Sunday, August 30, 2009

August '09

COMMONWEALTH: DROWNING WORLD
-A.D. Foster-scifi
-315- yet another novel of the commonwealth. And guess what? You have several different species all stranded together on an inhospitable world who must rely on each other to survive. Also guess what again? Another sentient being is found in plant life. Surprise! Man, Foster needs to stop. His stuff is becoming as rote and as badly written as Edding's stuff was before he died.

BARTIMAEUS: THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND
-J. Stroud-YA fantasy
-462-a young magician in training calls up the djinni Bartimaeus to revenge himself on another magician and in the process saves England from a revolt of other magicians. This was very occultic, with all the pentagrams and incense and whatnot. And all the footnotes by Bartimaeus threw the whole rhythm off. Couldn't read half a page before you had to stop the main story and read a stupid footnote. Like that through the whole book. Very poorly executed. I'll probably try the next one, but it is definitely taking a backseat in the bookline.

EYESHIELD 21 #1-16
-R. Inagaki-manga

GOING POSTAL
-T. Pratchett-fantasy
-377- a smooth talking conman is conned by Lord V into taking over the Post Office. It was amusing and interesting, but not riotous or outlandishly weird like most of Pratchett's early stuff. Discworld in Depends, if you know what I mean.

LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET
-M.E. Braddon-classic
-440-a young woman, whose husband has run off to Australia to make his fortune, gives herself a new name and ends up marrying an old rich lord. The husband returns, Lady Audley kills him and her secret is safe. Except that her husband was good friends with the lord's nephew, Robert. Robert investigates his friends disappearance and turns up all of Lady Audley's secrets. She is put away in an insane asylum. In the end she dies a couple of years later and her husband, who she supposedly killed, turns out to be alive, and in Australia. Written back in the 1860's, I'm sure this was shocking stuff; bigamy, murder, etc, etc. Sadly, today, the social foundations that made this story shocking no longer exist and so the story descends into a mere murder mystery. I feel so jaded on society's behalf.

THE RIVER INTO DARKNESS: BENEATH THE VAULTED HILLS
-S. Russell-fantasy
-451- The last of the mages who is determined to end magic. A schism of mages who want to revive magic. And all the people who are drawn into this battle. Basically follows several people as they attempt to find the entry way to Faery, the source of the mages power and the source of the mages themselves. Ends up with everyone trapped in some caves and finding their way out. As in The Swan's War, this was slow, understated and more about the characters than anything else.

STAR WARS: MILLENNIUM FALCON
-J. Luceno-fantasy
-317-2 years after Invincible. The Solo's go on an adventure to find out the history of the Millennium Falcon. In the process, they meet up with a Clone War era pilot who is trying to fulfill his last mission, which involved the Falcon. Overall, the history parts were cool. The Solo's were working it backwards from when Han won her and the pilot was working forwards from when he crashed and burned her. The "present" plot about some treasure to restore honor to the Republic [the last mission of the pilot] was kind of fuzzy and was almost a carbon copy of the Han Solo at Star's End in its ending. It was even mentioned, so it was deliberate. This was just a fill in story to tie the Legacy of the Force series into the new Fate of the Jedi series.

NIGHT ANGEL: SHADOW'S EDGE
-B. Weeks-fantasy
-636-Kylar tries to make a life with Elene and without killing. He ends up going back to the fallen city and rescuing Logan. Another wetboy, girl, kidnaps Uly and takes all traces of Kylar's love for Elene. Elene thinks that Kylar has left. The Wetboy girl breaks a spell placed on her by the Godking by using old bonding magic with Kylar and kills the Godking. Kylar is now married to Vi, the girl wetboy. And Durzo comes back right at the end. He's not dead. Going to be interesting to see how Weeks ties everything up in one final book.

BARTIMAEUS: THE GOLEM'S EYE
-J. Stroud-ya fantasy
-562- yet another subversive government magician working to overthrow the current regime. Bartimaeus and the kid get thrown together. This time the Resistance plays a big part. And are dupes for some big player. The kid is a wretched brat and really arrogant to boot. I enjoyed this more than the first though, LOTS less footnotes.

BLEACH #27
-T. Kubo-manga

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION #7-9
-Y. Sadamoto-manga

TWILIGHT
-S. Meyer-fantasy
-498-a 17year old girl moves in with her dad in a small town in Washington. Going to her highschool are what turn out to be 5 vampires. She falls in love with one, and he with her. They are 'vegetarian' vamps, eating only animal blood. Another group of vamps come in and one is taken with the girl. He decides to hunt her. The vege-vamps rally around her and save her and destroy the bad vamp. This is the epitome of young-girl romanticism. Undying love, mysterious rugged lover, etc, etc. Meyer's did a good job of capturing what it feels like to be in love for the first time. I suspect that the girl will be turned in later novels. I kind of enjoyed this, a guilty, embarrassing pleasure.

WOLF: THE DRAGON OF DESPAIR
-J. Lindskold-fantasy
-729-Melina Shield has married the Healed One of New Kelvin and is working on setting free an ancient dragon to consolidate her power. FireKeeper and Co must stop her. All the while, settlers are starting to move beyond the Iron Mountains, threatening the Royal Beasts. King Tedric proclaims them off limits, but it seems like war between humans and royal beasts is in the near future. Lindskold uses the growth of humanity as a reason why humans are starting to push beyond the Iron Mountains, but with all the wars and the sub-standard standard of living among the majority of peoples, it doesn't really seem reasonable that there are that many people yet.

YU-GI-OH! DUELIST #1-24
-K. Takahashi-manga
- Yeah, I liked this series. Of course, the rules for cards were pretty loose and everyone pulled "secret" abilities out of their butts ALL the time, but it was cool. And having played myself I could enjoy the strategies as a player and not just a reader. Good stuff.

TSUBASA: RESERVOIR CHRONICLE #20-22
-CLAMP-manga

STAR WARS: FATE OF THE JEDI: OUTCAST
-A. Allston-fantasy
-302- the next Star Wars storyline. Jedi seem to be going rogue; going insane and gaining new, unknown talents. Luke is exiled from Coruscant by Daala and the GA, as a means for the GA to try to take control of the Jedi Order. Luke, along with Ben, are trying to follow Jacen's journeys to see if they can find out where he went bad so as to prevent it happening again. I enjoyed this. Not sure if I want to own these though.

LOOKING GLASS: THE CLAWS THAT CATCH
-J. Ringo & T. Taylor-scifi
-443- the next Adventures of the Vorpal Blade II. Two Guns is married, Dr Weaver is a sidelined character and Miriam [the genius linguist who hears the voice in the ship] has taken over from Mimi for weird/genius female role. The ship finds a big artifact, and in order to deny it to the Dreen, figure it out. Turns out to be a big, solar system sized entertainment system. They turn it into a weapon to fight the Dreen. And there are some bio-engineered purple crab thingies that turn out to be Dreen eaters. So the Dreen are fought off, again, and the Alliance of humans, cheerick and hexohaurs[or whatever] have a bit of breathing room. I got this as a free download off of Baenbooks, and I have to say, I am glad I don't own this in pbook format. What a waste of paper that would be.