son, is finding life as a member of the Night’s Watch more dark and despairing than he ever thought possible.

Wow.  If I had to use one word that would be all I need to describe this book.  Martin tells this story from 7, 11, 13 (I didn’t count them all but there are many) points of view.  It feels overwhelming sometimes but there’s too much going to and you can’t put it down.  You keep reading and reading interested to know what’s going to happen to each and every character.  You have that much invested.

For as much as I want to keep going with this series, I’m taking it very slow.  I could simply devour every one of these books one after the other, but I won’t.  I’m forcing myself to take it slow; one book every few months.  I’m doing this for several reasons: 1.) it’s a planned seven book series, only five books are written with the fifth coming out this July; 2.) if I come to the end of book five with nothing to look forward to for years, I may go into some sort of withdrawal and I can’t have that.

If you have a chance to pick up this series, do it.  It’s intimidating, 800+ pages, but the story is so good, fantastic really, that you’ll be completely entranced.  I highly recommend this book and the whole series, even though I’m only on book two.

Sunday Salon – Home

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Hello everyone.  It’s been quiet here the last week or so thanks to my being far, far away from a computer.  We made it back to the US mid-last week but I was too tired to do anything useful besides unpack the suitcase which was made easy by the fact it was all dirty clothes.  Since it’s Sunday, I thought this would be a good time to get back at it.

And since I didn’t read much while on vacation or write a word either — I finished The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma (very good), The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (not bad), and started Before Versailles by Karleen Koen (so far good) — I thought I would share photos from our trip to Ecuador instead.  I hope to get back to my regular posting schedule sometime this week but while I get myself used to sitting in front of a computer again, I will blind you with photos.  Oh, and by the way, it’s better if you look at them backwards.  I started to post them and realized about halfway through I was doing it first to last instead of last to first so it would make more sense and then decided I didn’t feel like doing it all over again. So if you’re interested in flow, start at the bottom.  🙂

Happy Sunday.

Overlooking Quito at night.

The elevation sign at the Cotopaxi parking lot --- over 14,000 feet above sea level. Crazy feeling.

Cotopaxi Volcano. At the base of the mountain, we couldn't see anything but clouds. It didn't clear completely but we did get to see most of the volcano.

Butterflies of Mindo.

Hummingbird in Mindo.

Monument to the true equator. Ignore the compass, it means nothing at the equator. It was our Flat Stanley. We borrowed it from a friend and didn't have a use for it so we began taking photos of it everywhere.

The monument to the equator. It's not the true equator though...

Relaxing in the hot springs in Papallacta. Yep, my toes.

View from Pinchincha Volcano. You can see a view of Quito between the peaks.

Mary that looks over Quito; blessing or judging, your choice.

The Golden Church in Quito's Old Town. You can't take pictures inside but the name is very appropriate --- everything in the church is covered in gold leaf.