Sims

Sims by F. Paul Wilson has nothing to do with Sims the computer game, so breathe your sigh of relief now. Instead of wandering around a very small town and having people with green diamonds floating over their heads, Sims takes us to Westchester County, NY following the lawyer Patrick Sullivan.

Patrick Sullivan starts out at a golf course with one of his clients. There are no hovercraft or anything more sci-fi than our current world today. Except for the sim caddie, an altered chimpanzee to be less ape and more human, a product of SimGen. Leased as unskilled labor, sims gave America the ability to compete against Asia in the textile markets.

Back at the golf course, Patrick Sullivan is with his client and approached by a sim cabbie, Tome. Tome is after the unionization of the caddie sims. Their only demand is the sims are like a family and they want to keep that family together. As leased sims, a sim at any moment can be traded in for a different 'model'. The returned sim is then sent to a retirement home in Arizona.

Sullivan agrees to help the sims, against the force of SimGen. If sims can unionize, how far are they really from people? The scariest part of this entire book is summed up nicely in the author's note.

"Sims takes place just around the corner, timewise, in your town, your country, your world. It may seem like science fiction, but it isn't. For right now, as you read these words, someone somewhere is altering a chimpanzee's genome to make it more human. Right now. So it won't be too long before we all come face-to-face with the same issues challenging the characters in Sims..."

A major possibility. We had Dolly, the sheep, already as well as various other animals. Granted its cloning as opposed to manipulating chimp and human DNA to produce a different breed of the ape-man. However, theres also been human cells mixed with a cow's egg to harvest stem cells. Seems to me the world of the Sims isn't too far off. I'm sure you're thinking to yourself that laws will be passed against anything like sims well before any of them could be made and commercialized. Not necessarily true, considering how SimGen managed to keep ahead of the game.

"The Bush administration, wrapped up in seemingly endless war on terrorism, failed to pass any regulatory bills."

F. Paul Wilson definitely knew how to strike a chuckle with me, and if any administration would let something slip, it would be the one led by George W.

Sims is a great read, a genetics mystery thriller that leaves you guessing up until the end. Reading Sims will make you think twice when a cloning or DNA manipulation bill comes up for vote. With how the book ended, I don't see F. Paul Wilson being able to make a sequel, or at least not one that can compare in any way. It's a bummer, as I really enjoyed the characters introduced into the story. But as the review on the front cover states...

"Sims is... disquieting, and I'm glad it's only fiction...." - Brian Lumley

I second that statement.

Lord of Light

I finished reading Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny early Sunday morning and I'm just now getting around to posting about it. Part is blamed by Prince Caspian coming out in theaters and Eddie Izzard being the voice of Reepicheep, and subsequently, the amount of Eddie Izzard I've watched in the past 2 days. The other part of my lack-of-postness is because I had no clue where to start on this book. None whatsoever.

I made the mistake of picking up the book, getting through the first 2 chapters, and having to set it down. The beginning chapters is the end of the tale and it isn't that apparent. The other mistake I made in regards to Lord of Light is by not reading the back of the book first.

"Earth is long since dead. On a Colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rules their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons. Lord of Light"

Yes, there is technology present all throughout the book, but I'm apparently pretty dense this week as I didn't realize until halfway through that the gods were ruling with technology alone. That it was the technology that made them gods as opposed to actual god-powers, whatever that is. Gods made themselves immortal by machines constantly placing their lifeforce into new bodies, much like in Biting the Sun.

Once I sat down, restarted Lord of Light and really focused on the book itself, I enjoyed it. There is a huge cast of characters to play in this book, all which can reincarnate through technical means. Not to mention if certain gods aren't reincarnated, their co-gods fill in. So God A dies, God B changes bodies and names to be like God A, and yet still has the same personal interaction as God B originally did. This book is not straight forward whatsoever. Its not the smoothest read either. Zelazny goes off on random tangents. One such is about a rajah and how this particular rajah collects taxes, and the only part of that tangent that holds anything relevant to story line is that the rajah rules the city which is a 5 day journey from the mountain named Channa. Pardon the mini rant, but it irked me slightly.

