Ill Wind by Rachel Caine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes coming in with lowered expectations can pay off. This was just barely one of those times.

Rachel Caine writes up many a figurative storm in Ill Wind. The narrator’s voice is chatty and forthright without grating on my intolerance for women who spend too much time thinking about clothes, shoes, cars, and how hot they are. Well…maybe it grated a little.

(view spoiler)[I didn’t have a problem at all with the convenient new romance, which only bothered me in the instances when David got all bossy protector-y. Even so, his motivation materialized, albeit toward the end.

Somehow the Djinn were at once not explored enough and also made too human to retain their mystique. The first sighting of the Djinn was exciting, I couldn’t wait to see the dynamic play out. I would have liked to know more about their history with the Wardens (and the history of the Warden’s themselves), maybe more exploration/exploitation of that thorough list of rules at the beginning.

I also wish Joanne had been given a bit more present to contextualize her past. A lot of info was dumped about her and then never mentioned again. Honestly, I could have run wild with her speshul snowflake childhood stories and the whole learning to control the weather stuff. But then, maybe spinning the story out wouldn’t have worked, given the entire thing is structured around a very unlikely road trip/car chase. Unlikely given the lack of sleep she mentions frequently,, the number of times she has to stop (the woman drinks a lot of coffee, you’re tryna tell me our delicate flower doesn’t need frequent pee breaks?), and the gratuitous liberties Caine takes with the geography of the United States.

Lastly, I’d have loved to have seen more of Lewis in the present day in this book. Granted, now I plan to read all of them to see if there is more of him to come, but I am curious to know what his deal is. Also I get the feeling that since every man ever is in love with this chick (no idea why, she’s in this perpetual state of emotional and physical unavailability, re: lightning} the fact that she was with both her mentor, the Djinn, and him at some point would have raised eyebrows. And now she’s dead. I mean…the possibilities, man.

I don’t know, you go through the whole story telling me this chick wanted to succeed in her career and be promoted and self actualize because she’s SOOOO powerful, and then you kind of kill/superpower her. Frankly, I was reminded of the Twilight series. She was a lot more interesting than Bella, though weirdly into similar things like old cars…and she goes and gets “saved” by being turned into a superhuman creature. Been there, read that.
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All in all though, despite its flaws Ill Wind was a decent beach read. Lots of explosions and bad-ass weather manipulation, explained in technical detail. Bad geography, but what are you gonna do.

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Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As introspectively awe-inspiring as Fun Home but in a much more exhaustive way. Bechdel narrates her creative process as she weaves the narrative of the current book. The book refers to itself as a meta-book in the text.

It’s amazing that something so incredibly personal and minutely detailed remained gripping, even after having read Fun Home the same day. Bechdel is amazing, but I still get the impression that for all of her confessionals in these graphic novels, she still maintains a conscious distance.

What were in depth and serendipitous literary references and allusions in Fun Home seemed a bit forced here, but again, Bechdel was aware of it. Such lucid commentary on the thought process and the creative process. Really a great work. Probably deserves more stars.

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The Griffin Mage by Rachel Neumeier
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to buy the first novel separately, but Barnes & Noble only had the last two in stock, or the omnibus. So I went out on a limb and bought three books when I wasn’t even sure I was going to like the first one.

I’m on the second book right now and OMG, it’s so much better than the first, i.e. THERE IS ACTUAL DIALOGUE/I have some idea what’s going on. There is a plot, I can pronounce names, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I kept going through the first one. I’m not as patient a book-finisher as I once was, so it kind of means something. The griffins seem cool, and the descriptions are kind of pretty.

The desert, however, made me roll my eyes SO HARD. I have lived in a desert. They are not all that, especially when your body is 70+ per cent water. For Kes, I guess that isn’t an issue.

Anyway, so far my complaints about the 1st book are essentially:

1)Can’t pronounce any of the names, and I study language. I’m not exactly sure which languages they’re supposed to be based from. Japanese? French? Greek? German? SO MANY VOWELS. If I can’t figure it out by the third time it’s mentioned, I stop caring.

2) There are no character relationships. Like, yeah, there are preexisting filial bonds between Kes & her sister, Bertaud & the king. But outside of that? Kes & Opailikiita? Arbitrary. Kes & Jos? Barren. Like, I get it, Kes has no emotions now, whatever, but apparently Jos doesn’t either? Bertaud is not even a real person (round character), in his slavish devotion to the king. I get it, he raised you. You contemplate his sternness and flaws but that just makes you love him more EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE JEALOUS OF HIS WIFE?

