Michelle's bookshelf: dtb-own en-US Sun, 04 May 2025 12:07:27 -0700 60 Michelle's bookshelf: dtb-own 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Neuromancer 6899631 271 William Gibson Michelle 5
Once upon a different time in college, I read Neuromancer with a sci-fi lit class. Even though it was more than a decade old at that time, it was exciting and fresh and wildly different (to be fair, that whole class was excellently curated). A punky-ass early 20s deeply flawed protagonist! A grunged-up, lived-in, dirty-around-the-edges reality! With money and computer skills, the world is your oyster! I remember it as fast-paced and take-no-prisoners, and it launched an incredible discussion in class about the nature of reality and the future of science fiction.

It's now been 35 years since the ideas and style of Neuromancer made waves in the sci-fi pool. It was the recent Pick for my IRL book club, and I was both very interested to see how the first-time readers in the group responded to it, as well as how it held up over the years. And, well, Citizen Kane strikes again. The book is written largely in the trade jargon of its hackers and street rats, and while I actually enjoy a book that makes me work a bit to get everything, several other folks found it needlessly opaque. The ideas of "the matrix" and "cyberspace" and "noir down on his luck dead end has-been + badass femme fatale" that were so fresh and new 20 years ago felt clichéd to more than one reader. And for me, the punky drug addict with zero character growth despite some major life events now feels more pathetic than anti-establishment. Neuromancer's place in the canon is well-deserved - a thousand ships of concepts were launched here - but at this point, it might be best appreciated with a solid dose of historic/literary context.]]> 3.66 1984 Neuromancer
author: William Gibson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/21
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: sci-fi, 1001-books, dtb-own, award_winner, rereads, book_club_irl
review:
Once upon a time in college, I sat down to watch 'Citizen Kane' after the AFI 100 Movies list declared critical consensus to be that it was the best movie of all time. I was lost for the first half hour - it was rambling, boring, and I just did not get the fuss. A friend of my roommate's excitedly sat down to watch when he saw what was on, and then kept up a running commentary of how *this shot* was the first time anyone had done that and why it mattered. The film was ultimately far more interesting with its far-reaching historical impact than it was solo.

Once upon a different time in college, I read Neuromancer with a sci-fi lit class. Even though it was more than a decade old at that time, it was exciting and fresh and wildly different (to be fair, that whole class was excellently curated). A punky-ass early 20s deeply flawed protagonist! A grunged-up, lived-in, dirty-around-the-edges reality! With money and computer skills, the world is your oyster! I remember it as fast-paced and take-no-prisoners, and it launched an incredible discussion in class about the nature of reality and the future of science fiction.

It's now been 35 years since the ideas and style of Neuromancer made waves in the sci-fi pool. It was the recent Pick for my IRL book club, and I was both very interested to see how the first-time readers in the group responded to it, as well as how it held up over the years. And, well, Citizen Kane strikes again. The book is written largely in the trade jargon of its hackers and street rats, and while I actually enjoy a book that makes me work a bit to get everything, several other folks found it needlessly opaque. The ideas of "the matrix" and "cyberspace" and "noir down on his luck dead end has-been + badass femme fatale" that were so fresh and new 20 years ago felt clichéd to more than one reader. And for me, the punky drug addict with zero character growth despite some major life events now feels more pathetic than anti-establishment. Neuromancer's place in the canon is well-deserved - a thousand ships of concepts were launched here - but at this point, it might be best appreciated with a solid dose of historic/literary context.
]]> <![CDATA[Retribution Falls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #1)]]> 6285903 380 Chris Wooding 0575085150 Michelle 0 3.98 2009 Retribution Falls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #1)
author: Chris Wooding
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read, fantasy, sci-fi, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gates (Samuel Johnson, #1)]]> 6762281
Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund Boswell are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Hallowe’en. Which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Avenue.

The Abernathys don’t mean any harm by their flirtation with Satanism. But it just happens to coincide with a malfunction in the Large Hadron Collider that creates a gap in the universe. A gap in which there is a pair of enormous gates. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out. . . .

Can Samuel persuade anyone to take this seriously? Can he harness the power of science to save the world as we know it?
]]> 293 John Connolly 1439172633 Michelle 3
'The Gates' is a light confection of British humor pitched for precocious kids, regarding the opening of the gates of hell due to a demonic glitch in the large hadron collider at CERN ripping a teeny hole in the fabric of space-time. A plucky boy and his dog and his scooby gang friends and his divorced mum have to do battle to save the world from the destruction of small town UK; demons get bashed over the head, vicars get into arguments with the walking dead, and John Cleese read this in my brain. It's silly and a little pleased with its own cleverness, and oh wow I would have loved this if I read it when I was half my age, but at this stage it's just a little too twee and contrived. If you're maybe a bit less cynical than I, give it a whirl. ]]> 3.71 2009 The Gates (Samuel Johnson, #1)
author: John Connolly
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: fantasy, sci-fi, dtb-own, kids_and_y-a, hilarity
review:
2.5 stars

'The Gates' is a light confection of British humor pitched for precocious kids, regarding the opening of the gates of hell due to a demonic glitch in the large hadron collider at CERN ripping a teeny hole in the fabric of space-time. A plucky boy and his dog and his scooby gang friends and his divorced mum have to do battle to save the world from the destruction of small town UK; demons get bashed over the head, vicars get into arguments with the walking dead, and John Cleese read this in my brain. It's silly and a little pleased with its own cleverness, and oh wow I would have loved this if I read it when I was half my age, but at this stage it's just a little too twee and contrived. If you're maybe a bit less cynical than I, give it a whirl.
]]> <![CDATA[Through Wolf's Eyes (Firekeeper Saga, #1)]]> 817015
Some of the humans think she may be the lost heir to their throne. This could be good-and it could be very, very dangerous. In the months to come, learning to behave like a human will turn out to be more complicated than she'd ever imagined.

But though human ways might be stranger than anything found in the forest, the infighting in the human's pack is nothing Firekeeper hasn't seen before. That, she understands just fine. She's not your standard-issue princess-and this is not your standard-issue fairy tale.]]> 594 Jane Lindskold 0312874278 Michelle 4 3.98 2001 Through Wolf's Eyes (Firekeeper Saga, #1)
author: Jane Lindskold
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: dtb-own, fantasy, dragons-beasties, war_is_hell
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8)]]> 22668811
When her mate’s ex-wife storms back into their lives, Mercy knows something isn’t right. Christy has the furthest thing from good intentions—she wants Adam back, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get him, including turning the pack against Mercy.

Mercy isn’t about to step down without a fight, but there’s a more dangerous threat circling. As the bodies start piling up, she must put her personal troubles aside to face a creature with the power to tear her whole world apart.]]> 292 Patricia Briggs 0425256278 Michelle 3
It's been nearly a decade since I've picked up a Mercy book, and yet with Frost Burned and this one, I was able to step right back into her story without feeling like I'm missing anything. These books are compulsively readable, filled with living, breathing, thinking characters so easy to root for and spend time with. In these past two, though, there's not much in the way of development of the larger story arc, and both read like a "monster of the week" where some new big bad guy shows up in town. And boy howdy does Mercy get beat up a lot, yikes. Still, they're fun and engaging to the point I'm wondering why the next one in the series isn't sitting here in front of me ready to read...]]> 4.43 2014 Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8)
author: Patricia Briggs
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/07
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: shapeshifters, urban_fantasy, dtb-own
review:
3.5 stars

It's been nearly a decade since I've picked up a Mercy book, and yet with Frost Burned and this one, I was able to step right back into her story without feeling like I'm missing anything. These books are compulsively readable, filled with living, breathing, thinking characters so easy to root for and spend time with. In these past two, though, there's not much in the way of development of the larger story arc, and both read like a "monster of the week" where some new big bad guy shows up in town. And boy howdy does Mercy get beat up a lot, yikes. Still, they're fun and engaging to the point I'm wondering why the next one in the series isn't sitting here in front of me ready to read...
]]> The Dragon Waiting 1744640 383 John M. Ford 0380698870 Michelle 4 The Hollow Crown. And yet, I didn't dig into Byzantine or Italian Renaissance history, so I still very much needed the supremely helpful breadcrumb path laid out in , a chapter-by chapter annotation of all the people, places, and events from real history that make an appearance in this fantasy.

And krikey that makes this sound like a joyless slog, and hooboy that's a lot of work for a book, and it was slow going but interesting.

So as soon as I was done, I read it a second time straight through, and on that run it sang.

Dragon is a play in 3 acts: The first is a series of stand-alone short stories, each of which is achingly beautiful, a musing on the human condition, on loss of innocence and the potential inside each of us. The second is a locked-room murder mystery, very old fashioned, very clever, the kind of thing that's a delight to pick apart both the plot and the hidden motivations of the secretive people snowed in together at this crossroads inn. It also just so happens to acquaint the fourth character to each of the three from those introductory short stories, so that in our third act, we can go on a quest with them to battle against empire and put a new king on the throne of England. It's subtle and slyly funny, every character has a lived-in breathing backstory, all magic has a price, and it's the sort of art that really just strikes you with the deftly wielded talent of the artist.

So I absolutely get the slew of 5* reviews, because this utterly belongs in that Fantasy Masterworks collection that a later reprint pulled it into. But yeah, it made me work harder than I typically do, so I'm not knocking the harsher reviews either. But it's still so very, very worth it.

For a more detailed review, Jo Walton loved it, and hey that's good enough for me too: ]]> 3.71 1983 The Dragon Waiting
author: John M. Ford
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: award_winner, alternate_history, historical-fantasy, fantasy, vampires, dtb-own, book_club_irl
review:
John M Ford's masterpiece occupied my reading time for most of a month. I knew it was dense going in, and that the density was part of the praises heaped upon it - a book you can really sink your teeth/time into! I knew that being familiar with the history helped unlock the ways in which history was being played with, so I did homework ahead of time, consuming Plantagenet history with The Hollow Crown. And yet, I didn't dig into Byzantine or Italian Renaissance history, so I still very much needed the supremely helpful breadcrumb path laid out in , a chapter-by chapter annotation of all the people, places, and events from real history that make an appearance in this fantasy.

And krikey that makes this sound like a joyless slog, and hooboy that's a lot of work for a book, and it was slow going but interesting.

So as soon as I was done, I read it a second time straight through, and on that run it sang.

Dragon is a play in 3 acts: The first is a series of stand-alone short stories, each of which is achingly beautiful, a musing on the human condition, on loss of innocence and the potential inside each of us. The second is a locked-room murder mystery, very old fashioned, very clever, the kind of thing that's a delight to pick apart both the plot and the hidden motivations of the secretive people snowed in together at this crossroads inn. It also just so happens to acquaint the fourth character to each of the three from those introductory short stories, so that in our third act, we can go on a quest with them to battle against empire and put a new king on the throne of England. It's subtle and slyly funny, every character has a lived-in breathing backstory, all magic has a price, and it's the sort of art that really just strikes you with the deftly wielded talent of the artist.

So I absolutely get the slew of 5* reviews, because this utterly belongs in that Fantasy Masterworks collection that a later reprint pulled it into. But yeah, it made me work harder than I typically do, so I'm not knocking the harsher reviews either. But it's still so very, very worth it.

For a more detailed review, Jo Walton loved it, and hey that's good enough for me too:
]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6520929
His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.]]> 535 Hilary Mantel 0805080686 Michelle 4
I've had a theme for the past couple of months, revisiting Plantagenet/Tudor history (which is absolutely wild in its own right via nonfiction The Hollow Crown then fiction The Dragon Waiting. Both the latter and Wolf Hall seek to take a character reviled as a villain and tell a more nuanced story within the boundaries of historic fact. Dragon does so by adding fantasy elements, Wolf does so by turning deeply inward and creating a character study. After all, nobody thinks of themselves as evil or wrong-headed.

Mantel fleshes out the history with rich details about the society that royalty and commoners walked in, and by focusing on the infamously common-born Thomas Cromwell, she illustrates both the have and have-not sides of the coin. We're in his mind a whole lot, and it's an educated, witty, practical place to be. It's also intermittently hilarious (not a flavor I associate with Booker Prize winners), since Cromwell is painted with a very very dry sense of humor:
“The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.� He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.�


It's a chonky doorstop for sure, and yes the pacing gets a bit slow in a few places, but when it's off and running this book is both charming and fascinating.

]]> 3.87 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: historical-fiction, dtb-own, award_winner
review:
What a fascinating window into someone else's mind!

I've had a theme for the past couple of months, revisiting Plantagenet/Tudor history (which is absolutely wild in its own right via nonfiction The Hollow Crown then fiction The Dragon Waiting. Both the latter and Wolf Hall seek to take a character reviled as a villain and tell a more nuanced story within the boundaries of historic fact. Dragon does so by adding fantasy elements, Wolf does so by turning deeply inward and creating a character study. After all, nobody thinks of themselves as evil or wrong-headed.

Mantel fleshes out the history with rich details about the society that royalty and commoners walked in, and by focusing on the infamously common-born Thomas Cromwell, she illustrates both the have and have-not sides of the coin. We're in his mind a whole lot, and it's an educated, witty, practical place to be. It's also intermittently hilarious (not a flavor I associate with Booker Prize winners), since Cromwell is painted with a very very dry sense of humor:
“The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.� He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.�


It's a chonky doorstop for sure, and yes the pacing gets a bit slow in a few places, but when it's off and running this book is both charming and fascinating.


]]> <![CDATA[Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7)]]> 477732
Luckily, however, he's not alone. Although most people don't believe in magic, the Chicago P.D. has a Special Investigations department, headed by his good friend Karrin Murphy. They deal with the . . . stranger cases. It's down to Karrin that Harry sneaks into Graceland Cemetery to meet a vampire named Mavra. Mavra has evidence that would destroy Karrin's career, and her demands are simple. She wants the Word of Kemmler - and all the power that comes with it. But first, Harry's keen to know what he'd be handing over. Before long he's racing against time, and six necromancers, to get the Word. And to prevent a Halloween that would truly wake the dead.

Magic - it can get a guy killed.]]> 396 Jim Butcher 0451460278 Michelle 5 4.35 2005 Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/09
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: dtb-own, witches_wizards, urban_fantasy, wow-wtf, dragons-beasties, music
review:

]]> The Silver Metal Lover 293656 1 Tanith Lee 0809950006 Michelle 5 4.17 1981 The Silver Metal Lover
author: Tanith Lee
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-reread, worldview, dtb-own, romance, sci-fi
review:

]]> Steel's Edge (The Edge, #4) 12119496 The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Wal-Mart and magic is a fairy tale—and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny�

Charlotte de Ney is as noble as they come, a blueblood straight out of the Weird. But even though she possesses rare magical healing abilities, her life has brought her nothing but pain. After her marriage crumbles, she flees to the Edge to build a new home for herself. Until Richard Mar is brought to her for treatment, and Charlotte’s life is turned upside down once again.

