Hey guess what? Number 14 is more fantasy! I don't think I've read this much consecutive fantasy novels that weren't all part of the same series in a very long time. But anyway, number 14 is The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. This came suggested from a number of sources, so thought it was time to give it a try.

Glad I did. So since this is the first book of a trilogy, this is our introduction. We meet the cast ; Barbarian Logen Ninefingers, crippled Inquisitor Glotka, selfish-spoiled pretty boy Jezal; the commoner who made good Major West and of course the powerful and enigmatic magus, cause you always need one of those.

I liked all the characters, even when they were made to be unlikable. Jezal is a complete pratt, West is a little too moral, Glotka is so very cynical (with good reason though), and Logen, well he's not as barbaric a barbarian as he's been in the past.

So not only do we meet the characters, but Abercrombie does some very successful world building too as he takes us through a few countries and their history and the wars that all of the main characters (except Jezal) have lived through. It's nicely done.

I don't have much to say other than I did enjoy this book a lot and will definitely be forging ahead with this crew, especially as they were finally heading out on the quest that that aforementioned powerful and enigmatic mage had enlisted them for.

Number... crap, what number am I on? Oh yeah, lucky number 13. And it is The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. I picked this book up because it got a good review from the AV Club, invoking a favourable comparison to GRRM no less, so I decided to give it a shot.

I could immediately understand the GRRM comparison as Abraham structures this book exactly like GRRM structures his Song of Ice and Fire books; each chapter is told from the POV of a main character. The difference is that Abraham has less main characters than GRRM does. There are three main characters, Marcus Wester, Cithrin and Geder. Then a few other lesser characters who also get POV chapters.

I found this a little... hard to get into. It wasn't bad or anything, it just didn't really reach out and grab me. I found the worldbuilding a little... I don't know, pedantic? I just didn't find the unfolding of the world's history to be that interesting. Perhaps because I felt it was somehow disconnected from what the characters were going through? Geder has an almost unhealthy interest in history, but since his interest is put forth as almost frivolous and child-like, I found it hard to take all of it seriously. And I just found all the different races kinda Star Trekian and a little difficult to keep track of.

Abraham's court intreigue is definitely not on par with GRRM's. Now, the comparison is a mite unfair because that is the sort of thing that GRRM so excels at, but at this point in fantasy writing, if you're going to approach court politics, you have to bring your A game. I think we have a B game going on here. One of the other POV characters (Dawson) is knee deep in this, a nobleman mover and shaker who is convinced he is saving his king, and he brings some of the other characters into the fold whether they want to or not.

I have no problem with characters being far flung from one another, but other than at the very beginning, I just wasn't seeing connections between their storylines and that kinda annoyed me. I'm sure it will come back around again and be tied together, but the sense of... urgency isn't there? I dunno.

Not to say that there aren't some very good parts to this book. Geder makes an incredibly huge, dire decision that I definitely didn't see coming, and his character is growing very interesting. He's almost doing a reverse Jaime and I can respect that. In fact, I think I found Geder's plotline to be the most interesting of them all.

All this being said, I felt the book did considerably pick up in the second half, so it is enough to make me want to continue on when the next one comes out.

Since this is about books and concerns two of my favourite authors, I thought this would be a good place to post it for posterity.

Wednesday of last week, I did an interview with the CBC for a piece they were doing on George R.R. Martin. They wanted to talk to a fan, and my friend who works for the best sci-fi/fantasy bookstore in Toronto immediately thought of me and put my name forth.

The piece aired on Sunday, on The National no less. I'm on it for like 30 seconds, and they got my name wrong, but still, there I am along with interviews with George himself and Guy Gavriel Kay, who is undoubtedly, my favourite author. Supreme geek moment as far as I'm concered :)

Here's a link to the piece: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2068554409

Number 12 this year is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Thanks to all the follow up to A Dance With Dragons I'm on quite the fantasy kick right now.

So I came to this book in a funny way. Two years ago, I voted in the silly cage match on suvudu.com where they pit various characters from different fantasy series against one another in mock battles. I started voting because one of the characters involved was Jaime Lannister. Jaime had a solid voting block and moved all the way through the competition to the final, where he was defeated by Rand Al'Thor from the Wheel of Time saga. But... the character Jaime defeated to get to the final was someone I'd never heard of before, a guy named Kvothe (pronounced close to 'Quothe'). Didn't think much of him didn't bother to look him up, I just voted for Jaime (and by this time, GRRM himself had gotten in on the fun and was doing little writeups of the battles himself, which definitely helped Jaime in the voting). I even remember thinking that Qvothe was a stupid-sounding name and basically dismissed it summarily (I have this rather strange bias that I usually have to like the names of the main characters I'm reading about in order to have full enjoyment)

A week before ADWD came out, I was browsing in Chapters and one of the employees recommended The Name of the Wind to me. I immediately recognized Kvothe's name, and was all set to dismiss it again, but then I realized; not only was this fellow recommending it to me, but on the strength of one book, this character had garnered enough votes in a contest voted on by fans of the genre, to get to the quarter finals. Hmm. Maybe there is something to this story. So I took the advice and the book came home with me.

I actually started it just before ADWD came out, but then set it aside in order to deal with that incredibly anticipated monstrosity. I picked it up the moment ADWD was finished and... I enjoyed it.

It's an interesting narrative, with Kvothe, now a simple innkeeper called Kote, basically telling his life story to a Chronicler. It seems that Kvothe has lead an extrodinary life, the life of a hero, and there is some mystery surrounding his disappearnce.

As with many fantasy heroes, Kvothe 'suffers' from disgustingly perfect syndrome. He's incredibly intelligent, the son of wandering musicians, playwrites, etc. So he can sing, he can play, her can perform, and he learns so very very quickly. When his family and troupe are killed by a seemingly mythical group of bad guys, Kvothe's comfortable life is (of course) thrown upside down. He spends three years living on the streets of a large city before he takes control of his destiny and goes to learn at the University, a place that teaches what passes as the world's magic.

The book, and Kvothe himself would get tiresome after awhile due to his incredibly gifted intellect, but fotunatately Rothfuss does balance this nicely with Kvothe's penchant for getting into trouble. It is, of course, a common problem of those who are so much smarter than most everyone around them, but in this case it does work. It's not so much you want to see Kvothe taken down a peg or anything like that, you actually do want him to succeed.

Rothfuss has done an excellent job of giving us a protaganist who might have tilted towards unlikable, but there is enough strength and depth to this charater that you do want to know how he went from poor child prodigy to hero and then fell to lowly inkeeper. And since this book revolves around the one character (told from his POV pretty much), that's pretty freaking important.

The sequel to this has just come out. And yeah, I'll probably end up picking it up.

I'm so excited about number 11 this year. It is a book that I (and many other) have been waiting for SIX years to come out now. That's right folks, number 11 this year is A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! :)

In 1996, my then-roommate Karen tossed me a book with the words "Read this. I mean it." Karen and I had gone through university together and a lot of our reading tastes meshed quite well. So read it I did. And then I immeditately went out and bought my own copy of A Game of Thrones. So yeah, I've been with this series for a long time now.

I'm afraid to say too much about this book because I realize I blew threw this behemoth (900-odd pages long) in 5 days, so great was my NEED to read it, and I realize that not everyone has read it yet, and there are those who are coming to the books after having watched the series on HBO...

So all I will say is that for the most part, I loved it. It's been 10 years since we've heard from Tyrion (who had last been seen performing a rather incredible murder), Daenerys (who was staying put in the city of Mereen to try and learn to rule) and Jon Snow (who had just been made Lord Commander of the Wall). Much of DWD is devoted to these three, and it's so wonderful to read about them again. One of the few misgivings I had was of a new travelling companion for Tyrion. Not sure why Penny didn't sit right with me, but yeah... no. Dany's dragons are growing up and, in standard Martin form, they are not cute and cuddly, sage-wise dragons of much other fantasy. They have loyalty and love for Dany, but they are very large, VERY dangerous creatures that no one really knows how to train. And Jon... he has to deal with the resident king-claimant in Stannis, his rebellious brothers who aren't exactly in favour of Jon's dealings with the wildings, the wildings themselves, and the unrest caused by Roose Bolton's 'rule' of the North. He has his hands full and also has the book's first true "FUCK YEAH!" moment.

Disappointments? Not many. Biggest one for me is only one Jaime chapter, and a chapter that obviously puts him in some danger, so now I'm really wondering what happened to him.

More new POV characters, some I didn't really care about (as usual, I'm finding it hard to be interested in any of the Ironborn, with the exception of Theon though. Oh Theon, karma is a harsh, harsh mistress for you isn't she?), but a certain exiled ex Knight of the Kingsguard also becomes a POV character, and it was nice to read of him. He's a class act.

The endings leave some major characters (and some minor but those we've seen for a very long time) in pretty dire straights again, whilst some seem to be trucking along fine and others seem to be improving their lot from previous, and of course, the shifting power is shifting again, especially with the revelation of another Targaryen, one that Dany knows nothing about.

Overall? It's bleak and hard and dire with moments of cunning and heroism and just enough fantasy elements thrown in to make things just that much more intersting. In other words, it's perfect and like we haven't been away for 6 years (although, in preparation for July 12th's release date, I did re-read the other books).

So, how long before The Winds of Winter? :)

Place holder for books 9 Origin of the Species by Nino Ricci and 10, The Constant Gardner by John Le Carre.

Number 8 is Tigerheart by Peter David. I've had some ups and downs with Peter over the years (well, ok, really only one down, so nevermind) but overall, I've always enjoyed his stuff, and he is mentioned a few times in this blog due to his Arthurian cycle. So when I saw Tigerheart on sale for a ridiculously cheap price, it had to come home with me.

I loved this damn book. It's been awhile since a book made me tear up, but this sure did. Tigerheart is a pastiche of Peter Pan. It's not a true retelling, perhaps a bit of a sequel, but whatever it is, I thought it beautiful and I enjoyed it much more than the original.

It's not just that the story is familiar of course, but it's also that David's narrative voice so perfectly captured the narrative voice of so much late 19th/early 20th century children's literature, where the narrator is omnicient and very nearly a character in themselves. It's a voice I don't find that's pulled off well very often (I think C.S Lewis did it brilliantly in his Chronicles of Narnia) and so David should be lauded for this alone.

But he should also be lauded for creating an interesting character in Paul Dear, who holds his own with The Boy and Captains Hack and Slash and sweet Gwenny. And he should be lauded for such a beautiful, moving treatise on what it means to be a child, and what it means to be an adult, and how moving from one to the other is difficult but doesn't always mean they have to be mutually exclusive either.

Well done Peter David, really, really well done.

Book number 7 is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I have not seen the movie, I picked this up because I loved his novel Remains of the Day.

Never Let Me Go is told from the first person narration of one Kathy H. A "carer" for "donors" who has been at her job for a very long time; longer than most seem to be able to do it in fact.

She reminices about her days at a (what sounds like) very idyllic English boarding school called Hailsham. She's repeatedly told she was lucky to have been there, to have learned and had a good life and been treated kindly by the school's various guardians. She had two very close friends at the school, Ruth and Tommy.

It's hard to discuss this novel without talking about the main 'mystery' that is slowly unfolded through Kathy's narration. These are not typical children who are destined to be typical adults. They have singular purposes, to be donors, and once you realize what they are and what they're to be, this book is all at once sinister, sad and even a little appalling. But it's because it's also beautifully written from the POV of a character who is, first and formost, a person. Kathy is a naieve, empathetic, smart girl who never really rails against what she and her friends are reared for. And as much as you want her and Tommy and Ruth to escape their fate, you also know that they won't. For despite everything they learned at Hailsham, about life and art and the tantalizing rumour of 'deferrment', they weren't taught to question. They were taught to just accept because they don't know any better and really, society didn't want them to know any better.

It's an excellent, sympathetic mystery that leaves you questioning... a lot of things.

Numero 6 this year is The King's Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi. Let's just get this right out of the way shall we? I loved the movie. Loved it. It was well acted, well written, well done. It was touching and surprisingly funny and all around engaging. And now, upon reading this book, I also realize the movie used a fair bit of 'dramatic license'. Funny enough though, this knowledge does not affect my enjoyment of the movie. It is too well done of a movie for me to feel I've now been cheated or anything. The movie centers more on moving towards one, specific goal, and that is that King George VI (played so beautifully by Colin Firth) is able to deliver his first war-time address to his subjects free of his previously debilitating speech impediment. But according to the book... by the time this speech was delivered, the King wasn't as hampered by his speech problems as the movie would have you believe...

Anyway, the book, compiled from the journal entries and scrap clippings of Lionel Logue by his grandson Mark, is a fairly straightforward telling of Logue's life from his initial work as a speech therapist in Australia, to his family's move to England, to the meeting and treatment of his most famous patient who would also become a friend. The book lays out Bertie's treatments much like they are in the movie, breathing exercises, practice, removing of troublesome words from speeches, basically giving the King confidence in his ability to speak, therefore removing his tendency to stutter. The book does also show that there was an honest to goodness friendship between the two men of VASTLY different classes and it is nice to see. But by the time Bertie is crowned King George VI, Logue and Bertie had been working together for quite awhile already and his stutter was much more under control by this point. Yes, Logue still helped and attended the Coronation and whatnot, but by this time, Bertie was not attending regular sessions and whatnot.

The book is an interesting look at what happened through many of Logue's and even the King's own words. It is also a slightly deeper look at the crisis the monarchy faced with the abdication of Edward VIII. But the movie, through some phenomenal performances, manages to give everyone much more warmth and character, if not true historical acuracy.

Books have been read, but not blogged, so let's do a catch up post:

Number 3 of the year is Some Great Thing by Lawerence Hill. Saw this book for cheap, and since I enjoyed his Book of Negroes, thought I'd give something else by him a shot. This book tells the story of the unlikely named Mahatma Grafton, a young, rather aimless black man who returns to his hometown of Winnipeg and gets a job as a reporter with the Winnipeg Herald. He doesn't partcularly care about the job, nor about Winnipeg, nor about his father's ambitions for him. Hat is like a lot of his generation, he just doesn't really care about much. But that changes over the course of the book as he gets involved with racial tensions and the entire Manitoba language-rights issues. It's a very interesting read because it's something I really knew nothing about. Oh sure I remember language-rights as an issue overall, plus of course the Referendum, but this book is a nice microcosm of the unrest that was happening over a lot of Canada at the time. The characters are all well done, and, despite being a large cast, quite memorable. There's some oddities that make it really fun (the exchange reporter from Cameroon for one) and overall, it's a very clever novel.

Number 4 of the year is Gwenhwyfar by Mercedes Lackey. Not a bad book. I definitely like books where Gwen isn't a whiny bitch, but this also felt like Lackey had watched that horrendous King Arthur movie (y'know, the one with Clive Owen) and decided that Warrior! Gwen needed some backstory. So yeah, this Gwen is a warrior, which is fine and dandy but doesn't really bring that much new to the character. I did like that Lackey brought the idea of the 'three Gwens' that Arthur marries into one tale (this is something that isn't dealt with much in most of the Legends) and I liked that she gave Gwen some interesting sisters. But overall, the 'Arthurian' part of the story isn't dealt with at all so the book actually feels strangely disconnected from what it should seemlessly be a part of. As a look at gender roles and equality in early Britain, it's a great book, as an Arthurian tale? Not so much.

Number 5 of the year is Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore. This is the first book of his tale of Jody and Thomas, and the one I should've started with rather than You Suck. So it was nice to get the backstory down and how it all got started. Fun as always, Moore is rarely disappointing. Best line? "He's doing rather well for a non-swimmer".

Ok, gotta get reading some more it seems.

Book number 2 for the year is The Sword of Albion by Mark Chadbourn. It's a fun historical fantasy set in the Elizabethan years (well, 1588 to be exact) and concerns the exploits of England's most famous spy, Will Swyfte. And yes, that is rather odd, for one would think that by being well known to the world at large as being a spy, that you wouldn't actually be very good at your job, but in this world, as with Will Swyfte, what you see isn't what you get. Swyfte and his comrades are not the main source of information against the mundane enemies of England such as France and Spain, no, they are employed against a far more fearful, nefarious and older Enemy; the Unseelie Court.

Chadbourn builds a nice world, familiar but with overtones of the unfamiliar, his characters are good (Swyfte is a bit too much out of the James Bond mold, but hey, it kinda works) and he does dread and excitement well. I could've done with a little less sea warfare, but given the context of when this novel is taking place, I guess there's not much way around it.

If there's more Will Swyfte books, I'll continue on.

Brand new year, brand new page. Book number 1 of 2011 is Sleepwalk With Me by Mike Birbiglia. This was tossed to me by my husband, as Birbiglia is one of those stand up comics that Graig knows about but whom I've never heard of before. Sleepwalk With Me is the book-version of Birbiglia's one man show of the same name. It's a funny look at his life, and the main thread in it is that he suffers from sleepwalking (or the more clinical REM sleep disorder), to such an extent that he actually endangers his life during it. I liked Birgibglia's style, very self-depricating but funny.

On a personal note, I think I found this book kinda scary-funny from the point of view that my dear husband has some of the same sleepwalking type episodes. Fortunately they've not escalated to the point of Birbiglia's, but still... a lot of it sounded mighty familiar.

It's January 2nd now, so time for our 2010 Year End post. In a lot of ways, it wasn't a very diverse year as I read quite a few things by the same authors. And of course, there were my usual tomes about Shakespeare in there. So what did I read this year? The list is as follows:

The Book of Negroes - Lawrence Hill
Shakespeare's Wife - Germaine Greer
Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris
Fool - Christopher Moore
Under Heaven - Guy Gavriel Kay
Privilege of the Sword - Ellen Kushner
Dead in Dallas - Charlaine Harris
Mythago Wood - Robert Holdstock
The Torontonians - Phyllis Bret Young
A Gentleman's Game - Greg Rucka
The White Queen - Phillipa Gregory
The Children's Book - A.S. Byatt
The Court of the Air - Stephen Hunt
Contested Will - James Shapiro
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Elfland - Freda Warrington
A Cure for All Diseases - Reginald Hill
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thakeray
The Wordy Shipmates - Sarah Vowell
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larsson
The Red Queen - Phillipa Gregory
You Suck - Christopher Moore
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maughm
Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind
Let the Right One In - John Alvide Lindqvist
Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffeneger
Dead to the World
Dead As A Doornail
All Together Dead - Charlaine Harris
Definitely Dead
From Dead to Worse
Dead And Gone

Grand total? 32. Damn, one shy of my best record so far. Of course, part of the problem was in November I got completely sidetracked and did a slew of re-reads, but oh well.

Favourite book this year? Of course we have to go with Guy Kay's latest, Under Heaven. A truly gorgeous book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Also right up there was A.S Byatt's The Children's Book. And for best non-fiction, I'm going to go with Contested Will because I like any book that shoots down the 'Shakespeare didn't author his plays' conspiracy as well as this one did.

I read a freaking lot of vampire books this year, 10 all together. The best one being, by far, Let the Right One In. You Suck was rather... toothless (disappointing for a Christopher Moore novel) and the Sookie Stackhouse extravaganza is just light fare that's easy to burn through.

Tried to get into an author two of my cousins adore, but found myself disagreeing with their worship of Terry Goodkind.

Overall, I am pleased with my tally. Library plus starting to take the subway again in the latter part of the year helped bump the totals up.

I've already started my first book of 2011.

Ok, last one, really. Number 32 of the year was Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris. The last of the Sookie Stackhouse books my Mom gave me. I think I'm good for awhile. So this one? More developments with Eric, the Weres come out of the closet and there's a Faerie War. S'ok really. I didn't mind Harris' Faerie lore, and a lot of it was usual stuff, but, in all my (IMHO) vast readings, I've never heard of Fey being harmed by lemon. That was a new one. I shall have to research this. Oh, and pretty insignificant detail that I knew was wrong and so drove me nuts? She said the name Niall means 'Cloud'. I know darn well it means "Champion". Yeah. That bugged me. I know I'm picky.

Stay tuned for our Year End review.

Squeaking one more in under the wire. Number 31 is From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris. I've only got one more to go before I'm out of the ones my Mom gave me. Whew.

Anyway, this one isn't bad. It deals with the aftermath of the disasterous vampire summit and we learn more about Sookie's Fae heritage. Mainly where it came from. Some old characters are gone, some dead, some broken up with. New people are introduced as a shift in power in Louisiana happens.

So uh... not much to say about it really. It was fine. Nothing earthshattering. Let's face it, I can't really delve too deep into the literary merit of these books; they don't really have any. They are fun for what they are but that's it.

I will say this though, these books sure did let me pad my total for the year, and that's just awesome :)

Numbers 29 and 30 for the year, are, respectively, Definitely Dead and All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris. Between getting ready for Christmas and the disaster (due to sickness) that it was, more of these silly Sookie Stackhouse books have hit the spot; they definitely don't require a lot of brain work. Except they are starting to all blur together...

In fact, I had to go back and look at the back of the book to remember what happened in Definitely Dead. Sookie travels to New Orleans to gather the belongings of her dead vampire cousin Hadely, and gets mixed up more in the world of the Louisiana Queen, Sophie-Anne Leclerc. Sophie is about to get married to the King of Arkansas, and well, the vampire wedding goes as well as most superhero weddings do. The usual suspects are there, Eric, new boyfriend Quinn, and a couple of new characters in witch Amelia, but yeah, fun enough to read, but not substantial enough to really remember.

All Together Dead actually had some slightly more interesting meat to it, with a journey to the big vampire summit (which I think has been talked about for like the last three books), and of course, all sorts of shit goes down, including a big terrorist plot perpetrated by the Fellowship of the Sun. Lots of intreigue and suspicion, as well as Sookie having to get closer to Eric.

I'm not sure how many more are left in the pile my mom gave me, but I'm thinking it's finally getting low enough to see the light at the end of the Stackhouse tunnel.

Numero 28 of the year is, yes another Sookie Stackhouse book. Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris. She definitely tried for a bit more plot this time, what with snipers shooting shifters and werewolves electing new leaders and someone trying to kill Sookie again... but it still didn't really leave much mystery. It's falling into the 'oh, new characters. They must be the ones behind it." The mystery's basically as sophisticated as something from Murder She Wrote. I've also realized I'm a wee bit tired of the vast majority of the supernatural males trying to get Sookie into bed with them. It's getting predicatable. Vampire Bill wants her back. Eric the Viking Vampire wants her. Sam the Collie wants her. Alcide the WereWolf wants her. Calvin the were-panther wants her. Now I'm assuming Quinn the were-tiger wants her. We get the message. Sookie's different. Although, I will give her this, that for all this attention, Sookie remains fairly chast and hasn't yet devolved into Anita Blake territory. But still... yawn.

But, as I still have a few more of these kicking around and they don't take long to finish, and I'm not hating them or anything... I might as well just keep plowing through 'em.

Well, I went and did a WHOLE bunch of re-reads instead of reading anything new, so my tally has now suffered. I'm not sure what came over me, but I re-read Tamlin (for the zillionth time) and then, because I'm completely obsessed with it due to the upcoming HBO series, I launched into the Song of Ice and Fire books again. Finished A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, still have to start A Feast of Crows. Which I think I'm actually kind of putting off becuase once I finish that one, I've got nowhere to go again because GRRM still isn't finished the next one and, I hate to say it, the wait has gotten a little frustrating (since Crows was published 5 YEARS AGO!).

But re-reads are not why I'm here. Number 27 of the year is Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris. Yep, another of the Sookie Stackhouse books. My mother came over last week and dumped a stack of these books on me. So I started reading. They're like popcorn, where basically each one takes me a little over a day to finish. My mother gave them to me with the caveat "They get progressively worse written." And yeah, I'm only 4 books in and she's right. The plot on this one is pretty darn thin. Evil witches move into Shreveport to take over uber-vampire Eric's business interests. And in doing this, they curse Eric with a nasty bout of amnesia so he doesn't remember a thing. Sookie finds poor lost Eric wandering, and takes him home with her, for his own protection. As this Eric is much more to her liking (i.e. he's not an ultra-arrogant prick), she ends up sleeping with him. As she broke up with Bill in the previous book, hey, why not.

But basically, whilst there is some interesting world building still going on (the town of Hotshot which is completely populated by were-cats was interesting) and we get to see more of the inner workings of were-wolf society, she didn't build enough about the bad guys to make them seem like credible threats. They weren't really on-screen much until the big showdown with them, so I found them very underwhelming. The meat of this book is pretty much Sookie dealing with Eric in various states of undress. Not terribly interesting really. Had I felt the bad guys were more of a threat, I probably would've liked this book better.

Oh, she also introduces fairies, and I'm not sure I like where she's going with it. Especially her insistence in using the word 'fairy'. Yes I'm a snob, but really, Fey should be the way to go, it always sounds more ominous.

But anyway, I'll plow ahead to the next one, they're a quick read that will at least get my total up a bit more before the end of the year. Heh.

Number 26 is Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. I (surprisingly) enjoyed her first book enough to give her second one a shoot.

Yeah, Sophmore Jinx happening here all right. Did not like this book too much at all.

It wasn't that I was expecting the same sort of thing from this book as her first, but I sure didn't expect to really not like ANY of the characters here. Well except for poor ol' OCD Martin, he was really the most sympathetic character of all.

Because the other characters? Twins Elspeth and Edie, twins Valentina and Julia, and poor grieving Robert? Man they suck. They're weak and manipulative and kinda downright stupid in a few cases.

Overall, this is a ghost story, and yes, ghost stories can be about a malevolent ghost, which I think is the case here, but its a passive-agressive malevolence, which just gets boring once you realize where it's going.

I also expected more out of her use of the cemetery next door. It's like she tossed it in just because she felt she needed something 'gothic' as she was trying to write a ghost story. It really didn't lend to the atmosphere though.

I found the ending rather depressing overall, not because I cared enough about these characters to feel bad on their behalf... actually, I'm not even sure why I found it depressing other than there seemed to be so much wasted potential in this book, where it could've been a powerful tale of loss and grieving and relationships, but as the characters were so thin and unlikeable, I didn't feel any depth to their emotions for the most part.

Number 25 this year is Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. (Side note, I've read more Swedish books this year than I've ever read before in my life. That's right, a whole 2!)

It's been a looooong time since I've read a good vampire novel. In fact, I'm not sure I remember when it was I last read a good one. But this is a damn good novel. Centered around Oskar, a lonely, bullied 12 year old boy, and his new friend and next door neighbour, Eli. Who just happens to be a vampire.

I don't want to go into this book too much because I feel there's so much too it. Loneliness, brutality, loyalty, the cruelty of children and the cruelty of a predator, child abuse... it's all there. And yet despite all the ugliness, there is a strange beauty to the friendship of Oskar and Eli.

It's also a truly creepy vampire novel, which just makes it all the better. Eli is a fascinating creature, but she sure has hell doesn't sparkle. Thank the gods.