Enemy of Entropy

Presentation Done, Good Reading

21 April 2008, 11:55 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Blogging, College, Reading.

I can’t talk about the pre­sen­ta­tion. I might have flash­backs. The fact that BOTH my classes that start next week have group projects is NOT giv­ing me a happy.

Personal DemonHow­ever, I did read Kelly Armstrong’s lat­est Women of the Oth­er­world book, Per­sonal Demon, yes­ter­day, and then Dana Stabenow’s Pre­pared for Rage today. They were good.

Dates From HellPer­sonal Demon fol­lows Hope Adams, a half-​​demon with a chaos addic­tion, who takes on a job for Cortez Cabal in order to clear up a debt. When her were­wolf friend (briefly a lover) and pro­fes­sional jewel thief Karl Marsten, with whom she incurred the debt,1 finds out that she’s work­ing with­out him, he imme­di­ately endeav­ors to extract her. While Hope isn’t as obvi­ously pow­er­ful as some of the other char­ac­ters in Armstrong’s uni­verse, she’s no pushover, and she’s very good at using her tal­ents. Lucas, way­ward son of cabal leader Beni­cio Cortez, and his wife Paige Win­ter­bourne are also key to the plot.

Living With the DeadI enjoyed the book immensely, although it was a light read that only lasted a few hours. I like the way Arm­strong is keep­ing her uni­verse fresh. I do wish she’d put out more books a year, though! I look for­ward to Liv­ing With the Dead, which is sched­uled for a Novem­ber release. Oh! I didn’t know that she was doing a young adult tril­ogy set in the Oth­er­world. Cool! Hate the Flash web site, though.

Prepared for RagePre­pared for Rage is not a book I’d nor­mally read. It’s a thriller involv­ing an Al Qaeda ter­ror­ist, a space shut­tle launch and one of the astro­nauts on the crew, a Coast Guard cut­ter cap­tain, and a high-​​ranking CIA ana­lyst. I’ve enjoyed Stabenow’s Kate Shugak and Liam Camp­bell series,2 so I gave it a try.

I found the sec­tions told from the terrorist’s point of view truly dis­turb­ing. I didn’t really feel that the astro­naut had much depth to her, but the cap­tain and the ana­lyst were good char­ac­ters. I under­stand the func­tion the astro­naut served as a hook, but she should have been fleshed out more fully. I have a feel­ing that there was a lot of mate­r­ial edited out somewhere.

Blindfold GameI don’t know if I’ll try read­ing Blind­fold Game,3 Stabenow’s ear­lier thriller, but I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing Silk and Song when­ever she finds a pub­lisher for it.

1 Hope was intro­duced in the Dates From Hell anthol­ogy, with a novella that cov­ered her ini­tial encounter with Karl and the Cortez Cabal.

2 Actu­ally, I’m pretty sure I read the first of her sci­ence fic­tion tril­ogy fea­tur­ing Star Svens­dot­ter many years ago, but didn’t know that there were two more books until after they were out of print.

3 Ah – just real­ized that it’s in the same uni­verse as PR. Maybe I will. Maybe.

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