Franchise Fiction - Richard Castle - Naked Heat (2010)

I've already talked at length in my previous post about how weird it is to be giving authorial credit to a fictional entity, so let's just move on, shall we?

This entry into the series is much longer than its predecessor and flows differently, as if a different writer worked on this one from the last one. While each chapter in the previous entry ended like a commercial break, this one seems to be in love with ending chapters with the characters knowing one important piece of information that the reader will have to read on, even one more sentence into the next chapter to find out.

I'm not a fan.

Don't get me wrong, the story here was, at least for me, more compelling than the previous one, possibly because of the long suspect list to keep you guessing. But this "the characters read a name and then move into action; you want the name? Better read the next chapter" thing is bullshit. I wouldn't have such a problem with it if it just happened once or twice. But as the book goes on and the stakes get higher, the author relies on this device as if it was the only thing he has ever learned from creative writing classes or critiques.

Maybe there's a person out there that eats that shit up. It doesn't appetize me. It just gets my frustrated. Granted, I'm easily frustrated, especially by books, but it feels so much like a cheap trick that I want to rebel against their manipulation. I actually stopped part of the way through for a week to get over being mad about this.

The real lesson here is, if you have a trick, don't overuse it. You'll just piss your audience off.

7/10

Buy it @ Amazon.
Buy it @ Barnes & Noble.

Writing - Sage Cohen - The Productive Writer (2010)

I want to take a brief moment to talk about GoodReads.

Until a few moments ago I had an account there, and I used it primarily to try to get those precious book recommendations. Unfortunately, you have to rate 20 (!) book in order to begin getting those recommendations. This is one of the reasons I had a problem with it. When I go to Barnes & Noble, the receipt will come with a short list of products suggested to me based on what I just purchased. Why can't GoodReads do that with just the books you just read? I get that it is free, but it was mostly useless.

I bring it up in this book review because I rated this book on there as low, and it was disseminated to my various social media profiles, particularly Facebook and Twitter. Then, someone asked why I didn't like it. I had intended to write this review, so of course I wasn't going to detail it there (or even on GoodReads, which is a feature it has, I guess), but it gave me pause. Wasn't my rating these books as I read them, in order to get the recommendations that I still hadn't earned, giving away the content of my blog, which I wasn't wanting to do?

So, long story short, GoodReads is not for me, and it took me being within 3 books of getting recommendations for me to realize it.

But I digress. The Productive Writer.

I picked this up after that tough first therapy session I mention in my review of The Fault in Their Stars. I expected it to be about heightening your productivity as a writer, which is something I am interested in since my current productivity is firmly planted at zero. I was wrong. But could you blame me for the assumption, when "productive" is one of the words in the goddamn title?

This book really should have been called "The Marketing Writer" because that is what it is about. There is almost nothing about how you have to actually write to be productive. For god's sake, the very first chapter is about developing your "platform". Ms. Cohen is a business writer and a poet, and the former is at the reins here. She gives her own examples of how you develop your platform and business presence, but she only talks about her nonfiction works in these examples. When it comes to fiction, she brushes it off as easy. Um, no. How about telling us how to determine "what you have to offer an audience" when you are writing a fiction novel? Whatever happened to just writing?

The beginning of each chapter is prefaced by a list of things that a "productive writer" does, usually things covered in the following chapter, but they are usually things not actually having to do with being productive at all. I think this woman is confusing productive with well-marketed. Not everyone wants to be a freelance article writer. But this book is making that assumption anyway. Some of us want to get help with writing, not with becoming a self-promoting typist.

Hey, maybe you want to be that. More power to you. This book will do well for you. But if you actually want to be a productive writer, I would say look elsewhere, because this book will have you doing everything BUT writing.

2.5/10

Buy it @ Amazon.
Buy it @ Barnes & Noble.

Urban Fantasy - Cat Adams - Blood Song (2010)

The short version of this review is that I really didn't like this.

You're staying for the long version? That's a lot of mettle.

Let us begin with the author. There is no person named Cat Adams that wrote this book. The name is an amalgamation of the two authors' names, C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. Now, I understand collaborations. I understand using pen names. I understand simplifying it to one name. What I don't understand is why you would have a pen name when you just use your real names and your separate identities in your acknowledgements and author's note? I'm not talking about the copyright page. That's fine. But making it extremely clear that two of you wrote it without putting it on the cover of your book? Go to jail.

Next up, let's discuss the main character. Her name is Celia Graves. Graves. As in, where your coffin goes. And this is an urban fantasy involving a person being turned into a half-vampire abomination (that's even the technical term they use). Also, and I've only ever seen Charles de Lint avoid this trap, why are all urban fantasy heroines gun-toting, sarcastic, and slutty? It's like if the girl isn't feisty and has an arsenal under her coat, she's not interesting. In this case, the main character is a bodyguard against paranormal beings like vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and demons. Big fucking surprise. And she's haunted, a fact she doesn't mention until between a third and a half way in. I'll get back to this bitch.

