I just fin­ished read­ing a bunch of dif­fer­ent short sto­ries that have been lurk­ing in var­i­ous pro­grams on my iTouch. While they are reviewed in sep­a­rate entries on GoodReads, I’m going to try to put the reviews in one blog post.

Blood from Stone by Lau­ra Anne Gilman

My review

rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars
It feels like a spoil­er, but since Gilman says this at the front of the book, I sup­pose it isn’t: Blood From Stone is the last Retriev­ers nov­el, at least for a time. She’s mov­ing on to focus on oth­er char­ac­ters in the Cosa Nos­tradamus uni­verse. I was­n’t hap­py to read that, but after read­ing the book, I’m okay with it.

Blood From Stone def­i­nite­ly isn’t a book to start with if you’re new to Gilman’s work. The Retriev­ers series real­ly does need to be read sequen­tial­ly. If you have read the rest, you know that Gilman has devel­oped a very inter­est­ing uni­verse and some very well-devel­oped char­ac­ters in the series. Book 6 does­n’t dis­ap­point at all, and brings the major plot threads to a very sat­is­fac­to­ry close. I can’t be more spe­cif­ic with­out real spoil­ers, though!

I’m def­i­nite­ly look­ing for­ward to read­ing the next nov­el in the uni­verse, which will focus on Bon­nie and the PUPIs (Pri­vate, Unaf­fil­i­at­ed, Para­nor­mal Inves­ti­ga­tors). I adore CSI, Bones, NCIS and the like, so I’m curi­ous as to how foren­sics will work in urban fan­ta­sy set­tings. Jes Bat­tis’ A Flash of Hex is sup­posed to be wait­ing for me at the library, so by the time I get to Hard Mag­ic I’ll have some­thing else to com­pare it to.

View all my reviews.

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!

Yes, I’m bor­ing. I hate try­ing to think of titles for posts.

The girl is off vis­it­ing, hav­ing left yes­ter­day after­noon. Her cat is fran­tic. He is very much attached to HER, not US. So when­ev­er she leaves the house, he goes nuts, gets ter­ri­bly anx­ious, and is cer­tain that she’ll nev­er, ever come back. He spends most of his time sit­ting in the front win­dows or sniff­ing under the front door, try­ing to detect her return.

Shel­ley nev­er freaked like that, but then Katie vis­it­ed Atlanta once a week pret­ty much every week from the time she was a few weeks old ’til they moved here with me. She knew the girl would always come back. And Shel­ley was with me for a year before Katie was born, and attached to both of us. Kioshi is just a one-per­son cat. I should make that a one-girl cat, as he isn’t big on males at all.

I read the first of Lau­ra Anne Gilman’s Retriev­er nov­els, Stay­ing Dead. Fun stuff, and I think many of you would enjoy it. Then I went on to Twi­light by Stephanie Mey­er. Katie was so excit­ed about it that I had to see what the big deal was. She fin­ished that huge suck­er in a day or so. I took a lit­tle longer, but then I was­n’t the one check­ing the library’s hold queue sev­er­al times a day.

I can see why the series is such a huge hit with some teenage girls, but I don’t think it will car­ry near­ly as much pop­u­lar­i­ty with any oth­er age group or males, peri­od. There’s too much “oh, I’m bad for you” angst­ing from the vam­pire (male roman­tic lead). Seriously–he beats David Bore­anz’s Angel all to pieces on the brood­ing, and that takes some doing.

The main char­ac­ter, Bel­la, is annoy­ing to me because she’s pret­ty damned use­less. She hon­est­ly can’t be trust­ed to walk down a hall­way with no obsta­cles with­out hurt­ing her­self. She’s not cre­ative or par­tic­u­lar­ly intel­li­gent, shows no par­tic­u­lar tal­ents of any sort–a beige per­son, in my mind. What’s there to like?

I took a break and read Curse The Dark (sec­ond of the Retriev­er series) before start­ing New Moon, but I did start it. And damn, it’s even more emo­tion­al­ly dra­mat­ic.

I’m not sure I’ll read the oth­er two books when­ev­er we get hold of them (I’m not sure the fourth is even out yet). I know that Katie will, though. The series isn’t writ­ten bad­ly, but I’m way out of the tar­get audi­ence.

There was some­thing spe­cif­ic I was going to post. I know it. I remem­ber think­ing, “Oh, yeah, I want to blog about that!” But I did­n’t do it imme­di­ate­ly and now, of course, it’s gone, gone, gone. Blah.

So, instead, you get a lit­tle hodge-podge update of books and pic­tures.