Bookcrossing - live to share, share to live

Kitty's Greatest Hits by Carrie Vaughn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Short stories set in the Kitty Norville universe. You could still read them, if you never heard of Kitty Norville before, but this is definitely a great addition if you are a fan.

I did not do a proper count, but I think of the 14 stories maybe only two do not contain a character from the series. Kitty is nicely snarky and sarcastic, as always.

My favourites were the stories centered around Cormac though. You get a look at his early life, when he meets Ben for the first time and the last story of the book chronicles his life in prison. That one is the longest story at about 60 pages and fleshes out his character in a really nice way.

Good fun. It reminded me why I like Kitty Norville so much!

( my read booklist with links behind cut for safekeeping )

Stray by Rachel Vincent

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I can't say that I REALLY liked it, as I found the main character, Faythe, much too irritating. Think very pampered college student with issues of teenage rebellion.

Take and replace the strong, female heroine with a whiney girl and you get a pretty good idea what this book is about.

The storyline is pretty entertaining and I will probably get the next book in the series, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that Faythe will mature a little in the sequels.

Several other reviews mentioned that the book is too long and I have to agree. The book is over 600 pages and the action starts about halfway through. I wasn't exactly bored during the first 300 pages, but half that many probably would have done the job.

The other characters stayed a little one-dimensional and the shapeshifting aspects of the story were pretty brief.

So, a tighter storyline, less whining, stronger characterizations and more emphasis on the world-building and this could have been outstanding. As it is, I merely liked it and it has potential...

Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

25% into the book, tossing it. Edward's inner monologue is excruciatingly boring. I hope when I am 80 my inner landscape is going to be more evolved than that!

I just transferred my Kindle account from amazon.com to amazon.de. I noticed the German mirror site a few days ago, not sure how long it's been there. I hope I won't regret it. There seems to be a lot of content in English. All my settings moved as well, I just lost my Kindle wishlist. But I didn't have too many books on it, so it was a quick job to find those books again and create a new ebook wishlist. So far, so good.

I just pre-ordered Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris. Delivery date 3rd of May. I hope I can get it straight away at midnight... The price finally dropped from an outrageous 23 dollars something to slightly over 16 dollars. In the German Kindle shop I save a few cents, but that'll probably vary with the exchange rate. The ebook is 1 Euro more than the paperback. I can live with that!


Finally finished last night, just in time for Sookie:

Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Mysterious things are afoot in the town of York. A conspiracy of major proportions is tucked away somewhere.

As usual with Sansom, the story is alive with the sounds and smells of Tudor England. Descriptions are excellent. It's easy to get immersed into his world, you can almost feel, taste and especially smell it.

Page 122: "We walked to Stonegate as the sun rose up and the city came to life, keeping under the eaves as people opened their windows and threw the night's piss into the streets."

There is a surprising amount of swearing going on for historical novels.

When I read his books, it always makes me sad to contemplate how many beautiful things Henry VIII destroyed with his dissolution.

I keep jumping back to the computer to read up on historic events and characters mentioned in the books, it's always a very educational experience for me.

The whole question of succession regarding Richard III, the princes in the tower and the War of the Roses has always confused me a lot and now I get something else confusing thrown into the mix.

Some further reading that contains spoilers -- I suggest not looking at this until you have read the book:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_IV_o...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_%...
http://www.york.ac.uk/ipup/projects/york...

The last 200 pages dragged on a bit for me. At times Sansom's books seem to be a little too cosy, until the next twist hits you and the plot moves back to nail biting suspense.


Gave up:

A Taste of Crimson by Marjorie M. Liu

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Giving up on this one. I made it to page 80 with several stops and starts.

I do not like the vague SF setting. It bothered me already in the first book -- it's hinted at, but not really explored and somehow it feels confined and claustrophobic to me. I know, sounds stupid, but I don't know how else to explain it.

And that the two main characters suddenly decide that they are soul mates and in love with each other after they have just met and barely exchanged any words -- it could work and it has in other books I've read -- here it just feels silly.

Not for me. Perhaps it would have grown on me after another 100 pages, but I'd rather read something I enjoy from the start...

River Marked by Patricia Briggs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What do you call Urban Fantsay without an urban setting? Is it just Fantasy? Because in this one Mercy and Adam are running around in the wilderness and get wet a lot in rivers.

Good suspense, straight forward story, lots of action. It wasn't breathtaking, but a good, solid read. Interesting detour into Native American Folklore.

Sending this one out to a BC friend.

Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very good, I think I even liked it better than Dime Store Magic. The books seem to be getting better with every one. Good plot, no strange endings dangling anywhere, suspenseful, straight forward, nice amount of action. Characters are well fleshed out and believable. I had fun!

I'll be happy to give this book away, just let me know if you want it.


Le Tour Gourmand - Ein kulinarisches Reisetagebuch von Bad Ischl bis Peking by Christoph Wagner

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I dumped this book after 20 pages. It was irritating. The author was building endless sentences, that meandered along senselessly. Maybe he was trying to look smart, I don't know. Authors writing in German have a tendency to do that. I guess German is a perfect language to stick on another comma and yet another sentence and another comma and... repeat ad infinitum. It's one of the reasons why I dislike reading novels in German so much.

On the Prowl by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finally caved in and got the precursor to the Alpha & Omega novels. My excuse is that I wanted to try out my new eReader. And as expected I really liked the first story, although I already roughly knew what to expect from the story. I guess that is the nice thing about book series. You make friends and it's familiar and nice to meet them again.

The second story by Eileen Wilks was pretty good as well. Interesting idea of the borders between realms breaking down and talents emerging. The heroine should appeal to fans of Patricia Briggs or Carrie Vaughn. There were some odd changes in tenses a few times, throwing me off. But the plot and characters made up for it.

I read two books in the Cassie Palmer series by Karen Chance, so the world in the third story was not new to me. The story was ok, but did not really captivate me. Until the ending, that was unexpected and fun. But all in all the story lacked a red thread. The ending didn't feel as if it belonged.

Story number four was supposed to be great for fans of Laurell K Hamilton, if the blurb is to be trusted. But believe me, Anita Blake this was not. Neither early nor late Anita. The style felt antiquated and stuffy, the sex was lacklustre, it felt like a summary of another book and you were fiercly hit over the head with an ad for the next book in the series. I skimmed this very quickly.

So, #1 was nice and comfortable, #2 might be a potential new author for me. #3 was ok, but nothing great. #4 did nothing for me.

(PS: Read as a .pdf on the Sony Reader Touch)

***

In other new my WLAN router arrived today! Took me about an hour to set it all up. The stick was plug and play, very simple. For the box I followed the instructions on the CD and ended up with the router plugged in between the modem and the PC. Some head scratching followed and some swearing at the screen, then I unplugged the whole thing and connected the router to my modem and it worked 5 minutes later. I happily pulled that nasty network cable from above the footboard and around my kitchen door. Much better! I need to buy something to plug up all the holes the nails left behind.

My iPhone is insanely fast connected to the net by WiFi and I could finally register my Kindle. Downloaded a book preview from the Kindle store and it was pretty much instant delivery. I'm a happy camper! I really like the Kindle. But I'm pretty sure I will keep the Sony as well. The glare is a bitch, but I realised that .pdf-files display much better on the Sony. Plus I found some sites were books are cheaper than on Amazon.

Dime Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I did not like Paige very much in the previous books, so this ended up sitting on my shelf for over a year. She was as annoying as I remembered in the first half of the book. But I liked the plot and the action picked up nicely in the second half, so I tried to ignore her more stupid personality traits. The book ended up being fun.


Irresistible Forces by Brenda Jackson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


A free Kindle download. So predictable that I could summarize it after reading the first chapter and was almost spot-on. I skimmed after the first few chapters. Shallow and uninspired, it was painfully boring. Really? If I had paid money for this, I would not have been happy.



( Books I've read in 2010 )

The list is pretty pathetic. One of my two New Year resolutions is to read more in 2011.

Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress #1) by Jeaniene Frost

From the back cover:
"Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of these deadbeats is her father; the one responsible for ruining her mother's life. Then she's captured by Bones, a vampire bounty hunter, and is forced into an unholy partnership. In exchange for finding her father, Cat agrees to train with the sexy night stalker until her battle reflexes are as sharp as his fangs. She's amazed she doesn't end up as his dinner; are there actually good vampires? Pretty soon Bones will have her convinced that being half-dead doesn't have to be all bad. But before she can enjoy her new found status as kick-ass demon hunter, Cat and Bones are pursued by a group of killers. Now Cat will have to choose a side . . . and Bones is turning out to be as tempting as any man with a heartbeat."

It took me two weeks to get through this -- including skimming over the last 100 pages. I am still trying to figure out what I did not like about it. It just did not grip me. I did not connect with the characters. Bones stayed one-dimensional. I did not like the mother. The plotline did not interest me. The bad guy was just a blank.She definitely didn't have me staked in five seconds flat.