Book 69

Book 69 was No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong, from her Otherworld series. I recently read Personal Demon from the same series.

No Humans Involved is possibly my favorite book in the series. It follows Jamie, a necromancer, as she tries to solve a case involving human sacrifice of children, all while trying to connect with a guy she has had a major crush on for four years, and trying to land a TV show. One of my favorite things about Jamie is that she "celebrity" necromancer, performing shows across the country helping people get in touch with dead family members. She's a "spiritualist", and it's fun to see her faking it when we as readers know she actually can do this. 

No Humans Involved

Kelley Armstrong

6/69

Meh

I really hate it when I can't decide what to read next. I have a small bookshelf filled with new stuff, but none of it's appealing to me. And I have wandered the bookshelves, trying to find something to reread, and nothing is working there either. Grr.

Books 67 and 68

Books 67 and 68 were The Woman Who Rides Like a Man and Lioness Rampant, both by Tamora Pierce. There are the final two books in her Song of the Lioness quartet, the first two of which I read earlier this year. 

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man and Lioness Rampant deal with Alanna's life after she becomes and knight and goes off on her own for while for some adventuring. Once again, I enjoyed her adventures-Alanna is a lot of fun, and it was great to watch her grow over all four books and make her life just want she wanted it to be, no matter what others wanted her to do or be. Alanna grew up a lot in these two books-she finally accepted her magic, and being a woman. 

These two books were better than the first two in terms of pacing-great gaps of time weren't skipped so much, and things flowed a bit more coherently. I still would have liked more detail, but I can deal without it in a YA book. 

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Lioness Rampant

Tamora Pierce

5/68

Book 66

Book 66 was The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. The Color of Magic is the first in the Discworld series, which spans over 30 novels. That's impressive.

I enjoyed the book-it was light hearted, but had a great deal of action and "oh shit" moments. It followed the failed wizard Rincewind and Twoflower, a tourist. They take a trip through Discworld, and through their journeying we get a picture of what Discworld is and how it works. The humor of the book worked really well for me-there was a great deal of mocking of fantasy in general, and all of it was sharp and funny. The humor never really got ridiculous-it was subtle as opposed to in your face "look how clever I am" humor.

So, overall the book was good and I will read more of the Discworld series. Since there are so many books, I don't expect that I will get through them anytime soon.

The Color of Magic

Terry Pratchett

3/66

Book 65

Book 65 was a reread of Personal Demon by Kelly Armstrong.

Review here.

Personal Demon

Kelley Armstrong

1/2/65

Book 64

Book 64 was The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley.

Earlier this year I read General Winston's Daughter by Sharon Shinn. At the time, I noted it was quite similar to the Blue Sword. It is-they both have the same feel to them. A girl in her late teens heads off to a far off land to join a male family member in a vaguely middle eastern country that is occupied by their Britishesque homeland. The male family member is in the military, and the ladies end up falling in love with their land.

The stories diverge from that point. The Blue Sword follows Harry on her journey from a semi proper young lady to becoming a King's Rider in the land of Daria. Coincidentally, that is the same land from The Hero and the Sword , only Harry's tale takes place long after Aerin has become a legend to her people. Harry fights a war, finds her magic, and becomes a warrior. It's pretty awesome, and has over time become a comfort book for me.

I am now current on reviews. Go me!

The Hero and the Sword

Robin McKinley

1/1/64

Book 63

Book 63 was The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley.

This is a coming of age tale about Aerin, a princess who was disqualified from the throne at birth due to the dubious origins of her mother. Aerin, while ranked first among the ladies of the court, is considered last by everyone else. She is tall and awkward, tongue tied in public and worst of all, had little to none of the magic that is inborn to all royals. An outcast, she does her best to make her way in world she doesn't fit into. Naturally, she ends up becoming a great warrior and the savior of her people in the end-although to be fair, it was an uphill battle for her.

One of the main themes of this book was Aerin's struggle to find out what she could be. Unable to fit into court life, she made her own place. With some assistance from a friend, she teaches herself to fight mounted and becomes a dragon killer (dragons are a small pesty beast in this world), the least respected of all fighters. She finds more effective ways to do this all on her own. When her country needs to be saved, she goes off alone, without endangering anyone else to do what she can to help. She becomes a hero by doing what others don't want to do, instead of setting off on a big quest with lots of fanfare and helpers.

The Hero and the Crown

Robin McKinley

no known/63

Books 61 and 62

Books 61 and 62 were Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen, by Tamora Pierce. These books follow Alanna's daughter.

Aly is the daugher of two very prominent people in her country. Neither of them is willing to allow her to join the family business of spying, which is what she wants to do. They just want her to grow up. In a fit of pique, she leaves to visit friends. On her journey there, she is abducted by pirates and sold into slavery in the Copper Isles, a kingdom far from her native land. She plans to escape asap, using her spy skills, only before she can accomplish that, she is informed she was chosen by the Copper Isles' main god, the Trickster, to help keep two young girls alive so one of them can lead the land into rebellion and become the promised Queen.

Wow, that's a lot to process. And since this is a YA novel, Aly is able to make this all happen. The books were good, except for one thing-Aly is able to accomplish all of these goals without a single failure or misstep the whole time. I will admit that the author goes out of her way to show us how well Aly is trained as a spy, and that Aly covers all of her bases like ten times each. But still, it was hard to swallow that a young girl, in a strange country, never makes one mistake. That bothered me, and ruined some of my enjoyment of the story overall. 

Trickster's Choice  Trickster's Queen

Tamora Pierce

you know the drill/62 

Book 60

Book 60 was Personal Demon by Kelley Armstrong. This is book eight in a ten book series. 

Since this is a series book, it's a bit harder to talk about than a regular book, as there is a great deal that happened before that led us to this particular story. Anyway, the full series (Women of the Underworld) is one of my favorite paranormal sets. The world setting is that paranormal people exist among us, unknown, just doing their thing. Only their thing is way more exciting than ours, with witches, sorcerers, werewolves, etc. The author changes narrators between books, which keeps things fresh and introduces new people without creating a giant cast of characters that need to be in each novel. It also allows each character to grow in a reasonable manner, without having to overpower someone just to give then something to do. 

Personal Demon follows Hope, a half demon who's special ability is to sense and relive chaos events. This sort of makes her a tracking dog of the supernatural world, since she can sense bad magic, murder, etc. and get a replay of what happened. This sucks for her, since she can't turn off the receptors. I liked Hope-she was fun, and  I liked that no matter how hard things got for her, she kept trying to get her abilities under control and fine tune them then as best she can. Her love interest, a werewolf, was a bit of a stock character, but no less fun for that. I don't think it will be my favorite book in the series, but it was a worthy addition none the less.

Person Demon

Kelley Armstrong

guess/60

Book 59

Book 59 was Shadowbridge, by Gregory Frost. New fantasy duo. Yay for only two books!

Shadowbridge was very original-and I mean that in a good way. It's about a puppeteer who is traveling around the world, practicing her craft and learning new stories where ever she stops. Leodora, our puppeteer, is following in the footsteps of her father who was at one time the most famous puppeteer in all of Shadowbridge. Traveling with her is her father's former partner Soter and her accompanist, who is a gods touched musician. As they travel, Leodora realizes that they are things Soter isn't telling her about her dead parents, and that these things could lead her into danger she knows little to nothing about. 

The story includes stories within the story, the tales that Leodora tells and learns as she travels putting on her shows. The inner stories are done in the style of fables and myths about all of the strange places she goes to in Shadowbridge. The world  is a character in itself-it's a world of small islands connected by bridges and tunnels with cities themselves built on the bridges. It's a magical bit of world building-incredibly different cultures are just a bridge span away, and really allows the author to take a world traveling approach with the story that feels very fresh. The inner stories also let us know more about Leodora and Soter without going into heavy explanations, which is a nice touch also.

Shadowbridge

Gregory Frost

#/59 

Book 58

Book 58 was Feast of Souls, by C.S. Friedman, and is first in a new fantasy series. It will be three books-shocker!

In this book, we have male mages, called magisters, who get to live forever and have uber casting powers by stealing other people's life force, since each mage only has a limited amount of magical casting ability within themselves. Women either can't, don't or won't do this, until one girl finally decides to figure out how. This magical ability is a big secret since the magisters know that if people found out what they were doing, everyone would kill them asap. Makes sense-who would want a bunch of parasite magic casters killing off random people so the caster can be all powerful? 

Yeah, the set up sounds dumb, but the book really works. The author really captures the idea of how awful and wonderful is it to be a magister, and how magisters come to view their world after a number of years. We see first hand how a victim is affected by this, and how it changes their life.

Oh yeah, there are also some horrible giant dragon creatures that eat magic and torture people making a come back and the world needs to be saved from them. I will totally read this series.

Feast of Souls

C.S. Friedman

meh/58

Book 57

Book 57 was The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's a historical fantasy-meaning the book is set during a recognizable period of history, but it's in an imaginary world with magic and such.

This book is set during Viking times, and deals with their raids on the British coast. The story line is vast and complex, following multiple characters in various locations. The story flows so smoothly that the switch from place to place and person to person isn't jarring at all. All of the characters are well written and complex, with equal attention paid to both female and male characters. Kay is a wonderful writer, and the book reads so wonderfully at times it's hard to believe that the people aren't real. A solid story with beautiful prose and no plot holes-a great read.

The Last Light of the Sun

Guy Gavriel Kay

do you know?/57