The beginning isn't too straight forward, theres a bit of confusion with all the body switching, and a couple of detours. The war between the gods though, awesome. Each one has their own cool superpowers, and your archivist gets turned into a monkey. There are a couple of good quotes in there as well.

"For six days he had offered many kilowatts of prayer, but the static kept him from being heard On High."

The above quote seems to be out of the geeks version of the Bible. Off to read something else, as since watching Eddie Izzard on Youtube was too addicting.

Biting the Sun

Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee is 2 books, Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine, republished as 1 novel. Unlike On Her Majesty's Occult Service that I posted about before, it seemed like one book. There were no random jumps to different mini stories that kept me thinking I was in the second half, in fact, if there wasn't a page dedicated to the title of the second half, I wouldn't have noticed. The 2 stories connected so well, it was a seamless transition. On an flip side though, if I read Don't Bite the Sun without the Drinking Sapphire Wine, I doubt that I would've picked up another Tanith Lee book for a bit. Perhaps its just me, but the first have really had no ending, no climax to build up to and resolve. It laid awesome ground work for the second book, which I truly enjoyed.

In truth, I almost set the book down after the first 15 or so pages. I think only once have I never finished a book that I've started reading.

"Although I have put the Four BEE into equivalent modern English, the Jang slang vocabulary which the writer uses pales in translation. I have therefore left the sixteen or so odd words she employs untouched, and included on the following page a glossary, which provides an adequate, if imperfect guide to what they mean."

Irritating. So irritating. Yes, by the end of the book you have most of the memorized. Until the words are memorized, having to flip back and forth to the beginning is annoying as all hell. Lee uses less and less of the 'Jang' words as the book progresses, but they are extremely common in the beginning. In my opinion, to put normal English words in would've been an improvement to the books ease of reading. For example...

attlevey - Hello
derisann - Lovely, Beautiful
ooma - Darling, honey
tosky - Neurotic

All of those words, plus the others listed in the 'Glossary of Jang Slang' really do not make much of a difference to be in Jang, as opposed to actually using the English word. Our brains, after flipping through the book back to the beginning, would just substitute the English word back into the sentence anyways. There are a couple of swear words that are in Jang, which I can understand - much like the Chinese phrases that aren't translated in Firefly and Serenity, the tone and sound leave you with building your own meanings. The swear words are particularly easy to figure out. But no, instead we're left with normal boring words that should've just been translated originally.

I believe the intent of Lee was to show how the main character is growing out of her Jang stage, which is approximetly 50 years, to the Older Person stage of her/his life. I would tell you the characters name, but I'm not sure its ever mentioned in the book.

Life in the Four BEE, a city with sister cities named Four BOO and Four BAA, is extremely easy. Androids run the government and shops, providing everything for the humans. No one works because the cities run off energy, and if you require anything, your payment is a show of hysterical thank yous that is then siphoned off to the city's energy banks. There are no deaths in Four BEE (or Four BOO or Four BAA) as each human life spark is picked up by androids as soon as death occurs and put in a Limbo tub, awaiting a new body. So if you don't want to wait the required 30 days for a new body, you merely open your bubble underwater and drown, or crash your bird-plane into the Zeefahr Monument.

There are no responsibilities, at least until you're an Older Person, then if you so choose, you can be a Maker and have a child. But for your Jang life, you can do anything irresponsible that you want. In fact, its expected of you. Any Jang not acting as outlandish as the Jang lifestyle dictates is frowned upon by the androids in the Committee. When doing whatever you want finally gets to be boring, and your life isn't as fulfilling as it should be, then you're at the starting point for Biting the Sun.

God's Demon

To go from seeing the splendor of God to descending into the pit of Hell would be an eye opening moment that I would wish upon anyone. The image of Hell that is conveyed in God's Demon is so horrible and twisted, but it seems so architecturally beautiful at the same time. The story is written by Eligor, Captain of the elite squadron of the Flying Guards. His story begins from the point of the Fall from Above, the costly mistake of choosing to side with Lucifer in the battle against God.