Richard is a swordsman without peer, future head of his large and rambunctious Edger clan—and he’s on a clandestine quest to wipe out slavers trafficking humans in the Weird. So when his presence leads his very dangerous enemies to Charlotte, she vows to help Richard destroy them. The slavers� operation, however, goes deeper than Richard knows, and even working together, Charlotte and Richard may not survive...]]> 388 Ilona Andrews 1937007820 Michelle 3 dtb-own, fantasy, romance 4.16 2012 Steel's Edge (The Edge, #4)
author: Ilona Andrews
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2020/09/13
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: dtb-own, fantasy, romance
review:
Ilona Andrews ties up the edge series with a greatest-hits sort of last battle, in which we get to check up old friends (everyone is doing just fine, thanks, despite how fiesty and independent they all are), kick the asses of old enemies that had it coming, save the day, and get a Happily Ever After thrown in. Villains are of the dastardly moustache-twirling variety, heroes are bad boys with a noble streak, heroines are capably talented and deserve better guys than their crap exes. You know beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what will happen in this book, the literary equivalent of a decent quality sheet cake: it's sweet, predictable, and doesn't inspire any regrets.
]]> Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1) 5022352 Here is the novel that will be forever considered Frank Herbert's triumph of the imagination.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice� melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for....

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.]]> 541 Frank Herbert Michelle 5 4.16 1965 Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/05
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves: sci-fi, worldview, to-reread, dtb-own, award_winner, there-s-a-movie-too, rereads, witches_wizards
review:
2024 reread: I remember being fascinated by this book back in my 20s and wanted to revisit it after watching the 2nd half of Villeneuve's attempt to adapt this doorstop. The pacing of the book is simply masterful - despite its hefty page count, the plot marches briskly and doesn't get bogged down in the amazing worldbuilding. It's fascinating how different the two movie versions are, yet each one captures a different facet of the genuine spirit of what's on the page.
]]> My Real Children 18490637
Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War—those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles?

Two lives, two worlds, two versions of modern history. Each with their loves and losses, their sorrows and triumphs. My Real Children is the tale of both of Patricia Cowan's lives...and of how every life means the entire world.]]> 320 Jo Walton 0765332655 Michelle 5 3.77 2014 My Real Children
author: Jo Walton
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/06
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: award_winner, alternate_history, sci-fi, lit_fic, dtb-own
review:

]]> Wanderlust (Sirantha Jax, #2) 3182799 Sirantha Jax doesn’t take chances� she jumps at them�

Sirantha Jax is a “Jumper,� a woman who possesses the unique genetic makeup needed to navigate faster than light ships through grimspace. Jax has worked for the Farwan Corporation her entire career. But now the word’s out that the Corp deliberately crashed a passenger ship, and their stranglehold on intergalactic commerce has crumbled—which means that Jax is out of a job.

She’s also broke, due to being declared dead a little prematurely. So when the government asks her to head up a vital diplomatic mission, Jax takes it. Her mandate: journey to the planet Ithiss-Tor and convince them to join the Conglomerate.

But Jax’s payday is light years away. First, she’ll have to contend with Syndicate criminals, a stormy relationship with her pilot, man-eating aliens, and her own grimspace-weakened body. She’ll be lucky just to make it to Ithiss-Tor alive…]]> 312 Ann Aguirre 0441016278 Michelle 3 Grimspace, we met a brash spacepilot on the edge of burn-out. she and a scruffy bunch of space-pirates careened all over the known universe, racing one step ahead of the corporation that owns and operates pretty much everyone and everything. the goals they're pursuing throughout that first book, important though they are, are far-reaching and aren't anywhere near completed by the end, so the series felt very well set up (though sans the annoyance of a cliffhanger) and ready to move on to further installments.

rather unexpectedly, then, this book feels disappointingly like a bunch of filler that exists mainly to set the stage for the remainder of the series. Jax is tapped to be an ambassador to a far-off world only because she's basically the only human on speaking terms with any of the insect-like aliens...and then spends the entire book dodging and weaving on her way to just get to that other planet. most gratingly, several of the classic romance-novel tropes crop up in the main character's relationship (miscommunication, running away from intimacy), though i otherwise wouldn't have all classified this as a romance novel.

oh well. the characterization is still really solid, and the adventure whizzes along at break-neck speed, so we still have an zippy and engaging read. here's hoping the rest of the series finds its feet more solidly.

2015 edit: yep, just like the first time i read this one, the follow-up to the super fun adventure Grimspace falls rather heavily into second-tale-itis. while the characterization feels much more solid and real this time around (there's plenty of good reasons to make our headstrong heroine an ambassador), it's still a lot of wheel-spinning. in other words, if the mission is stated explicitly from the first as "we need to go to this other planet to open diplomatic relations" but you never actually make it to that planet, the plot feels a little aimless.]]> 3.87 2008 Wanderlust (Sirantha Jax, #2)
author: Ann Aguirre
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2015/08/31
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: dtb-own, sci-fi, romance, rereads
review:
in Grimspace, we met a brash spacepilot on the edge of burn-out. she and a scruffy bunch of space-pirates careened all over the known universe, racing one step ahead of the corporation that owns and operates pretty much everyone and everything. the goals they're pursuing throughout that first book, important though they are, are far-reaching and aren't anywhere near completed by the end, so the series felt very well set up (though sans the annoyance of a cliffhanger) and ready to move on to further installments.

rather unexpectedly, then, this book feels disappointingly like a bunch of filler that exists mainly to set the stage for the remainder of the series. Jax is tapped to be an ambassador to a far-off world only because she's basically the only human on speaking terms with any of the insect-like aliens...and then spends the entire book dodging and weaving on her way to just get to that other planet. most gratingly, several of the classic romance-novel tropes crop up in the main character's relationship (miscommunication, running away from intimacy), though i otherwise wouldn't have all classified this as a romance novel.

oh well. the characterization is still really solid, and the adventure whizzes along at break-neck speed, so we still have an zippy and engaging read. here's hoping the rest of the series finds its feet more solidly.

2015 edit: yep, just like the first time i read this one, the follow-up to the super fun adventure Grimspace falls rather heavily into second-tale-itis. while the characterization feels much more solid and real this time around (there's plenty of good reasons to make our headstrong heroine an ambassador), it's still a lot of wheel-spinning. in other words, if the mission is stated explicitly from the first as "we need to go to this other planet to open diplomatic relations" but you never actually make it to that planet, the plot feels a little aimless.
]]> Grimspace (Sirantha Jax, #1) 1828067 312 Ann Aguirre 0441015999 Michelle 5
i sincerely wish i could remember what individual or book group recommended this to me, because it's absolutely all it was cracked up to be. a dark, edgy heroine (she carries the ultimately fatal gene necessary for interstellar travel that allows her to manipulate in-between-space, so she's rarer and more valuable than imaginable, yet fatalistically damaged) zips all over known space with a rogue's gallery of off-the-grid mercs to figure out why the company that trained her gave out her burn notice. a cracking good adventure tale with a touch of romance, swarthy pirates, buggy aliens, and a light hand with social commentary thrown in to boot.

2016 edit: maybe not quite as thrilling the 2nd time around, but still a great adventure story, with utterly memorable characters.]]> 3.73 2008 Grimspace (Sirantha Jax, #1)
author: Ann Aguirre
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2016/07/29
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: dtb-own, sci-fi, feminism, rereads
review:
4.5 stars.

i sincerely wish i could remember what individual or book group recommended this to me, because it's absolutely all it was cracked up to be. a dark, edgy heroine (she carries the ultimately fatal gene necessary for interstellar travel that allows her to manipulate in-between-space, so she's rarer and more valuable than imaginable, yet fatalistically damaged) zips all over known space with a rogue's gallery of off-the-grid mercs to figure out why the company that trained her gave out her burn notice. a cracking good adventure tale with a touch of romance, swarthy pirates, buggy aliens, and a light hand with social commentary thrown in to boot.

2016 edit: maybe not quite as thrilling the 2nd time around, but still a great adventure story, with utterly memorable characters.
]]> Cold Magic (Spiritwalker, #1) 7114825 528 Kate Elliott 1841498815 Michelle 5
Cathereine, a smart (and smart-mouthed) woman on the cusp of her legal adulthood at 20 is suddenly required to marry a powerful mage due to a mysterious contract between their families. overwhelmed, she goes with him as the law and familial honor demand, but learns that nothing about her life is what it seems. there's a far murkier and wider political sphere than she's ever noticed, her parents may have been rebels in it, in fact nothing about her family is what she's always believed to be true, she's got a husband she doesn't know and can't possibly trust, and there's no way of knowing how she fits in to the bigger picture or just what is going on.

racing from peril to adventure seeking the answers makes for un-put-down-able reading. very recommended, but with that wide-open (thankfully not cliff hanger-y!!) ending, you'll wish the sequel was available.]]> 3.72 2010 Cold Magic (Spiritwalker, #1)
author: Kate Elliott
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/20
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: fantasy, book_club, dtb-own, witches_wizards, rereads
review:
4.5 stars, with my only quibble being that this book is very much the first in a longer whole, rather than a fully complete tale on its own.

Cathereine, a smart (and smart-mouthed) woman on the cusp of her legal adulthood at 20 is suddenly required to marry a powerful mage due to a mysterious contract between their families. overwhelmed, she goes with him as the law and familial honor demand, but learns that nothing about her life is what it seems. there's a far murkier and wider political sphere than she's ever noticed, her parents may have been rebels in it, in fact nothing about her family is what she's always believed to be true, she's got a husband she doesn't know and can't possibly trust, and there's no way of knowing how she fits in to the bigger picture or just what is going on.

racing from peril to adventure seeking the answers makes for un-put-down-able reading. very recommended, but with that wide-open (thankfully not cliff hanger-y!!) ending, you'll wish the sequel was available.
]]> Cassiel's Servant 61884931 The lush epic fantasy that inspired a generation with a single “Love As Thou Wilt."

Returning to the realm of Terre d’Ange which captured an entire generation of fantasy readers, New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Carey brings us a hero’s journey for a new era.

In Kushiel’s Dart , a daring young courtesan uncovered a plot to destroy her beloved homeland. But hers is only half the tale. Now see the other half of the heart that lived it.

Cassiel’s Servant is a retelling of cult favorite Kushiel’s Dar t from the point of view of Joscelin, Cassiline warrior-priest and protector of Phèdre nó Delaunay. He’s sworn to celibacy and the blade as surely as she’s pledged to pleasure, but the gods they serve have bound them together. When both are betrayed, they must rely on each other to survive.

From his earliest training to captivity amongst their enemies, his journey with Phèdre to avert the conquest of Terre D’Ange shatters body and mind� and brings him an impossible love that he will do anything to keep.

Even if it means breaking all vows and losing his soul.]]> 528 Jacqueline Carey 1250208335 Michelle 4 Kushiel's Dart since it clocks in at merely half of that tome's weight. But ahhh, that little bit of nuance is especially delicious when you do wholeheartedly love that character, and Joscelin was never allowed to speak his own voice, being much a man of action instead.

I didn't re-read any of the original trilogy before starting this one, but did pick up the first of the sequel trilogy a few months ago, in which Joscelin is older and wiser and settled in peaceably with his gods-touched love, years of quiet in between the trauma of those first 3 books and the present. 'Cassiel's Servant' feels a lot like that mature Joscelin has settled down to write his memoirs, as though he's viewing things from a distance and documenting the events for history. In his own voice, he cannily avoids revealing the specifics of the Casseline Brotherhood's training traditions that outsiders cannot know, he notes precisely which historic personages were present at key events, he gently rues his own stiff neck and outrage at Phedre's courtesanery, he's judicious if not outright prim about mentioning any details of their lovemaking. Joscelin's voice didn't belong in 'Kushiel's Dart' - Phedre's story through and through - but without him she "would have died a dozen times over" as she recounts in this book's end, and it's lovely to hear from him this time. ]]> 4.21 2023 Cassiel's Servant
author: Jacqueline Carey
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: dtb-own, war_is_hell, fantasy, romance
review:
These "hero's POV" novels are fairly popular for big fantasy/romance series, and I generally don't get much out of them. Any original novels attain popular status because the author was already talented with expressing the emotions of their creations, so seeing it from the other side just adds a little nuance, rarely anything genuinely new. 'Cassiel's Servant' isn't far from that formula - exactly what you'd presume, it's a victory lap for a much beloved character - and would be a poor starting place for the thorny political intrigue filling Kushiel's Dart since it clocks in at merely half of that tome's weight. But ahhh, that little bit of nuance is especially delicious when you do wholeheartedly love that character, and Joscelin was never allowed to speak his own voice, being much a man of action instead.

I didn't re-read any of the original trilogy before starting this one, but did pick up the first of the sequel trilogy a few months ago, in which Joscelin is older and wiser and settled in peaceably with his gods-touched love, years of quiet in between the trauma of those first 3 books and the present. 'Cassiel's Servant' feels a lot like that mature Joscelin has settled down to write his memoirs, as though he's viewing things from a distance and documenting the events for history. In his own voice, he cannily avoids revealing the specifics of the Casseline Brotherhood's training traditions that outsiders cannot know, he notes precisely which historic personages were present at key events, he gently rues his own stiff neck and outrage at Phedre's courtesanery, he's judicious if not outright prim about mentioning any details of their lovemaking. Joscelin's voice didn't belong in 'Kushiel's Dart' - Phedre's story through and through - but without him she "would have died a dozen times over" as she recounts in this book's end, and it's lovely to hear from him this time.
]]> <![CDATA[Lore Olympus: Volume Three (Lore Olympus, #3)]]> 60149524 Witness what the gods do after dark in the third volume of a stylish and contemporary reimagining of one of the best-known stories in Greek mythology, featuring a brand-new, exclusive short story from creator Rachel Smythe.

"It is natural for a King to be curious about his future Queen. . . ."

All of Olympus--and the Underworld--are talking about the God of the Dead and the sprightly daughter of Demeter. But despite the rumors of their romance, Hades and Persephone have plenty to navigate on their own.

Since coming to Olympus, Persephone has struggled to be the perfect maiden goddess. Her attraction to Hades has only complicated the intense burden of the gods' expectations. And after Apollo's assault, Persephone fears she can no longer bury the intense feelings of hurt and love that she's worked so hard to hide.

As Persephone contemplates her future, Hades struggles with his past, falling back into toxic habits in Minthe's easy embrace. With all the mounting pressure and expectations--of their family, friends, and enemies--both Hades and Persephone tell themselves to deny their deepest desires, but the pull between them is too tempting, too magnetic. It's fate.

This full-color edition of Smythe's original Eisner-nominated webcomic Lore Olympus brings Greek mythology into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.

This volume collects episodes 50-75 of the #1 WEBTOON comic Lore Olympus.]]> 384 Rachel Smythe 0593160312 Michelle 0 4.47 2022 Lore Olympus: Volume Three (Lore Olympus, #3)
author: Rachel Smythe
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/10
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, feminism, gods, myths-fables, rereads, graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lore Olympus: Volume One (Lore Olympus, #1)]]> 57282218
Persephone, young goddess of spring, is new to Olympus. Her mother, Demeter, has raised her in the mortal realm, but after Persephone promises to train as a sacred virgin, she’s allowed to live in the fast-moving, glamorous world of the gods. When her roommate, Artemis, takes her to a party, her entire life changes: she ends up meeting Hades and feels an immediate spark with the charming yet misunderstood ruler of the Underworld. Now Persephone must navigate the confusing politics and relationships that rule Olympus, while also figuring out her own place—and her own power.

This edition of Smythe’s original Eisner-winning webcomic Lore Olympus features a brand-new, exclusive short story, and brings the Greek Pantheon into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.

This volume collects episodes 1-25 of the #1 WEBTOON comic, Lore Olympus.]]> 384 Rachel Smythe 0593160290 Michelle 4 4.22 2021 Lore Olympus: Volume One (Lore Olympus, #1)
author: Rachel Smythe
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2023/10/10
shelves: award_winner, dtb-own, graphic-novels, myths-fables, fantasy, gods, rereads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lore Olympus: Volume Two (Lore Olympus, #2)]]> 57717417 Witness what the gods do after dark in the second volume of a stylish and contemporary reimagining of one of the best-known stories in Greek mythology, featuring a brand-new, exclusive short story from creator Rachel Smythe.

