December Reading
Jan
02
2011

There are no books for this week (unless you count the crockpot cookbook I bought, but that’s not quite the same) so the December reading post will be the Sunday substitute.  I’m mostly taking the weekend off since it’s the end of my vacation, but next week I’m hoping to get started on the next reviews I need to write (The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker and Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold) or perhaps the post on a book I didn’t finish.

Books read in December are:

47. Midsummer Night by Freda Warrington (Review)
48. The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker (To Be Reviewed)
49. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold (To Be Reviewed)
50. Death Note: Volume 1 by Tsugumi Ohba (Will probably wait and review the whole graphic novel series instead of each individual volume)

Favorite Book of the Month: Tough one.  I liked all of these a lot.  I’m going to go with Midsummer Night, but this is a case where it could be any one of the three novels depending on my mood as they’re all very different but very good.  Midsummer Night was very atmospheric, The Folding Knife was very clever, and Memory was very fun and one of my favorite books in the Miles Vorkosigan series (out of the 10 I’ve read so far).

Currently Reading: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.  I’m a third of the way through it and I like it so far.  My husband told me I should read it since I was on vacation, but I actually didn’t end up reading that much over vacation so I’ve still got a ways to go before finishing it.

What did you read in December?  What did you think of the books you read last month?

Favorite Books of 2010
Dec
31
2010

Now that it is New Year’s Eve and I know there is no way I will finish the lengthy book I am reading by tonight, it is time to compile the favorites list.  2010 was a very good year – sure, there were a few books I didn’t enjoy or thought were mediocre, but there were a lot that I really liked a lot.

It was also a good year for blogging in other ways since I got to go to Book Expo America and the first Book Blogger Convention and meet a lot of other reviewers I had never thought I’d really get to meet.  Getting to actually talk to some of these people in person was one of the highlights of the year since they were all just as nice and fun in real life as on their blogs!  Also, my husband revamped the website and I have to say I’m very happy with the results and still love the new header.  Getting to interview Ginn Hale and Danielle Bennett and Jaida Jones was also exciting and has made me want to try to do more interviews next year (and I’ve already got one lined up as of today that I’m thrilled about).

Back to the books.  As far as number read went, I read 50 (including one graphic novel) which is a little less than last year when I read 59 total.  It’s still better than I thought it would be since it was somewhat of a crazy year, as it was also the year in which my husband and I became homeowners which ended up leading to moving twice in just 2 or 3 months. (Which is insane!  I do not recommend it!)  Due to the increasing number of random review copies coming through my door that I really want to read, I’ve read more books published this year than is normal – 24.  There were still a lot of books published this year I wanted to read and haven’t gotten to yet, though (Cold Magic by Kate Elliott, The Spirit Lens by Carol Berg, The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman, Passion Play by Beth Bernobich and so many more!).  For the main list, I’ve decided to do favorites for the entire year and then I’ll add the favorites published of 2010 to the end (these will overlap some, although I am limiting each to one book per author which means if a book isn’t on one of these another book by the same author may be on the other).

All Books Read in 2010


I’m sure it’s no surprise that my number one favorite book read this year is the lovely Elfland by Freda Warrington (review).  It’s a very character-driven, intense book and that made it right up my alley.  Not only did I enjoy it, but it’s one of only three books read this year that were ones that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

The second spot on this list probably isn’t all that shocking, either, since The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner is another book I can’t stop talking about (review).  It impressed me greatly with its subtle writing and emotionally charged story.  And that last line?  Such a perfect ending.

Magic Strikes

It’s a little tough to choose whether or not I preferred the third or fourth book in the Kate Daniels series, but in the end, I have to go with the Magic Strikes since it never had a dull moment (review).  It was both action packed and full of character development, and I just love the way Ilona Andrews has been slowly revealing more and more about Kate’s background and building up the mystery about the villain.

The Broken Kingdoms

This was another one where I liked two books in the same series pretty close to equally, but I definitely preferred The Broken Kingdoms (review). With her first and second novel out this year and both of them incredibly good, N. K. Jemisin is an author I’m going to have to watch.  I just loved her world mythology and the narrative voice of Oree.