Eligor rose up from the field where he fell, next to Sargatanas, a seraph now turned Demon Major. Sargatanas as the Demon Lord of the area, with Eligor and his squadron as his personal flying guards, they begin building the city of Adamantinarx-on-the-Archeon. The palace was built using the earth they had landed on, but the rest of the buildings and roads were made of soul bricks. Soul bricks, humans who had fallen into Hell, the pond scum under the hooves and talons of their demon masters, formed into bricks, still alive and ever aware with their eyes watching and blinking. The souls were also skinned for their hides, and fashioned into demon clothing. Other souls become books, when their glyphs were activated, they recited the contents of the pages within.

Sargatanas was the most angelic of the Demon Majors. While he conformed with the rest of Hell, Sargatanas treated his minions with more respect and dignity than the other Demon Majors, especially Beelzebub. Prince Beelzebub, The Fly, is the Lord of Dis and ruler of Hell in Lucifer's absence. Sargatanas, remembering his time spent Above, is against all the pain and anguish Beelzebub brings, and grows restless in his position in Hell. Then the decision is made to see if God can forgive even a fallen angel, and Sargatanas will bring about the rebellion in Hell to see Beelzebub destroyed. Even the very bricks themselves will fight for the cause, for it brings the possibility of going to Heaven.

Wayne Barlowe does such great imagery in God's Demon, Hell is the most hideously beautiful place. I would never want to live there, or even have a summer home there, but to immerse myself in Hell through Wayne Barlowe's words for a small fraction of time was quite nice indeed. There are 2 minor points that slightly irritated me though. In the first several chapters, the passage of time is slightly confusing. What seems like a week or a day in the beginning is actually centuries. Shortly into it the timeline does even out and we're not skipping years upon years at a time. Also here are 3 or 4 'A' names that are so similar in text that if you're not careful its easy to get them confused. I did google Barlowe to see if theres another book after God's Demon. Instead I found this, artwork depicting the images he set forth on paper. Enjoy.

Crossover

Ferro-enamelous bone, equivalent in strength to spacecraft hull ribbing. Muscles of synth-alloy myonmer. Insatiable sex drive. Designation GI-5074J-HK. A GI made by the League during the war against the Federation. The GIs were extremely strong, but the Federation had the brains. Until Captain Cassandra Kresnov.

Cassandra Kresnov went AWOL from the League over a year ago. The problem with an experimental GI with a brain that can think for itself is that sometimes, they no longer believe in what their creators are having them fight for. Cassandra is a machine who has emotions, a machine who decided that to work for the men that killed her teammates she loved was out of the question. A killing machine who started her life over in the software engineering field.

Unfortunately, her previous life wasn't giving up that easily. Tracked down and dismembered by her previous government, Cassandra is saved by a CSA SWAT member on a biotech raid. CSA and the Federation aren't known for their love of the GIs and it isn't until an attack on the President of Callay that Cassandra is finally trusted. Then the fun begins.

Crossover by Joel Shepherd would've made a better movie then Ultraviolet by far. Then again, almost anything would be better than Ultraviolet. At 457 pages, Crossover is a bit on the bigger side, but its still an awesome read. The book leaves you with a sense of wanting to know how Cassandra turns out, if she stays with the CSA or if she gets to be the civilian she wants to be. I'll have to read Breakaway to see how that turns out.

On Writing

I had been talking with Bryan about trying to improve my own writing and he had mentioned that I should read Stephen Kings' On Writing. Lo and behold, Bryan happens to own a copy. Then by some mysterious force, I find myself holding a bag of books. Not only did I get On Writing, but I'm apparently going through Bryan's collection of books now as well. When it rains, it pours.

The first half of the book is Stephen Kings autobiography, though he himself claims otherwise.

"This is not an autobiography. It is, rather, a kind of curriculum vitae - my attempt to show how one writer was formed. Not how one writer was made; I don't believe writers can be made, either by circumstances or by self will..."