3)Meandering plot.

To be continued when I finish the next one.

Ok, finished all three. The next two books are so very differently written than the first. Being all up in Kes’ headspace is very disconcerting when you flip to the second book and all a sudden you’re following a completely different kind of character. Gereint is older, from a different country, and a slave. But he’s a lot easier to get to know, and a lot more likeable than Kes.

The third book is also easier to slip into for the same reason. They’re both good, solid reads.

My only complaints (of course I have some) are that the relation ships between Bertaud and… anyone? Tehre? are so lightly dealt with that the reader can only rely on conjecture about what he really felt. Mienthe mentions he seems disappointed, and based on the way Neumeier writes by this point you assume it’s his separation from the griffins that is his major disappointment, not that he’d loved and lost someone. I couldn’t even tell you if Mienthe is in love with anyone by the end, because she sort of goes out of her way to say she isn’t, but could be. GAHHH. Implications.

Normally readers complain about being told things point blank, but I think in this case I would have preferred that to being at sea about all of it.

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The Master of Heathcrest Hall by Galen Beckett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m trying really hard to decide whether or not I hated how easily all of the happily-ever-afters came.

I mean, they were all plausible enough. I suppose. But I generally am distrustful of authors who make every single element end the way I wanted them to end. This probably comes of reading George R. R. Martin and having my heart in my throat as I turn each page for fear someone I like has been murdered.

I don’t know, but I’m so glad Ivy and Rafferdy ended up together because he was my favorite character in the whole series, even though I had to read the word “punch” so many times I no longer care for it because of him.

My inner ship-fangirl is pleased, but my lit major critic is wondering how successful Beckett was, exactly, with his whole experiment. The “mystical reasons” men dominated women were NEVER argued. It was just kind of like, women are witches and magicians are aliens. There is no establishment for an argument. It begs the question.

Also, the list of things that went unexplained was far longer than the list of things that were. Such as, what exactly is a White Thorn, what can she do, and why does she have to be female?

Siltheri are men born of witches, but if they can be illusionists why couldn’t witches be too? Are there any homosexuals in this world who aren’t men with witch blood? I don’t think that was a particularly effective means of explaining the gay away. Especially because I don’t see how being a witch’s son would make you gay everysingletime.

I enjoyed the book, but really think it could have been better.

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How to Be Popular by Meg Cabot
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ok, so I picked up a copy of this book in a thrift store and it just happened to be autographed! I couldn’t just LEAVE it there. And I also couldn’t NOT read it. So after I read Jinx, which I also found in the same thrift store, I gave it a go.

And I liked it, sure. But given how incredibly similar the elements of the characters and even some of the story was, well… Let’s just say I wasn’t bowled over. But I liked it.

Meg Cabot is absolutely knock-your-socks-off wonderful, but she’s proven that she has her highs (Mediator series) and her lows (Insatiable). I’d say that if I were the intended age, this book would have fallen somewhere in the middle. But since I’ve long since left high school, I am very meh about it. A good meh, though. A worth-reading-if-you-have-the-spare-time meh.

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Bossypants by Tina Fey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like Tina Fey a lot. I think she’s a really good female role model, and hilarious to boot (or maybe that should have gone first, since that is basically the foundation of her career). Bossypants was funny, but not hilarious. The self-deprecating humor I usually appreciate actually read a lot like, gasp, humility, a good amount of the time.

It was a good read, and funny, and I gained a lot of insight as to what she’s gone through to get where she is today, and how under-appreciated women comediennes are and have been. But if I hadn’t already loved her, I doubt the book would have interested me much at all, which is sad to say. Because I do love her, and I guess that means I came in with unreasonable expectations. Ah well, my love for Tina Fey is forgiving. And I always refer to her that way, Tina Fey, not just a single name, like every cute boy I never had a chance with in school.

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Storm Born by Richelle Mead
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this paperback up in a thrift store for 35 cents, after reading the blurb. I almost never do this, because the blurbs can be well written, and the books hilariously, well, not.

This one was! Well-written, I mean. Granted, I don’t like Tucson, AZ very much (I’m from a desert and they are awful places to be) and it is a paranormal romance (I think?) which is not my thing, usually, but I like it. It was fresh, and the shaman bit was pretty cool.