Lord of the White Hell Book 1

This was one story split into two so Lord of the White Hell really counts as one book in its entirety to me (Book 1 Review, Book 2 Review).  I loved this book for so many reasons – the characters, both the romance and the friendships, the curse and the white hell, and the different cultures and how they clashed.

The Habitation of the Blessed

The Habitation of the Blessed is a book that I enjoyed, but it’s also grown on me a lot more since finishing it (review).  It’s vast and epically imaginative and gorgeously written.  At times it’s also very thoughtful and insightful, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book sometime after it is out next year!

Naamah's Kiss

A lot of people don’t seem to like these as well as the first series, but I really enjoyed Naamah’s Kiss (review).  Maybe it’s because I still haven’t finished the original series, but I liked reading about Terre d’Ange and later alternate China through Moirin’s eyes.  I also liked that Moirin was a completely different character than Phedre with a completely different narrative voice that fit her better.  (While I also enjoyed it, I can see why people don’t like Naamah’s Curse, though – it is rather flawed).

Blameless

The Parasol Protectorate series just keeps getting better and better, and Blameless is my favorite so far (review).  These books are both witty and just plain fun with lots of well-worded phrases.

An Artificial Night

The October Daye series has gotten better with the second and third book, and this is another case where I liked them almost equally but An Artifical Night was just a little better (review).  It had a darker, creepier atmosphere plus there wasn’t quite as much mystery solving, which was a plus since I still don’t understand how Toby ever got to be a PI.  Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the series for the characters (Tybalt!), the humor, and faerie, but Toby seems a little dense at times…

World's End

While it’s not as epic as The Snow Queen, I still was very glad I read World’s End (review).  It was about one of my favorite characters from the former, and both reading about him and what happened at the end was fantastic.

There were a couple of books I considered for the tenth spot, neither of which I’ve reviewed yet since I just read them both, but I wanted to mention them since they were in consideration: The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker and Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Books Published in 2010

If I just go by books published in 2010, here is what the list looks like (the first few are pretty similar since half the books on my first list were published in 2010 and one of the other series had a new book out this year that was nearly as good):

  1. Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews (Review)
  2. The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Review)
  3. Lord of the White Hell by Ginn Hale (Book 1 Review | Book 2 Review)
  4. The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente (Review)
  5. Blameless by Gail Carriger (Review)
  6. An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire (Review)
  7. Midsummer Night by Freda Warrington (Review)
  8. The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker (Review Coming Soon)
  9. Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs (Review)
  10. Killbox by Ann Aguirre (Review)

Books Coming Out in 2011

Of course there are many books I’m looking forward to in 2011.  I’m sure there are some I am forgetting but some of the ones that I’m really looking forward to are:

  • The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
  • The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
  • Embassytown by China Mieville
  • A Tempering of Men by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
  • The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie
  • The Sea Thy Mistress by Elizabeth Bear
  • The Hammer by K. J. Parker
  • The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham
  • Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
  • Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews
  • River Marked by Patricia Briggs
  • Heartless by Gail Carriger
  • Kingdom of Gods by N. K. Jemisin
  • Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire
  • Naamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey
  • Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
  • The Folded World by Catherynne M. Valente
Magic Slays

What are some of your favorite books of the year?  Which books coming out next year are you really excited about?

Happy New Year!

Spin
Dec
31
2010

“Police helicopters peppered the crowd with tanglefoot gel until much of Gamla Stan looked like something a tubercular Godzilla might have coughed up.” Robert Charles Wilson, Spin

  • Comments Off on Spin
  • »
  • Author:
  •  
Review of Lady Lazarus by Michele Lang
Dec
30
2010
Lady Lazarus
by Michele Lang
320pp (Trade Paperback)
My Rating: 3.5/10
Amazon Rating: 4.5/5
LibraryThing Rating: 4/5
Goodreads Rating: 3.62/5
 

Lady Lazarus is the first book in a trilogy, the Magda Lazarus Saga, by Michele Lang.  The second book in this re-imagining of World War II, Dark Victory, will be released in 2011.  Even though it is an account based on an alternate history involving vampires, angels, witches, and werewolves, it is also based on the author’s family history since her Jewish mother and grandparents are Holocaust survivors who lived in Hungary during this time.  It also draws from the magical culture at the time and the Jewish Book of Raziel as Michele Lang discusses in a fascinating article she wrote for the Tor/Forge blog.