I thoroughly enjoyed reading how King grew up, the stories of the babysitter who farted in his face and the mistake of using poison ivy to 'take care of business'. Then King went into his first stories and first submissions, how he stuck every rejection slip on a nail above the phonograph until the nail had to be replaced with a spike.

But only a 3rd of the book is actually on King, though the rest of the book is filled with more stories and examples. Every literary lesson is preceded by an anecdote and at no point is it ever just a text on writing. The first lesson is about your toolbox. Of course there's a story to go with it, but you can read that on your own.

"I want to suggest that to write to your best abilities, it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.."

The top slot of the toolbox is vocabulary, because the most commonly used tool must be the easiest to access. King then quotes different authors and books, pointing out that extensive vocabulary does not a good story make. Pointing out a Steinbeck passage, he notes that

"... It's fifty words long. Of those fifty words, thirty-nine have but one syllable. That leaves eleven... There is no word longer than two syllables in the entire sentence. The structure is complex; the vocabulary is not far removed from the old Dick and Jane primers."

Apparently, good writing isn't based on the obscene amount of dictionary time you put in. Whew, I'm saved. On to the next part of the toolbox, grammar. First it's the moans and groans about it, and how simple sentences should be mixed with more complex ones. King then goes on about his dislikes, things like passive verbs.

"Verbs come in two types, active and passive. With an active verb, the subject of the sentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. The subject is just letting it happen. You should avoid the passive tense."

Interesting, I never thought about it like that. Now I'm not sure if I have put thoughts down on paper in a passive voice, but now I'll be sure to look. King shows other examples, and how to make them active tense. Passive verbs are not his only dislike, adverbs are right up there too.

To read On Writing wasn't the same as reading a college text on how to write better. It is a story on Stephen King, with what made him an author, and what he did to become what he is. On Writing was fun to read, and definitely something to keep in mind for when I attempt to write just an eensy-weensy bit. To leave you with one last excerpt...

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

I have the reading down... now to the hard part.

Turning Point

I stood in Bryan's kitchen Monday night trying to tell him about Turning Point. I wasn't quite finished with the book at that point, but close enough to know that the story wasn't going to do 180 degree turn in 30 pages. (Or so I hoped. I was very happy with the direction the story was taking, and a 180 degree turn would mean my favorite characters killed off, and then I would be upset. Luckily, nothing too extreme happened.) So there I am, bringing dirty dishes to the sink and trying so hard to wrap my tongue around my thoughts.

I'm not sure where the conversation started that I absolutely had to inform Bryan about the telepathic link that was woven throughout the entire storyline of Turning Point, nor does it really matter. I do know that I had to attempt to share because it was just that damn cool and obviously had something to do with the previous conversation. More importantly, the story and telepathic thread was awesome to read and imagine. Who cares about the conversation, books are better. Its all about the books, people! (I kid, I kid... or maybe not...)

First we meet Carrie, a Terren girl, on the newly colonized planet of Keiss. Telepaths are unheard of in her culture, but Carrie and her identical twin, Elise, have a twisted telepathic bond. Elise being the more headstrong of the two takes all the risks, while Carrie takes all the pain from her sister. When Elise is captured by the Valtegans, an alien race who plan on conquring anything in their sights, Elise is able to withstand the torture because she doesn't feel a thing. Instead Carrie, at home, feels every fingernail pulled out, every kick and punch to the point that the physical symtoms are manifesting themself on her body. Elise dies in the hands of her captors and Carrie is left alone in her mind for the first time, a first time that she can't handle. Reaching out, she touches another mind, an alien one.

Kusac is a telepath from a feline race that is opposed to the Valtegans as well. Drawn to Keiss with his crewmates, their ship is shot down by the Valtegans. Kusac ends up alone and hurt. Appearing as one of the native forest cats, he finds Carrie through their link. Together, their bond grows, and slowly a shaky alliance is formed between the Terren guerillas and the small band of crashed Sholan. An alliance against a common foe.

Lisanne Norman's Turning Point. A quicker read than what I've read recently, about 250 or so pages long. So far there are 7 books in total in the Sholan Alliance series, and I plan on reading the reading the rest.

