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Bookkeeping
Sep. 17th, 2008 01:43 pmBecause I am made of dead, book reports.
22. The Wild Road - Marjorie Liu
I didn't like this as much as The Iron Hunt, but it's still pretty good. I'm pleased to note that even though this is technically a paranormal romance, it didn't hit any of my big romance squicks. (Hero: not an asshole! Heroine: not a virgin! Woot!)
Some of the things that bugged me in Hunt were present here, too--characters withholding information from the MCs left and right, lots of convenient backstory tie-ins and superpowers. That can be tricky, though, since this is part of a larger series and I imagine some of these side characters have had their own books.
I would have liked the main plot to be stronger and more stream-lined, and some of the side stuff pared away, but god knows I have enough trouble doing that in my own stories. (Yes, I'm in one of those phases where I can't read anything without dissecting it and comparing it to something I'm working on. Le sigh.)
23. Black Cherry Blues - James Lee Burke
Burke came to my attention when I was trying to play![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jmeadows bookstore game. (I kept getting anthologies and weird stuff in the SF section, so I moved to mystery.) The book I picked up first was a new hardback in this series, so I found an earlier one to start with. I don't know where the series actually starts, since the publishers cannot be arsed to print the "other books by this author" list in chronological order.
The idea is pretty standard: a former cop with a past full of bad shit meets an old buddy and gets caught up in new bad shit. But, oh, the writing is lovely. From little details--The rain spun in the yellow arc lights over the cafe parking lot. and I could smell the sun's heat in her hair.--to dialogue--"They burn a girl to death and you ask me a question like that? These guys got no bottom, if that's what you mean. They'll go down where it's so dark the lizards don't have eyes."--to symphonies of violence--I heard the chain clink and sing through the air, felt it come back over my head again and again, felt their hands rake against the side of my face; my ears roared with sound--a rumble deep under the Gulf, the drilling-rig floor trembling and clattering violently, the drill pipe exploding out of a wellhead in a red-black fireball. My hand was bitten and streaked with rust; it was the color of dried blood inside a hypodermic needle used to threaten a six-year-old child; it was like the patterns I streaked across the walls, the bedclothes, the sliding glass doors that gave onto the courtyard where azalea petals floated on the surface of a lighted turquoise pool.
Yeah. The descriptions had me constantly stopping to catch my breath. And Burke does that richness of setting and sense of place that I'm so in awe and envy of.
Why the heck am I so tired anyway? So far I've walked the dog and swept, scrubbed & mopped the slab-that-was-my-dining-room, and I may have to take a nap if I'm going to climb tonight.
22. The Wild Road - Marjorie Liu
I didn't like this as much as The Iron Hunt, but it's still pretty good. I'm pleased to note that even though this is technically a paranormal romance, it didn't hit any of my big romance squicks. (Hero: not an asshole! Heroine: not a virgin! Woot!)
Some of the things that bugged me in Hunt were present here, too--characters withholding information from the MCs left and right, lots of convenient backstory tie-ins and superpowers. That can be tricky, though, since this is part of a larger series and I imagine some of these side characters have had their own books.
I would have liked the main plot to be stronger and more stream-lined, and some of the side stuff pared away, but god knows I have enough trouble doing that in my own stories. (Yes, I'm in one of those phases where I can't read anything without dissecting it and comparing it to something I'm working on. Le sigh.)
23. Black Cherry Blues - James Lee Burke
Burke came to my attention when I was trying to play
jmeadows bookstore game. (I kept getting anthologies and weird stuff in the SF section, so I moved to mystery.) The book I picked up first was a new hardback in this series, so I found an earlier one to start with. I don't know where the series actually starts, since the publishers cannot be arsed to print the "other books by this author" list in chronological order.The idea is pretty standard: a former cop with a past full of bad shit meets an old buddy and gets caught up in new bad shit. But, oh, the writing is lovely. From little details--The rain spun in the yellow arc lights over the cafe parking lot. and I could smell the sun's heat in her hair.--to dialogue--"They burn a girl to death and you ask me a question like that? These guys got no bottom, if that's what you mean. They'll go down where it's so dark the lizards don't have eyes."--to symphonies of violence--I heard the chain clink and sing through the air, felt it come back over my head again and again, felt their hands rake against the side of my face; my ears roared with sound--a rumble deep under the Gulf, the drilling-rig floor trembling and clattering violently, the drill pipe exploding out of a wellhead in a red-black fireball. My hand was bitten and streaked with rust; it was the color of dried blood inside a hypodermic needle used to threaten a six-year-old child; it was like the patterns I streaked across the walls, the bedclothes, the sliding glass doors that gave onto the courtyard where azalea petals floated on the surface of a lighted turquoise pool.
Yeah. The descriptions had me constantly stopping to catch my breath. And Burke does that richness of setting and sense of place that I'm so in awe and envy of.
Why the heck am I so tired anyway? So far I've walked the dog and swept, scrubbed & mopped the slab-that-was-my-dining-room, and I may have to take a nap if I'm going to climb tonight.