Persephone was ready to start a new life when she left the mortal realm for Olympus. However, she quickly discovered the dark side of her glamorous new home � from the relatively minor gossip threatening her reputation to a realm-shattering violation of her safety by the conceited Apollo � and she's struggling to find her footing in the fast-moving realm of the gods. Hades is also off balance, fighting against his burgeoning feelings for the young goddess of spring while maintaining his lonely rule of the Underworld. As the pair are drawn ever closer, they must untangle the twisted webs of their past and present to build toward a new future.

This edition of Smythe’s original Eisner Award–winning webcomic Lore Olympus features a brand-new, exclusive short story from creator Rachel Smythe and brings the Greek pantheon into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.

This volume collects episodes 26�49 of the #1 WEBTOON comic Lore Olympus.]]> 368 Rachel Smythe 059335608X Michelle 4 4.42 2022 Lore Olympus: Volume Two (Lore Olympus, #2)
author: Rachel Smythe
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/04
date added: 2023/10/10
shelves: dtb-own, feminism, gods, graphic-novels, fantasy, myths-fables, rereads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Galveston (Resurrection Man, #3)]]> 1005153
Now it is twenty years later. The Mardi Gras continues. The revellers dance on, the singing never stops, and of the thousands who wander in, only a handful ever return to the real world�

On this particular night, Sloane Gardner wanders in. In part, to see her stepfather, Momus, the leader of the carnival city. In part, to save her mother. “I just can’t stand to see her die,� she says. But her choice of words is unfortunate. Momus, with his twisted sense of humor, makes sure she misses everything. For four days Sloane is swallowed in dance, in song—blinded by Mardi Gras. And what happens to the people on the other side while she is gone can never be changed…]]> 454 Sean Stewart 0441006868 Michelle 0 3.87 2000 Galveston (Resurrection Man, #3)
author: Sean Stewart
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/10
shelves: to-read, award_winner, fantasy, magical-realism, local-color-tx, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Persian Boy (Alexander the Great, #2)]]> 67700 The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander’s life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon army conquered his homeland.
Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes-mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexander’s mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone.]]> 420 Mary Renault 0394751019 Michelle 0 4.18 1972 The Persian Boy (Alexander the Great, #2)
author: Mary Renault
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/05
shelves: to-read-ebook, ebook, dtb-own, historical-fiction, to-reread, lit_fic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kushiel's Scion (Imriel's Trilogy, #1)]]> 6586772 An alternate cover of this edition can be found here

Imriel de la Courcel's birth parents are history's most reviled traitors, but his adoptive parents, the Comtesse Phedre and the warrior-priest Joscelin, are Terre d'Ange's greatest champions.

Stolen, tortured and enslaved as a young boy, Imriel is now a Prince of the Blood; third in line for the throne in a land that revels in art, beauty and desire. It is a court steeped in deeply laid conspiracies---and there are many who would see the young prince dead. Some despise him out of hatred for his mother, Melisande, who nearly destroyed the entire realm in her quest for power. Others because they fear he has inherited his mother's irresistible allure---and her dangerous gifts.

As he comes of age, plagued by unwanted desires, Imriel shares their fears. When a simple act of friendship traps Imriel in a besieged city where the infamous Melisande is worshiped as a goddess and where a dead man leads an army, the Prince must face his greatest test: to find his true self.]]> 769 Jacqueline Carey Michelle 4 dtb-own, fantasy, ebook 4.41 2006 Kushiel's Scion (Imriel's Trilogy, #1)
author: Jacqueline Carey
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/20
date added: 2023/09/08
shelves: dtb-own, fantasy, ebook
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume VII: A Saucer of Loneliness]]> 43416
A Saucer of Loneliness
The Touch of Your Hand
The World Well Lost
And My Fear Is Great
The Wages of Synergy
The Dark Room
Talent
A Way of Thinking
The Silken-Swift
The Clinic
Mr. Costello, Hero
The Education of Drusilla Strange]]> 400 Theodore Sturgeon 1556434243 Michelle 0 4.46 2000 The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume VII: A Saucer of Loneliness
author: Theodore Sturgeon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/04
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, sci-fi, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume V: The Perfect Host]]> 274623 The Perfect Host provides enough of a representative sampling of Sturgeon's "greatest hits" to give the uninitiated a good sense of what all the fuss was about way back when. At the same time, it offers a generous selection of alternate takes and rarities, notably several of Sturgeon's best forays into other forms of genre writing, plus previously unreleased cuts and liner notes.

Contents:
1. Die, Maestro, Die!
2. Farewell to Eden
3. Messenger
4. Minority Report
5. One Foot and the Grave
6. Prodigy
7. Quietly
8. Scars
9. The Dark Goddess . . . More to a Marriage . . .
10. The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast
11. The Love of Heaven
12. The Martian and the Moron
13. The Music
14. The Perfect Host
15. Till Death Do Us Join
16. Unite and Conquer
17. What Dead Men Tell]]> 408 Theodore Sturgeon 1556433603 Michelle 0 4.28 1998 The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume V: The Perfect Host
author: Theodore Sturgeon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/04
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, sci-fi, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume III: Killdozer!]]> 274620
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Robert Silverberg
Afterword by Robert A. Heinlein
Stories:
Blabbermouth
Medusa
Ghost of a Chance
The Bones (with James H. Beard)
The Hag Séleen (with James H. Beard)
Killdozer!
Abreaction
Poor Yorick (prev unpub)
Crossfire (prev unpub)
Noon Gun
Bulldozer is a Noun (prev unpub)
August Sixth
The Chromium Helmet
Memorial
Mewhu's Jet]]> 392 Theodore Sturgeon 1556433271 Michelle 0 4.19 1996 The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume III: Killdozer!
author: Theodore Sturgeon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/04
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, sci-fi, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume II: Microcosmic God]]> 274618
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Samuel R. Delaney
Stories:
Cargo
Shottlebop
Yesterday Was Monday
Brat
The Anonymous
Two Sidecars
Microcosmic God
The Haunt
Completely Automatic
Poker Face
Nightmare Island
The Purple Light
Artnan Process
Biddiver
The Golden Egg
Two Percent Inspiration
The Jumper (with James H. Beard)
Microcosmic God (early unfinished draft)]]> 408 Theodore Sturgeon 1556433018 Michelle 0 4.19 1995 The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume II: Microcosmic God
author: Theodore Sturgeon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/04
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, sci-fi, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume I: The Ultimate Egoist]]> 274619 The Ultimate Egoist, the first volume of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, contains the late author's earliest work, written from 1937 to 1940. Although Sturgeon's reach was limited to the lengths of the short story and novelette, his influence was strongly felt by even the most original science fiction stylists, including Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gene Wolfe, each of whom contributes a laudatory foreword. The more than 40 stories here showcase Sturgeon's masterful knack with clever, O. Henry-ish plot twists, sparkling character development, and almost archetypal, why didn't I think of that? story ideas. Early Sturgeon masterpieces include "It," about the violence done by a creature spontaneously born from garbage and mud, and "Helix the Cat," about an inventor's bizarre encounter with a disembodied soul and the cat that saves it. Sturgeon's unique genius is timelessly entertaining.

Table of Contents:
Forewords by Ray Bradbury,
Arthur C. Clarke, and Gene Wolfe
Stories:
Heavy Insurance
The Heart
Cellmate
Fluffy
Alter Ego (prev unpub)
Mailed Through a Porthole
A Noose of Light (prev unpub)
Strangers on a Train (prev unpub)
Accidentally on Porpoise
The Right Line (prev unpub)
Golden Day
Permit Me My Gesture
Watch My Smoke
The Other Cheek
Extraordinary Seamen
One Sick Kid
His Good Angel
Some People Forget
A God in a Garden
Fit for a King
Ex-Bachelor Extract
East is East
Three People (prev unpub)
Eyes of Blue
Ether Breather
Her Choice
Cajun Providence
Strike Three (prev unpub)
Contact!
The Call
Helix the Cat
To Shorten Sale
Thanksgiving Again (prev unpub)
Bianca's Hands
Derm Fool
He Shuttles
Turkish Delight
Niobe
The Long Arm
The Man on the Steps
Punctuational Advice
A Place of Honor
The Ultimate Egoist
It
Butyl and the Breather
Look Around You (poem)
Mahout]]> 408 Theodore Sturgeon 1556432992 Michelle 0 4.04 1995 The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume I: The Ultimate Egoist
author: Theodore Sturgeon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/04
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, sci-fi, short-stories
review:

]]> Killbox (Sirantha Jax, #4) 7843135
Sirantha Jax is a “Jumper,� a woman who possesses the unique genetic makeup needed to navigate faster than light ships through grimspace. With no tolerance for political diplomacy, she quits her ambassador post so she can get back to saving the universe the way she does best—by mouthing off and kicking butt.

And her tactics are needed more than ever. Flesh-eating aliens are attacking stations on the outskirts of space, and for many people, the Conglomerate’s forces are arriving too late to serve and protect them.

Now, Jax must take matters into her own hands by recruiting a militia to defend the frontiers � out of the worst criminals, mercenaries, and raiders that ever traveled through grimspace…]]> 356 Ann Aguirre 0441019412 Michelle 5 sci-fi, dtb-own
having succeeded in her mission to open contact between the human and Ithlorian governments, Sirantha immediately quits as ambassador, leaving the job to people with more finesse and less trash-mouth, and moves on to helping March & co build up a rag-tag armada to defend known space from the oncoming alien destruction. While keeping all the good parts (space pirates! ass kicking!), there's loads in the way of rich character arcs while telling a good story, and it's refreshing to see Jax grow up a bit ("old me would be drinking and dancing on that bar. I reined her in quickly and left to get working."). There's love and loss (and, yeah, space pirates!), and the only thing that stopped me from diving straight into book 5 was its not having arrived at my house yet.]]> 4.06 2010 Killbox (Sirantha Jax, #4)
author: Ann Aguirre
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2016/06/26
date added: 2023/07/23
shelves: sci-fi, dtb-own
review:
after the super fun rollercoaster of book 1, books 2 and 3 felt a little stalled-out, almost like filler while waiting for the real story to unfold. AH. nope, oh me of little faith, it was all meticulous set-up of the sort one doesn't expect in a space-opera-adventure novel so that THIS book would be a real kick in the teeth.

having succeeded in her mission to open contact between the human and Ithlorian governments, Sirantha immediately quits as ambassador, leaving the job to people with more finesse and less trash-mouth, and moves on to helping March & co build up a rag-tag armada to defend known space from the oncoming alien destruction. While keeping all the good parts (space pirates! ass kicking!), there's loads in the way of rich character arcs while telling a good story, and it's refreshing to see Jax grow up a bit ("old me would be drinking and dancing on that bar. I reined her in quickly and left to get working."). There's love and loss (and, yeah, space pirates!), and the only thing that stopped me from diving straight into book 5 was its not having arrived at my house yet.
]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Compleat Enchanter]]> 420277
The Baen edition includes an introduction by David Drake.]]> 532 L. Sprague de Camp 0671698095 Michelle 0 4.09 1989 The Complete Compleat Enchanter
author: L. Sprague de Camp
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/08
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, grand_masters, fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)]]> 13413589 River Marked was praised as "an urban fantasy where our everyday world is believably twisted into the world of fey, werewolves, vampires, and myths made real." Now Mercy Thompson faces a shapeshifter's biggest fear as the realm she has embraced is thrown into chaos...

Mercy Thompson's life has undergone a seismic change. Becoming the mate of Adam Hauptman - the charismatic Alpha of the local werewolf pack - has made her a stepmother to his daughter Jesse, a relationship that brings moments of blissful normalcy to Mercy's life. But on the edges of humanity, a minor mishap on an ordinary day can turn into so much more...

After an accident in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Mercy and Jesse can't reach Adam - or anyone else in the pack for that matter. They've all been abducted.

Through their mating bond, all Mercy knows is that Adam is angry and in pain. But she fears Adam's disappearance may be related to the political battle the werewolves have been fighting to gain acceptance from the public - and that he and the pack are in serious danger. Outmatched and on her own, Mercy may be forced to seek assistance from any ally she can get, no matter how unlikely.]]> 342 Patricia Briggs 0441020011 Michelle 4 4.34 2013 Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)
author: Patricia Briggs
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/03
date added: 2023/05/04
shelves: shapeshifters, urban_fantasy, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Speaks the Nightbird (Matthew Corbett, #1)]]> 1525997
After hearing damning testimony, magistrate Woodward sentences the accused witch to death by burning. Desperate to exonerate the woman he has come to love, Matthew begins his own investigation among the townspeople. Piecing together the truth, he has no choice but to vanquish a force more malevolent than witchcraft in order to save his beloved Rachel and free Fount Royal from the menace claiming innocent lives.]]> 792 Robert McCammon 1416552502 Michelle 4 4.13 2002 Speaks the Nightbird (Matthew Corbett, #1)
author: Robert McCammon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/27
date added: 2023/04/28
shelves: historical-fiction, dtb-own, mystery
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dragon Vet (Dragon Vet series)]]> 61383936 427 Dean Scott Michelle 0 3.75 Dragon Vet (Dragon Vet series)
author: Dean Scott
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/13
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, dragons-beasties, medical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beginning Operations (Sector General, #1-3)]]> 318389
Contents:
* Introduction (Beginning Operations) � essay by Brian Stableford
* Hospital Station [Sector General � 1] (1962) / collection by James White: Medic (1960) novelette (variant of O'Mara's Orphan); Sector General (1957) novelette; Trouble With Emily (1958) novelette; Visitor at Large (1959) novelette; Out-Patient (1960) novelette
* Star Surgeon [Sector General � 2] (1963) / novel by James White.
* Major Operation [Sector General � 3] (1971) / collection by James White: Invader (1966) novelette; Vertigo (1968) novelette; Blood Brother (1969) novelette; Meatball (1969) novelette; Major Operation (1971) novelette]]> 511 James White 0312875444 Michelle 3
If that sounds like a fun ride, by all means seek out this old-skool space romp. But the things that make it awesome are the same ones that make it kind of a drag. The stories that make up the novels were originally serialized in 60s & 70s pulp mags, so they're full of unfettered crazy big ideas... and reading them straight through results in some repetitive passages that surely served as "reminder" info in the parted-out version. This is "golden age" mode of sci-fi storytelling, where problems are solved by application of brainpower, determination, and good clean hard work...and populated by Gary Stu-type characters who don't have much development beyond their impressive ability to conjure up the solution to a problem that's stumping everyone else. It's very much a product of its time, filled with rampant casual sexism (women can't be doctors, and everyone openly ogles the hot one)...yet the female characters are consistently shown to be just as competent and knowledgeable in their skillset as the old boys club.

What rub me as flaws are indeed the features of this type of storytelling, so I'll probably be passing on the rest of the series... but this book does inspire me to find more modern stuff in this vein. ]]> 4.15 2001 Beginning Operations (Sector General, #1-3)
author: James White
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/10
date added: 2022/12/10
shelves: dtb-own, mystery, sci-fi, medical-fiction
review:
Medical sci-fi is a somewhat niche genre, but the Sector General novels are purported to be the granddaddy of them all. They collect the tales of the staff on a huge space station that serves as a state-of-the-art hospital for any and all types of intergalactic life forms, its mission to boldly seek out and cure whatever ails patients, whether well-known or just discovered. It's an egalitarian pacifist society where war is abhorrent and all knowledge is worth questing for.

