Category Archives: Series

The Harlequin (Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #15)

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by Laurell K. Hamilton

Reading a new book in a favorite series is like visiting old friends. You get to see how they’ve changed and developed since your last visit, and hopefully come away satisfied.

Unlike the previous installment in the saga of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, The Harlequin has more plot than monster porn. Not that there isn’t sex, because it wouldn’t be an LKH novel without that, but the sex takes a back seat this time, and instead we’re treated to the return of Edward, the only man Anita doesn’t want to draw down on.

If hired killers can mellow, than Edward has, a little, in this outing, but then, fatherhood (even step-fatherhood) will do that to a person.

That aside, this is a great novel, and seems almost a return to the “old” Anita, the one who solved crimes. This time she’s going up against a secret sect of vampire enforcers, and trying to protect the members of the vampire church, of all things. Jean Claude is there, but not prominent, and the pack has actual development, and not just handsome body parts.

Great read, great to revisit Anita’s St. Louis.

Freedom Writers Diary

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by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell

It is rare when a book moves me to tears. It’s not that I’m not sentimental about things that have meaning to me, but that I can generally separate myself from what I’m reading enough to retain necessary distance. So when I say that The Freedom Writers Diary, made me cry, that’s saying a lot.

If you’re one of the five people in the country who hasn’t seen the film, read the book first, then rent the DVD. The book has 150 or so diary entries, designated solely by number, by the students in Erin Gruwell’s English classes from Wilson High School in Long Beach, CA, during the late nineties. They are frank, often brutal, glimpses into the lives of real kids living in a city that MTV dubbed “the gangsta rap capital of the world,” and they will tear at your heart strings.

Bookending the kids’ diaries are journal entries from Erin herself, the young teacher who manages to turn a bunch of disenfranchised teenagers into first a class, and then a family, teaching them about tolerance by using the diaries of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic as well as other works she finds relevant to their lives.

It’s a moving book, made more so by the knowledge that these kids, now college graduates, have turned around and continued to teach the lessons Gruwell taught them.

Forever in Blue

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by Ann Brashares

The fourth and final installment in the stories of the Sisterhood was the least juvenile of a series that really is universal, and shouldn’t be ignored just because of it’s YA label. In this novel, the girls are separate more than not, and the Pants are shared throughout their first year of college, not just during the summer. While not every story ends up completely happy, each of these young women grows and changes and sets the stage for what her life will become, and it’s great to watch them all deal with real issues, that real college freshman often encounter, and triumph over their personal obstacles.

I loved this series because the girls were so real.
I wanted to hate this book because it meant saying goodbye to old friends, but the beauty of books is that you can always re-read them.

Summers of the Sisterhood

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Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants / Second Summer of the Sisterhood / Girls in Pants (3 Book Set) by Ann Brashares

Despite the fact that a very kind author sent me a review copy of his book, and despite the fact that I’ve read the first fifty pages and found it gripping, having been burned to a crisp put me in the mood for light, fluffy reading.

Since I’ve seen The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on cable many times at this point, and even rented the dvd when it was first available, and since my friend Erin had mentioned them several weeks ago (months, really) when the fourth book had just come out, AND since YA books are less expensive than general fiction, I ordered them all.

I’m glad I did. Like J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Brashares’s novels are not all all “kiddie lit” but well-written, interesting coming-of-age novels that happen to have teenaged protagonists. The four girls who make up the Sisterhood are all three-dimensional. None of them are perfect. All of them are unique. Their stories are every bit as interesting as any more grown up chick-lit characters, and the writing is considerably less fluffy than many. Bookstores and publishers may classify these books as YA, but to me, they’re comfort reading. You know there will ultimately be a mostly-happy ending, but you also know the characters will progress, and that not everything will be sunshine and roses.

I’m a fast reader. I received these on Wednesday evening, and am now a bit more than half way through the third book. Is it too early for me to recommend them? No. Because everyone has gone through adolescence, and that makes these novels (which, at around 300 pages each, are a satisfying length) truly universal.

If you have daughters. If you are a daughter. If you are remotely in touch with your inner teen-aged girl, you must read these books.

