A Brush of Darkness, Allison Pang

I am hoping after my carpal tunnel surgery I will feel more inclined to update this blog. I realize I've been neglecting it terribly. I post all updates to my twitter feed, though, maybe you should look into that.

So. This is a fantasy novel about a woman who is a "touchstone" for someone pretty important in the supernatural world. One day at work she meets an incubus, and discovers she can be someone's touchstone merely by touching them. This seems obvious from the name, but whatever.

And there was a plot of some sort.

This was entertaining but, as you can tell, not very memorable. I'll probably check out the next book at some point.

Symbiont, Mira Grant

I have been trying to space out the Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire stuff, honest I have. It's just that her stuff is so dang good.

However, this one is a little iffy. After the events of the first book, Sal is shaken. Everyone wants a piece of her, too. So, to figure out how to stop the tapeworms from blindly killing their hosts AND themselves, everyone begins looking for a solution.

This is suspenseful and gross, but it's just not plausible to keep throwing your character from one dangerous situation to the other. I think Sal gets like 12 hours of sleep in the whole book.

Which could explain a few things, but still..

On the whole a good read.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; John Le Carre

Things are getting a mite tense at MI6 or whatever. Retired spy George Smiley is called to a very secret meeting. It seems there is a double agent in the system. Smiley is asked to put together his own team and find out which of the suspects it could be.

Smiley knows who he WANTS the mole to be, but he is methodical and thorough in his search.

This is a slow book, but, just like the BBC miniseries, it keeps you interested to the very end.

Then again, if I hadn't been sick as hell and low on reading material I might never have gotten through the first part, which is really slow going and mildly irrelevant.

Mrs. Noodlekugel and Drooly the Bear, Daniel Pinkwater

Mrs. Noodlekugel's husband comes home from being lost at sea. He brings with him a rather vexing bear, who of course wanders off and gets into scrapes.

This was not as much fun as the last two books, but the illustrations were still adorable.

Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible, Ursula Vernon

This book is really adorable and fun, with wonderful illustrations. Another one on my list of stuff to buy for my great-niece when she's six or so.

Harriet is cursed as an infant--when she's twelve, she will prick her finger on a hamster wheel, and sleep until a prince kisses her.

Harriet's parents keep her life really boring until the day Harriet learns of the curse. Since the curse needs her to live until she's twelve, Harriet figures she's invincible!

So she does some cliff diving and runs off to kick the snot out of some monsters.

all goes well until she's drawn back home on her twelfth birthday..

Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch

Locke and Jean are up to their usual thieving ways when they find out that they've made some really powerful enemies. Then they are forced to put a plan on hold when one of the most powerful guys in the city decides they should help him make the military more powerful. It's one of those slow-acting poison thingies.

So Locke and Jean try to become pirates. This does not go well, and they find themselves conscripted onto a REAL pirate ship, with a badass captain.

I didn't like this book as much as the first one. The main reason is one I can't tell you because of spoilers, but let's just say it wasn't necessary to the plot and as soon as I saw it coming I got REALLY pissed off.

The Honourable Schoolboy, John Le Carre

I don't really recommend reading Le Carre's books so close together, but the book I have is an omnibus of three novels, so it was fairly easy for me.

It is discovered that Russian master spy Karla has been funneling money into China, and Smiley and his crew are trying to find out why.

This book is the longest of the three in my omnibus, and while a lot of the things that seem trivial are important later, I gotta admit I skipped some parts because they were interminable.

Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light; Tanya Huff

I was going to hold off on this until after my surgery so I would have something entertaining to read, but then I got a notice that it was due and couldn't renew the damn thing and now the fine's really big so I read it and here's my review (GASP):

Evil invades Toronto to take over the world, and our defense consists of one young woman with some brain damage, a guy with a guitar who is apparently a bard, and the young woman's caseworker. Also a cat.

But they summon help from the light and boom, an angel shows up.

I really liked this, it was fun to read and kind of reminded me of a Diana Wynne Jones book I have somewhere, except there were no angels in that one. Centaur, though.

Pocket Apocalypse, Seanan McGuire

Alex Price heeds his girlfriend's plea to come to Australia and help with the werewolf outbreak. Australia's never dealt with werewolves before.

So Alex goes to the most dangerous continent to face werewolves and his girlfriend's family, both of which want to kill him. This trip will be VERY educational.

This book almost made me cry about a mouse.

Man, I love this series.