If that sounds like a fun ride, by all means seek out this old-skool space romp. But the things that make it awesome are the same ones that make it kind of a drag. The stories that make up the novels were originally serialized in 60s & 70s pulp mags, so they're full of unfettered crazy big ideas... and reading them straight through results in some repetitive passages that surely served as "reminder" info in the parted-out version. This is "golden age" mode of sci-fi storytelling, where problems are solved by application of brainpower, determination, and good clean hard work...and populated by Gary Stu-type characters who don't have much development beyond their impressive ability to conjure up the solution to a problem that's stumping everyone else. It's very much a product of its time, filled with rampant casual sexism (women can't be doctors, and everyone openly ogles the hot one)...yet the female characters are consistently shown to be just as competent and knowledgeable in their skillset as the old boys club.

What rub me as flaws are indeed the features of this type of storytelling, so I'll probably be passing on the rest of the series... but this book does inspire me to find more modern stuff in this vein.
]]> <![CDATA[Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation]]> 6658572
Few books have been as controversial or as historically significant as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Since the moment it was released on November 24, 1859, Darwin's masterwork has been heralded for changing the course of science and condemned for its implied challenges to religion.

In Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, author Michael Keller and illustrator Nicolle Rager Fuller introduce a new generation of readers to the original text. Including sections about his pioneering research, the book's initial public reception, his correspondence with other leading scientists, as well as the most recent breakthroughs in evolutionary theory, this riveting, beautifully rendered adaptation breathes new life into Darwin's seminal and still polarizing work.]]> 192 Michael Keller 1605299480 Michelle 0 3.72 2009 Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation
author: Michael Keller
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/12
shelves: to-read, graphic-novels, nonfiction, dtb-own, nature, science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia � a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo � to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family � past and present � is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 Michelle 0 4.12 2010 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/12
shelves: nonfiction, local-color-baltimore-dc, dtb-own, to-read, medicine, science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Knife Man: Blood, Body-Snatching and the Birth of Modern Surgery]]> 161726
In the gothic horror story, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the house of the genial doctor turned fiend is reputedly based on the home of the 18th century surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter combined an altruistic determination to advance scientific knowledge with dark dealings that brought him into daily contact with the sinister Georgian underworld. In 18th century London, Hunter was a man both acclaimed and feared.

John Hunter revolutionized surgical practice through his groundbreaking experiments. Driven by an insatiable curiosity, he dissected thousands of human bodies, using the knowledge he gained to improve medical care for countless patients, including some very illustrious people, Joshua Reynolds and Lord Byron among them. He was appointed Surgeon Extraordinary to King George III.

In The Knife Man , Wendy Moore unveils a world characterized by hangings at the Tyburn Tree, by gruesome expeditions to dank churchyards, and by countless human dissections in attic rooms � large sums were paid to body-snatchers for stolen corpses which were delivered to his back door.

Meticulously researched, The Knife Man is a fascinating portrait of a scientist determined to haul surgery out of the realm of superstition and into the dawn of modern medicine.]]> 429 Wendy Moore 0553816187 Michelle 0 4.23 2005 The Knife Man: Blood, Body-Snatching and the Birth of Modern Surgery
author: Wendy Moore
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/12
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, nonfiction, medicine
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country]]> 12550296 The Sandman is the most acclaimed and award-winning comics series of the 1990s for good reason: a smart and deeply brooding epic, elegantly penned by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by a rotating cast of comics' most sought-after artists, it is a rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama, and legend are seamlessly interwoven. The saga of THE SANDMAN encompasses a series of tales unique in graphic literature and is a story you will never forget.

These four chilling and entertaining tales make up the tapestry that is Dream Country. The world fantasy award-winning tale of the first performance of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream...
A beautiful muse enslaved by a novelist to feed his need for stories...
A cat's-eye view of the tyranny of mankind...
And an immortal indestructible woman, who only wants to die...
As an additional bonus, Dream Country prints Neil Gaiman's original script to "Calliope," annotated by the writer and the artist.

Dream Country is the third volume of ten in The Sandman Library. These books can be read in order or as individual volumes.


Description from back cover]]> 160 Neil Gaiman Michelle 0 4.00 1990 The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: to-read, dangling_series, fantasy, graphic-novels, horror, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House]]> 825062
Dream picks up the pieces of his kingdom and existence in the wake of his imprisonment for most of the 20th century, and attempts to track down several nightmares who fled his realm during his imprisonment.]]> 232 Neil Gaiman 1852862920 Michelle 4 4.38 1990 The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/28
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: award_winner, fantasy, graphic-novels, historical-fantasy, horror, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes]]> 12550154
In PRELUDES & NOCTURNES, an occultist attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. After his 70 year imprisonment and eventual escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power. On his arduous journey, Morpheus encounters Lucifer, John Constantine, and an all-powerful madman.

This book also includes the story "The Sound of Her Wings," which introduces us to the pragmatic and perky goth girl Death.]]> 234 Neil Gaiman 1563890119 Michelle 3 4.22 1988 The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/09
date added: 2022/08/13
shelves: graphic-novels, dtb-own, myths-fables, rereads, fantasy, horror, there-s-a-movie-too, witches_wizards
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17)]]> 23106013
But this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago, and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way.

Harry’s mission is simple but impossible: Save the city by killing a Titan. And the attempt will change Harry’s life, Chicago, and the mortal world forever.]]> 418 Jim Butcher 0593199308 Michelle 2
Halfway through the far more aptly named 'Battle Ground,' I was confused if anything was going to happen other than this "greatest hits of the Dresdenverse" battle, and the answer was similarly simply nope. This book spends 400 pages running all over a war zone over the course of not quite one day, with one supernatural group after the other taking turns pummeling the new bad guys, and no resolution of any of that plot stuff that started happening in the first half of the story. There's zero reason for this to have been two books, but about a dozen reasons for this to have been trimmed into shape by a heartless editor. By the end, it feels that Butcher decided he'd painted himself into corners he no longer wanted to be constrained by, so just smashed up the playing field to pivot the rest of the series in a wholly different direction.

The worst part about it is how much I genuinely like Butcher's writing and so many of these characters. I breezed right through this book in 2 half-days, because it's so comfortable to curl up and spend time with these guys. Sad, little, underestimated, wimpy Butters becoming more than a stereotyped sidekick and stepping up into heroism-even-when-it's-hard legit makes me tear up. The cinematic sweep of the battle descriptions is absolutely compelling. But the total lack of a meaty story, the meaningless (possibly expedient, or even convenient, and that's really ugly) death, the overlong ad-nauseum ass-kickery, the nutty arbitrariness of too many decisions on either the author's or the main character's part... Meh. Just meh. ]]> 4.35 2020 Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2022/07/03
date added: 2022/07/04
shelves: dtb-own, faerie, gods, urban_fantasy, vampires, war_is_hell, witches_wizards
review:
Halfway through 'Peace Talks' (which had vanishingly little to do with any actual talking re: peace), a plot began to emerge, and I was rather confused as to how any of this was going to get wrapped up in the scant pages left, and the answer was simply that it didn't.

Halfway through the far more aptly named 'Battle Ground,' I was confused if anything was going to happen other than this "greatest hits of the Dresdenverse" battle, and the answer was similarly simply nope. This book spends 400 pages running all over a war zone over the course of not quite one day, with one supernatural group after the other taking turns pummeling the new bad guys, and no resolution of any of that plot stuff that started happening in the first half of the story. There's zero reason for this to have been two books, but about a dozen reasons for this to have been trimmed into shape by a heartless editor. By the end, it feels that Butcher decided he'd painted himself into corners he no longer wanted to be constrained by, so just smashed up the playing field to pivot the rest of the series in a wholly different direction.

The worst part about it is how much I genuinely like Butcher's writing and so many of these characters. I breezed right through this book in 2 half-days, because it's so comfortable to curl up and spend time with these guys. Sad, little, underestimated, wimpy Butters becoming more than a stereotyped sidekick and stepping up into heroism-even-when-it's-hard legit makes me tear up. The cinematic sweep of the battle descriptions is absolutely compelling. But the total lack of a meaty story, the meaningless (possibly expedient, or even convenient, and that's really ugly) death, the overlong ad-nauseum ass-kickery, the nutty arbitrariness of too many decisions on either the author's or the main character's part... Meh. Just meh.
]]> <![CDATA[Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)]]> 49381341 340 Jim Butcher 0451464419 Michelle 2 halfway through this run. For all that we catch a couple of glimpses into a room full of magic's heaviest hitters, there's oddly very little actual Peace Talks happening in these pages, focusing instead on a side quest to deal with family issues. The end here isn't so much a cliffhanger as a pause in the action before our hero rushes off to deal with The Big Damn Problem that's only just now raised its head after being built up toward for the whole book, which feels unsatisfyingly abrupt. So for me, no denouement = no rating yet.

All that being said, sweet baby monkeys this book is a whole lot of fun. I've been reading a lot of excellently written, challenging and provocative fiction lately (lots of 4 and 5 stars, I'm on a real streak of good stuff!), and all of those books are taking me weeks to work on. Harry has me blazing through Chicago with him in a scant 2 days. It's been 6 years since we last rode along on his perilous adventures, and wow do I need to re-read some stuff, but I'm now rather looking forward to that.

Edit for 2022 re-read: The first time through 'Peace Talks' one of my major confusions was WTF was going on. Who the hell are these Fomor folks, where did they come from, and how does a SUPER HUGE MEGA BADDIE just poof into existence after 15 books' worth of story. So over the past year or so, I went back and re-read most of the series in between (many other) things, while trying to locate Fomorian clues... and nope, not really many to find, other than a short story tucked among other shorts. It still feels jarring to have something this earth-shattering unexplainedly pop into what is already a rich (borderline crowded) cast of supernatural nations. 'Peace Talks' also suffers by comparison with the rather fantastic 'Skin Game,' wherein we get added complexity and tension for well-established characters and relationships: book 15 said there was a lot more to explore in the onion-layers of supernatural politics while book 16 said 'meh, screw it, let's just change the whole thing.' This round, though, I'm headed straight into the next one without a months-long wait. ]]> 4.16 2020 Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2022/07/02
date added: 2022/07/02
shelves: dragons-beasties, dtb-own, faerie, fantasy, urban_fantasy, vampires, witches_wizards, rereads
review:
What we have here, folks, is half a book. Butcher has said () that he had this great idea for two intertwining plots, which would have resulted in a huge and hugely expensive hardcover, and his publisher prevailed on him to split it. So we get not one but TWO Dresden books! Finally something fun happens in 2020! But for all my relief the series continues, for all my love of these people and what's happening in their lives, I just don't feel this volume stands on its own. At about a hundred and a half pages in, the wheels really grip the tracks and this train is off & running... and though the pacing feels brisk & snappy, that's halfway through this run. For all that we catch a couple of glimpses into a room full of magic's heaviest hitters, there's oddly very little actual Peace Talks happening in these pages, focusing instead on a side quest to deal with family issues. The end here isn't so much a cliffhanger as a pause in the action before our hero rushes off to deal with The Big Damn Problem that's only just now raised its head after being built up toward for the whole book, which feels unsatisfyingly abrupt. So for me, no denouement = no rating yet.

All that being said, sweet baby monkeys this book is a whole lot of fun. I've been reading a lot of excellently written, challenging and provocative fiction lately (lots of 4 and 5 stars, I'm on a real streak of good stuff!), and all of those books are taking me weeks to work on. Harry has me blazing through Chicago with him in a scant 2 days. It's been 6 years since we last rode along on his perilous adventures, and wow do I need to re-read some stuff, but I'm now rather looking forward to that.

Edit for 2022 re-read: The first time through 'Peace Talks' one of my major confusions was WTF was going on. Who the hell are these Fomor folks, where did they come from, and how does a SUPER HUGE MEGA BADDIE just poof into existence after 15 books' worth of story. So over the past year or so, I went back and re-read most of the series in between (many other) things, while trying to locate Fomorian clues... and nope, not really many to find, other than a short story tucked among other shorts. It still feels jarring to have something this earth-shattering unexplainedly pop into what is already a rich (borderline crowded) cast of supernatural nations. 'Peace Talks' also suffers by comparison with the rather fantastic 'Skin Game,' wherein we get added complexity and tension for well-established characters and relationships: book 15 said there was a lot more to explore in the onion-layers of supernatural politics while book 16 said 'meh, screw it, let's just change the whole thing.' This round, though, I'm headed straight into the next one without a months-long wait.
]]> <![CDATA[Foxglove Summer (Peter Grant, #5)]]> 20893457 323 Ben Aaronovitch 0756409667 Michelle 0 4.11 2014 Foxglove Summer (Peter Grant, #5)
author: Ben Aaronovitch
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/16
shelves: to-read, dangling_series, urban_fantasy, witches_wizards, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mélusine (Doctrine of Labyrinths, #1)]]> 361271 Mélusine � a city of secrets and lies, pleasure and pain, magic and corruption � and destinies lost and found.

Felix Harrowgate is a dashing, highly respected wizard. But his aristocratic peers don't know his dark past � how his abusive former master enslaved him, body and soul, and trained him to pass as a nobleman. Within the walls of the Mirador � Melusine's citadel of power and wizardry � Felix believed he was safe. He was wrong. Now, the horrors of his previous life have found him and threaten to destroy all he has since become.

Mildmay the Fox is used to being hunted. Raised as a kept-thief and trained as an assassin, he escaped his Keeper long ago and lives on his own as a cat burglar. But now he has been caught by a mysterious foreign wizard using a powerful calling charm. And yet the wizard was looking not for Mildmay � but for Felix Harrowgate." Thrown together by fate, the broken wizard Felix and the wanted killer Mildmay journey far from Melusine through lands thick with strange magics and terrible demons of darkness. But it is the shocking secret from their pasts, linking them inexorably together, that will either save them, or destroy them.]]> 421 Sarah Monette 0441012868 Michelle 4


And then sat on it for quite a few years both due to the very mixed reviews here as well as the trigger warnings on most of them - I needed some kinder & gentler things than this tale of sexual assault-induced insanity (NB: those trigger warnings are there for very good reasons). But a rainy weekend and that enticing cover illustration finally pulled me in, and I absolutely devoured this in just a couple of days. Monette writes from the "throw them in the deep end and they'll figure it out as we go" school, which I love when done deftly. There's a richly realized world here, with layers of society and manners and professions and politics and schools of magic, all of which are mentioned in passing by characters living in them, people who have no need to explain them in detail. Instead, Monette's focus is on the people she's created in this world, and what utterly memorable people they are. On one hand a young and highly talented wizard of the highest social echelon, and on the other a cat burglar for hire dodging the dogs of the law on the low streets. Both have truly awful secrets in their past, and there are hidden ties that will inevitably bring them together, and when it's all over you could choose to pretend a happy ending for each of them is somewhere just over the horizon... but of course with all that's happened so far I know better and instead dove straight into book 2. ]]> 3.85 2005 Mélusine (Doctrine of Labyrinths, #1)
author: Sarah Monette
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/07
date added: 2022/05/09
shelves: fantasy, dtb-own, witches_wizards, ghosts-hauntings
review:
I bought a copy of Sarah Monette's dark and twisted Melusine based on Jo Walton's recommendation of books that made her excited to read fantasy:



And then sat on it for quite a few years both due to the very mixed reviews here as well as the trigger warnings on most of them - I needed some kinder & gentler things than this tale of sexual assault-induced insanity (NB: those trigger warnings are there for very good reasons). But a rainy weekend and that enticing cover illustration finally pulled me in, and I absolutely devoured this in just a couple of days. Monette writes from the "throw them in the deep end and they'll figure it out as we go" school, which I love when done deftly. There's a richly realized world here, with layers of society and manners and professions and politics and schools of magic, all of which are mentioned in passing by characters living in them, people who have no need to explain them in detail. Instead, Monette's focus is on the people she's created in this world, and what utterly memorable people they are. On one hand a young and highly talented wizard of the highest social echelon, and on the other a cat burglar for hire dodging the dogs of the law on the low streets. Both have truly awful secrets in their past, and there are hidden ties that will inevitably bring them together, and when it's all over you could choose to pretend a happy ending for each of them is somewhere just over the horizon... but of course with all that's happened so far I know better and instead dove straight into book 2.
]]> American Gods 567724
Shadow spent three years in prison, keeping his head down, doing his time. All he wanted was to get back to the loving arms of his wife and to stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But days before his scheduled release, he learns that his wife has been killed in an accident, and his world becomes a colder place.

