Category Archives: Series

Ya-Yas In Bloom

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Ya-Yas in Bloom

Rebecca Wells

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I first encountered Rebecca Wells when I read Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, about seven years ago, long before there was even thought of a movie. I fell in love with the vivacious, scandalous, wonderful, and wonderfully human characters that Wells had created.

When I encountered them again, in Little Altars Everywhere, I thought, “Ok, we’re obviously in our dark period, now.” I didn’t dislike that book – it expanded on a lot of events that weren’t made clear in the other – but it didn’t have the same vibrance.

Ya-Yas In Bloom, the third book in the series, has some of the darkness of the second, and some of the effervescence of the first, and combines both into an enjoyable story. This time, the events are more centralized, different perspectives of one core incident, although there is a flashback to the forming of the Sisterhood, when the Ya-Yas were barely out of diapers. It’s much more an integrated story, though it keeps the format of being a series of vignettes.

Some critics have called it lackluster, but I disagree. True, it’s a much quieter novel than either of the others, but that’s not at all a bad thing. Even though it doesn’t have flash and melodrama, it’s still perfectly in keeping with the characters that Wells originally created.

I recommend it, but with the caution that it may be wiser to wait til it’s out in paperback, or borrow it from the library.

It should be noted. I am aware that Little Altars… was really the first book, however, I read Divine Secrets first, and they are not books that must be read in a specific order.

Stolen

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Stolen

Kelley Armstrong

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The second installment in Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series begins with Elena – and us as readers – learning that there are other mythical creatures running around – witches, shamans, vampires, telekinetics – some of whom feel they’re being hunted.

The story is good, though, in retrospect, much of the plot feels like set-up for the third book in the series. Still I’d recommend it.

V (and others)

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V - The Final Battle

by A. C. Crispin, and others.

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As part of my recent geeky nostalgia festival of watching all of V (the original miniseries, The Final Battle, and all nineteen episodes of the television show) I went upstairs to The Room That Will Someday Be a Game Room and found all the V novels. (I have only eight of the fifteen) and read them in spurts during the last two weeks. With the exception of the first one, by A.C. Crispin, which is a novelization of both miniseries, they are short novels, averaging 200 pages each, and they’re total fluff – even fluffier than the Trek novels I’ve also been reading – but fluff can be fun, sometimes.

Other titles read:


The Pursuit of Diana
Prisoners and Pawns
Death Tide
The New England Resistance
The Crivit Experiment
The Florida Project
East Coast Crisis
The Texas Run

Bitten

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Bitten: Women of the Otherworld : Book 1

Kelley Armstrong

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I haven’t been this excited about a new series of books since I first started reading Anita Blake novels back in…1997 or 98, I think. I’ve always had a thing for mythical creatures, and Armstrong’s first volume in her “Women of the Otherworld” series fills the craving nicely.

Like Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels, Armstrong’s novels are written in first person, and feature female protagonists, otherworldy creatures, and a bit of romance with the action. Unlike the more recent Anita Blake novels, there’s less sex, and more actual plot.

In Bitten, we are introduced to Elena, a rare female werewolf (in the Otherworld the were gene passes from father to son, females are produced only if human women are bitten and survive, which almost never happens), a Canadian with ties to a pack in upstate New York.

While there is a plot that connects all the different scenes, this novel is fairly typical of first novels in series: there’s a lot of character introduction, and more exposition than action.

There are also pop-culture references, and hunky male werewolves, neither of which seem out of place.

Fuzzy thinks there’s too much sex (he’s never read any of the Anita Blake books), but I disagree. This was a wonderful read, and a great introduction to a new version of “now.”

Kushiel’s Chosen

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Kushiel's Chosen

by Jacqueline Carey

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The second installment of Carey’s trilogy that began with Kushiel’s Dart. Very much a “middle” novel, but with some interesting plot twists.

Read in February; logged in April.

Kushiel’s Dart

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Kushiel's Dart

by Jacqueline Carey

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Read in February, logging in April.

For the first fifty pages of this book, I was thinking, “This is stupid, this is boring, this is badly written, and oh, God, I bought the sequel!”

But I realized I wasn’t really giving it a chance. I still think the author overwrites, but the story of palace intrigue and alternative-earth politics is still pretty entertaining. Good characters, just too much purple prose.

STTNG: A Time to Die

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A Time to Die (Star Trek The Next Generation)

John Vornholt
Book two in the “To Every Season” series was a bit darker than book one, but enjoyable nonetheless. Again, I read it in eBook format, which means I have to sit and read on purpose, and not in the bathroom.

I thought it would delve more into Data reacting to no longer having his emotion chip (after all, he’s on the cover), but instead it was a Wesley story. If they had filmed this sort of wrap-up, I think people might have hated Wesley less.

Or not.

Anyway, it’s still brain-candy, but it’s fun brain candy.

STTNG: A Time to be Born

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A Time to Be Born (Star Trek The Next Generation)

John Vornholt
I can’t talk about this sub-series of the Star Trek: The Next Generation novels without hearing the song in my head
To everything
(Turn, turn, turn)
There is a season
(Turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose
Under heaven

Ok, now that that’s purged – I’d resisted buying these until now because the ninth book wasn’t published until October, and nothing irks me more than having to wait for sequels. So, I was strong, and as a result, I get to read the whole series, over the next few weeks.

The cover blurbs tells us that this series of nine novels is designed to fill in the blanks between Insurrection and Nemesis in the TNG universe, and it does a great job. Already in book one we’ve seen what Wesley’s been up to all this time, and found out just why Data no longer had a functional emotion chip in the last movie.

I read it in ebook format in one sitting while half-watching the Monk marathon on television, and I’m not sure if it was the show, or the format, but I feel like I’ve missed something by not having a tangible book in my hands.

Still, it was a great read, and makes me wish they’d filmed THIS instead of the movies they actually made.