During the summer of 1939, Magda Lazarus lives in Budapest, Hungary, where she works for a vampire in order to support the only family she has left, her younger sister Gisele, and her best friend Eva.  There have been rumors of an impending war, but the reality doesn’t really hit home until Gisele, who has the gift of prophecy as an ancestor of the Witch of Ein Dor, has a vision.  In the future Gisele sees, millions of people are killed by the Nazis.  Horrified, Gisele asks her sister Magda to do something about it; although Magda would like to deny her legacy, she has the stronger power as the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter in the Lazarus family.

Against her better judgment, Magda is convinced to summon the Witch of Ein Dor herself in an attempt to discover what they can do to prevent this ominous event from occurring.  The Witch tells her the Jewish race will be eradicated, and there is nothing she do to change fate.  After some more cajoling, she reveals there is one possibility although it is very dangerous – Magda can find The Book of Raziel and use its power.  The future is so bleak, anything is worth trying so Magda embarks on a search for the legendary book of the Angel Raziel.

This has been a tough book for me to review (as evidenced by the fact that I finished it in the end of August/early September and am only reviewing it now).  I had very mixed feelings about this one, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I liked the premise far more than the execution.  It’s an alternate history featuring vampires, werewolves and the supernatural, which has been done to death recently, but I really liked the way that it was rooted in Jewish history and lore as well as its feminist leanings. Throughout the story, there is some mention about the Witch of Ein Dor being instrumental in the time of Saul and Solomon, and there’s also a very interesting story about the Book of Raziel and how it was actually given to Eve and passed down to her daughters.  The power of the Lazarus heritage is similarly passed from mother to daughter, and there are some strong female characters.  Magda is a reluctant heroine, but no one can fault her courage in the end, and Eva is a resilient protagonist as well.  I really wanted to like this book because I loved the idea of it – basing it on the author’s family’s personal experience with the Holocaust, the mythological parts and the role of women throughout the ages and in the present.

In spite of these strengths, I found my interest waning about halfway through and it was a bit of a struggle to finish the book.  While admirable as a character, Magda didn’t have enough depth to continue to be enjoyable to read about, and the romance between her and the angel Raziel was very trite.  Her attraction to him made sense – he was supposed to be a gorgeous angel – but I never really understood what he saw in her.  The romance was a bit quick and predictable, and I never really believed in them as a couple.  The characterization in general was fairly flat and no one really came alive; they just had a few character traits.

The main reason I wanted to read this book was the first paragraph, which intrigued me:

 

I damned my soul in the summer of 1939. I did it for the noblest reasons, the best ones — to save the people I loved; to make a terrible wrong turn right. But still I am tormented by the thought that my sins overwhelmed my intentions and turned my noble sacrifices to dust even as I made them. Only time will tell if my desperate measures, in the end, were justified. [pp. 11]

This is a case where being mysterious did not pay off because my imagination was hoping for something truly horrible, a big moral dilemma, and I ended up feeling underwhelmed by how it actually played out.  Plus the writing grated on me after a while.  It is from the first person perspective, and a lot of the sentences started with “I.”  It’s inevitable that this will happen sometimes, but it happened excessively and just started to seem like lazy writing.  There are times when it really threw me out of the story because there was no reason for it, particularly when she told us “I watched” instead of just stating what she saw:

 

I watched a crow fly over the tracks to reach a cluster of his brethren waiting on the other side. [pp. 106]

Just say a crow flew, Magda.  It goes without saying that you are watching it if you see it.