The reason I didn't like it had nothing to do with vampires, okay? It's no secret that I loathe Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series. But that doesn't mean that all vampires suck (see what I did there?). Fat White Vampire Blues was great. But far too often does it fall into this trap of vampires are evil, vampires are sexy, vampires are awesome. And this book is no exception.

My main problem with the book is that it felt like it was written by two people, and that new ideas were added in haphazardly without a thought to changing the prior writing. This process is otherwise known as rewriting. The whole thing read like a first draft. Every time a new character or setting was introduced, the story would come to a full stop so that the main character could describe it in excruciating detail. I don't have a problem with description. This was badly handled. Intersperse your details in the action, and broad brush your initial description sections. Don't say a character has blue eyes. Say that they narrowed their blue eyes.

During the first half of the book, Celia is supposed to be chasing down her vampire "sire", and destroy him before he comes back to finish the job with her. At halfway through, the problem just goes away deus ex machina style, when a background character produces the guy's head in a bag. Then, it became this thing with another vampire completely, and it's still not mentioned why anyone should care.

After the climax of the book, Celia's grandmother pulls her aside and tell her that she is one-fourth siren, a creature that, up until now, we had no idea existed in this world. During the resolution, they are having a funeral for Celia's best friend. Some bitch comes in during eulogies and interrupts the whole thing by singing. When Celia calls her on it, she proclaims that she's some kind of siren princess, and that Celia was the one being rude.

So much effort is put into making Celia some kind of victim too. Sure, she's a bodyguard and all, but her sister is dead! She was kidnapped when she was little! She was half-turned into a vampire! She can't eat solid food! She upset some supernatural royalty and now has to have a fight to the death with her! It sounds more like these two authors were trying to shoehorn every idea they ever had into one book, and it just looks schizophrenic.

This would have all been solved if they had just done a little world-building. Holy symbols, water, and ground are harmful to most of these predatory creatures, but somehow not a lot of people go to church? Why not? And if the existence of these creatures is well known, why aren't more precautions beyond "hire a guy" taken?

All in all, it was terrible. Would not suggest you buy it, let alone read it.

2.0/10

Fantasy - A. Lee Martinez - Divine Misfortune (2010)

I have a confession. You know that saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover"? I totally do. What do you expect from me? The cover is on the outside. Sure, I judge a book after it's in my hands on the synopsis on the back, or maybe even the first page, but it's the cover that gets it into my hand. I'm not proud of this. But it's worked well for me over the years. And with this one, a giant fist descending from heaven to crush a tiny man, I had to pick it up.

In case you can't tell from the title and cover, this book is not for the religious types. Not ones who can't laugh at the whole establishment, anyway. And certainly not ones who can't read science texts if they don't preach your church's version of the creation of everything, or consume any media if it doesn't reaffirm your particular sect of religion to be the right one.

However, this book is just right for me, an atheist. Hearts!

The premise of this tale is that society is driven by a partnership between humans and the immortal gods they worship. People pay tribute in various forms to their god: blood, sacrifice, money, services, lodgings, food; and then the gods work within their own realm to favor their follower. The main characters, Phil and Teri, are in the market for a god, so of course they turn to a god-follower matchmaking website on the internet. They sign up for the services of Luka, a raccoon luck god, who shows up on their doorstep with a suitcase. Hilarity ensues. Also, there is a primordial god of oblivion and chaos who hates him and a goddess of heartbreak torturing some hapless girl.

Did I mention that this book is fucking hilarious?

During the course of the book, there were several genuine LOL moments for me. In no particular order:

• Hades losing at a ninja video game to Phil
• Horrors of hell resigning themselves to watching a baseball game
• Chaos god referring to his followers as douchebags
• Zeus in a tracksuit

Did you catch that last one? Zeus. White flowing beard, big guy, lightning bolts, wearing a yellow tracksuit. Fucking awesome.

There were two books in particular that my mind kept calling back to: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Good Omens was more set in modern times, like this book, so it matched up more for me. But it was Small Gods that gave me pause.

I've mentioned before the Black Jewels trilogy is my favorite series of books. What I didn't mention was that Small Gods, even being part of the Discworld series, is my favorite book. I won't get into it now, just in case there is a book drought for me and I have to go through and just reread the books I've already read, but it brought up questions of where the gods' powers come from, a question that is resolved in that book, and similarly answered in this book. It's a mechanic I love, and for that reason alone, you should get both of these books.

Divine Misfortune raises its own questions, which go mostly unsolved, but let for the reader to decide for themselves: in a world populated by humans and gods, who is responsible for what events? Oh man, it's just so delicious!

There is one, and exactly one, thing keeping this book from being a ten out of ten. The ending. Pfft. What utter bullshit. Have you ever heard the song by Lemon Demon, "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny"? Here's a link to a video if you need a reminder. The part right before Chuck Norris gets defeated by fucking everybody on the planet? That was essentially the ending. What a crap, cheap climax. It was shit.

Still, you should get it and read it. I mean, it's still getting a good score.

9.5/10

Paranormal Romance - Various Authors - Inked (2010)

Sorry about the long wait between posts; somewhere in there I got married, so forgive me for being a bit distracted. Sadly, this post may be kind of short, too. I finished reading this book like two weeks ago, so it'll mostly be me trying to remember how I felt about it.