Blindsight

First contact. To boldly go where no man has gone before. To be the first of your race to talk to another form of intelligent life. To be on board the ship Theseus when she first encounters the alien vessel Rorschach in Blindsight by Peter Watts... What a day that would be.

I didn't care for this book to much. I could never really empathize with the main character, Siri Keeton. He flashes back pretty regularly, little glimpses in to what he is, or what he says he is. Its not until the end of the book that you finally start to get Siri. Everything on the ship is perceived through his eyes and while you can't quite understand the person who's head you're in, he can't quite wrap his head around what's happening aboard the alien ship, Rorschach.

The book felt like riding the first minute or so of a roller coaster. You spend the time getting seated, buckling up, waiting for the ride to start. Then the ride starts, and you climb that big hill listening to the chain drag you up towards the top. At the top, you pause and tip forward ever so slightly. Finally the ride rushes down the track, the thrill of riding a roller coaster with your stomach up in your throat. If the ride were to stop there at the bottom of the first hill, it would be a downer to say the least. All the work and anticipation for 2 precious seconds of emotion and you never really got to enjoy it. Same with Blindsight. Peter Watts works the story, slowly at first, building to that climax and boom, dumps everything on you at once. So much happened in such a few short pages that it felt like there was no closure, nothing made sense. Ok, I lied. Some of it made sense, other parts didn't. I wish he had taken some time with end as he had with the beginning.

I read some of the reviews on Blindsight after I already read it. It either got a 5 star or a 1 star. Maybe it just takes a certain kind of person to enjoy that style. Either way, Peter Watts has made a cool alien race for the crew of the Theseus to make first contact with.

A Restoration of Faith

Last week I had read the 10th book in the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, Small Favor. Now I didn't think that writing about the 10th book in the series would be the best thing to do. So I went to the beginning, well actually... I googled the Dresden Files to see which book came first. So I found an awesome website giving me links to all of Jim Butcher's work and I found a tiny little gem. A Restoration of Faith is a short story that takes place before the Dresden Files even begin.

You meet Harry Dresden for the first time in all his not-quite-as-experienced glory, and you see what he was before a P.I (Paranormal Investigator) to Chicago's finest. Murphy makes her first contact with Dresden as well at the end of this story, and it makes a bit more sense how Dresden ends up on the police department's payroll.

Also, I had no clue there was a Dresden Files TV series. Hmmm.....

Mainspring

Last night I went with my very very small church to go see Ironman instead of our usual bible study-like service. We decided as a group to go for an outing and joking claimed that we would watch Ironman and see what 'theological' message could be found in the movie. I think we would've had a much easier time finding a message from Jay Lake's Mainspring.

The book appears to take place in early America following a young apprentice clockworker named Hethor. He is visited by the angel Gabriel and tasked with the mission of saving the world. The world is not what it seems at first, even though he travels to Massachusetts. The angel is not just an angel, but a brass one made of gears and feathers of razor-sharp silver. The world turns on one mainspring; the sun, moon, and stars all travel a brass tract through the sky. The world is not a world as we know it, but one of clockworks and springs, all done by God and his hands.

"Our Father, who art in Heaven
Craftsman be thy name
Thy Kingdom come
Thy plan be done
On Earth as it is in Heaven
Forgive us this day our errors
As we forgive those who err against us
Lead us not into imperfection
And deliver us from chaos
for thine is the power, and the precision
For ever and ever, amen"

It is a beautiful story of faith, hope, and love that Jay Lake writes. Young Hethor runs into so many of his own trials and tribulations that test what he believes and opens his eyes to the best, yet most unnoticed, things of the world. His actions are based solely on his faith, and his task even though his 'guides' throughout the book constantly end up being the devil in disguise. It isn't until Hethor runs into the 'correct people', the people who speak in the language of the clockworks that run the earth does he find people who have the same faith as he does.

Faith, hope and love works wonders for both Hethor and for anyone reading it. Perhaps its the misty-eyed female in me that goes 'awwwwww' at the ending of this book. Perhaps its my faith and how close to home this book hit. Either way, Mainspring is written with wonderful words of brass and gears, clockworks that transport you to the world where precision mechanisms reign.

