kgbooklog

Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds
Tor (2008) ISBN: 0-7653-1008-2
Score: 5

Eighth Malazan book (out of ten), set on the same continent as books 1 and 3 (with a few characters from books 6 and 7). The major themes of this volume seem to be vengeance and redemption, the familial themes are cousins and adoption, and the mood of the series is drifting towards tragedy. There were many scenes narrated by Kruppe, which I could've mostly done without (though the bit about the White-Haired Empress was a perfect example of absurdity in the midst of catastrophe).

Next Book: Kat Richardson, Underground

Tobias S. Buckell, Sly Mongoose
Tor (2008) ISBN: 0-7653-1920-9
Score: 1

Third book of an unnamed series (I'm calling it Caribbeans in Space) and set in a poverty-stricken floating city on a Venus-like planet. There's a teenage boy to provide a naive POV, but most of the book is spent watching Pepper (from the previous books) run around killing aliens and space zombies. Yes, space zombies.

Next Book: Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

Donna Andrews, Cockatiels at Seven
Thomas Dunne (2008) ISBN: 0-312-37715-0
Score: -1

Ninth Meg Langslow mystery, in which the heroine gets some experience raising a child. Key characters deliberately did not do things they obviously needed to do to avoid suspicion, and the heroine's wacky family stopped being amusing a few books ago. I'm not going to continue the series.

Gregory Frost, Lord Tophet
Del Rey (2008) ISBN: 978-0-345-49759-8
Score: 1

Conclusion of the Shadowbridge duology, in which we learn why people are chasing the heroine and what really happened to her parents (making me wonder if the first volume is even necessary). The plot is rather contrived and full of infodumps, but that's not surprising in a story about stories. The last ten pages (excluding the epilogue) consists of the story of the title character, a couple paragraphs of climax, and then a page of ambiguous denouement. Someone who likes short stories would probably like this better than I did.

Next Book: Kai Meyer, The Water Mirror

C.E. Murphy, House of Cards
Luna (2008) ISBN: 0-373-80263-3
Score: -1

Second book of the Negotiator trilogy, in which things get messy. The heroine does stupid things (like telling Old Boyfriend she wants to get back together while constantly daydreaming about New Boyfriend) and a lot of the plot twists didn't add up (especially the genealogies).

Next Book: Alaya Dawn Johnson, Racing the Dark

Martha Wells, "Houses of the Dead"
Black Gate #12 (2008) ISSN: 1531-7854
http://www.blackgate.com/downloads/black_gate_12.pdf
Score: 1

(I don't understand magazines. I'm including the ISSN because I thought it was equivalent to ISBN, but this is the same number as the previous issue. And for a magazine claiming to publish quarterly, it's odd to see consecutive issues both labeled Summer. Anyway, this issue is a free download from the above link for a limited time.) Another Gil and Ilias story, set a couple years after they meet, but still early in their career and deals with a mining town missing its entire population.

Next Book: C.E. Murphy, House of Cards

Patricia Briggs, Cry Wolf
Ace (2008) ISBN: 978-0-441-01615-0
Score: 2

This is the first novel but second story about Anna and Charles; the publisher calls the series Alpha and Omega after the novella (from On the Prowl) that it follows, but I disapprove of that name since Charles isn't an alpha (nor likely to become one anytime soon). This is a spinoff of the Mercedes Thompson urban fantasy series and contains spoilers for Moon Called while being set before the later Mercy books. This series is aimed more at Romance readers than Fantasy[1], and the beginning of this book is a bit slow (partly from the need to inclue readers who didn't see the novella), but once the plot started I had trouble putting it down, and it deepened the characters of Bran and Leah, which was a pleasant surprise.

[1] Something I'm discussing over in bittercon.
Next Book: Martha Wells, "Houses of the Dead"

Naomi Novik, Victory of Eagles
Del Rey (2008) ISBN: 978-0-345-49688-1
Score: 2

Fifth Temeraire novel, in which many characters get to deal with the consequences of their actions. Which is probably why I liked it better than the last couple, even though I still find Lawrence to be stiff and dull (in this series I find it easier to relate to the dragons than the humans).

Lawrence Watt-Evans, The Summer Palace
Tor (2008) ISBN: 0-7653-1028-7
Score: 2

Conclusion of the Annals of the Chosen trilogy, in which we learn more about the Uplanders and the giant anti-magic birds they live off of. I did correctly guess the direction of the main plot from the first book, but there were still a few surprises. I did find it odd that the protagonist's opinion of the ler (nature/elemental spirits) kept flip-flopping from "respected allies" to "evil menace". And a warning to anyone who checks the end of the book for appendices and stuff: this book does have an appendix, and the last line of it is a big spoiler.

Next Book: Naomi Novik, Victory of Eagles

Steven Brust, Jhegaala
Tor (2008) ISBN: 0-7653-0147-4
Score: 5

A typical Vlad Taltos book (11th out of 19), set between Phoenix and Athyra. He goes to Fenario, but the town he visits is atypical in several ways, so we still don't really know much about the country (he also spends some time in the capital, but apparently nothing worth mentioning happened there). The book is divided into several sections, each beginning with a description of part of the life cycle of a jhegaala, and each chapter quotes some dialog from a play (looks like a murder mystery); I'll need to re-read to see how any of that relates to the plot of the book. The plot is exactly the sort of thing we usually see from Vlad, and like the last book the author expects us to read between the lines in a few places.

Next Book: Lawrence Watt-Evans, The Summer Palace