Entry tags:
2009-07-04
fireworks
These are pictures from the postgame fireworks show of the Rangers game I went to last weekend. Unfortunately, my batteries were low and trying to die on me as I was taking the pictures, so they aren't the best ever.
( Around 30 medium sized pictures. )
( Around 30 medium sized pictures. )
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Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews
This is the third book in Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniel series. Unlike most urban fantasy which starts strong for me and then gets increasingly irritating with subsequent books, these books get better and better with each subsequent book. (Ok, objectively speaking, book 3 may be a bit early to make that claim, but…) But…how shall I put this? The average urban fantasy cover features the (typically miniskirt) clad leather butt of the heroine, with some leg and back. If she’s facing you and has a head, she’s temptingly posed and still
Which is a good way to summarize the differences between these books and the average urban fantasy book. The only leather Kate owns is for defensive purposes. I doubt she owns a miniskirt. There are no sexy vampires lounging around. Actually, the vampires are creepy. Kate doesn’t really have time for a love triangle or a complicated love life, much less to dwell on one, and she’s more than able to stand up to her single love interest. This, however, does not mean that Kate doesn’t have a number of important relationships with representatives of both genders.*
Still dealing with the fallout from the magic flare in Magic Burns, Kate gets a call from her teenaged werewolf sidekick, Derek, and ends up owing a favor to Saiman, a shapeshifter no one wants to owe a favor to. Derek, it seems, is investigating an underground gladiator ring called the Midnight Games, which Saiman is connected to. Except that Atlanta’s weres are strictly forbidden to have anything at all to do with the games, and breaking that rule will royal annoy Curran, the head of the weres. Annoying Curran isn’t much different from asking to be maimed. Curran also wants to date Kate.
Around the same time, she goes to investigate a dead body and finds her way blocked by Jim, her occasional partner, who’s also one of Curran’s top men. Except that Jim and his team are trying to keep the death of a were secret from Curran. This is also very high on the list of things you don’t do that could result in Curran doing very unpleasant things to you. Did I mention Curran wants to date Kate? Really, I mean that he wants her to be his mate, which makes me think that he really loves alpha battles.
Most of the plot beyond that point is incredibly spoilery, so I won’t get into it much. But Kate’s voice is even sharper, funnier, and more biting than before, as is her sarcasm, and we get the backgrounds of several characters. A number of the relationships also have interesting developments, though I’m starting to think that the idea of Kate and Curran is something that I like only as long as it doesn’t happen without some attitude adjustment. (Normally, I probably wouldn’t care for Curran at all, but since he focuses his attention on someone who can handle it-and him-and will injure him in sensitive places if he steps over the line, I end up liking him.) I wish, though, that the romantic relationships weren’t all so focused on the man pursuing the woman, though I suppose it make sense with the heavy were focus. It’d just be nice if one or two had a reversal.
*Important question! Does Kate and Julie’s relationship remind anyone else of Wolverine and Jubilee’s? For the comic book fans, I mean.
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Not Quite A Husband by Sherry Thomas
She’s a female doctor in the 1890s who’s also an extreme introvert. He’s a renown mathematician with an odd yet secret family background. Together, they utterly fail at life. Separately, they only really do much better due to being rather good at their individual callings.
And for a little over the first third of the book, I was madly in love. And then we learned a part of their shared past that doesn’t sit well with me.
Four years ago, Bryony Asquith proposed marriage out of the blue to her neighbor, Leo Marsden. Probably, she was in love with him at the time, but, due to her childhood, so closed off from her feelings and unfamiliar with anything resembling normal relationships that she had no idea. Leo accepted, due to having been in love with Bryony since about birth. Due to his own family life and his obsessive (but unnecessary) need to prove himself his father’s son, however, he never thought to actually mention that, or wonder if Bryony realized it. This leads to his making a mistake just before their marriage that Bryony (rather understandably) allowed to fester and used to shut herself off from him, until she finally asked for an annulment and left England to practice overseas.
