Books.

[kyrielle]

I haven't posted about books I've been reading, in general, for a long time. In part because I lacked energy - it came down to "read the books, or read fewer and post about them" - and in part because I don't generally do book reviews anyway.

But I've read several in the past year (or more) that I have wanted to say something about, and now appears to be when I've found the energy. So....

• Feed and Deadline by Mira Grant. The first two books in a trilogy. It's a zombie horror trilogy, and those of you who know me well are looking at me oddly now, because I don't do horror. If it's actually horrific I can't stand it and if it's merely gory I don't care. And I don't do zombies. But these are more than just zombie books. I read them because I know the author's writing (it's an open pen name for Seanan McGuire) from other books (which I'll mention in just a moment) and I really love her stories. Also because a couple people who do know me well raved about them and said I'd like them.
  
  I began reading Feed with a great deal of trepidation, because I didn't expect to like it. May I just say that in some cases, I love being wrong? Because this book was wonderful, and knocked my socks off. It was Hugo-nominated, and let me just say it deserved it utterly. I haven't read the Hugo winner - so I can't say they didn't deserve it - but Feed deserved it too, I can say that for sure. Feed is not a "zombies rise and eat your brains, raar" book. It is the world, a couple decades after the zombies rose. They've never gone away. And everyone lives with the risk of becoming them. But Feed is also a political thriller. With zombies.
  
  If the first book is a political thriller, the second one is a medical thriller, with more of a focus on the CDC and the nature of the disease. And some real, eye-blinking, stare-at-it moments.
  
  I'm not saying these aren't horror books. They are. But they're not gore-horror or traditional horror. They're much more subtle, and much nastier, in that the worst of the horror is not the zombies, but what else is happening around, about, and because of the existence of the zombies. They also have a couple of the best emotional sucker-punches I have ever been delivered by a book.
  
  One word of warning: this is a trilogy where the middle book ends on a cliff-hanger. Book three is due out next May, I believe. If you don't like cliff-hangers, Feed can be read reasonably well standalone, but I'd leave Deadline to wait until you can also get Blackout, as while it wraps up its individual story, in the overall arc it does leave you hanging. If you like cliffhangers, though, read on; this is a good one. :)


• The Toby Daye series, by Seanan McGuire. (Remember, I mentioned her above, as the alter-ego of Mira Grant?) These are definitely lighter than Grant's books - urban fantasy, and mostly reasonable for teens (maybe even some pre-teens, I'd have read them happily at 10 or 11).
  
  Current books are (in order) Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses, and One Salt Sea (just out this fall). October "Toby" Daye is a private detective, and a changeling. I can't rave about half the things I love in this series without spoilering something (most things, in fact), but I can say this: I love the characters. I love how they are fully realized, and I also love how they grow and change. I love that not every change is for the better, and not every new thing they learn/gain comes without a price (in fact, very little comes without some price), and I love that nonetheless they do grow and it does feel like an evolution in the characters.
  
  I love the common threads that weave through the stories; I love that each book is a story of its own - part of a larger tapestry, yes, but no cliff-hangers here (well, at the ends of books; I promise nothing about the ends of chapters :). I love that the stories have some common threads, but also their own tones.
  
  That said...Rosemary and Rue is good. I'm not so sure about A Local Habitation - it felt weak to me, as if it required too many mistakes from the characters. That one, I thought was "okay" rather than "good". However, ALH is also a locked-door murder mystery and I've never enjoyed those as much, so there's bias on my part. And others have enjoyed it very much, based on their reviews. And after that one, I just felt the series got stronger and stronger - I cannot properly express how much I adore the rest of the series to date. I do. A lot. "Excellent" would be the word I'd apply to the most recent three.
  
  But if you're going to read the series, I'd recommend you read them in order. While each can stand alone, they do have spoilers for the ones before.


• Unnatural Issue, the latest in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series. Some of you may remember my (unhappy, unfriendly, mocking) review of About the Cat, the prior installment in this series. I still feel that way about that book. It just didn't hang together for me, and I was rather afraid that the series was going to keep sliding that way.
  
  It didn't. There was one plot resolution (near the end, so I shan't say more) that felt too easy and pat to me, but if there were plot holes, repetitions, or major screw-ups, I managed to miss them. I enjoyed this book very much, and felt like the series was coming back a bit to what I loved in earlier installments.


• Cast In Chaos, Michelle Sagara. I just finished this tonight. I adore this series, I adore Kaylin, I adore the horrible world-spanning situations that Sagara dumps poor Kaylin into. Enough so that I actually bought a Kindle copy rather than wait for my library (which has an enormous hold list for this one) to get it to me. Or make time to get to a bookstore. I don't regret it. I'll have to buy it again in paperback as I really want it in that format, but being able to read it on my phone had certain advantages this weekend (like being able to finish it), and once again she's delivered a very solid story with all sorts of interesting repercussions. I'm...VERY curious to see where the next one goes, given where this one ended.
  
  This is another series where, if you haven't read it, you really want to start from the beginning. Not only do later books spoil earlier books, but in this case there's a lot of accumulated knowledge from those earlier books that's useful in understanding the later ones.

I think that's all the books I presently have in me to babble about. I'm very much looking forward to Pierce's Mastiff also, but will hopefully wait for it from the library. We'll see. It's not out yet. It's coming out in hardcover, though, which is not a format I love. I'll wait for paperback to get the dead tree edition, at least.

Comments

[dansa.livejournal.com]

Michelle Sagara has got to be my all time favorite author, hands down, though I prefer the books she writes under Michelle West (if only slightly). I just finished Cast in Ruin, picked it up this morning, couldn't put it down once I started. So much good. =D I really feel like this series is getting better with every book, and it started out in a great place.

[kyrielle]

*grins* She rocks.

I prefer the Michelle Sagara books, but I think the Michelle West ones are better books. They are, however, complex and intricate enough that I have trouble simply grabbing one and rereading (I spend my time trying to remember who is who and what was happening, unless I restart from the beginning of the series, which is not how I normally reread), so for rereading value they are much lower than the others, for me.

[dansa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can totally understand that point of view. I'm midst re-reading the House War books that so far exist again myself, attempting not to be too painfully anxious for the next one.

Attempting being the key there. Aie!