The whole thing smacked loudly of a 15 years-more-modern Anita Blake, minus the heavy-ego-hardboiled-detective aspect mixed in with Hamilton’s other Meredith Gentry series. Which I have read, ad nauseum. Maybe I should not spend so much time knocking Laurell K. Hamilton’s authorly choices if I am going to read all of them.

Hopefully as this series continues it will also stay minus the absurd amount of group sex…because I went out and bought the next three. And was ashamed to see, printed on every cover “Author of the Vampire Academy series.”

Well, as Storm Born’s blurb says, “A girl’s gotta eat.”

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Cat’s Claw by Amber Benson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I gave the first book of the serious a pretty heavy “meh.” I’m going to go ahead and lighten up that meh an octave or so, but still retain the fleshy meh-ness of my response.

This book is not amazing. It is neither wildly entertaining nor emotionally engaging. But if you are ever really really bored on a rainy day and you like mythology, go for it. Egypt in particular is featured here, but there be no dragons.

If this series ever gets up to a 6th or 7th book, I am going to be EXCITED. It’ll be probably be amazeballs. I’ll get back to you on the subject then.

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Mastiff by Tamora Pierce
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Truth be told, it had been so long since I read the first Beka Cooper book, Terrier that I’d forgotten a lot of Beka’s history, and so long since I read Bloodhound that I’d clean forgotten all of that, so Mastiff took me quite some time to get into.

I will preface this by saying I ADORE Tamora Pierce’s books. Adore them. I have over twenty (or thirty?) much loved copies of her Tortall and Circle books, and I love them all to figurative pieces. That being said, Mastiff was not what I was expecting. I still liked Beka’s character throughout all of it, especially with the hard choice she faced with Tunstall, or, that it wasn’t even a choice for her.

What I guess I didn’t like (here it comes, I cringe already) was how dry of the deepening romance that usually develops throughout her books it was. Yes, yes, I realize I am complaining about a lack of romance. Please kill me, I don’t know who this monster is that I’ve become. But seriously, where did the attraction to Farmer come from? I can make as many arguments about Beka being an independent woman who was single-mindedly focused on her work as the next (more rational) person, but the thing I think I liked about Beka from the get-go was her frank awareness of herself and the people around her. That Farmer evolved in her opinion could, I guess, be why she loved him, but I think her cop-like propensity for sizing up a person as objectively as possible (i.e. admitting she is attracted to them in her inner narrative) wouldn’t have allowed that. Anyway, I’m only annoyed because I wanted her to end up with Rosto. I totally understand WHY she couldn’t (law-abiding blah blah) but that doesn’t make me less of an idiotic shipper who can’t appreciate the book for its loftier themes. I’m all about the ‘ships baby.

Ugh, hate myself.

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Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Eragon years ago; when it first came out I was in high school. I initially picked it up because of its length; it takes a serious beast of a book to last me out more than a few hours. I liked it then, and it has stood up to my one or two re-readings. Eldest and Brisingr, not so much. The writing kept getting more and more florid, the angst seemed less natural and more contrived, and dear, sweet God, the humor was so, so forced.

But the thing I did like about the series, and the reason I have actually sat down and read the dang things all the way through is the imagination and epic scale of the story. I liked the mystery of Angela (and the description of her flanged armor. Cool.), the culture of the different races, even the way the dragons were different or better explored than all of the dragons I’d read before. Paolini may lack the ability to come up with seriously funny dialogue (but to be fair, so do I. It’s pretty hard) but he really managed to pull that story together. Even down to the giant man-eating snails. Inheritance really wasn’t bad, and for the ending of a long series, and the closing of a story that had woven itself a lot of loose ends to tie together (whatever happened to Folkvir? Did the poor horse just hang out in the forest until Eragon remembered commanding him to stay there?) it did a pretty good job.

In fact, considering I spent the week or so before I read Inheritance re-reading the series just to refresh my memory, it slid pretty seamlessly in place in the narrative. I would have trouble telling you where the book began in the story’s timeline, which, on the one hand means it was consistent, but on the other hand means that Paolini’s stunted and sometimes downright awkward prose and inconsistently formal-ish and “archaic” dialogue didn’t improve at all.

So, in summary (tl;dr): Inheritance tied up the story pretty well, but its strengths didn’t outshine the previous books, and its weaknesses didn’t diminish. A nice solid read, but nothing amazing.

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