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ATDrake · 12-30-2010, 11:22 PM

Finished Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's A Mortal Glamour, which I thought would be a more-or-less straight historical about the secular world encroaching upon a religious retreat, but turned out to be a psychological horror novel about faith-fueled hysteria instead. Not that the seeds weren't planted throughout the story, but I'd kind of forgotten what the blurb was by the time I started reading. Pretty good, with nicely grounded detail into medieval attitudes and cloister practices etc. without being overwhelming.

Coincidentally, R.A. MacAvoy's Damiano's Lute, which I broke down and started flipping between AMG and, is also set in France during one of those periods where the Black Death was active and when the Popes were stationed at Avignon. Made for an interesting contrast, and both books certainly gave the built-in dictionary a workout (it choked on "terpsichorean"). Another book which took an unexpected direction which was in retrospect kind of telegraphed throughout.

This was apparently the Road-Trip of Self-Discovery volume in the Trilogy, and the final book, Raphael felt mildly superfluous afterwards, but it had an interesting guest appearance which made it kind of a surprise prequel to one of MacAvoy's other books. Suffers from the exact same errors (U instead of li, lack of scene breaks) as Damiano did; I suspect they were all scanned and processed in a batch, and I'll browse the used bookshops to see if they've got paper copies I can at least grab the scene break placements from.

Finished two paper books, Mischief in Mudbug and Showdown in Mudbug, which are sequels to Trouble in Mudbug by Janna De Leon, which was a free giveaway at Kobo or Borders some months back and which I was entertained by enough to pick up the next in series when I spotted them at the library.

I've discovered a mild liking for zany screwball romantic comedies, and these are mystery/thriller/suspense/humour variants on them, with the heroine of each book finding love while being targeted for death and assisted by an overbearing ghost who drives them to distraction. The first two were enjoyable enough, but the final book was a bit over-the-top, what with what turned out to be the suspension-of-disbelief-straining motivating factor for the attempted murder in that one. Yes, even accounting for the ghost premise.

Note to aspiring authors: when your character is supposed to be a highly skilled computer hacker yet seems to confuse IP with MAC address and uses the former as the reason why she has to abandon to destruction her cheapie laptops after each and every attempted system break-in session because it's now marked for life and the computer itself can and will be unmistakeably traced by the unique IP address the second time she uses it while sitting at a randomly-selected-and-varied Internet café, well, I'm just going to channel Morbo from Futurama and say: IP ADDRESSES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

Now dividing my time between Yarbro's Blood Games, one of her popular vampire Saint-Germain stories set in Neronian Rome, MacAvoy's Twisting the Rope, sequel to Tea with a Black Dragon, and starting Vonda N. McIntyre's Starfarers, which is currently a promotional free giveaway (for a limited time) at the BookView Café.

The first two are pretty good so far, but despite McIntyre's reputation, her prose just isn't doing it for me. I remember the same effect from trying her Star Trek novels, which seemed to have interesting ideas put together well enough, but for some reason just fell flat even though I was trying to like them. I'll give it a few more chapters, though.

12-30-2010, 11:22 PM	#7622
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	Finished Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's A Mortal Glamour, which I thought would be a more-or-less straight historical about the secular world encroaching upon a religious retreat, but turned out to be a psychological horror novel about faith-fueled hysteria instead. Not that the seeds weren't planted throughout the story, but I'd kind of forgotten what the blurb was by the time I started reading. Pretty good, with nicely grounded detail into medieval attitudes and cloister practices etc. without being overwhelming. Coincidentally, R.A. MacAvoy's Damiano's Lute, which I broke down and started flipping between AMG and, is also set in France during one of those periods where the Black Death was active and when the Popes were stationed at Avignon. Made for an interesting contrast, and both books certainly gave the built-in dictionary a workout (it choked on "terpsichorean"). Another book which took an unexpected direction which was in retrospect kind of telegraphed throughout. This was apparently the Road-Trip of Self-Discovery volume in the Trilogy, and the final book, Raphael felt mildly superfluous afterwards, but it had an interesting guest appearance which made it kind of a surprise prequel to one of MacAvoy's other books. Suffers from the exact same errors (U instead of li, lack of scene breaks) as Damiano did; I suspect they were all scanned and processed in a batch, and I'll browse the used bookshops to see if they've got paper copies I can at least grab the scene break placements from. Finished two paper books, Mischief in Mudbug and Showdown in Mudbug, which are sequels to Trouble in Mudbug by Janna De Leon, which was a free giveaway at Kobo or Borders some months back and which I was entertained by enough to pick up the next in series when I spotted them at the library. I've discovered a mild liking for zany screwball romantic comedies, and these are mystery/thriller/suspense/humour variants on them, with the heroine of each book finding love while being targeted for death and assisted by an overbearing ghost who drives them to distraction. The first two were enjoyable enough, but the final book was a bit over-the-top, what with what turned out to be the suspension-of-disbelief-straining motivating factor for the attempted murder in that one. Yes, even accounting for the ghost premise. Note to aspiring authors: when your character is supposed to be a highly skilled computer hacker yet seems to confuse IP with MAC address and uses the former as the reason why she has to abandon to destruction her cheapie laptops after each and every attempted system break-in session because it's now marked for life and the computer itself can and will be unmistakeably traced by the unique IP address the second time she uses it while sitting at a randomly-selected-and-varied Internet café, well, I'm just going to channel Morbo from Futurama and say: IP ADDRESSES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. Now dividing my time between Yarbro's Blood Games, one of her popular vampire Saint-Germain stories set in Neronian Rome, MacAvoy's Twisting the Rope, sequel to Tea with a Black Dragon, and starting Vonda N. McIntyre's Starfarers, which is currently a promotional free giveaway (for a limited time) at the BookView Café. The first two are pretty good so far, but despite McIntyre's reputation, her prose just isn't doing it for me. I remember the same effect from trying her Star Trek novels, which seemed to have interesting ideas put together well enough, but for some reason just fell flat even though I was trying to like them. I'll give it a few more chapters, though.