Reviews and Comments

I guess I'm doing a new Pratchett instead of continuing my other sci-fi book. Ah well.

A solid parboiled murder mystery. Brock is likeable in spite of his gruffness, the dogs are good in the book, and the other humans are alright. The Cleveland references by and large check out.

I enjoyed it.

Just found out that Brockway, a founder of 1-900-HOTDOG is a writer. Which, I guess duh? But hey, new book by him. Added a bunch of metadata to the OpenLibrary listing so it was good here.

Dennard's work on 1-900-HOTDOG is always entertaining, if the bleakest of the contributors. So I want to read this, but kinda don't.

...Wonder how awful Overdrive's license is for this book... Or I could buy it with Amazon Fun Buxx, (the scrip they pay you for choosing slower shipping,) and then get a good copy off of LibGen.

This isn't actually the collection I have, but it no longer exists on Amazon. I started reading this aaaaaages ago. Got several stories in and wandered off.

It's interesting to see the modern roots of low fantasy, but when I read that, "he was a good friend of HP Lovecraft," it, ugh...makes sense. Hella racist in a way that is more up front than Tolkien or whatever.

Might just read the modern queer Red Sonja book instead.

This one was interesting. I put it in my tbr because it was an Ohio author. While I feel there might be some Early inaccuracies, (where I think the second abandoned factory is has been torn down for a stadium since publishing,) it was a solid biker book. Everyone having different anxieties felt legit.

The gender reversals were interesting and gave some cliches more oomph.

I will say though, that it doesn't end like a lot of biker movies. I'll just say that there is room for a sequel.

Also, I vibe the most with Margot. Aside from the military thing, She seems the closest to how I'd be in that situation.

(no military for me in part thanks to my dad lambasting it as he was drafted.)

One of the things this book revolves around is meeting the expectations of/resisting against the characters' parents. I suppose that is something that one is more acutely concerned with when you're in your late teens/early twenties.

Though sitting here shy of forty, I suppose one knows by now if they have it or not. Though I can't say it's not still a subconscious concern.

Hm.

Book three of the novelization of Girl Genius continues it's witty, madcap take on Frankenstein. The novels continue to expand on areas glossed over by the webcomic, detailing what might have been in the background of one or two panels, occasionally adding something entirely new.

I would suggest reading the webcomic first at www.girlgeniusonline.com/

So, a gay space biker book. Not my usual. The biker part at least.

I do notice that I have a few archetypes for female characters in my head. Zarya Overwatch or that buff robot woman from Questionable Content, a friend of mine if on the skinny side, And Mokoto Kusanagi's haircut.

Margot came up as Zarya, but as I read, I don't think that's it. She's ex navy, but sounds more with the sliders in the middle, with maybe the buff one a little higher.

My first thought was she's short because being on an enclosed naval [space]ship would probably warrant being small, but given that she's a "Lunatic", (person from the Moon, love the name,) maybe she is tall.

I remember liking the first book several years ago, but wasn't in the headspace to pick up a book about a necromancer protagonist.

Glad I waited until I was ready. This book is a more tight tale than the first one. The first is more a series of happenings to set up the worldbuilding, but this was largely one solid tail.

The cover can tell you more about the story, but female protagonist, necromancer, one woman arm of the government and a surgeon, interesting misfit cast, and sapphic romance.

Good books.

If you're looking for sapphic fantasy, this is a series for you. There's a lot more in this sequel than the first, but still.

A cozy mystery set in the suburbs of Cleveland, a mall owner is killed and there are a bunch of suspects. Lana Lee, a waitress at her parent's implicated noodle shop, starts investigating.

~

I don't read a lot of cozies, but I did enjoy this one. There is some flair of locale, but not too much that I had to constantly look things up. The mystery wasn't too hardboiled, but wasn't super obvious either. No scooby-doo ending, which is good. The romantic subplot, if it was rated by spiciness, would be a packet of pepper from a fast food joint. Which is fine by me.

I don't think it was anything revolutionary, but I enjoyed it.

Hopefully there's enough meat on it for a two hour discussion for the book club I arranged this around Monday.