Tag: Charles Stross

I gave in to my body and stayed in bed all day yes­ter­day. It helped. If I’m not try­ing to do any­thing else, I can take my break­through pain meds and mus­cle relax­ants. They make me too flop­py to walk around safe­ly or use dan­ger­ous tools like but­ter knives.

I’m doing pret­ty much the same today, but want­ed to post an update. Not that there’s real­ly any­thing much to talk about, oth­er than napping.

I have con­tin­ued to read when I’m awake, thanks to Sam’s will­ing­ness to go to the library to sup­port my habit. I fin­ished the first four books in Eileen Wilks’ World of the Lupi series. I think book 4, Night Sea­son, was bet­ter than the first three. The focus switched from one cou­ple to anoth­er in this book, and both of those peo­ple were def­i­nite­ly grow­ing and changing—always a plus in my mind.

I did fin­ish Caitlin Kit­tredge’s Pure Blood, but it was a close thing. The main char­ac­ter is a whiny, imma­ture brat who blames every­thing on the fact that she’s a were­wolf. The oth­er weres in her world don’t seem to have such poor con­trol over them­selves, so that just does­n’t wash. She’s also stu­pid, con­stant­ly run­ning off into dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions with­out let­ting anyone—like, say, her fel­low police officers—know so they can back her up.

I final­ly got my hands on Hands of Flame by C.E. Mur­phy, the last book of her Nego­tia­tor tril­o­gy. It was won­der­ful! All the impor­tant threads from the series were tied up, includ­ing some that I’d thought mere­ly back­ground. There are five Old Races liv­ing silent­ly among humans in Mur­phy’s uni­verse, and I love the way she avoids most of the clichés about them. I would like to have seen a few more shades of gray in the por­tray­al of one race, in par­tic­u­lar, but all in all she did a very nice job. It’s easy to imag­ine many, many more sto­ries in this uni­verse, focus­ing on new characters.

I haven’t decid­ed what to read next. Sam was so enthu­si­as­tic about Halt­ing State by Charles Stross that I might switch over to sci­ence fic­tion for a bit. It real­ly depends on how well I’m able to com­pre­hend it—Stross’ writ­ing is real­ly good, but more chal­leng­ing to the read­er than any of the urban fantasy/paranormal what­sis books I’ve been dawdling over.