Fool Moon

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Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2) by Jim Butcher

Book Two of Jim Butcher’s fantasy/mystery series The Dresden Files mixing it up with werewolves, of which, we learn from Bob (the spirit in the skull) there are many different kinds. Butcher’s novels are designed so that readers who follow the series in order will pick up the continuing relationships between the characters, but so that they can be read as stand-alone stories as well – which is my wordy way of saying that there was enough introduction included to make sure that new readers knew who everyone was, but not so much that it felt at all repetitive.

With the eponymous television series now in its seventh week on the Sci-Fi channel (here in the States, and on Space, I think, in Canada) comparisons are inevitable, but while the feel of the series is sort of “cozy paranormal” the books retain a much more classic detective novel tone, with strong secondary characters like local crime lord John Marcone offering a surprising amount of depth and personality.

Harry, of course, is our main focus, and in this novel we see just how fragile his friendship with cop Karrin Murphy really is, and get a little bit better knowledge of his on-again off-again romance with Arcane reporter Susan.

The action and exposition nicely balance each other, and over all the story does what Jim Butcher does best: entertains, and leaves us wanting more.

Carpe Demon

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 Carpe DemonCarpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom

I picked up Carpe Demon while on a lengthy visit to a local Half Price Books with my husband and brother-in-law, and read half of it while we were there, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I ordered it from Amazon.com along with its sequel.

I was hooked at first by the tag line, about how the protagonist, Kate, was something like an adult (as in grown up, not as in XXX) version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but while the whole “California girl fights demons” think does make their stories seem similar, Kate is not not at all like Buffy. For one thing, Kate has a husband, two children, one of whom is a teenager, and a minivan. As well, her demon hunting doesn’t seem to be mystical calling, as much as a choice made when she was largely choiceless.

Still, the snappy dialogue, humor-laced action sequences, and fast-paced plot made this book an enjoyable and entertaining read, and I’m currently in the middle of the sequel.

Atlantis Found

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Atlantis Found (A Dirk Pitt Novel)

Clive Cussler

My friend Rana mentioned the movie Sahara, and Clive Cussler books as a guilty pleasure in one of her blog entries, so when I saw several of his books on the library shelf, I picked one at random.

Atlantis Found reimagines the typical lost society of Atlantis and ties them together with a group of Nazi survivors hiding in South America and plotting to take over the world – on the surface not terribly original, except that it’s a Dirk Pitt novel which means there are exotic locations and cool gadgets and a sort of Indiana Jones / James Bond sense of fun.

I enjoyed the book a lot, but couldn’t talk about it because I knew it would be the type of thing Fuzzy would enjoy, and, indeed, he’s been reading it all weekend. I’m not sure I could read Cussler in large doses, but every so often, a visit with Mr. Pitt might not be ill-advised.

The Cat Who Went Bananas

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The Cat Who Went Bananas

Lilian Jackson Braun

From the first Cat Who… book, I jumped to one of the more recent, as I’d lost track of the series several years ago, and felt the need to catch up. Qwilleran and the cats (KoKo aquired a female partner a few books into the series) are in the tiny town of Pickax now, and the characters woven through this story are mostly old friends.

It involves a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest, bananas, bookstores, and real estate.

Enough said.

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards

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The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (Cat Who...)

Lilian Jackson Braun

I read this book years ago – decades even – when my mother still lived in the US, and we used to hit the library together every weekend, sometimes with my grandmother, sometimes not, and take home as many books as we could carry. Together, we worked through all of this series, as well as many others.

In any case, this book was originally published in 1966, but it manages to hold up pretty well, considering, and it’s the first in a long series of cozy mysteries about reporter Jim Qwilleran and his crime-solving Siamese cat KoKo.

These books aren’t intellectual in the slightest, but they’re full of great characters, gastronomic and architectural delights, and mild mysteries that are completely lacking in horror and gore.

Perfect for afternoon tea.
Or for sharing with your mother.

Kushiel’s Avatar

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Kushiel's Avatar (Kushiel's Legacy)

Jacqueline Carey

I don’t remember who recommended the Kushiel books to me in the first place, only that I resisted reading them for the longest time, then, when I did, sheepishly admitted that I liked them.

In any case, I bought this, the final book in the Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy, several months ago, but only read it very recently, when I was between trips to the library. I liked it well enough, I guess, but I hate to see series end, even though the ending in this case was a natural one, as the story arc was not only complete, but all the loose ends had been tied up.