Bone Song

Chris, my good friend and supplier of my current books, is a podcaster. His podcast, Metamor City (shameless plug), is a sci-fi/fantasy audio drama. One of his first episodes is about a new cop joining the Metamor City police force, and finding that things aren't at all like his rural town. His captain appears to be a wolverine and a vampire holds the position of MCPD's medical examiner. That's just the tip of the iceberg in episode 1, not to mention the rest of the podcast.

"Now, what does Metamor City have to do with Bone Song? We are going to talk about Bone Song, the book and not go on about a podcast, right?"

Right.

Bone Song, written by John Meaney, reminds me of the Metamor City podcast. On the first page, you meet Lieutenant Donal Riordan and by page two, you realize it isn't just a normal police HQ, because all normal PDs come with glowing pillars and elevator wraiths named Gertie. The story takes place in the big city of Tristopolis, far in the future. Bone Song is not Metamor City, nor is Metamor City Bone Song, but they both have a similar basic background concept in two totally different realms.

First if I may say so, Gertie, elevator 7 wraith, is a hoot. If John Meaney could write a book about her and what she sees... Anyways, I digress.

Donal Riordan is assigned protection duty for the Diva. 12 murders have happened all over the country of visiting performers, and their bodies stolen before autopsy. What best to fight an unknown threat of body snatchers than a task force full of the not-quite-so-human? Tristopolis has it all. Bone Song is a great book, and I'm tempted to type more about it, but I'm trying my best not to give away any of the good parts. The story flows well with some great character interaction that leaves you wanting to know more. John Meaney definitely left it open for a second book following Riordan and his relationships inside of the Tristopolis Police HQ.

If you like the Metamor City podcast... you'll enjoy this as well. On a side note, when I popped on Amazon.com for the book picture, I noticed that most readers who purchased Bone Song had read the Dresdan Files as well. Interesting...

On Her Majesty's Occult Service

On Her Majesty's Occult Service is written by Charles Stross. It isn't merely a book, a novel or a collection of words written on several pages of bound paper. It is 2 books together as one, the first being The Atrocity Archive, the second, The Jennifer Morgue.

I'm not sure even where to begin. I think you should take this book, and trade it in for the James Bond movies. You'll have a much better time and get some eye candy to boot. But I think you'd need several of these monstrosities to be able to trade in for 1 movie.

Our main character is Bob Howard who got drafted into the super-secret branch of a UK government known as "The Laundry". Not only does he have buddies who make all these cool gizmos, but at one point they even say his code signal is 007. Puh-lease. He's the exact opposite of Bond, James Bond. There are no women fawning over him. He's not tall, dark, and handsome with a license to kill. Howard is a bumbling idiot who doesn't even have the clearance to take a gun into the field.

The concept behind the stories are good. The magic is that there are different realms all connected by magic. Computer hackers and gamers stumble on what is referred to a Turing's Theorem, a combination of mathematics that let you do a lot of cool stuff... you know, like accidentally summoning demons. The Laundry's job is to police and control all aspects of the occult and to either keep people away from Turing's or draft them into service. I liked the concept, but the author barely even touched on it. At one point in The Jennifer Morgue Howard set up a mathematical string of code in a computer game that allowed him to enter the game itself. Cool, cool idea, but the author never let the mathematical aspect to evolve into anything at all.

When I started in on The Atrocity Archive, there was more than one time that I thought I started into The Jennifer Morgue because the story was so disjointed that there was no other option for my brain to find reasonable. The author seemed to put tiny mini stories on the beginning and ending of each major story and failed to connect them. It felt like watching a movie and catching 5 second glimpses of the build up until the last half hour when the battle went down.