There were also some overly melodramatic statements and internal monologue that made me feel like I was reading an angsty 13 year old girl’s diary.  The entire prologue was written in the same tone as that very first paragraph and occasionally there were more parts that were just trying too hard to sound theatrical.

Even though I loved the basis for Lady Lazarus – the Jewish history, the mythological stories about angels and Biblical tales, and the strong roles of female characters – I found I lost interest about halfway through and have no desire to continue to read the series.  There’s a great foundation for a story, but the plot, the characters and the writing are not good enough to pull it off.

My Rating: 3.5/10

Where I got my reading copy: Review copy from the publisher.

Read the Prologue

Looking to 2011: The Blog
Dec
29
2010

Next year I’m hoping will be a little less crazy so I can manage more of a one review per week schedule, but other than that, I don’t expect next year to be all that different.  While I’d love to be one of those people who posts 3 – 5 reviews a week, I’m afraid it just isn’t going to happen unless I win the lottery and get to manage my own schedule (which would be a great thing to have happen in 2011 but I’m not holding my breath waiting for that one!).  I do tend to write rather slowly since I often end up rereading part of the book when writing a review and trying to make sure I’ve really thought it through – and sometimes I even end up changing my mind about what I initially thought in the process.  I’d rather try to write the best review I can than try to write more reviews that I feel are rushed and not great quality (not that I think my reviews are particularly great now, but I at least feel like I’ve given it my best shot when I publish them).

So as far as reviewing goes, I’ll try to do more of what I’ve been doing but will hopefully improve with practice – which would be my hope for every year.  My goal is to give you some information about each book I read – if it fits into a series and where, if it works as a stand alone or not, the plot (while always putting this in the same spot so it’s easy to skip for those people who don’t care), and any thoughts on characters, pacing, writing, world-building and anything else that stood out.  Since everyone’s taste in books is different, I attempt to provide enough information that you can get an idea of whether or not it’s a book you will like regardless of if I liked it or not without spoiling too much – which can be a difficult balance to maintain.  I generally decide what is too much information by asking myself if knowing what I’m saying beforehand would have spoiled the reading experience for me, but of course that differs from person to person.  Also, I sometimes ask what my husband thinks since I generally ask him to read my reviews before I post them anyway (any editor’s notes you find occasionally sprinkled throughout reviews are his).

The one thing I would like to change in 2011 is that I’d like to do some more interviews with authors whose work I’ve read and enjoyed.  This year I did an interview with Ginn Hale and one with Danielle Bennett and Jaida Jones and both of these were a lot of fun to do.

I would also like to open this up to suggestions.  Is there anything you’d like to see more or less of in 2011?  Now that there’s a new website, is there anything you’d particularly like to see on the new site?  The only feedback I received about changes when the site first went up was that it would be nice if Disqus let you just post a name and URL, which it does if you type your comment and then go to submit it instead of logging in first.  Is there anything else that would make the new site better?

Thank you to everyone who read my site in 2010!

Review of Midsummer Night by Freda Warrington
Dec
28
2010
Midsummer Night
by Freda Warrington
412pp (Hardcover)
My Rating: 8/10
Amazon Rating: 4/5
LibraryThing Rating: 4/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.75/5
 

Midsummer Night is the second Aetherial Tales novel as well as the second book by British author Freda Warrington to be published in the United States.  The first Aetherial Tales book is Elfland, but both this and Midsummer Night stand alone even though they are set in the same universe.  The more recently published book does take place after Elfland, but it’s definitely not necessary to read the earlier book first.  There are some minor characters that appear, but it doesn’t add much to the reading experience at all to know who are they are beforehand.

After the recent accident that destroyed her dreams and changed her life, Gill Sharma just wanted some peace and quiet.  She left London to stay at a cottage in Cairndonan in Scotland for 6 weeks, thinking it would be isolated and she could just be left alone.  Instead, she finds that Dame Juliana, the owner of Cairndonan and a famous artist, is running an art class so chaotic that it reminds her of an insane asylum.  Also Peta, one of the other art teachers, keeps trying to befriend her and even convinces her to be one of her subjects for making a mask in one of her classes.

