Mean Streets by Jim Butch­er

My review

rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
Mean Streets is one of the best antholo­gies I’ve read in a while. It only has four dif­fer­ent pieces in it, but they’re all novel­las, and all by strong, expe­ri­enced writ­ers. I don’t think any of them are here rid­ing on some­one else’s name on the book cov­er.

Jim Butcher’s “War­rior,” the first piece, is very good. It fol­lows Har­ry and the Car­pen­ter fam­i­ly after they expe­ri­enced some major changes in the last Dres­den nov­el. I could have stood a lit­tle more Mol­ly, but Har­ry and Michael were the focus char­ac­ters and they worked out some things that real­ly need­ed to be dealt with. I’m glad I read this before the next Dres­den nov­el, because I feel there’s impor­tant char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. I seri­ous­ly rec­om­mend this book to all Dres­den fans.

I haven’t read any of Simon R. Green’s nov­els, though I’ve heard of the Night­side series and thought about pick­ing one up. If “The Dif­fer­ence a Day Makes” is typ­i­cal, though, I may not both­er. He is a good writer, so I’m not sure what it is that both­ered me so much. I know that some­thing framed as one of the nas­ti­est things peo­ple could choose to do in this piece isn’t even in my top 10, but I feel there’s some­thing else that I just can’t quite artic­u­late yet.

I’ve read all three of Kat Richard­son’s Grey­walk­er nov­els and enjoyed them enough that I plan to keep read­ing. “The Third Death of the Lit­tle Clay Dog” is my favorite piece of her work, hands down. There’s more light, some­how, and that’s impor­tant to me.

“Noah’s Orphans” is my first expo­sure to Thomas E. Sniegos­ki, as far as I can recall. It was an inter­est­ing piece. I found myself won­der­ing about Remy Chan­dler’s past, about how the char­ac­ter has devel­oped. If there are nov­els fea­tur­ing that char­ac­ter, I may give them a read. In any case, it brought up some inter­est­ing ques­tions about faith and obe­di­ence. I think it would have been more per­son­al­ly rel­e­vant to me about 20 years ago, though.

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I did­n’t sleep very well last night, although I man­aged to stay up all day yes­ter­day (unusu­al late­ly). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I end­ed up sleep­ing most of the day, today, and I’m still sleepy! So I hope I can sleep well again, tonight.

I have a fever, too, so appar­ent­ly push­ing myself to not nap was a bad idea. Doc­tor’s orders are still to lay down 15 min­utes of every hour, which makes it dif­fi­cult to get much done at a time. Oh well. It’s bet­ter than a fever.

The girl got home safe­ly, but did­n’t go out with her friends tonight as planned due to a threat­en­ing migraine. They did­n’t real­ly see much of the mete­or show­er, because the skies were too cloudy, but they did have fun.

I fin­ished read­ing the sec­ond of Kat Richard­son’s Grey­walk­er books today, Pol­ter­geist. Very good stuff, and a nice change from some of the too-com­mon urban fan­ta­sy themes. The library is hold­ing Under­ground for me, which I hope to pick up tomor­row.

The mail brought an O’Reil­ly JavaScript book to review for TCM, so I’ll be work­ing on that dur­ing my more coher­ent wak­ing hours for a bit.

My real-life dra­ma tol­er­ance cir­cuits were total­ly burned out with mar­riage v.3. I’m cool with that. I was able to han­dle much more of it in fic­tion, though I’m not big on whiney char­ac­ters.

I guess the Stephanie Mey­er back­lash is still with me, though, because after fin­ish­ing the fifth of Lau­ra Anne Gilman’s Retriev­er nov­els, Falling Free, I tried read­ing Anne Bish­op’s Tan­gled Webs.

I just start­ed read­ing Bish­op ear­li­er this year, and tru­ly enjoyed the ear­li­er Realms of the Blood books. I did notice that every­body in the books is more than slight­ly high-strung, and that (as is so often the case), good com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills would have large­ly removed most the plot premis­es.

I mean, yeah, evil peo­ple plot, what are you going to do about it? Stick togeth­er and talk to the peo­ple you care about, dammit! Nev­er believe you’ve been betrayed with­out doing some fact-check­ing, at the very least!

But I just got a few chap­ters into Tan­gled Webs, and there they go again. I think lithi­um needs to be added into the water table of this uni­verse.

I’m dis­ap­point­ed, because I do enjoy many things about Bish­op’s writ­ing. Maybe I’ll give that one anoth­er try some­day in the future. For now, it goes back to the library.

Grey­walk­er by Kat Richard­son is next on the stack!