Thursday, March 25, 2010

Frost Moon by Anthony Francis

In an alternate Atlanta where magic is practiced openly, where witches sip coffee at local cafes, shapeshifters party at urban clubs, vampires rule the southern night like gangsters, and mysterious creatures command dark caverns beneath the city, Dakota Frost's talents are coveted by all. She's the best magical tattooist in the southeast, a Skindancer, able to bring her amazing tats to life. When a serial killer begins stalking Atlanta's tattooed elite, the police and the Feds seek Dakota's help. Can she find the killer on the dark fringe of the city's Edgeworld? Among its powerful outcasts and tortured loners, what kind of enemies and allies will she attract? Will they see her as an invader, as a seducer, as an unexpected champion ... or as delicious prey?

Frost Moon was a very enjoyable read. Fast-paced, lots of action, vampires, weres – it is a good urban fantasy. It is the first in the Skindancer series. I suspect this may be Anthony Francis’s first story. Dakota herself is a magical tattoo artist, the best in the southeast. I, personally, have not read a book before where the main character makes magical tattoos. Uses them, yeah, but not makes them herself. She is also bi, which isn't that common either.

Frost Moon begins with Dakota brought into the police station by the cops and she is nervous. There, she learns a serial murderer is killing people with tattoos. It only speeds up from there. My favorite scene was probably when she went looking for a werewolf she was supposed to tattoo underground and the cat with her sidetracked him. The ending was pretty good, too, a little unexpected. A part of me knew who the murderer was, but hadn’t figured out that the wolf and vampire were his minions.

Dakota also develops maternal feelings for the cat and I didn’t see that coming at all. I really didn’t. Oddly, by the end, it doesn’t feel that unbelievable. Though if she had developed maternal feelings in the beginning, I would have had a hard time buying that.

Frost Moon is also fairly specific in the setting. Specific enough that I imagine that the author either visited Atlanta or knows someone with intimate knowledge of the city. She was also specific about years – this happened in 2005. I don’t know if that’s good – ten years from now, that might make Frost Moon dated. But it also might not so . . . . I don’t know. I do know I will definitely be reading the next book.

Grade: B

Monday, March 22, 2010

The Associate by John Grisham

Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.


But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want—even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.


Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.


With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains—from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country—and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.

The Associate starts out strong, very promising, very interesting, but it loses speed very quickly. I bogged down in the middle and barely finished it. Not that it doesn’t have an interesting story and some very nice twists; it does. But the plot meanders and doesn’t really go anywhere. By the end, Kyle, our clever hero, solves his problems, but there are questions still left unanswered; we never find out who the villain is or where he comes from. There are hints, but nothing solid. I started losing interest when Kyle was working in the law firm. It went on and on about billing, how tedious the work was and how long the hours were.

The parts I did like were few and far in between. I liked how when Kyle came to the city and was looking for a place to live, he tells the bad guy (his handler) one thing and takes a different apartment. Kyle gained time and cost the guy money. I liked the scene when Baxter went into a bar and struggled not to get a drink. The part where his father negotiated with the girl’s lawyer was good, too, I liked how he used the video. But that part could have happened earlier and nothing would be lost. Well, the story would have been almost over. Almost, because the threat of the video was still there and the handler could have published it as revenge.

During the course of this novel, Kyle somehow manages to elude the master spy, somehow manages to get around him. Kyle was a law student and than a lawyer. He reads mysteries and spy novels, visits spy stores and somehow manages to gain the knowledge to evade the master spy? It doesn’t make much sense to me.

Grade: D

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-troy Castro

Adam-troy Castro is a new writer for me. Emissaries from the Dead is fantastic. It is science fiction, of the space opera variety, and the first of the Andrea Cort series. I loved the world building, the way everything was described. The AI race (yes, there seems to be entire “race” of Artificial Intelligence programs) have created sentient beings. Odd, because usually sentient beings create AI. There are other alien races, too, but the book doesn’t really deal with them.

Humans and these other alien races all have collective rules about creating people and slavery. So they send a human diplomatic mission. Human, because the AI would only accept humans. Somewhere along the line a murder happens and Andrea Cort is called in to investigate.

She investigates, she probes, she finds answers to her life’s quest (related to the actual murder). Naturally, the answers involves AI and whether or not they should commit suicide en masse. I confess, I find the concept of aware programs wanting to die a little out there, but interesting. Very interesting.

Equally interesting is the idea that you can link a pair of people so that they become one person with one mind, but two different bodies. Maybe even link three people so they have one mind, but three different bodies.

Grade: B

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Shalador's Lady by Anne Bishop

For years the Shalador people suffered the cruelties of the corrupt Queens who ruled them, forbidding their traditions, punishing those who dared show defiance, and forcing many more into hiding. Now that their land has been cleansed of tainted Blood, the Rose-Jeweled Queen, Lady Cassidy, makes it her duty to restore it and prove her ability to rule.

But even if Lady Cassidy succeeds, other dangers await. For the Black Widows see visions within their tangled webs that something is coming that will change the land-and Lady Cassidy-forever..
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Warning: Spoilers

I loved Shalador's Lady. Okay, so it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the Black Jewels Trilogy, but it comes close. By the end of the last book, The Shadow Queen, Theran seems to be willing to accept Cassidy as Queen. In this one, he is trying to figure out to replace her at the end of the year when her contract runs out. It’s not really an about face, more like he went back to how he was acting in the middle of the last book, only this time the court is more willing to support Cassidy.

There were so many fantastic scenes, I really don’t know which one I like best. Gray grows up, Cassidy learns to trust her court not to leave her, the Shalador people get to know and love her. Theran gets an ultimatum from the other Warlord Princes living in his land. That was fun. Possibly, if I had to pick, the best scene was when Ranon keeps Cassidy from running away by taking her trunks.

The end was perfect. So perfect, I cannot imagine a more deserving ending.

The most intriguing part, the one that makes me want to read the next Black Jewels book, are the references to Falonar and flexible honor and Daemon doing something to him. In the trilogy, there wasn’t any indication that his honor was a flexible thing. Of course, there was any indication his honor was as strong as the other characters (Daemon for example). So I want to know what happened.

If this book has a weakness, it’s that it doesn’t stand alone. It is a sequel, of course, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that if you haven’t read the trilogy first, you are going to miss a lot. Not a lot, you will still get the idea and what’s going on all that and it will still be fun. But Shalador's Lady will lose depth.

Grade: A-

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