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The Good, the Bad, and the Undead.
Jan. 24th, 2005 11:59 pmSpent today transcribing sports and then promotional interviews for some touchy-feely environmentally correct million dollar homes in San Diego. Spent most of the day trying not to do that.
Spent the rest of the day reading Kim Harrison's The Good, the Bad, and the Undead. And...whoo....I haven't felt this happy about a read in a long, long time. I thought her first book, Dead Witch Walking was fun, but her latest was really remarkably entertaining, with a few startling moments of real heart. I'd say that it's every bit as good as Hamilton's middle Anita Blake books - if not better in some respects.
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bongirl5 finds her very genre, something about this particular heroine, Rachel Morgan, just resonates with me, even though I don't particularly have anything in common with her. Sometimes she's very, very bad at what she does or wants to do. She makes some dumb choices. She needs to have her ass saved a couple of times. She's impulsive but can keep a cool head. In other words, while all genre female characters written by female authors can and should be inspected for degrees of Mary-Sue-ism, this particular series quickly lays that fear to rest.
Maybe I'm still feeling a bit burned by Laurell K. Hamilton's Super-Sue!Antia Blake, but Kim Harrison just makes me so much happier than anything I've read in a long, long time. And as far as alternate modern realities go, I don't think I've seen a better origin story of why everything went supernatural.
And perhaps the best bonus - there are some very, very sexy, meaningful scenes in this story. That is, the sex (or almost sex) is about sex and something else, and it's not about being given the handy new power tailor-made to beat the bad guy of this particular book, and it's not about reveling in how totally sexy the heroine is and vague hints that a heroine's only really impressive power should be having sex with fifteen to twenty very fabulous men who are all obsessed with her. Harrison's scenes are character and situation specific - which is exactly as they should be.
I know, I know, I'm being very vague here, but I don't want to give anything away, either, in case you all take my recommendation and pick up these two books. And I say two, because although the second and more recent book is a vast improvement over the first, the pair work together as to volumes from what looks like a very long book itself. That is to say - this series doesn't answer questions neatly with each closing page. By the end of the second book, Rachel extricated herself from some serious problems she'd gotten herself into at the end of the first book, but she also got into much worse problems that will pick up in the third book, due in July.
And actually, sitting here thinking about it, I'm more excited about that than Harry Potter. Which just goes to show you something.
Ack. Am too tired, must sleep.
Spent the rest of the day reading Kim Harrison's The Good, the Bad, and the Undead. And...whoo....I haven't felt this happy about a read in a long, long time. I thought her first book, Dead Witch Walking was fun, but her latest was really remarkably entertaining, with a few startling moments of real heart. I'd say that it's every bit as good as Hamilton's middle Anita Blake books - if not better in some respects.
Although
bongirl5 finds her very genre, something about this particular heroine, Rachel Morgan, just resonates with me, even though I don't particularly have anything in common with her. Sometimes she's very, very bad at what she does or wants to do. She makes some dumb choices. She needs to have her ass saved a couple of times. She's impulsive but can keep a cool head. In other words, while all genre female characters written by female authors can and should be inspected for degrees of Mary-Sue-ism, this particular series quickly lays that fear to rest. Maybe I'm still feeling a bit burned by Laurell K. Hamilton's Super-Sue!Antia Blake, but Kim Harrison just makes me so much happier than anything I've read in a long, long time. And as far as alternate modern realities go, I don't think I've seen a better origin story of why everything went supernatural.
And perhaps the best bonus - there are some very, very sexy, meaningful scenes in this story. That is, the sex (or almost sex) is about sex and something else, and it's not about being given the handy new power tailor-made to beat the bad guy of this particular book, and it's not about reveling in how totally sexy the heroine is and vague hints that a heroine's only really impressive power should be having sex with fifteen to twenty very fabulous men who are all obsessed with her. Harrison's scenes are character and situation specific - which is exactly as they should be.
I know, I know, I'm being very vague here, but I don't want to give anything away, either, in case you all take my recommendation and pick up these two books. And I say two, because although the second and more recent book is a vast improvement over the first, the pair work together as to volumes from what looks like a very long book itself. That is to say - this series doesn't answer questions neatly with each closing page. By the end of the second book, Rachel extricated herself from some serious problems she'd gotten herself into at the end of the first book, but she also got into much worse problems that will pick up in the third book, due in July.
And actually, sitting here thinking about it, I'm more excited about that than Harry Potter. Which just goes to show you something.
Ack. Am too tired, must sleep.