On the plane ride home to the funeral, Shadow meets a grizzled man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A self-styled grifter and rogue, Wednesday offers Shadow a job. And Shadow, a man with nothing to lose, accepts.

But working for the enigmatic Wednesday is not without its price, and Shadow soon learns that his role in Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. Entangled in a world of secrets, he embarks on a wild road trip and encounters, among others, the murderous Czernobog, the impish Mr. Nancy, and the beautiful Easter -- all of whom seem to know more about Shadow than he himself does.

Shadow will learn that the past does not die, that everyone, including his late wife, had secrets, and that the stakes are higher than anyone could have imagined.

All around them a storm of epic proportions threatens to break. Soon Shadow and Wednesday will be swept up into a conflict as old as humanity itself. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought -- and the prize is the very soul of America.

As unsettling as it is exhilarating, American Gods is a dark and kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an America at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. Magnificently told, this work of literary magic will haunt the reader far beyond the final page.

Source: harpercollins.com]]> 465 Neil Gaiman 0380973650 Michelle 5 4.04 2001 American Gods
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/27
date added: 2022/03/27
shelves: fantasy, urban_fantasy, to-reread, dtb-own, award_winner, myths-fables, gods
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15)]]> 19486421
Because as Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful.

He doesn’t know the half of it�

Mab has just traded Harry’s skills to pay off one of her debts. And now he must help a group of supernatural villains—led by one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone—to break into the highest-security vault in town, so that they can then access the highest-security vault in the Nevernever.

It's a smash and grab job to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure hoard in the supernatural world—which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the freaking Underworld and generally unpleasant character. Worse, Dresden suspects that there is another game afoot that no one is talking about. And he's dead certain that Nicodemus has no intention of allowing any of his crew to survive the experience. Especially Harry.

Dresden's always been tricky, but he's going to have to up his backstabbing game to survive this mess—assuming his own allies don’t end up killing him before his enemies get the chance…]]> 464 Jim Butcher 0451464397 Michelle 4 4.54 2014 Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/04
date added: 2022/02/04
shelves: dtb-own, faerie, gods, urban_fantasy, witches_wizards
review:

]]> SUPERLUMINAL 1537541 279 Vonda N. McIntyre 0671531360 Michelle 3 I picked up this space exploration novel after , and when I needed something less heavy than my last read, this old-skool space-opera looking feminist SF ride seemed like just the ticket.

'Superluminal' (faster than light, natch) is way more thinky than the silly ice-skating-costumed cover would suggest, and indeed far more thoughtful than most things I'd classify as space opera - though there's far-flung colony planets, there's no laser fights to be had here. It's also not really hard SF, despite the genetic manipulation and biomechanical body modification going on here. This is truly a novel of big ideas - communication with people that come from a wholly different frame of reference and experience, self-agency in determining how you can achieve your own greatness, when money is/not necessary in a society - but wrapped in a fun adventure package rather than a dry academic one. My only downside was that this book ended just when everyone had come to their own Big Decisions, and it feels a bit like a prequel or the opener to a series. I'm a little disappointed to know that McIntyre never wrote more in this world, because I'd absolutely love to know more about the lives of each of the 3 main characters.]]> 3.50 1983 SUPERLUMINAL
author: Vonda N. McIntyre
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/22
date added: 2022/01/22
shelves: feminism, sci-fi, dtb-own, worst_covers
review:
3.5stars.
I picked up this space exploration novel after , and when I needed something less heavy than my last read, this old-skool space-opera looking feminist SF ride seemed like just the ticket.

'Superluminal' (faster than light, natch) is way more thinky than the silly ice-skating-costumed cover would suggest, and indeed far more thoughtful than most things I'd classify as space opera - though there's far-flung colony planets, there's no laser fights to be had here. It's also not really hard SF, despite the genetic manipulation and biomechanical body modification going on here. This is truly a novel of big ideas - communication with people that come from a wholly different frame of reference and experience, self-agency in determining how you can achieve your own greatness, when money is/not necessary in a society - but wrapped in a fun adventure package rather than a dry academic one. My only downside was that this book ended just when everyone had come to their own Big Decisions, and it feels a bit like a prequel or the opener to a series. I'm a little disappointed to know that McIntyre never wrote more in this world, because I'd absolutely love to know more about the lives of each of the 3 main characters.
]]> Blood & Beauty: The Borgias 16142157
Cesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatest—though increasingly unstable—weapon. Later immortalized in Machiavelli’s The Prince, he provides the energy and the muscle. Lucrezia, beloved by both men, is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old when the novel opens, hers is a journey through three marriages, and from childish innocence to painful experience, from pawn to political player.]]> 596 Sarah Dunant 1400069297 Michelle 0 3.66 2013 Blood & Beauty: The Borgias
author: Sarah Dunant
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/02
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, free, historical-fiction, lit_fic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy]]> 145269 366 Sarah Bradford 0143035959 Michelle 0 3.74 2004 Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy
author: Sarah Bradford
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/02
shelves: to-read, biography, dtb-own, free, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Witch with No Name (The Hollows, #13)]]> 20426917 At long last... The final book in the New York Times bestselling Hollows series by Kim Harrison!

Rachel Morgan's come a long way from the clutzy runner of Dead Witch Walking. She's faced vampires and werewolves, banshees, witches, and soul-eating demons. She's crossed worlds, channeled gods, and accepted her place as a day-walking demon. She's lost friends and lovers and family, and an old enemy has become something much more.

But power demands responsibility, and world-changers must always pay a price. That time is now.

To save Ivy's soul and the rest of the living vampires, to keep the demonic ever after and our own world from destruction, Rachel Morgan will risk everything.]]> 462 Kim Harrison 006195795X Michelle 0 4.41 2014 The Witch with No Name (The Hollows, #13)
author: Kim Harrison
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/11
shelves: to-read, faerie, shapeshifters, urban_fantasy, vampires, witches_wizards, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13)]]> 8058301
But being dead doesn't stop him when his friends are in danger. Except now he has no body, and no magic to help him. And there are also several dark spirits roaming the Chicago shadows who owe Harry some payback of their own.

To save his friends—and his own soul—Harry will have to pull off the ultimate trick without any magic...]]> 481 Jim Butcher 045146379X Michelle 4
The prior book in this long-running series ended with a hell of a cliffhanger à la "who shot JR," but instead of needing to wait a mere summer until the next season revealed what was going on, devotees agonized more than a year over the bullet that ended Changes. I dove into 'Ghost Story' the moment it came out, and was taken aback by how accurate the title was - I kept expecting the spectral schtick to be just a prelude, and was frustrated by the book-long idea that Harry was now a spiritual helper instead of a flesh-and-blood wizard. It certainly didn't help that this book also ends on a (much gentler) cliffhanger, and that each book since has had a bit more delay in arriving. My original review was 3 stars.

We're a few books more down the road now, and knowing what happened here and how it fits into the bigger story, all the pressure of BUT WHY IS HE A GHOST is gone. This is a far better book in this state of mind, and actually a perfect companion to 'Changes': after Harry decided to be A Big Damn Hero (tm), he now gets a ringside seat in witnessing the fallout that's rained down on his chosen family as a result of his cavalier badassery. It's not all painful self-introspection, there's plenty of action and human connection, and we get to learn more about a facet of magic unfamiliar to our hero, but the focus is squarely on "with great power comes great responsibility, so maybe try to tread a bit more lightly, ok?"]]> 4.23 2011 Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2021/07/23
date added: 2021/07/23
shelves: dtb-own, faerie, urban_fantasy, witches_wizards, ghosts-hauntings
review:
Wow, what a difference a decade makes.

The prior book in this long-running series ended with a hell of a cliffhanger à la "who shot JR," but instead of needing to wait a mere summer until the next season revealed what was going on, devotees agonized more than a year over the bullet that ended Changes. I dove into 'Ghost Story' the moment it came out, and was taken aback by how accurate the title was - I kept expecting the spectral schtick to be just a prelude, and was frustrated by the book-long idea that Harry was now a spiritual helper instead of a flesh-and-blood wizard. It certainly didn't help that this book also ends on a (much gentler) cliffhanger, and that each book since has had a bit more delay in arriving. My original review was 3 stars.

We're a few books more down the road now, and knowing what happened here and how it fits into the bigger story, all the pressure of BUT WHY IS HE A GHOST is gone. This is a far better book in this state of mind, and actually a perfect companion to 'Changes': after Harry decided to be A Big Damn Hero (tm), he now gets a ringside seat in witnessing the fallout that's rained down on his chosen family as a result of his cavalier badassery. It's not all painful self-introspection, there's plenty of action and human connection, and we get to learn more about a facet of magic unfamiliar to our hero, but the focus is squarely on "with great power comes great responsibility, so maybe try to tread a bit more lightly, ok?"
]]> Raphael (Damiano, #3) 77312 230 R.A. MacAvoy 0553243705 Michelle 0 3.80 1984 Raphael (Damiano, #3)
author: R.A. MacAvoy
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/15
shelves: allegory, to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, historical-fantasy, witches_wizards
review:

]]> Damiano's Lute (Damiano, #2) 643992 254 R.A. MacAvoy 0553171550 Michelle 0 3.90 1984 Damiano's Lute (Damiano, #2)
author: R.A. MacAvoy
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/15
shelves: to-read, allegory, dtb-own, feminism, historical-fantasy, witches_wizards
review:

]]> Damiano (Damiano, #1) 1587065 To save his beloved city from war, Damiano leaves his cloistered life and sets out on a pilgrimage, seeking the aid of the powerful sorceress Saara as he must walk the narrow path between light and shadow, accompanied only by his talking dog. But his road is filled with betrayal, disillusionment and death, and Damiano is forced to confront his dark heritage, unleashing the hellish force of his awesome powers to protect those he loves.

The further volumes of this tale are Damiano's Lute and Raphael.

]]> 243 R.A. MacAvoy 0553235753 Michelle 0 3.83 1984 Damiano (Damiano, #1)
author: R.A. MacAvoy
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/15
shelves: to-read, allegory, dtb-own, fantasy, historical-fantasy, witches_wizards
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Winter Long (October Daye, #8)]]> 15748529
And then Simon Torquill comes back, and everything begins to fall apart. In Faerie, nothing stays buried forever. No matter how much you might want it to.]]> 358 Seanan McGuire 0756408083 Michelle 0 4.36 2014 The Winter Long (October Daye, #8)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/15
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, faerie, mystery, urban_fantasy
review:

]]> We 530787 Before Brave New World...
Before 1984... There was...

We

In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier—will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.

One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful I-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery—or rediscovery� of inner space... and that disease the ancients called the soul.

A page-turning SF adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, WE is a classic dystopian novel. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the end of the twentieth century as it was at the beginning.]]> 232 Yevgeny Zamyatin 0380633132 Michelle 0 3.79 1924 We
author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, dystopia, sci-fi, 1001-books
review:

]]> Cryptonomicon 8350702
In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detatchment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

]]> 918 Neal Stephenson Michelle 5
part of the story is about a WWII GI, who happens to be so gung-ho and talented at both completing difficult missions successfully and staying alive at their completion that he gets the dubious honor of being assigned to a squad so top-secret he has no idea what he's doing there. part of the story is about a brilliant but oblivious mathematician (clearly an asperger's syndrome kind of guy) who becomes a codebreaker during the same war. and part of the story is about the computer-programmer grandson of the latter and his infatuation with the tough-as-nails granddaughter of the former. part of it is about codes (both for war messages and for computer programs) and part of it is about war (both physical and digital). all of which makes it sound very dry when it's anything but.

Stephenson's typical doses of randomly-applied hilarity are out in full force here. he does an incredible job of painting the world through the individual voices of his characters...and quite often, those guys are thinking very odd things about very odd situations. the hefty book could have been trimmed by, say, 30% if it left out these random observations, sometimes comical, other times simply beautiful examples of what letters can do in the hands of a gifted wordsmith, but then we'd miss out on things like:

"a red dragonfly hovers above the backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explains why the insect can apparently teleport from one place to another, disappearing from one point and reappearing a couple of meters away, without seeming to pass through the space in between. there sure is a lot of bright stuff in the jungle. randy figures that, in the natural world, anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass."

no, i'm not recommending it to everybody. it's long and meandering and insanely technical in many places. but yes, i am gushing about it. it's lovely.]]> 4.02 1999 Cryptonomicon
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2008/05/01
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves: sci-fi, 1001-books, worldview, dtb-own, award_winner, war_is_hell
review:
it took me a month to get through this book. amazing, considering my usual speed with the written word, but quite true. this behemoth refused to be devoured in my usual hours-at-a-time fashion, nope. more like very high quality cheesecake, in that it's so rich you can only take a few bites before you need to assimilate.

part of the story is about a WWII GI, who happens to be so gung-ho and talented at both completing difficult missions successfully and staying alive at their completion that he gets the dubious honor of being assigned to a squad so top-secret he has no idea what he's doing there. part of the story is about a brilliant but oblivious mathematician (clearly an asperger's syndrome kind of guy) who becomes a codebreaker during the same war. and part of the story is about the computer-programmer grandson of the latter and his infatuation with the tough-as-nails granddaughter of the former. part of it is about codes (both for war messages and for computer programs) and part of it is about war (both physical and digital). all of which makes it sound very dry when it's anything but.

