peekle book blog

Yet another urban fantasy series, but one I can get along with. A traumatic event in the first book (_Greywalker_) gives Harper Blaine the power to see ghosts and other magic phenomenon. Another event later in this first book gives her more power, and then she spends the next two (_Poltergeist_, Underground) discovering what she can do. The books are interesting, well-written and -plotted, using their Seattle setting to the fullest — especially Underground, which also has one of the coolest big bad monsters ever. I read them all at a clip, and wasn’t exhausted of them by the end of the three, but I am glad there aren’t any more to read right now. The next one will be that much better for the break.

Grey is an almost-dizzyingly-inventive science-fiction romance. Sweetly compelling. At first, I thought it was going to be too stylistic for its own good, but the events (and the fashion!) going relentlessly over the top worked very well.

The Study series sputters to a close. Oh, yay, Yelena, the most powerful magician of her kind EVAR, wins the day with the help of her adoring posse, her silent assassin heart-mate <3, and not just one but TWO psychic pets. The villain is exactly who I thought it was from the very beginning (and anyone with half a brain would’ve come to the same conclusion). There’s a not-very-convincing fake-out death. Yelena is rendered unconscious so many times I almost lost track, and started rolling my eyes every time it happened.

For a series I enjoyed so much at first, I was so glad for this to be over.

#54: Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne): Classic SF, still highly readable and inventive. Really fun to read the cranky professor’s lines in a “For Science!” voice from campy ’50s SF films.

#55, 56: Poison Study, Magic Study (Maria V. Snyder): A fairly standard fantasy trilogy, written with enough flair that I am able to ignore the standard fantasy cliches that usually drive me nuts (psychic connection with pets, continually escalating magical powers) and really enjoy it.

Most of the Iain Banks books I’ve read have been of the M variety — i.e., science fiction. The non-M books have been thrillers, excepting the one that was merely almost science fiction. This one is a slowly-building family drama, mostly from the viewpoint of one character, that shifts precariously in time and sometimes in viewpoint. Banks avoids going the obvious place in the ending — I never should have doubted him — and the book has definite charms. Not better than Matter, but a good book in its own right.

The plot is the conveyor belt of your story. It trundles along at a constant speed, moving the scenes (all packed into cardboard boxes labelled “Chapter 1″ and so on) past the reader. A novel is at its best when this machinery is smooth and continuously operating. Minor hiccups aren’t so bad, and there are belt operators so skilled at stops and various diversions (Neal Stephenson, I’m looking squarely at you here) that an enthralled reader won’t even notice them.

Undead and Unworthy’s belt is in bad shape, gears grinding, the magic smoke escaping. Practically nothing happens. There’s too much shouting and too many repititions of old jokes. The body count among established characters — three — is much too high for a series this lightweight. One of them happens off-screen; the other two within the last couple of pages of the novel. The other characters react to these deaths oddly. Worst of all, perhaps, a major plot point — the one teased in the preview in the last book — goes absolutely nowhere. No pay-off whatsoever!

There are distracting mistakes and quirks in the craft of the novel as well. Two seperate times, a conversation between characters skipped a beat, making me reread it over and over to try and puzzle out who was saying what. Once I couldn’t make sense of it, and just gave up and moved on.

Very dissapointing. The author’s foreward — either in this book or the last one, I can’t remember and can’t be bothered to go and look — warns of a coming shift in tone and focus, which is a shame for a series that started so well and so merrily.

I won’t be reading any more of this series.

A classic gothic doomed-romance novel. I can’t remember whether I was assigned to read it in high school or not, but have never held that against a book like some people can. C– and I watched the 1939 film version with Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, and decided to both read the book. Amazingly readable and compelling, even if I did find the end-notes on how to decipher Joseph’s accent mandatory.

(A blackout followed by sheer laziness delayed the printing of several reviews. Oops.)

Schroeder shows his wonderful world-building talents off in Ventus, his first novel. Less polished than the Virga books but still wildly inventive and fun.