The End of the Road

Here we are, in March. It’s been a long voyage, and WordPress has been a joy. But it’s time to spread our wings. This is the last entry I’ll be making to this journal.

BookLove has moved to it’s own space at http://www.michelelee.net/booklove

Please update your bookmarks and keep coming for more reviews, genre book news and whatever strikes my fancy.

In the future I’ll be continuing my work with MonsterLibrarian and The Fix, as well as adding links to the work I’m doing for Dark Recesses (which is mostly book, graphic novel and movie reviews). My To Read pile is still quite large, so there will be plenty more to see.

The links here will slowly disappear as I update the index to the new site. The blog itself will stay up, or at least this message will, for probably the next year, until the traffic drops off. So if your book is one of the nearly 200 I’ve reviewed in the last two years please update your link, or save the review for your own use.

It’s been fun, and I’ll see you on the flip side.

Love,

Michele

When Science Goes Wrong by Simon LeVay

Click to buy

Review by Jason Lush

Really should have been called “When Humans with College Educations Do Really Stupid Things”, but I guess that wouldn’t be sensational enough.

When Science Goes Wrong is informative and engaging, but I believe it may have been rushed to press to capitalize on some event. The book covers twelve events in recent history in which seemingly smart people committed decidedly careless or outright stupid deeds, always at the cost of others.

Each of the twelve stories are factual and informative, but every one of them is jam-packed with worthless fluff and personal anecdotes that distract from the point. My advice is read the first three and last three pages of each chapter and you’ll get all the relevant information you need.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Guest Review by Jason Lush

Click to buy

One hundred and ninety pages of political masturbation disguised as a supernatural suspense story. Of the three main characters we have; Dorian Gray, who is a brainless puppet the personifies vanity; Basil Hallward, the artist who painted the fabled portrait and represents the sorrowful conscience; and Lord Henry Wolton, who is the quintessential 19th Century fop whose sole purpose in the book is to act as Wilde’s voice on politics, religion and homosexuality and as a driving corrupter of everyone else in the book.

The pacing is horrendously slow, the chapters devoted to explaining Gray’s hobbies and the pictures of his ancestors in his hallway don’t help with the lousy pacing. The whole story could have been condensed to a 30 page novella and would have been enjoyable.

And, as a side note to the posthumous Mr. Wilde, forty is not old and hideous.

Pride by Rachel Vincent

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ISBN: 978-0-7783-2649-6, $6.99

Pride is the third book in Rachel Vincent’s werecat series and like the ones before it, it begins in the middle of a mess and ends with the characters looking forward to the next challenge.

Faythe Saunders is on trial for accidentally infecting her ex-boyfriend and being forced to kill him in self defense. There are three judges and two of them have problems with her father’s liberal choices in running his pride–like his decision to let Faythe be the first female enforcer ever. The job that finally pulled Faythe into feeling like her pride valued her for more than the (potential) contents of her uterus is why she encountered her ex in the first place. As for the third judge in her trial, well, her uncle is technically on her side, but even he doesn’t believe she can partial shift, which means he’s not convinced that the infection was an accident at all.

However, the trial for Faythe’s life is put on pause when Elias Keller, a bruin (werebear) who cares for the neutral land that the prides have gathered in for Faythe’s trial, storms in angry at all the cats causing trouble on his land. The pride cats and Elias quickly put two and two together, realizing that not only are the mysterious noisy werecats not from any of the visiting prides, but they’re probably also responsible for the two missing hikers the humans in the area are searching for. Things continue to grow more tangled when Elias brings in a tabby cat he believes to be Faythe, but in fact is a thirteen year old girl no one’s ever heard of before.

Faythe has to prove herself useful, out maneuver one of the judges who is plotting not just against Faythe but also against her father and save the girl, from her past and the future the old fashioned alphas want to manipulate her into.

Even though this is part of a running series it would be easy enough for new readers to pick up the story, and the world, so far. Despite it’s size Pride is fast paced with lots of action, both emotional and fight scenes. And unlike a lot of other urban fantasies that feature kick ass heroines, in this one the drive Faythe feels to be recognized and respected as a real person, not just a breeder, is integrated to the plot, as is the gender skewed world view that fuels Faythe’s fight. Pride is definitely recommended, especially to women who are tired of princesses who need to be saved or women who’s sole purpose is to be swept off their feet, impregnated and plopped into a Donna Reed role.

Free Fiction: Diamonds in the Sky, a science fiction anthology

Diamonds is the Sky is a science fiction anthology spawned by the National Science Foundation, which taught a class on astronomy to a collection of science fiction writers. In turn, the writers’ stories have been developed into a free anthology for edu-tainment use.

The contents listing is here.