The Jennifer Morgue was much better than her brother, Atrocity, even though it was like watching a bad James Bond film that was grainy, out of focus, with an ugly James Bond. Granted, he is mindlinked with a really hot demon (well, her level 3 glamour is drop dead gorgeous anyways) but the best thing going for the story magic-wise is the really hot demon, zombie seagulls, and a hero-complex ward that tries to make our crappy main character into a young Sean Connery. Believe me, I'm not going overboard with the Bond references as the entire book is nothing more than Bond Bond Bond Bond. Wait, scratch that. The whole 'evil-villain-is-going-to-control-the-world-using-makeup' fits in there too. Too bad the Makeup Villain was used in Catwoman and was less than entertaining.

The concept behind the magic was interesting, but please, go watch some Double-0-7 with some hot chicks and a good story line.

The Nimble Man

Well here we are, first book of the new blog. I finished it about 2 hours ago, and I'm already a good 50 pages into another book before I decided this blog was a good thing to start. Part of my 'contract' with my friend Chris is merely that in exchange for his books, I tell him what I like and don't like, about how the plot goes or how the author had the story flow. More often then not, I'll return a bag of books on a Saturday and have to peek open each cover so that I remember which main characters go with each title. Titles are my weak point, and don't even ask me to remember authors. Anyways, to the book!

The Nimble Man is written by Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski, the first book in "The Menagerie" series. Currently there seems to be 4 books in total, so I'll have to ninja those at some point or another to read.

The beginning starts out well... some authors let the beginning dry up and just blow away because there is no substance, like leaves on a tree heralding the start of winter. Each character is introduced with a specific reason, not just for the reason of "This character needs to come in somewhere." No, each one has its purpose. Each character's entrance foreshadows something to come.

You get drawn in by the mystery surrounding the characters. The main character, known as Mr. Doyle, is the first one you meet. He sounds almost out of the Victorian era, but his accomplice, Eve, is every bit of "Female, perhaps slightly evil, dressed to kill and since you got her 4 inch stilettos dirty, you're a dead man". Next enters Squire, a very adorable hobgoblin. Each character is totally different from the rest, not just in personality like all good books have, but in race as well. Think of it as a more fantasy/horror version of the Avengers (Just watched Iron Man... go watch it if you haven't already), a healthy dose of magic and hexes, a pinch of vampire, a touch of Odo from DS9, demons, zombies, and a couple of Faerie royalty to add to the mix.

The books that I've read over the last 2 weeks or so have spent alot of time in or with the Fey. They touch upon the Faerie realm a bit in here, maybe might have mentioned the Seelie court once or twice, but its definitely a book based in the modern realm of our time. Considering some of the characters that come out later in the book are from the realm of the Faerie, I'm hoping the next books delve more into the other realms that are just barely attached to our own.

I like the way these authors write. Theres no extremely slow spots, but they're not sacrificing the detail for the speed of the story. I can see Eve kicking ass and taking names, with Mr. Doyle standing there waiting for the proper time to go and do what is necessary of him while a hobgolin is in control of an automobile. *Shudder*

The start of something new

I was reading a blog, one belonging to a good friend of mine. I found a post about me and my ability to devour books, about how I'm going through his collection faster than he could. I love to read, and at the current rate I'm demolishing his books at about 7 a week. Theres about 2 more months left of his collection before I find another source from which to feed on. I've already read probably a good 20 to 25 books of his, and it would be such a shame not to put them somewhere to be remembered.

There are countless books in the past that I look at in the library, and neither the title nor the author strikes me as familiar. I sit down, excited about the new book and the story inside only to find about 10 pages in that I know how it ends. Sure, depending on the length of time that has passed, I will reread the book to remember all the intricate details and how the author paints a picture in my head. I tend to forget titles and authors, but I very rarely forget the characters. I can see their struggle against their enemy in my head, I can hear their voices as they laugh and talk. I can feel their worry and doubt about their survival against their foe as the end battle draws near.

This blog is my tool to help me not forget the authors and the titles, both so I know which direction to go in every new book that is published and as my friend put it...

It’s very helpful in dealing with my case of literary overload: by having Andrea screen them, I can find out which books to move to the top of my reading pile and which ones to put in the back of the closet. If I can’t read everything, I can at least focus on the best stories first.

Perhaps it'll be of some value as a prescreening process, perhaps it won't. Only time will tell.