Books in the Hollows series are always compelling. In this latest entry, though, I felt like someone had told the author that she needed to work on the romance angle, so there's a half-hearted, poorly executed push-pull between our heroine, the witch demon and the elf who has been her nemesis since the first book, if I remember correctly. I do like that Rachel's love interests are always flawed, in a way that can't be brushed aside.
Hello literary lesbian romance! Well, one of the lovers is bi, so it's not strictly lesbian. While the whole novel focuses on the relationship between Indian-Irish flight attend Síle Sunita Siophán O'Shaughnessy and butch Canadian archivist Jude Turner (spoiler: the butch is the one who sleeps with men sometimes) the book as genre fiction. Dog knows I have nothing against genre fiction, but author Donoghue had different aspirations for Landing.
Before that the Turners had been broke, but Jude hadn't cared; what did she need pocket money for, when all the things she liked to do were free and she knew so many of the locals, it was like living in a book?
Writing to you reminds me that you're far away, but it also throws a kind of bridge across the abyss. It's a sad fact, couples who spend blissful lives together don't leave much trace in the archives. Whereas a love letter will outlive us both, if printed on acid-free paper and kept in a dry place.
I have a soft spot for librarian fiction, but a distaste for Gale Cengage Learning, which in addition to the crime of being a library conglomerate responsible for some overpriced electronic resources with crappy interfaces, has published at least one other librarian penned title in its Five Star genre fiction imprint.
The heroine of Before I Fall is loathsome for the first 350 or so pages of the 470 page novel, and she dies about a half dozen times. Even so, it's a diverting read, and more nuanced than you think it's going to be.
The second book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh series is just as compelling as the first, though I don't like the narrative voice quite as much. (It's a boy.) This time the focus is less on media (though of course blogging and fancy tech are still major elements) and more on medicine, medical ethics in particular.
It's 2039. Scientists have cured cancer and the common cold. Unfortunately in so doing, they have also created a virus that turns all of the dead or infected into zombies. Good thing there are some blogjournalists on the scene to find out who's weaponizing the zombies and training them on a presidential campaign.
See, Berkeley has always drawn the nuts and flakes of the academic world. That's what happens when you have a university that offers degrees in both computer science and parapsychology. It was a city primed to believe any weird thing that came across the wire, and when all those arguably crazy people started hearing rumors about the dead rising from their graves, they didn't dismiss them. They began gathering weapons, watching the streets for strange behavior and signs of sickness, and generally behaving like folks who'd actually seen a George Romero movie.
I almost put The Mockingbirds down after the first clumsy page or two, but I stuck with it, and am glad I did. It's the story of date rape and students taking the law into their own hands because the school administration is too impressed with itself to acknowledge and address the school's imperfections. The rapist is a water polo player, for dog's sake!
Even though I don't generally like them, I can handle an unreliable narrator. What I don't like is a manipulative author. Liar is an enjoyable read, but you end up irritated with it in the end. Therefore, I don't know whether to recommend it or not.
The Southern California psychic from Shattered Moon is working with the post-Rodney King beating LAPD to find a missing child. Published in 1993, this installment isn't quite as New Agey as the first in the series. There are still a lot of protective white lights being imagined around people's hearts, and Theresa Fortunato is still attracted to boorish men, so things haven't changed too much.
Future dystopia space teen love story. Reasonably compelling. Some surprises. Just the kind of thing I like to read these days.
One of the first lessons Eldest gave me when I moved to the Keeper Level was about Sol-Earth's religions. They were magic stories, fairy tales, and I remember laughing myself silly when Eldest told me how people on Sol-Earth were willing to die or kill for these fictional characters.