Monthly Archives: February 2008

Storm Front (Jim Butcher)

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Storm FrontJim Butcher Storm Front is the first book of the Dresden Files, about which I’d heard a lot of good things in the corridors of the internet. Urban fantasy has been my genre of choice since I first discovered it, but the books that I’ve read in the same vein as the Dresden Files normally have female main characters. (And female authors, of course, but that’s a much more convoluted issue.) The differences, under Harry Dresden, are a surprising pleasure. With a female main character, there’s always this sort of desperate drive to prove herself, a ramrod tension where […]

Thoughts (Tea-Time & American Gods)

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I was just thinking about buying a copy of Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Douglas Adams) and remembering how it kept jumping to my mind when I read American Gods (Neil Gaiman, review below). Because, honestly? Very different styles, but the plots hit every key note in perfect harmony. Metaphors aside, the real reason why the core of American Gods didn’t surprise me — I’d already seen it. Instinctively, I knew Wednesday was Odin, even before I consciously realized the Wodin’s Day connection… because it was deja vu from Tea-Time. It was like the time I was reading this […]

Anansi Boys (Neil Gaiman)

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Anansi BoysNeil Gaiman I tend to read in author streaks, as you may have noticed. This one I liked a lot better than American Gods, which it follows. The evolution of tension between the two brothers to alliance against the outside danger is artfully constructed. Of course, you immediately suspect Tiger is the ultimate enemy, because throughout the storytelling interludes, Anansi and Tiger’s rivalry is repeated in many different forms, like a recurring theme in a piece of music. Those interludes were my favorite part of the book, because it was like Anansi himself was speaking to us, telling the […]

Iron Kissed (Patricia Briggs)

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Iron KissedPatricia Briggs You never really attach to characters until they’re broken. Sure, you may admire them, think they’re interesting, or funny — but the moment of truth doesn’t come until they’re pushed past their yield point, squeezed until they shatter. The yield point, in material science, is the point when the plastic deformation is to some extent non-reversible. Repairs, of course, will straighten out your twisted psyche, but some of the damage will be permanent. And watching characters fighting to pull themselves together, to cobble their pieces into a functioning framework? That’s the most gut-wrenching, truthful experience you will […]

Dust (Elizabeth Bear)

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DustElizabeth Bear Just as fantastic and mind-bending as I was anticipating… full of those ideas that just make me shiver in awe. The first punch of the story is the best, when you get hit with all the world’s concepts at once. There were a few things I recognized – shadow panels show up in Ringworld, the term ‘coffins’ for sleeping quarters in Neuromancer – but the vast majority was new territory. I mean, angel Engineers who have machine-oil blood? Jacob’s Ladder a DNA helix? An entire artificial world that’s just as foreign and unexplored as an organic one? That […]