Three years later, Leo tracks her down in India with a message from her sister that their father is dying, and persuades her to return to England with him, just in time for the two to get caught up in the siege of Malakand. I love stories about characters who are extreme introverts and find it difficult to function in society or interact well with people, much less form lasting attachments, but they’re rarely pulled off in a way that convinces me.* Here, it’s pulled off with both leads. Leo (who, IMO, is a more interesting and likable hero than Thomas’s previous heroes) interacts normally with most people, but these interactions seem to largely be form and manners, not any real connection and understanding, and while his relationships with his various family members are loving, they are also strained and conflicted, and formed of unconventional circumstances. Bryony, on the other hand, is almost completely cut of from humanity as a whole, despite seeming to have a near obsessive need to save people, and anything most of us would call normal human interactions and relationships are alien to her.
Initially, the book is written in a detached, almost terse style that I loved because I thought it fit Bryony’s view of the world and her relationship with Leo perfectly, but others might have problems with. Later, as their relationship begins to mature and we get to the “ZOMG! Uprisings! Danger!” part of the book, the writing gets more “traditional” as Bryony comes out of her shell.
( spoilers of the problematic kind )
Still, despite the problematic parts, Thomas is consistently moving closer to an author I just plain really, really enjoy, and further from an author who has some parts I love, and some parts that make me want to rage.
*There are many reasons Claymore is my favorite shounen manga. (Except for when Fullmetal Alchemist is. I’m fickle that way.) That most of the cast is made up of people who have been trained their entire life to reject meaningful relationships and feelings and interactions and to not depend on anyone and are only really allowed one close friend so that they can have the security that someone will kill them if they ever turn into a murderous monster is but one of those reasons.
And for a little over the first third of the book, I was madly in love. And then we learned a part of their shared past that doesn’t sit well with me.
Four years ago, Bryony Asquith proposed marriage out of the blue to her neighbor, Leo Marsden. Probably, she was in love with him at the time, but, due to her childhood, so closed off from her feelings and unfamiliar with anything resembling normal relationships that she had no idea. Leo accepted, due to having been in love with Bryony since about birth. Due to his own family life and his obsessive (but unnecessary) need to prove himself his father’s son, however, he never thought to actually mention that, or wonder if Bryony realized it. This leads to his making a mistake just before their marriage that Bryony (rather understandably) allowed to fester and used to shut herself off from him, until she finally asked for an annulment and left England to practice overseas.
Three years later, Leo tracks her down in India with a message from her sister that their father is dying, and persuades her to return to England with him, just in time for the two to get caught up in the siege of Malakand. I love stories about characters who are extreme introverts and find it difficult to function in society or interact well with people, much less form lasting attachments, but they’re rarely pulled off in a way that convinces me.* Here, it’s pulled off with both leads. Leo (who, IMO, is a more interesting and likable hero than Thomas’s previous heroes) interacts normally with most people, but these interactions seem to largely be form and manners, not any real connection and understanding, and while his relationships with his various family members are loving, they are also strained and conflicted, and formed of unconventional circumstances. Bryony, on the other hand, is almost completely cut of from humanity as a whole, despite seeming to have a near obsessive need to save people, and anything most of us would call normal human interactions and relationships are alien to her.
Initially, the book is written in a detached, almost terse style that I loved because I thought it fit Bryony’s view of the world and her relationship with Leo perfectly, but others might have problems with. Later, as their relationship begins to mature and we get to the “ZOMG! Uprisings! Danger!” part of the book, the writing gets more “traditional” as Bryony comes out of her shell.
( spoilers of the problematic kind )
Still, despite the problematic parts, Thomas is consistently moving closer to an author I just plain really, really enjoy, and further from an author who has some parts I love, and some parts that make me want to rage.
*There are many reasons Claymore is my favorite shounen manga. (Except for when Fullmetal Alchemist is. I’m fickle that way.) That most of the cast is made up of people who have been trained their entire life to reject meaningful relationships and feelings and interactions and to not depend on anyone and are only really allowed one close friend so that they can have the security that someone will kill them if they ever turn into a murderous monster is but one of those reasons.