Presentation Done, Good 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.

How­ev­er, 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.

Per­son­al 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,¹Hope was intro­duced in the Dates From Hell anthol­o­gy, with a novel­la that cov­ered her ini­tial encounter with Karl and the Cortez Cabal. 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, the way­ward son of cabal leader Beni­cio Cortez, and his wife Paige Win­ter­bourne are also key to the plot. 

I 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 web­site, though.

Pre­pared for Rage is not a book I’d nor­mal­ly read. It’s a thriller involv­ing an Al Qae­da ter­ror­ist, a space shut­tle launch, 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,²Actu­al­ly, 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. 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.

I don’t know if I’ll try read­ing Blind­fold Game,³Ah—just real­ized that it’s in the same uni­verse as PfR. Maybe I will. Maybe. Stabenow’s ear­li­er thriller, but I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing Silk and Song when­ev­er she finds a pub­lish­er for it.