This was a light reading week for me. I finished one book, The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory, I have a few pages left to go in Star Trek: The Great Adventures, Book 1 by James Blish, and I managed to crack the cover on Bernard Cornwell’s Vagabond. I have three books that are due back at the library and only one is finished. I’m doing my best to read what I have checked out before getting any more. I have a list of books I’m interested in but I’m restraining myself since I have several books at the house that I would like to finish before bringing more home.

My reading always tends to slow down in December. There are so many things to do — shopping, buying a tree, walking it home (We live in a city and, yes, we walk our tree home. We did it yesterday while it snowed. It seemed very fitting.), decorating, parties, visiting friends. I feel like I should be slowing down since it’s the end of the year but there are too many fun things to do to slow down now.

So, two very quick reviews before the tree decorating commences.

The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory — In a small town in Tennessee, a strange new disease attacks the population and the ones that survive begin transforming. In the end, survivors become one of three new human-like races — argos (giant like humans), betas (wine colored humans that show no emotion), and charlies (large, squat almost round humans). Pax, the son of the town’s preacher, was not infected, a skip as people in the town like to refer to the unaffected.  He moved away as soon as he could after the transformation. Now, he’s returning for the funeral of one of his best friends. What he finds in the town changes his life forever. The Devil’s Alphabet was an OK story. The writing was good but the main character, Pax, doesn’t ask a lot of questions and is all right with feeling left out and not understanding what people are talking about. I felt left out too and didn’t care for it. I’m not one for having everything explained to me but it’s nice to know what the characters are talking about.

Star Trek: The Great Adventures, Book 1 by James Blish — I still have a few pages left but did want to mention what fun it is. It’s a box set of 5 books all containing several short stories. Each story is an episode with all the Star Trek nuances that fans have become accustomed to. One small caveat, I think you need to be a fan to get the most out of it. I have watched a lot of Star Trek over the years so these are turning out to be fun, quick reads for me.

Well, onto a new week of reading.

My very first Sunday Salon! And, oddly, one of my lightest reading weeks in well, weeks. I finished Nefertiti by Michelle Moran and started Fallen by Lauren Kate. I hope to finish Fallen before the end of the day today.

Since I don’t have much to talk about, I thought I’d do two mini-reviews.

Nefertiti

Nefertiti — With this book, I’ve now read all of Michelle Moran’s books. She’s become one of my new favorite authors and I’m looking forward to her next book already. I read somewhere that it takes place in 16th or 17th Century France and I’m sure she’ll do it justice. As a small side note, that’s one of my favorite historical periods to read about. I don’t really know why, it just is. Anyway, in Nefertiti, she takes us to 1351 BCE Egypt. The Pharaoh Amunhotep IV, soon to be Akhenaten, takes power when his brother dies. His mother, Queen Tiye, wants him to marry a strong woman who will be able to control him. She picks Nefertiti. Nefertiti is cunning, cruel, sweet, loving, manipulative, and so ambitious that she drips with it. Of course she shows none of this to the Queen mother and when the marriage is arranged, her family becomes one of the most powerful in Egypt. Soon, Nefertiti and Akhenaten begin building their dream city, Amarna, in the desert and their empire, built on the backs of soldiers and gold from outlawed temples, begins to crumble around them. The story is told from Nefertiti’s sister’s point of view, Mutnodjmet, who is a wonderfully sweet loving person who just wants to be alone with her garden but, unfortunately, her sister won’t allow her that kind of peace. I enjoyed this book and do recommend it. Moran has a way of creating characters that are really engaging and she manages to pull you into the story before you even know it.

Fallen

Fallen — I still have about 75 pages to go so here’s the short re-cap. Luce is involved in the unexplained death of a classmate at her boarding school. She doesn’t remember what happened and can’t explain the fire that killed him and almost took her life. A judge orders her to reform school, the Sword & Cross, and the day she checks in she’s drawn to one student, Daniel. He isn’t nice to her, doesn’t want anything to do with her, and she can’t leave him alone or get him out of her head. And then there are the shadows. Medication and psychiatrists have not been able to rid her of these sightings and now they are coming even closer and becoming more daring, absolutely terrifying her. It started out really slow for me but around the middle of the book, it began to pick up and now I’m looking forward to the ending. This is the first in a series and I think I’ll probably read the others as well.

OK, now that I’ve written more than I’ve read all week, I’m calling that an end to my first Sunday Salon.