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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The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love Sarah Addison Allen, and I loved The Sugar Queen almost as much as I loved Garden Spells and much more than what I’ve read of her other novels, even though I managed to figure out a major plot twist pretty early in. Despite the minor element of predictability the rest of the book was excellent.

One thing I DIDN’T like is how Josey Cirrini is described as being unattractive so much early on, but after she starts dressing better and wearing makeup the other characters consider her pretty. This sets up a number of assumptions about standards of beauty that I don’t quite care to address, since there is a character limit for these reviews that I could EASILY exceed.

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Sunshine by Robin McKinley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I finished this book a few weeks ago and have pretty mixed (but mostly positive) feelings about it. I certainly liked it a great deal, but I did have trouble with the idea of Robin McKinley writing a book about a human who ultimately has some sort of physical or romantic attachment to a vampire. Even though she started out amazingly by portraying Sunshine’s fear and disgust of the inhuman and repulsive vampires, in the end it kind of warped into the same old over-done thing.

I wasn’t as shocked by the language as a lot of other readers seemed to have been, probably because I’ve read much, much, more gratuitous language in urban fantasy and been summarily disgusted with it. I was surprised, but since it was brief I didn’t think it was so bad. This is definitely McKinley writing for a more mature audience, which is good because there is no shortage of darkness in Sunshine.

Nor is there a shortage of baking. If you don’t want to go mad from sugar cravings, be prepared with cinnamon rolls beforehand. I have become quite the aficionado for homemade cinnamon rolls from scratch since reading this book. After spooning honey out of a jar while reading Chalice I should have known to be prepared.

In short, Sunshine was a nice, solid read, as long as I like books to be (since I read through them so quickly) with tons of imagination and very little for me to criticize. I’ll look forward to a sequel, if it ever materializes.

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War for the Oaks by Emma Bull
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wish I understood the hype this book has commanded for over twenty years, but I can’t. I also wish I’d heard of at least half of the songs mentioned (stuffed, more like) in it. Unfortunately, Emma Bull was under the impression that the more contemporary hip iconic culture she shoved down the throats of her readers, the better it would be. In doing this, and shamelessly using her own (poor) lyrics as filler, she managed to completely neglect her writing.

I can’t even recall how many times I had to exclaim “REALLY?” before I lost my voice to disgust and just started gagging. Probably right around the point where Carla, a completely flat character seemingly designed by a schizophrenic, says “No one is cuter than Prince.” Or maybe it was Eddi who said that. Whatever, the two were completely interchangeable, which is made worse by the fact that Eddi is THE MFING PROTAGONIST. Gahh!!! Whyyy????? So…painfully…bad.

DO NOT get me started on the phouka’s dialog. Or the extensive descriptions of his (and everyone’s) clothes (WTF, even 80s doesn’t explain that away) and his hair, which, from the repetitive and unimaginative description was obviously a Jheri curl.

Don’t get me wrong, I can totally see the influence this book had on fantasy, and am willing to accept that it is a pioneer of the urban fantasy sub-genre, but I can only praise subsequent writers for redeeming it from the awful depths War for the Oaks set it at. Even writers like Laurell K. Hamilton, who can at least make the outfits easy to envision (that is not an endorsement of rabid “let’s get dressed up!” chapters in fantasy).

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