Showing posts from July, 2015

[Book Review] The Demon's Librarian

The Demon's Librarian / Lilith Saintcrow

Demons, magic, and kick ass librarians.  How could I not read this.  It even comes with a dedication to librarians (awww).

Chess used to be your regular librarian, coming across a bit all buns, cardigans, and comfortable shoes at work, with her own life outside where she could let her hair down.  Well, somewhere along the line things went a little wrong and in taking things into her own hands her life goes down the rabbit hole.  Nasty tentacle things that go bump in the night are a good reason to start watching over your shoulder, and little does she know what's coming her way or what newly waking powers she possesses.

Ryan is something of a "hulk smash" alpha male, but it's balanced by his awareness of his need to control his "animalistic" urges.  Rather brooding and over-protective, but his job is literally to be over-protective.


Where do I even start with him?  He's the type of character that I wan…

[Book Review] The Girl With All The Gifts

The Girl with All the Gifts / M. R. Carey (Powell's Books)
M. R. Carey masterfully balances narrative and exposition, sharing details and knowledge of the world the characters navigate with a purpose to the plot and the action immediately at hand.  The characters are convincing in their and sympathetic, even if unlikable.  I was quickly drawn into the story and stayed entranced through the end.

The Girl with All the Gifts is the story of the extinction of humanity, and just maybe what comes next. See full review here. I am not big into horror (my preferences for LARP settings aside).  I can read terrifying stories without issue during the day, but inevitably as I try to go to sleep my imagination goes into overdrive.  So for me to find a zombie novel about the end of humanity and love it is unusual.  The Girl With All the Gifts was like nothing I had ever read before, so I put it into the reading list as the July pick for the Virtual Speculation Bookclub.  I honestly don'…

[Book Review] 30 Days

30 Days / Christine d'Abo

Losing someone you love, someone who completes you, is never easy.  Two years ago Alyssa lost her one and only to cancer.  Now a widow in her 30's surrounded by friends happily in relationships of their own and still feeling the loss of Rob, Alyssa is faced with his final urgings that she move on with her life.  As a last gift Rob gave her a set of 30 cards, 30 cards for 30 days of refinding her sensuality, her sexuality, and happiness within herself and others.

When someone new moves in to the neighboring condo, a friendly someone with a cute behind and devilish grin.  Harrison definitely catches Alyssa's eye, and as a temporary resident a relationship is off the books, maybe making him the perfect man to help her get back into the proverbial saddle again.

Christine d'Abo perfectly captures the grief and loss, the struggle of maintaining a sense of normalcy, the feelings of guilt when you realize the ways in which you have healed and moved on…

Book Challenge - Recommend Away

Normally I wouldn't classify recommending books as a challenge, but A Throne of Books over on Booklikes has presented a very through list.  The fact that they're not all necessarily "favorites" in said category makes it a little bit easier.

I made this a little harder on myself by limiting to just books I've read and trying not to repeat books or authors, since often a single book fits in multiple categories.  For example, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance clearly works for both "unreliable narrator" and "character with mental illness," but I liked it better under wanderlust.

Some of my choices may be a bit odd, but I'm pretty happy with myself for coming up with something unique for each with the self-imposed restrictions.
1. Favorite books in all categories -The Last Unicorn / Peter S. Beagle
2. Start to a series - The Atrocity Archives / Charles Stross
3. By an author who's written over 5 books total - The Deed of Paksenar…

[Book Review] A Murder of Mages

A Murder of Mages / Marshall Ryan Maresca (Powell's Books)

A gaslamp fantasy of Sherlockian flavor filled with magic and murder, A Murder of Mages starts off a new series following the investigations of Satrine Rainey and Minox Welling.  The story jumps right in, almost with the feeling of a sequel, with Satrine's intricate and well-established backstory bringing her to where she is now, complete with expertise, fears, and motivations.

The world itself is fantasy, but could just as easily be any of the re-imagined magical Londons that populates the literary world.

The constabulary is a man's world, with women mostly present in support roles.  But Satrine has the skills, and the chutzpah to claim the title of Inspector.  Minox Welling is also a bit of an oddity, not just for his focus on details to the point of obsession and conspiracy theory, but as an uncircled mage.  He has the power, but not the training nor the membership within the fellowship of a Mage House.

When som…

[Book Review] Bound with Honor

Bound with Honor  / Megan Mulry

This is not a historical/regency romance.  Rather it is "regency reimagined" which allows for regency window dressing with some vague nod to expectations of propriety.  There are references to the expectations of society, but the characters live in a little orgastic oasis where loving polyamory is the norm.

Perhaps it is a child's duty to be embarrassed by one's parents, certainly not all of Kinsey's children were enthusiastic about their parents openness regarding sexuality.  If that's the case, Lord Archibald Cambury fulfills his duty admirably, wanting nothing more than the opposite of the intimate relationships of his closest family.  His mothers are splendid, and his sister is quite happy with her two husbands, but all he want is a single, proper, wife.

The lovely Selina Ashby could be that very wife: demure, lovely, and intelligent.  Or at least Archie thinks she is demure, and is both shocked and horrified to discover th…

[Book Review] Ink and Bone

Ink and Bone : The Great Library / Rachel Caine (Powell's Books)

Adventure!  Danger!  Romance!  Magic!  Librarians!

No, this isn't the next season of The Librarians.  Rather it's the start of Rachel Caine's latest series.

Books are everything to Jess Brightwell.  Perhaps too much, as anyone involved in book smuggling must be ready to destroy a book on moments notice to stay free.  Books, originals, belong to the Library, accessible to the masses through an Alchemical mirroring process called "mirroring" where the text is duplicated into a ready blank as needed.  When his father offers to send him into the Library service, even as a family spy, it's more than he ever imagined.

But then, the Library itself is more than he ever imagined.  The Library has changed over the years, growing in power and size, and as the ranks swell so has the opportunity for men to gain, and abuse, dominion over others.  Those with power fear change, even change that would better …

[Book Review] The Do It List

The Do It List / Jillian Stone

Gracie Taylor-Scott is a blistering talent in the advertising field, throwing her life into her work and helping raise her young niece while her widowed brother-in-law works late shifts in the emergency room.  It doesn't leave much time for a personal life or dating, but that works just fine for her, a nice shield between her, intimacy, and emotional scars.

Then she ends up trapped in an elevator with the gorgeous company transfer Bradley Craig during a power-outage on their way to an after-hours work party.  Trapping in a dark box raises some fears and opens some chinks in her personal armor, and some serious sparks fly.

What started out as a fear-fueled fondle opens the door to satisfying their own "do it" lists, erotic encounters with no strings attached.  But is it just chemistry between them, or something more?  And can they find the right balance to stay on top of their professional game while dealing with their emotional pasts?

The Do…

Link Smorgasbord, June 2015

Long Before Snowden, Librarians Were Anti-Surveillance Heroes
On the privacy efforts by librarians over the past decade.

The quest to save today’s gaming history from being lost forever
Digital preservation is a huge challenge, bit loss, planning for accessibility, and for format and technology obsolescence.  On top of that copyright law actively interferes with independent efforts to copy and preserve.  Video games that often have patches and expansions that result in profound changes to the game itself.  Add in the different platforms, add-ons, social aspects, and even the different modes of play (including private servers for MMOs), its a bit of a tangle.

Recently Discovered Original Script For STAR WARS Finally Confirms Who Shot First
Librarians for Han Shot First.

“Let's talk about genre”: Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro in conversation 
"The two literary heavyweights talk about the politics of storytelling, the art of the swordfight and why dragons are good for the econom…