Stephenson's typical doses of randomly-applied hilarity are out in full force here. he does an incredible job of painting the world through the individual voices of his characters...and quite often, those guys are thinking very odd things about very odd situations. the hefty book could have been trimmed by, say, 30% if it left out these random observations, sometimes comical, other times simply beautiful examples of what letters can do in the hands of a gifted wordsmith, but then we'd miss out on things like:

"a red dragonfly hovers above the backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explains why the insect can apparently teleport from one place to another, disappearing from one point and reappearing a couple of meters away, without seeming to pass through the space in between. there sure is a lot of bright stuff in the jungle. randy figures that, in the natural world, anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass."

no, i'm not recommending it to everybody. it's long and meandering and insanely technical in many places. but yes, i am gushing about it. it's lovely.
]]> <![CDATA[Changes (The Dresden Files, #12)]]> 6585201 438 Jim Butcher 045146317X Michelle 5 4.50 2010 Changes (The Dresden Files, #12)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/16
date added: 2021/02/17
shelves: fantasy, urban_fantasy, vampires, dtb-own, witches_wizards, wow-wtf, faerie
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11)]]> 3475161 420 Jim Butcher 0451462564 Michelle 5
the long version: Jim Butcher is sneaky. he sucked you in a long time ago (and if you haven't been sucked in, get right on in there. and start from the beginning, it's important & well worth it) with a fun couple of books about a hardboiled detective of a wizard. at some point a few adventures in, though, this lark started getting serious, and the mysteries our hero was sorting out got less about a random client in trouble and more about keeping himself & his friends alive. nobody is invincible, and for every step won there's a pretty steep price to pay. it's compelling, interesting, complex without being bogged down in gimmicks reading. anyone else would have jumped the shark 11 books in, but this keeps getting better.]]> 4.43 2009 Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2020/12/17
shelves: shapeshifters, urban_fantasy, vampires, rereads, dtb-own, witches_wizards
review:
the short version: it kept my up way too late one night, then kept me firmly on the couch a good chunk of the following day. very compelling.

the long version: Jim Butcher is sneaky. he sucked you in a long time ago (and if you haven't been sucked in, get right on in there. and start from the beginning, it's important & well worth it) with a fun couple of books about a hardboiled detective of a wizard. at some point a few adventures in, though, this lark started getting serious, and the mysteries our hero was sorting out got less about a random client in trouble and more about keeping himself & his friends alive. nobody is invincible, and for every step won there's a pretty steep price to pay. it's compelling, interesting, complex without being bogged down in gimmicks reading. anyone else would have jumped the shark 11 books in, but this keeps getting better.
]]> <![CDATA[Chimes at Midnight (October Daye, #7)]]> 10184403
Toby's efforts to take the problem to the Queen of the Mists are met with harsh reprisals, leaving her under sentence of exile from her home and everyone she loves. Now Toby must find a way to reverse the Queens decree, get the goblin fruit off the streets--and, oh, yes, save her own life, since more than a few of her problems have once again followed her home. And then there's the question of the Queen herself, who seems increasingly unlikely to have a valid claim to the throne....

To find the answers, October and her friends will have to travel from the legendary Library of Stars into the hidden depths of the Kingdom of the Mists--and they'll have to do it fast, because time is running out. In faerie, some fates are worse than death.

October Daye is about to find out what they are.]]> 357 Seanan McGuire 0756408148 Michelle 0 4.35 2013 Chimes at Midnight (October Daye, #7)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/15
shelves: to-read, faerie, urban_fantasy, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Small Favor (The Dresden Files, #10)]]> 927979 THE New York Times Bestseller

Harry Dresden's life finally seems to be calming down -- until a shadow from the past returns. Mab, monarch of the Sidhe Winter Court, calls in an old favor from Harry -- one small favor that will trap him between a nightmarish foe and an equally deadly ally, and that will strain his skills -- and loyalties -- to their very limits.]]> 423 Jim Butcher 0451461894 Michelle 3
I gave this one 3 stars the first time around, and halfway through the book I really couldn't figure out why I'd marked it so low. It's actiony and fast-paced, plenty of snappy dialogue and high stakes... then I remembered that there's a handful of things that just don't make sense here.

Harry is tasked by Mab to find the kidnapped Johnny Marcone, apparently only because he's a signatory to her accords and she's offended someone would dare to disrupt them, and she calls in one of Harry's owed favors to do so. Fairies trade on debts all the time, sure, but only to their own benefit, and I'm still sketchy on why Mab would relinquish any part of her hold on Harry if she's not getting the distinctly better end of the deal. Warriors from the Summer Court show up repeatedly and determinedly trying to kill Harry, not simply to thwart his mission, which sparks loads of fun action scenes, but hey weren't we all friends previously and yikes that's a lot of lives to throw away for simply "Summer always fights Winter" with no deeper reasoning (whatever has Mab especially motivated about saving Marcone also has Summer worried? Who knows?). After having some rumbles at Wrigley Field and the Field Museum in prior books, this is one of the last big action pieces set in real-world Chicago that I remember in the series. This time, parts of the Shedd Aquarium get trashed, and the casual-but-necessary destruction of the animal habitat rubs my fur backward both because of physics (the weight of that water and glass is likely non-survivable) and as an animal caretaker myself.

That being said, there's plenty to like. We get a smattering of quality time with good friends (the Carpenters, Mouse, a visit from Sanya), a twisty double-crossing battle with the Denarians, the aforementioned fun fight scenes, and hey maybe Harry can have a bit of companionship after hours.]]> 4.43 2008 Small Favor (The Dresden Files, #10)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2020/10/25
date added: 2020/10/26
shelves: urban_fantasy, rereads, dtb-own, witches_wizards
review:
Re-read October 2020:

I gave this one 3 stars the first time around, and halfway through the book I really couldn't figure out why I'd marked it so low. It's actiony and fast-paced, plenty of snappy dialogue and high stakes... then I remembered that there's a handful of things that just don't make sense here.

Harry is tasked by Mab to find the kidnapped Johnny Marcone, apparently only because he's a signatory to her accords and she's offended someone would dare to disrupt them, and she calls in one of Harry's owed favors to do so. Fairies trade on debts all the time, sure, but only to their own benefit, and I'm still sketchy on why Mab would relinquish any part of her hold on Harry if she's not getting the distinctly better end of the deal. Warriors from the Summer Court show up repeatedly and determinedly trying to kill Harry, not simply to thwart his mission, which sparks loads of fun action scenes, but hey weren't we all friends previously and yikes that's a lot of lives to throw away for simply "Summer always fights Winter" with no deeper reasoning (whatever has Mab especially motivated about saving Marcone also has Summer worried? Who knows?). After having some rumbles at Wrigley Field and the Field Museum in prior books, this is one of the last big action pieces set in real-world Chicago that I remember in the series. This time, parts of the Shedd Aquarium get trashed, and the casual-but-necessary destruction of the animal habitat rubs my fur backward both because of physics (the weight of that water and glass is likely non-survivable) and as an animal caretaker myself.

That being said, there's plenty to like. We get a smattering of quality time with good friends (the Carpenters, Mouse, a visit from Sanya), a twisty double-crossing battle with the Denarians, the aforementioned fun fight scenes, and hey maybe Harry can have a bit of companionship after hours.
]]> <![CDATA[White Night (The Dresden Files, #9)]]> 91475
Someone is targeting the members of the city’s supernatural underclass—those who don’t possess enough power to become full-fledged wizards. Some have vanished. Others appear to be victims of suicide. But now the culprit has left a calling card at one of the crime scenes—a message for Harry Dresden.

Harry sets out to find the apparent serial killer, but his investigation turns up evidence pointing to the one suspect he cannot possibly believe guilty: his half-brother, Thomas. To clear his brother’s name, Harry rushes into a supernatural power struggle that renders him outnumbered, outclassed, and dangerously susceptible to temptation.

And Harry knows that if he screws this one up, people will die—and one of them will be his brother...]]> 407 Jim Butcher 0451461401 Michelle 5
Original review 4/2007: Butcher is now on the 9th of his Harry Dresden books, and in a truly magical feat, the series is still going strong. there is NO point in starting the series with this book...new readers will be lost in the alluded-to but not explained background stories of each of the detailed characters. for most authors balancing this many people, everyone's voices start to run together; not so here, so once you've caught up with the other books, there's no problem keeping up.

the whole series is a lot of fun, and each one is a pretty quick read. they're all well worth checking out.

the sci-fi channel started running a tv show based on these books in january 07, and while the show is pretty good, these books are worlds better.]]> 4.38 2007 White Night (The Dresden Files, #9)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/28
date added: 2020/09/30
shelves: urban_fantasy, rereads, vampires, dtb-own, witches_wizards, mystery
review:
Re-read 9/2020: In which Harry has to solve/is suspected of a string of murders of women with minor magical talent, Thomas is suspected by everyone of being up to vampiric shenanigans, and there's a cinematically huge ass-kicking fight at the White Court's House Raith. I'm going way back in a re-read to refresh on the shifting political situation Butcher started laying out several books ago, which has gradually come to dominate the stories over the earlier "mystery of the week" books - the longer the series goes, the details of allies and betrayals become much more important. On the second go-round, White Night might be one of the best entries in the series. Though the mystery and consequences and story are plenty meaty enough, pacing stays nice and snappy. The Macguffin/mystery here (Harry is still a PI at heart, and has to solve a mystery in every case file) perfectly ties into the larger arc of what's going on. There's not a bunch of throw-away recap, but I'm not left floundering to figure out where we are here. Harry has always been a shoot-first-think-later kind of guy, and having friends good enough to tell him "dude, you're being a real asshole, maybe get yourself together," rather than a simple chorus of back-up assholes is deeply refreshing. I'm going to miss the hell out of Lash, but I suppose as a story tree grows some branches do inevitably need to be pruned.

Original review 4/2007: Butcher is now on the 9th of his Harry Dresden books, and in a truly magical feat, the series is still going strong. there is NO point in starting the series with this book...new readers will be lost in the alluded-to but not explained background stories of each of the detailed characters. for most authors balancing this many people, everyone's voices start to run together; not so here, so once you've caught up with the other books, there's no problem keeping up.

the whole series is a lot of fun, and each one is a pretty quick read. they're all well worth checking out.

the sci-fi channel started running a tv show based on these books in january 07, and while the show is pretty good, these books are worlds better.
]]> <![CDATA[Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy, Volume I]]> 535654 416 Al Sarrantonio 0451460987 Michelle 0 3.23 2006 Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy, Volume I
author: Al Sarrantonio
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/06
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, short-stories
review:

]]> Black Wine 567766 288 Candas Jane Dorsey 0312861818 Michelle 0 3.56 1996 Black Wine
author: Candas Jane Dorsey
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/25
shelves: to-read, fantasy, award_winner, dtb-own, horror, sci-fi, feminism
review:

]]> War for the Oaks 1270841 309 Emma Bull 0441870732 Michelle 4 4.10 1987 War for the Oaks
author: Emma Bull
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/04/19
shelves: rereads, urban_fantasy, dtb-own, faerie, music
review:

]]> The Roads of Heaven (#1-3) 2449683 Five-Twelfths of Heaven, c. 1985
Silence in Solitude, c.1986
The Empress of Earth, c.1987

A future in which alchemy and the carefully manipulated power of the elemental harmonies has made interstellar flight a reality.]]> 760 Melissa Scott Michelle 5
none of which would be worth the hill of proverbial beans if it wasn’t a good story. no trouble there, either, since ‘the roads of heaven� is easily one of the best rollicking space-opera adventure tales i’ve ever read. we’re tearing through the life story of a tough-as-nails space pilot (take that han solo!), hurtling between worlds with her two husbands (!), who goes on to become an amazingly powerful alchemist magician, and discovers the lost road to old earth.

i re-read this trilogy every few years, and it's actually gotten better with time/age. if you can find a copy, highly recommended.]]> 4.30 1987 The Roads of Heaven (#1-3)
author: Melissa Scott
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 1994/01/01
date added: 2020/04/19
shelves: sci-fi, worldview, rereads, feminism, dtb-own, best_covers, music
review:
an amazing example of social commentary without any trace of bitter pill to swallow. Silence (we learn this is an old-fashioned “virtue name�) introduced my tender little teenage brain to the idea of feminist sci-fi. we meet the main character just as her grandfather has died, and her uncle has stolen her inheritance to pay his gambling debts. having no other recourse, she throws her lot in with a pair of seemingly honest but disreputable space-farers. our heroine is dismissed by the system and by her own family, considered either property or a convenient solution by the men in her life, and is an all-around second-class citizen. this isn’t the tale of a shrinking-violet martyr, though: she finds ways to buck the system from within, and carve out a satisfying life on her own terms.

none of which would be worth the hill of proverbial beans if it wasn’t a good story. no trouble there, either, since ‘the roads of heaven� is easily one of the best rollicking space-opera adventure tales i’ve ever read. we’re tearing through the life story of a tough-as-nails space pilot (take that han solo!), hurtling between worlds with her two husbands (!), who goes on to become an amazingly powerful alchemist magician, and discovers the lost road to old earth.

i re-read this trilogy every few years, and it's actually gotten better with time/age. if you can find a copy, highly recommended.
]]> The Book of Ballads 1294247
Here are New York Times bestseller Neil Gaiman with "The False Knight on the Road"; popular mystery author Sharyn McCrumb's version of "Thomas the Rhymer"; acclaimed children's writer Jane Yolen with "King Henry" and "The Great Selchie of Sule Skerrie"; popular novelist Charles de Lint's contemporary reworking of "Twa Corbies"; Bone creator Jeff Smith with "The Galtee Farmer"; Emma Bull's version of "The Black Fox," and much, much more.

Introduced by award-winning editor and writer Terri Windling, and finished with full lyrics and discographies of the classic versions of these songs and tales, The Book of Ballads is an event in the worlds of fantasy and graphic storytelling alike.]]> 192 Charles Vess 076531214X Michelle 3
like many anthologies, this one benefits hugely from being read in small bites. the episodic comic book format means that you can breeze through the whole thing in an hour or two, so it is a quick read. the tiny details of the illustrations, though, and the shifting mood from story to story, mean that one-at-a-time savoring is recommended.

the back of the book contains a suggested listening list for each song, and most all of the songs are available in several formats on youtube:

]]> 4.03 2004 The Book of Ballads
author: Charles Vess
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2011/05/30
date added: 2020/04/19
shelves: dtb-own, fantasy, graphic-novels, short-stories, faerie, fairy-tales, dragons-beasties, music
review:
a collection of old scots/irish/british folk songs, each set to Charles Vess' lovely illustrations. some are left traditional, most have a subtle expansion on the strict lyrics of the ballad to flesh it out into a bit more of a story, but none are updated or modern reworkings - go ahead and ignore the list of contributing authors, this is 100% Vess' show.

like many anthologies, this one benefits hugely from being read in small bites. the episodic comic book format means that you can breeze through the whole thing in an hour or two, so it is a quick read. the tiny details of the illustrations, though, and the shifting mood from story to story, mean that one-at-a-time savoring is recommended.

the back of the book contains a suggested listening list for each song, and most all of the songs are available in several formats on youtube:


]]> Another Roadside Attraction 9570 Another Roadside Attraction answers those questions and a lot more. It tell us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, this stunningly original seriocomic thriller is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hot dog and eroding the borders of the mind.]]> 366 Tom Robbins 1842431293 Michelle 0 4.00 1971 Another Roadside Attraction
author: Tom Robbins
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/24
shelves: to-read, award_winner, dtb-own, fairy-tales, free, hilarity, lit_fic, magical-realism, myths-fables
review:

]]> Man Plus 968756 A bestselling, Nebula Award-winning novel when first published more than thirty years ago, this book is now more relevant than ever, as the battle between corporate interests & those who seek to save Earth's natural resources steadily escalates. The question of where man will go once the world's food, water & oil have run out has yet to be answered. Man Plus by Frederick Pohl is a brilliantly imagined, compelling possible scenario that has enthralled countless readers.]]> 215 Frederik Pohl 0394486765 Michelle 0 3.58 1976 Man Plus
author: Frederik Pohl
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/05
shelves: to-read, award_winner, sci-fi, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins � someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects� Harry Potter himself!]]> 352 J.K. Rowling Michelle 4 4.42 1998 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: kids_and_y-a, fantasy, dtb-own, witches_wizards, there-s-a-movie-too, dragons-beasties
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)]]> 6 734 J.K. Rowling 0439139597 Michelle 5 4.56 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: kids_and_y-a, fantasy, dtb-own, witches_wizards, there-s-a-movie-too, dragons-beasties
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)]]> 5 435 J.K. Rowling 043965548X Michelle 5 4.57 1999 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: kids_and_y-a, fantasy, dtb-own, witches_wizards, time-travel, there-s-a-movie-too, dragons-beasties
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dragon and the Unicorn (Arthor, #1)]]> 478276 539 A.A. Attanasio 0061057797 Michelle 5 3.89 1994 The Dragon and the Unicorn (Arthor, #1)
author: A.A. Attanasio
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: fantasy, dtb-own, best_covers, ebook, to-reread, dragons-beasties
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle]]> 11934 430 Peter S. Beagle 0345289676 Michelle 0 4.21 1978 The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle
author: Peter S. Beagle
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: to-read, best_covers, dtb-own, fantasy, ghosts-hauntings, shapeshifters, dragons-beasties
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unexpected Dragon (Pigs Don't Fly, #2-4)]]> 198514 852 Mary Brown 0739405837 Michelle 0 4.24 1999 The Unexpected Dragon (Pigs Don't Fly, #2-4)
author: Mary Brown
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, fantasy, dragons-beasties
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Birth of the Firebringer (Firebringer, #1)]]> 1359509 234 Meredith Ann Pierce 0590402803 Michelle 5 ]]> 4.18 1985 Birth of the Firebringer (Firebringer, #1)
author: Meredith Ann Pierce
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 1987/01/01
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: fantasy, worldview, dtb-own, kids_and_y-a, dragons-beasties
review:
an instant must-have when I found it as part of one those scholastic book fairs they used to have when in was in elementary school, I cherished this book greatly as a kiddo. not at all the hearts n flowers sort of unicorns, this one is a very well written coming of age tale where the prince searching for his lost birthright does battle with dragons with a sword already attached to his head rather than in his hand. a complete and wholly satisfying tale, except that a narrator's coda tells us "but that is only the first part of my song. come to my campfire tomorrow night and I shall tell you the rest.". the hunt to find the sequels launched a lifelong love of book collecting.