One day Gill leaves her cottage in search of a grocery store and finds herself in an unusual town.  It has no roads and she finds herself entering what must be a pub with a great statue of an angel outside.  At this point, she is in great pain from her injury, but a magnificent man named Rufus somehow makes her pain disappear.  He then offers her a drink, and Gill accepts some fruit juice and tries to find out more about where she is.  She’s told she is in Boundry, but later she cannot find anyone who has heard of this place – anytime she mentions it, people act as though she has lost her mind.

That night when Gill is in her cottage, someone begins pounding on her door and yelling for her to help him.  At first Gill is terrified, but he seems truly upset so she lets him in – and discovers it was the quiet man she noticed in Boundry with Rufus.  He seems hysterical and unable to say much other than to tell her not to let him go back there, so Gill fetches Peta.  The two women decide they want to find out just what is happening for themselves rather than involving any authorities, but they do involve Dame Juliana herself – who has her own secret fears that this man may be tied to her past and her artistic gift.

After reading Elfland, reading Midsummer Night was a must.  While I enjoyed Midsummer Night and think that it was better than Elfland in some ways (mainly in that it didn’t border on too much melodrama), my personal preference is Elfland.  The newer novel didn’t have the same intensity and turbulence as the previous book, which had me thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it.  The characters in Midsummer Night were likable but didn’t capture me the same way as Rosie and Sam and the others from Elfland.  Midsummer Night was a good book that I’m glad to have read, but ultimately it wasn’t as memorable as Elfland.

Personal preference aside, Midsummer Night is both very different from and very similar to Elfland.  Both books have some beautiful writing and an interesting setting in the earth that is accessible to the Aetherial realm. Each book starts out with a prologue that involves different characters than the ones introduced at the start of the first chapter, and both novels are character-driven but with very different protagonists.  In Elfland, the main characters are children who end up as adults in their twenties by the end of the story, and it feels like a coming of age story in a lot of ways.  As the protagonists grow up, they make a lot of mistakes and make huge realizations about life and themselves along the way.  In Midsummer Night, the ages of the protagonists vary from youngish adults to a woman in her sixties.  They still develop throughout the novel but to a lesser degree, and they have more past mistakes than ones made during the course of the novel (although these past mistakes do certainly play an important role in what happens in Midsummer Night).  It’s also less intensely dramatic and more atmospheric than Elfland was, and Elfland had a lot of romance while Midsummer Night had very little.  There’s also a little more explanation about how the Aetherial realm manifests itself on Earth in Midsummer Night, but Elfland also has the gorgeously written Aetherial creation story.

While Midsummer Night contains a lot of different characters, the main focus is on Gill, an athlete whose career and engagement were shattered by an accident, and Dame Juliana, a renowned artist who is struggling to keep Cairndonan Estate because she hasn’t yet completed her master work titled Midsummer Night.  Of the two, the latter is the more compelling although I still sympathized with Gill, who just wanted some solitude after her ordeal.  Dame Juliana is in her sixties and has not sold any of her art in years, resulting in her financial difficulties.  She is certainly a perfectionist who discards her creation as inferior when others think it is brilliant, but mostly she fears the unusual properties of her art and the origin of her gift – and does not understand either of these.  Throughout the story she learns more about them as well as her family’s past, mostly through the journals left by her Aunt Corah, and the discoveries about the past came together well and really made sense given certain other characteristics of Dame Juliana.  It does all tie in with the appearance of Leith, a young man trying to escape from Rufus, and more is revealed about the Aetherials.

Midsummer Night did not have the same passionate energy that made me love Elfland so much, but it was still a very enjoyable book in its own right.  With its elegant but not over-the-top flowery prose, immersive setting, well-developed characters, natural dialogue, and mystery-filled plot, it has left me eager for more Aetherial Tales.

My Rating: 8/10

Where I got my reading copy: Review copy from the publisher (I requested one after reading Elfland and finding out there was going to be a new book soon).

Read an Excerpt

Review(s) of Related Books:

Other Reviews: