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In recent adventures in reading, by far the best thing I've read was John L. Howard's Katya's World (thanks ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
qualapec!) which is one of those novels where you finish reading and you can't tell if you want to immediately start a re-read or shove this book at everyone you know so you'll have more people to talk about it with.
Katya's World is deliciously perfect sci-fi. The science is believable, serves the story, the world-building is interesting and described in just the right amount of detail. Seriously, I just tore through this book and cannot wait for the next. Katya is a wonderfully pragmatic and delightful heroine, Kane was deliciously wry and hard to pin down. I adored the Chertovka, who was a great chaotic neutral/lawful evil character. Anyway, she was badass, and I really liked Katya's conflicted pov on her.
I'm VERY curious to see if Katya and Kane are related. That he gave Katya the yo-yo intended for his daughter, the repeated mention of blood and history and genetics. I know her parent's deaths are explained, but I feel like there is something more going on with why Katya and Kane's fate's intersected than just coincidence.
Also, Howard seems to really, really love the ‘hanging off a flying device by one hand’ and ‘clinging to a crashing flying device with one hand’ tropes.
It is very cruel to not have even a release date for the next book.
I finally managed to get my way through Daughter of Smoke and Bone which was a book that I checked out from the library about three times and renewed over and over again before finishing it. On balance, I enjoy it. I'm invested enough to read the sequel and the author has a very nice sense of the poetic. It does, however, feel very long and very much like a first book in a series - like, really, did you NEED all this set-up just to get to the point wherethe main character goes on her rescue mission?
In adventures in romance novels, I read two recently that I really enjoyed, HDU by India Lee (fake dating!) and About Last Night by Ruthie Knox.
Okay, I'll be real; both of these books are total fantasy in a way that I would argue Jennifer Crusie's or Cecelia Grant's books aren't. Which is to say, I loved them because I connected with and liked a core fantasy in each of them, not because they were without flaws.
HDU is about a mod of a celeb gossip site who ends up in a fake relationship with a hot celebrity - he wants to rehab his image, she wants to get her career kick-started. Now, despite reading this on my iTouch, I could not read this book in public; I was smiling too much. My only major complaint is that there is not NEARLY enough fake!dating in this book. Not nearly enough to sell the romance.There is a love triangle in this book and sadly, because the author didn't sell me on 'these two are perfect for each other and falling in love' with the fake!dating, it feels like the hero gets the heroine 'by default' because the other man character doesn't stand by her in a situation everyone say coming from miles away.
I also read About Last Night by Ruthie Knox. Okay, first off, I could read "emotionally reserved girl has sex with and only slowly opens up while sexy love interest waits wanting as much as she's willing to give" narratives until the end of time. That said. The downside of this novella was that the heroine talks about herself as if she's such a bad girl - and she's really, really not. I think the author was mistaking a sad past for a villainous past. Plus, the hero's problems with his family magically disappear.
qualapec!) which is one of those novels where you finish reading and you can't tell if you want to immediately start a re-read or shove this book at everyone you know so you'll have more people to talk about it with.Katya's World is deliciously perfect sci-fi. The science is believable, serves the story, the world-building is interesting and described in just the right amount of detail. Seriously, I just tore through this book and cannot wait for the next. Katya is a wonderfully pragmatic and delightful heroine, Kane was deliciously wry and hard to pin down. I adored the Chertovka, who was a great chaotic neutral/lawful evil character. Anyway, she was badass, and I really liked Katya's conflicted pov on her.
I'm VERY curious to see if Katya and Kane are related. That he gave Katya the yo-yo intended for his daughter, the repeated mention of blood and history and genetics. I know her parent's deaths are explained, but I feel like there is something more going on with why Katya and Kane's fate's intersected than just coincidence.
Also, Howard seems to really, really love the ‘hanging off a flying device by one hand’ and ‘clinging to a crashing flying device with one hand’ tropes.
It is very cruel to not have even a release date for the next book.
I finally managed to get my way through Daughter of Smoke and Bone which was a book that I checked out from the library about three times and renewed over and over again before finishing it. On balance, I enjoy it. I'm invested enough to read the sequel and the author has a very nice sense of the poetic. It does, however, feel very long and very much like a first book in a series - like, really, did you NEED all this set-up just to get to the point where
In adventures in romance novels, I read two recently that I really enjoyed, HDU by India Lee (fake dating!) and About Last Night by Ruthie Knox.
Okay, I'll be real; both of these books are total fantasy in a way that I would argue Jennifer Crusie's or Cecelia Grant's books aren't. Which is to say, I loved them because I connected with and liked a core fantasy in each of them, not because they were without flaws.
HDU is about a mod of a celeb gossip site who ends up in a fake relationship with a hot celebrity - he wants to rehab his image, she wants to get her career kick-started. Now, despite reading this on my iTouch, I could not read this book in public; I was smiling too much. My only major complaint is that there is not NEARLY enough fake!dating in this book. Not nearly enough to sell the romance.There is a love triangle in this book and sadly, because the author didn't sell me on 'these two are perfect for each other and falling in love' with the fake!dating, it feels like the hero gets the heroine 'by default' because the other man character doesn't stand by her in a situation everyone say coming from miles away.
I also read About Last Night by Ruthie Knox. Okay, first off, I could read "emotionally reserved girl has sex with and only slowly opens up while sexy love interest waits wanting as much as she's willing to give" narratives until the end of time. That said. The downside of this novella was that the heroine talks about herself as if she's such a bad girl - and she's really, really not. I think the author was mistaking a sad past for a villainous past. Plus, the hero's problems with his family magically disappear.