]]> The Iron Dragon's Daughter 534875 424 Michael Swanwick 0380730464 Michelle 4 3.63 1993 The Iron Dragon's Daughter
author: Michael Swanwick
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 1999/01/01
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: faerie, fantasy, sci-fi, dtb-own, dragons-beasties
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Cities of Coin and Spice (The Orphan's Tales, #2)]]> 547448
Her name and origins are unknown, but the endless tales inked upon this orphan’s eyelids weave a spell over all who listen to her read her secret history. And who can resist the stories she tells? From the Lake of the Dead and the City of Marrow to the artists who remain behind in a ghost city of spice, here are stories of hedgehog warriors and winged skeletons, loyal leopards and sparrow calligraphers. Nothing is too fantastic, anything can happen, but you’ll never guess what comes next in these intimately linked adventures of firebirds and djinn, singing manticores, mutilated unicorns, and women made entirely of glass and gears. Graced with the magical illustrations of Michael Kaluta, In the Cities of Coins and Spice is a book of dreams and wonders unlike any you’ve ever encountered. Open it anywhere and you will fall under its spell. For here the story never ends and the magic is only beginning. . . .]]> 516 Catherynne M. Valente 055338404X Michelle 5 4.40 2007 In the Cities of Coin and Spice (The Orphan's Tales, #2)
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2009/07/21
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: fantasy, to-reread, dtb-own, faerie, fairy-tales, feminism, dragons-beasties, award_winner, worldview
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Night Garden (The Orphan's Tales, #1)]]> 202769
Every once in a great while a book comes along that reminds us of the magic spell that stories can cast over us—to dazzle, entertain, and enlighten. Welcome to the Arabian Nights for our time–a lush and fantastical epic guaranteed to spirit you away from the very first page...

Secreted away in a garden, a lonely girl spins stories to warm a curious peculiar feats and unspeakable fates that loop through each other and back again to meet in the tapestry of her voice. Inked on her eyelids, each twisting, tattooed tale is a piece in the puzzle of the girl’s own hidden history. And what tales she tells! Tales of shape-shifting witches and wild horsewomen, heron kings and beast princesses, snake gods, dog monks, and living stars—each story more strange and fantastic than the one that came before.

From ill-tempered 'mermaid' to fastidious Beast, nothing is ever quite what it seems in these ever-shifting tales—even, and especially, their teller. Adorned with illustrations by the legendary Michael Kaluta, Valente’s enchanting lyrical fantasy offers a breathtaking reinvention of the untold myths and dark fairy tales that shape our dreams. And just when you think you’ve come to the end, you realize the adventure has only begun�.]]> 483 Catherynne M. Valente 0553384031 Michelle 5
highly recommended, with the caveat that the 2nd book is a continuation of the first rather than a sequel.]]> 4.02 2006 In the Night Garden (The Orphan's Tales, #1)
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2009/05/20
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: fantasy, award_winner, book_club, to-reread, dtb-own, feminism, faerie, fairy-tales, worldview, dragons-beasties
review:
a son of a sultan sneaks out of the palace at night to listen to a more-than-half wild creature tell him wonderous tales. she's an orphan of unknown parentage living out in the gardens of the palace, and she has innumerable stories inked across her eyelids that she spins out unfinished night to night like Scheherazade. as the characters in each tale interact with someone else, they begin telling their own tale before finishing the first, resulting in a russian-nested-dolls approach to storytelling. in the hands of a less-gifted author, the approach would have come off as gimmicky or forced; in Valente's hands though, it's utterly fascinating and makes this book extremely hard to put down. it's not an easy book, as you're required to keep threads of many different lives straight at once, but those threads are each very brightly colored and the effort is well worth it. fans of old stories and myths will be consistently delighted at the tales that are clear variants of old faves, and perhaps even more so that the many shiny new workings that sound just as familar.

highly recommended, with the caveat that the 2nd book is a continuation of the first rather than a sequel.
]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)]]> 59920 184 Ursula K. Le Guin 055314863X Michelle 4 4.12 1968 A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2008/02/02
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: fantasy, dtb-own, grand_masters, dragons-beasties, award_winner
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1)]]> 68494 710 China Miéville 0345459407 Michelle 4
Isaac is a rogue scientist; he can't be bothered to teach a steady class at the university, and he'd much rather dabble in research on whatever topic catches his fancy. Yag's need to fly, and the possible solution in Isaac's pet theories on crisis energy launches him into a creative frenzy. when he comes up for breath, he slips away from the censure of the nearby faculty to live his open secret cross-species love for

Lin, an up & coming bohemian artist, is a khepri - a russet-skinned woman with a scarab beetle head. she's just taken a once-in-a-lifetime commission for a truly grand sculpture, one that will require her most bravura work. she'll never gain fame from this potential masterpiece, given the requirement of secrecy from the patron

Motley is possibly the city's prime crime lord, a shadowy figure with webs extending everywhere into the city's underbelly. he's cornering the market on a new drug who's effects are far worse than sobriety ever could be, something that will take many lives in its production.

these people's lives interlock in ever-closer patterns along with beautiful monsters, , robo-monkeys, steampunk clockworks, demons that exist in alternate planes of existence, AI, Shelob (?!), Crime and Punishment and Justice, and the crumbling mucous-dripping stained stench of the decaying city streets. Mieville gets full marks for creativity - this book is overflowing with imaginative ideas & nightmares. getting to all those pearls, though, necessitates have to wade through a whole lot of baroquely ornate prose rife with excessive descriptors. more than once, it starts to feel a bit too clever for its own good (e.g., my dictionary says that palimpsest = "writing material used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased", though each of the half-dozen times that word ostentatiously crops up, it generally means something closer to "a stench of many layers"). the first 200 pages are a slowly meandering stroll through the gritty, tired city before the story sharply veers off into exciting horror novel territory, and then finally fizzles some under its own weight. it felt like work to push through the last chunk of it, and i put down the book feeling it was solidly (somewhat disappointingly) a 3 star read.

24 hours later, though, all those ideas are still boiling up through my brain, and it occurs to me that the idea of "choice-theft" as the highest form of crime is a far more elegant way of phrasing my own personal morality. something that gets that far under your skin is pretty damn impressive, even with all the palimpsests of mucous.]]> 3.98 2000 Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1)
author: China Miéville
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2011/07/08
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: dtb-own, fantasy, award_winner, book_club, wow-wtf
review:
Yagharek is a garuda, an eagle-man from the desert, who has lost his wings in punishment for one of the worst crimes among his people. feeling trapped earthbound, he journeys to the crowded, crumbling city of new crobuzon to seek help from

Isaac is a rogue scientist; he can't be bothered to teach a steady class at the university, and he'd much rather dabble in research on whatever topic catches his fancy. Yag's need to fly, and the possible solution in Isaac's pet theories on crisis energy launches him into a creative frenzy. when he comes up for breath, he slips away from the censure of the nearby faculty to live his open secret cross-species love for

Lin, an up & coming bohemian artist, is a khepri - a russet-skinned woman with a scarab beetle head. she's just taken a once-in-a-lifetime commission for a truly grand sculpture, one that will require her most bravura work. she'll never gain fame from this potential masterpiece, given the requirement of secrecy from the patron

Motley is possibly the city's prime crime lord, a shadowy figure with webs extending everywhere into the city's underbelly. he's cornering the market on a new drug who's effects are far worse than sobriety ever could be, something that will take many lives in its production.

these people's lives interlock in ever-closer patterns along with beautiful monsters, , robo-monkeys, steampunk clockworks, demons that exist in alternate planes of existence, AI, Shelob (?!), Crime and Punishment and Justice, and the crumbling mucous-dripping stained stench of the decaying city streets. Mieville gets full marks for creativity - this book is overflowing with imaginative ideas & nightmares. getting to all those pearls, though, necessitates have to wade through a whole lot of baroquely ornate prose rife with excessive descriptors. more than once, it starts to feel a bit too clever for its own good (e.g., my dictionary says that palimpsest = "writing material used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased", though each of the half-dozen times that word ostentatiously crops up, it generally means something closer to "a stench of many layers"). the first 200 pages are a slowly meandering stroll through the gritty, tired city before the story sharply veers off into exciting horror novel territory, and then finally fizzles some under its own weight. it felt like work to push through the last chunk of it, and i put down the book feeling it was solidly (somewhat disappointingly) a 3 star read.

24 hours later, though, all those ideas are still boiling up through my brain, and it occurs to me that the idea of "choice-theft" as the highest form of crime is a far more elegant way of phrasing my own personal morality. something that gets that far under your skin is pretty damn impressive, even with all the palimpsests of mucous.
]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)]]> 119322
Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want--but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.]]> 399 Philip Pullman 0679879242 Michelle 5 4.02 1995 The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)
author: Philip Pullman
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2012/09/12
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: book_club, fantasy, dtb-own, award_winner, kids_and_y-a, mystery, rereads, dragons-beasties
review:
first read as part of the SFBC 3-in-1 around 2001-ish
]]> <![CDATA[The Magic and the Healing (Crossroads, 1)]]> 1417024 326 Nick O'Donohoe 0441000533 Michelle 4
BJ is a 4th year vet student in the middle of a brutal life upheaval that makes her question whether she can finish school. on the verge of walking out the door, she's invited by a large animal prof to join an ambulatory rotation, where she finds herself again by finding herself in an entirely different world. there's a somewhat superfluous bad guy plot tacked on the end, but that bit is easy to ignore in favor of the droll but deadly griffin and his ilk.

the fun of this for me was absolutely in the details. the afterword says that O'Donohoe's wife was a vet student during the writing of this novel, and her influence on accuracy of both the vet student experience and the practical realities of emergency equine surgery are utterly evident. this one is highly recommended for anyone who's both a fantasy lover and an IRL veterinarian.]]> 3.95 1994 The Magic and the Healing (Crossroads, 1)
author: Nick O'Donohoe
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2015/06/11
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: fantasy, best_covers, dtb-own, ebook, lendable-ebook, urban_fantasy, medical-fiction, dragons-beasties
review:
an occasionally unevenly-written "normal people end up in a fantasy land" sort of tale, only SWEET BABY MONKEY IT'S ABOUT VETERINARIANS TREATING UNICORNS AND WHATNOT.

BJ is a 4th year vet student in the middle of a brutal life upheaval that makes her question whether she can finish school. on the verge of walking out the door, she's invited by a large animal prof to join an ambulatory rotation, where she finds herself again by finding herself in an entirely different world. there's a somewhat superfluous bad guy plot tacked on the end, but that bit is easy to ignore in favor of the droll but deadly griffin and his ilk.

the fun of this for me was absolutely in the details. the afterword says that O'Donohoe's wife was a vet student during the writing of this novel, and her influence on accuracy of both the vet student experience and the practical realities of emergency equine surgery are utterly evident. this one is highly recommended for anyone who's both a fantasy lover and an IRL veterinarian.
]]> Tooth and Claw 344623 304 Jo Walton 0765349094 Michelle 4 3.85 2003 Tooth and Claw
author: Jo Walton
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/14
date added: 2019/11/13
shelves: award_winner, fantasy, dtb-own, dragons-beasties
review:
Funny, strange, straitlaced serious while being irreverently amusing, dragons being all red in tooth & claw while playing out fashionable Victorian social moires is thoroughly delightful.
]]> Dhalgren 3534579 "In the crippled city
where time has lost its meaning
and violence is swift and sudden,
a nameless young man with no memory appears...
He shares his great strength
in a loving trinity with a young boy
and a haunted, beautiful woman
in that time before the end of time..."]]> 879 Samuel R. Delany 0553117181 Michelle 0 to-read, dtb-own, sci-fi 3.89 1975 Dhalgren
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/09
shelves: to-read, dtb-own, sci-fi
review:

]]> Anno-Dracula 1734348 But what if Van Helsing failed, and Dracula's plan of conquest was successful...
This panoramic novel of altered history and literary speculation combines horror, mystery, romance, politics, and wit as Kim Newman brilliantly reinvent the familiar world of late Victorian melodrama, intermingling famous historical and fictional characters while penetrating the fog to discover the shocking truths.]]> 359 Kim Newman 0881849677 Michelle 5 3.87 1992 Anno-Dracula
author: Kim Newman
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2008/03/08
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: vampires, dtb-own, historical-fantasy, horror
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)]]> 11
Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.

Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!]]> 216 Douglas Adams Michelle 5 4.21 1979 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)
author: Douglas Adams
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: hilarity, sci-fi, 1001-books, worldview, dtb-own, books-about-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue (The Bern Saga, #1)]]> 6828998 268 Hugh Howey 1935254138 Michelle 3
it's neither fluffy "everyone has a happy ending" stuff, nor plagued by one-dimensional characters (problems with a lot of y/a literature). characters are complex and conflicted, and there's some real danger here. a fun adventure read. ]]> 3.88 2009 Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue (The Bern Saga, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/12/04
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: kids_and_y-a, sci-fi, dtb-own, free
review:
3.5 stars - a fun space opera in the school of "one wacky thing after another" serial-adventure. molly fyde is an orphan teen about to wash out of the naval academy (apparently, they REALLY don't like chicks flying their spaceships). when life kicks her in the pants, she finds out that her long-lost parents' ship has been found, as in hock across the galaxy. setting off with her best buddy (and huge crush) from the academy to pick it up begins a series of big adventures and close scrapes.

it's neither fluffy "everyone has a happy ending" stuff, nor plagued by one-dimensional characters (problems with a lot of y/a literature). characters are complex and conflicted, and there's some real danger here. a fun adventure read.
]]> The Historian 77273
Late one night in 1972, as a 16-year-old girl, she discovers a mysterious book and a sheaf of letters in her father's library—a discovery that will have dreadful and far-reaching consequences, and will send her on a journey of mind-boggling danger. While seeking clues to the secrets of her father's past and her mother's puzzling disappearance, she follows a trail from London to Istanbul to Budapest and beyond, and learns that the letters in her possession provide a link to one of the world's darkest and most intoxicating figures. Generation after generation, the legend of Dracula has enticed and eluded both historians and opportunists alike. Now a young girl undertakes the same search that ended in the death and defilement of so many others—in an attempt to save her father from an unspeakable fate.
(Fall 2005 Selection)]]> 642 Elizabeth Kostova 0316011770 Michelle 4
the unnamed narrator is the third generation to search through old letters & older tomes in an attempt to discover the whereabouts of vlad tepes dracula's tomb, with the underlying certainty that he is in fact the evil undead and must be destroyed. the story is mainly told from the point of view of a girl with a self-admittedly sheltered and highly educated childhood. the prose illustrates this at every opportunity - things slowly unfold in a decidedly old-fashioned way, and the story is told through intellectual pursuits and research, not flaming passions and sexy romps. all of which is quite the opposite to a typical vampire novel.

it succeeds in nearly living up to the massive hype surrounding it; it is indeed a lovely, richly detailed book. in fact, it's just the sort of thing that has you tearing through the wikipedia afterwards to glean more of the actual history. if that sort of brainy approach to what anyone else would have (and often has) written as a salacious horror novel sounds attractive, grab a copy and be prepared to spend a chunk of time with it. while ultimately liking it, i found that i absolutely had to be in the right mood to enjoy this book, otherwise, the charm of the old-fashioned meandering prose became an annoyance.]]> 3.74 2005 The Historian
author: Elizabeth Kostova
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2008/09/26
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: vampires, dtb-own, lit_fic, gothic
review:
this book is slooooooooow. if you're ok with that, read on.

the unnamed narrator is the third generation to search through old letters & older tomes in an attempt to discover the whereabouts of vlad tepes dracula's tomb, with the underlying certainty that he is in fact the evil undead and must be destroyed. the story is mainly told from the point of view of a girl with a self-admittedly sheltered and highly educated childhood. the prose illustrates this at every opportunity - things slowly unfold in a decidedly old-fashioned way, and the story is told through intellectual pursuits and research, not flaming passions and sexy romps. all of which is quite the opposite to a typical vampire novel.

it succeeds in nearly living up to the massive hype surrounding it; it is indeed a lovely, richly detailed book. in fact, it's just the sort of thing that has you tearing through the wikipedia afterwards to glean more of the actual history. if that sort of brainy approach to what anyone else would have (and often has) written as a salacious horror novel sounds attractive, grab a copy and be prepared to spend a chunk of time with it. while ultimately liking it, i found that i absolutely had to be in the right mood to enjoy this book, otherwise, the charm of the old-fashioned meandering prose became an annoyance.
]]> Gloriana 942077 378 Michael Moorcock 0445202718 Michelle 3
it's a lush, thick, dense sort of gothic sort of stuff here.

prose is overabundantly bursting with descriptions of fabrics that courtiers wear and lists of types of buildings that can be found in the city square; sentences curl baroquely across half a page at a time. it's dedicated to (and, i'm given to understand, a pastiche of) Mervyn Peake, so perhaps if i'd read Gormenghast, i'd be more in love with the heavy silken texture. as it is, when a nefarious plot feels the need to show up halfway through the book, i couldn't decide if it was good to get things moving along, or merely a distraction from all the overwrought wordsmithing. it's a strange lovely book, but [spoilers removed].

eat this one in small bites, perhaps with some very light-reading sort of short stories handy as a palate cleanser every few chapters.]]> 3.74 1978 Gloriana
author: Michael Moorcock
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at: 2012/04/09
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: dtb-own, fantasy, alternate_history, grand_masters, award_winner, lit_fic, gothic
review:
in a far more lush and gothic olde england, a decidedly NOT virgin queen rules over a golden age of expansion, exploration, and harmony. a secret population of those who have slipped into disfavor or diminished in fame live in between the walls of her sprawling palace. her gorgeous reign of peace and prosperity is built upon the blood and misery of her unlamented insane father. she keeps a seraglio of willing creatures of every sort because she loves them too much to ever turn anyone out of her household. court intrigues abound and formal costumed ceremonies usher in every season.

it's a lush, thick, dense sort of gothic sort of stuff here.

prose is overabundantly bursting with descriptions of fabrics that courtiers wear and lists of types of buildings that can be found in the city square; sentences curl baroquely across half a page at a time. it's dedicated to (and, i'm given to understand, a pastiche of) Mervyn Peake, so perhaps if i'd read Gormenghast, i'd be more in love with the heavy silken texture. as it is, when a nefarious plot feels the need to show up halfway through the book, i couldn't decide if it was good to get things moving along, or merely a distraction from all the overwrought wordsmithing. it's a strange lovely book, but [spoilers removed].

eat this one in small bites, perhaps with some very light-reading sort of short stories handy as a palate cleanser every few chapters.
]]> <![CDATA[The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1)]]> 7469018
There is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave's Mr Big.

Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

Perhaps today just isn't going to be Thursday's day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again...]]> 384 Jasper Fforde Michelle 5 4.04 2001 The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2002/01/01
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: dtb-own, alternate_history, hilarity, sci-fi, time-travel, books-about-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next, #2)]]> 963696 372 Jasper Fforde 034082283X Michelle 4 3.98 2002 Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next, #2)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2003/01/01
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: dtb-own, alternate_history, hilarity, sci-fi, books-about-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dragons and Other Fabulous Beasts]]> 18047681 61 Richard Blythe Michelle 5 4.00 1977 Dragons and Other Fabulous Beasts
author: Richard Blythe
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 1980/01/01
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: best_covers, fairy-tales, kids_and_y-a, myths-fables, dtb-own, worldview
review:

]]> The Thirteenth Tale 40440
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.]]> 406 Diane Setterfield 0743298020 Michelle 5
Once upon a time, Britain's most famous author, the creator of the most fantastic fairy tales and dark imaginings put to paper, lived a semi-reclusive life in a great house by the moors. She granted interviews regularly, and lied fantastically in each, spinning out yet another tale rather than telling any true story of herself. Nearing the end of her career and her life, she selects an obscure academic with her own reclusive tendencies and hidden secrets to be the biographer she finally tells the truth to, and both unearth and finally lay to rest the ghosts of the past.

Setterfield's hugely praised debut novel is a love letter to books and to reading them. People have stacks of books on every shelf, and are avid collectors as a matter of course. The biographer always has to settle into a comfortable seat to begin reading, since she took a tumble when too engrossed in a book in childhood and now "never reads standing up." The books themselves have seeped into the narrative, too, with every crumbling ruin, misty moor, insane relative in the attic, and whispered rumor from the gothic classics making a passing appearance. I remain convinced that each name and cracked windowpane is a subtle nod to a Bronte or Collins. This isn't a breakneck-paced thriller, but a true homage to the giants of gothic literature, fascinating and a little dark.]]> 3.96 2006 The Thirteenth Tale
author: Diane Setterfield
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2019/08/24
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: dtb-own, book_club_irl, mystery, books-about-books, award_winner, gothic
review:
The Thirteenth tale came highly recommended to me when it was released, and I've now had a hardback copy buried in the foothills of Mount Unread for several years. Thanks much to my book club for unearthing this gem with me!

Once upon a time, Britain's most famous author, the creator of the most fantastic fairy tales and dark imaginings put to paper, lived a semi-reclusive life in a great house by the moors. She granted interviews regularly, and lied fantastically in each, spinning out yet another tale rather than telling any true story of herself. Nearing the end of her career and her life, she selects an obscure academic with her own reclusive tendencies and hidden secrets to be the biographer she finally tells the truth to, and both unearth and finally lay to rest the ghosts of the past.

Setterfield's hugely praised debut novel is a love letter to books and to reading them. People have stacks of books on every shelf, and are avid collectors as a matter of course. The biographer always has to settle into a comfortable seat to begin reading, since she took a tumble when too engrossed in a book in childhood and now "never reads standing up." The books themselves have seeped into the narrative, too, with every crumbling ruin, misty moor, insane relative in the attic, and whispered rumor from the gothic classics making a passing appearance. I remain convinced that each name and cracked windowpane is a subtle nod to a Bronte or Collins. This isn't a breakneck-paced thriller, but a true homage to the giants of gothic literature, fascinating and a little dark.
]]> The Stand 149267 For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are listening to The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.]]> 1152 Stephen King Michelle 4 4.35 1978 The Stand
author: Stephen King
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/08/13
shelves: horror, post-apocalyptic, dtb-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hôtel Transylvania (Saint-Germain, #1)]]> 1062236 252 Chelsea Quinn Yarbro 0312392486 Michelle 0 3.47 1978 Hôtel Transylvania (Saint-Germain, #1)
author: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/07/17
shelves: to-read, alternate_history, dtb-own, historical-fantasy, horror, vampires
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Demon and the City (Detective Inspector Chen, #2)]]> 535342
Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.]]> 256 Liz Williams 1597800473 Michelle 3 3.5 stars 3.46 2006 The Demon and the City (Detective Inspector Chen, #2)
author: Liz Williams
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2019/02/24
date added: 2019/02/27
shelves: urban_fantasy, witches_wizards, sci-fi, dtb-own, gods
review:
3.5 stars
]]> <![CDATA[Petty Treason (Sarah Tolerance, #2)]]> 346223
of good family must, soon or late, descend to whoredom.

Miss Sarah Tolerance refuses to follow the path of the Fallen Women who have gone before her. She's a straight shooter, with her pistol as well as her wit, and her mind is as sharp as the blade of her sword. Miss Tolerance is an Agent of Inquiry, a private investigator of sorts--the sole one of her kind in London, in this year of 1810 with mad King George III on the throne and Queen Charlotte acting as his Regent. Her aim was to trace lost trinkets, send wastrel husbands back to their wives, and occasionally provide protection to persons with more money than sense--but she is continually drawn into the plots of others. Her newest case poses a puzzle unlike any she has faced who killed the Chevalier d'Aubigny? The French émigré was beaten to death in his own bed, found by his retainers the next morning, all the doors and windows of the house sealed tight. The murder is a classic locked-room mystery, but Miss Tolerance knows she can find the key. As Miss Tolerance examines the situation and interviews witnesses and suspects, she realizes things are far more complicated than she originally suspected--for the Chevalier had more enemies than he had friends, and Miss Tolerance is hard pressed to find someone who didn't wish him dead. Her search for his killer takes her from the lowest brothels of the seedy London underworld, where men go to indulge their more aggressive desires, to the Royal Family and a Duke who must hide his perversions or risk the Throne. Welcome to Miss Tolerance's Regency London, where nothing is what it seems and the only way to serve justice is to follow conscience rather than law.]]> 320 Madeleine E. Robins 0765343061 Michelle 0 3.88 2004 Petty Treason (Sarah Tolerance, #2)
author: Madeleine E. Robins
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/02/21
shelves: to-read, alternate_history, dangling_series, dtb-own, feminism, historical-fiction, mystery, romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Red-Rose Chain (October Daye, #9)]]> 15748535
For the first time in what feels like years, October “Toby� Daye has been able to pause long enough to take a breath and look at her life—and she likes what she sees. She has friends. She has allies. She has a squire to train and a King of Cats to love, and maybe, just maybe, she can let her guard down for a change.

Or not. When Queen Windermere’s seneschal is elf-shot and thrown into an enchanted sleep by agents from the neighboring Kingdom of Silences, Toby finds herself in a role she never expected to play: that of a diplomat. She must travel to Portland, Oregon, to convince King Rhys of Silences not to go to war against the Mists. But nothing is that simple, and what October finds in Silences is worse than she would ever have imagined.

How far will Toby go when lives are on the line, and when allies both old and new are threatened by a force she had never expected to face again? How much is October willing to give up, and how much is she willing to change? In Faerie, what’s past is never really gone.

It’s just waiting for an opportunity to pounce.]]> 367 Seanan McGuire 1472120205 Michelle 0 4.26 2015 A Red-Rose Chain (October Daye, #9)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/02/08
shelves: to-read, faerie, dtb-own, mystery, urban_fantasy
review:

]]> A City Dreaming 29498944
Enter a world of Wall Street wolves, slumming scenesters, desperate artists, drug-induced divinities, pocket steam-punk universes, hipster zombies, and phantom subway lines. Because the city never sleeps, but is always dreaming.]]> 304 Daniel Polansky 1682450384 Michelle 4 3.89 2016 A City Dreaming
author: Daniel Polansky
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/27
date added: 2019/01/29
shelves: witches_wizards, urban_fantasy, dtb-own, lit_fic, horror, hilarity
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wine Folly: Magnum Edition: The Master Guide]]> 39402952 JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER

The expanded wine guide from the creators of Wine Folly, packed with new information for devotees and newbies alike.

Wine Folly became a sensation for its inventive, easy-to-digest approach to learning about wine. Now in a new, expanded hardcover edition, Wine Folly: Magnum Edition is the perfect guide for anyone looking to take his or her wine knowledge to the next level. Wine Folly: Magnum Edition includes:
- more than 100 grapes and wines color-coded by style so you can easily find new wines you'll love;
- a wine region explorer with detailed maps of the top wine regions, as well as up-and-coming areas such as Greece and Hungary;
- wine labeling and classification 101 for wine countries such as France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Austria;
- an expanded food and wine pairing section;
- a primer on acidity and tannin--so you can taste wine like a pro;
- more essential tips to help you cut through the complexity of the wine world and become an expert.
Wine Folly: Magnum Edition is the must-have book for the millions of fans of Wine Folly and for any budding oenophile who wants to boost his or her wine knowledge in a practical and fun way. It's the ultimate gift for any wine lover.]]> 320 Madeline Puckette 0525533893 Michelle 4 4.59 2018 Wine Folly: Magnum Edition: The Master Guide
author: Madeline Puckette
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2018/12/25
date added: 2018/12/25
shelves: cooking, dtb-own, nonfiction, reference
review:
A crisply produced, full-color introduction to the world of wine, Puckette's super accessible guide offers both fun factoids for the more experienced wine nerd and a solid reference for newbies. Sections on how to assess color, aroma, and taste break down the old school wine sampling rituals to a simple method for diving into the experience, and a couple of brief pages on etiquette give a social head's up to folks that weren't raised with all this. These topics are technically correct without getting too technical, and the book breezily moves along to the next concept after making concise points. Since wine is typically labeled and sold by 2 different systems - grape variety or country/region of origin - the bulk of the book is devoted to a section for each of these. Each grape type gets a graphically organized one-sheet outlining flavor profile, what types of wines are typically made with it, and areas that grow it. Each wine growing country gets a map showing typically labeled regions, notes on the general style of wines produced there, and a few types of wines to try out. Not a single brand or specific winery is mentioned, so it all feels educational rather than commercial. Wine Folly is by no means an exhaustive reference, but nicely covers the bases for most any non-professional wine enthusiast... and provides links and books in the afterward if you need more.
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