 This book is actually a compendium of novellas by four authors, and, if the title of the book didn't give it away, each story includes some kind of magical tattoo that is important to the plot. The spine labels this book as paranormal romance, which I think is just what they want to call human/fantasy creature love in a post-Twilight world, but it also labels the book as urban fantasy.

Please. There is way better urban fantasy than that.

Maybe it's because I do not like what's happened to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section of my B&N, but I felt that all of these stories blew. Only one of them isn't tied to some other book series by the author, and all of them include as a focus a crime, specifically a murder, because we all know because of TV is the only thing that happens of interest in our society. Each protagonist is an investigator of some sort, and honestly the plots just bled together in my mind because they were all so similar.

The first story, "Skin Deep" by Karen Chance, is the only one that isn't tied to a book series, but definitely reads like it is. It introduces the idea of magical wards mages use to protect themselves or attack others that appear as tattoos on the mage. But it doesn't really explain any better than that, which sucks, because the whole story is about how the protagonist uses them to track killers of a werewolf and to defeat them. What? The werewolf community is alive and well in this story, and takes on an interesting role that I wish was dwelled more upon. They're political! That's way cooler than some magical war on homeless people that you mention and then never discuss again. Also, I live in Las Vegas. I know that the author lives in Australia and probably just doesn't know, but Las Vegas Boulevard is not called Highway 93 when it's the strip. Especially not right on Tropicana. That would have been solved by a quick Google Map search.

The second story, "Armor of Roses" by Marjorie M. Liu, is tied to her Hunter Kiss series, of which I've read none of. Apparently time travel is okay, though? The protagonist has a old guy die in front of her car, but not before asking her to perform a task. So she goes back in time (?) to when her grandmother was a spy in China during World War II and Jewish kids were being enslaved with magical tattoos. WTF? Also she has pet demons that she can absorb into her skin as armor. What? Huh?

The third story, "Etched in Silver" by Yasmine Galenorn, is actually one that I enjoyed until the end. A half-human agent lives in the fae dimension and has to track down a serial rapist/killer in a secret marketplace. I couldn't help but see Hellboy 2's troll market when they were describing the whole thing. Also it describes her falling in love with a too-handsome stranger. I wanted, all the way until the end, for him to be the bad guy. He wasn't. Fuck that story. :P

The last story, "Human Nature" by Eileen Wilks, was not so bad. The problem was that it was already done in the first story. The protagonist is an FBI agent sleeping with a werewolf whose relative turns up dead. Both stories even call the werewolf community the "Were"! But I liked this one for the same reason I like Laurell K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry series: it doesn't hide magic in urban fantasy, it projects it head-on into society. There are organizations against magic users and the creatures steeped in it, support and revilement from the press, isolated communities, cults, all of that. It's not hidden from the general public, is what I mean. I did have another problem with this story. It's overuse of the word "damn" and all its relatives. There are other cuss words, Ms. Wilks. :(

Like I said, I really didn't like how the novellas all bled together and had the same plot points. They could have at least tried to use a different crime than murder. Seriously. What about arson? Then you could at least have your Mary-Sue investigators pulling children out of burning buildings safely. >:(

2/10

Graphic Novel - Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins - The Halls Below (2010)

I told you I read comic books. Bet you didn't know that usually meant webcomics in book form, did you?

Penny Arcade sits on an understocked shelf at our house, next to Futurama and nothing else: a shelf of repeated references of dialogue in our day-to-day conversations. The phrase Ultimate Fucking Pussy Mode comes up frequently when playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Donkey Kong Country Returns. We refer to the UNR Wolfpack teams as the Dickwolves. Throwing old food in the garbage incurs a recitation of whether or not this "crystallized demon blood" is still good. So it's safe to say that in the Rosenberg household, Penny Arcade has the stamp of approval.

So it may surprise you to know that we didn't have all six books until, literally, yesterday. It came in the mail, finally, along with their TV show on DVD and my extra-giant Black Mantle hoodie. Last night, while imaging computers at work, I read the whole thing. Now, I'm not going to discuss the strips themselves, though this tome includes several good ones, not limited to just the one with the Ikea delivery poop guy. They've been on the internet for six years now (this book is of all of the strips from 2005), so if you want the strips without the accompanying text, you are physically capable of just reading them.

In a textual sense though, it started off really strong. The intro is by Chris Perkins, the creative director at WotC who also DMed for the PA guys, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton. In the intro he also digs at Wheaton, which is funny. Seriously, don't split the party.

I like having the books of the strips mostly for the text that comes with the strips. It's fine to go back and read the strips and the newsposts on the site. But usually the newsposts are fraught with news, and not so much the thought process that led to the joke in the strip. The thought process is what I really like, and I love that it has been immortalized for some strips in the form of podcasts and Fourth Panel videos. Some of the accompanying text includes this, but sometimes it just talks about the strip. I don't play and digest video games like other people do. I am certainly not teh hardcorez. I like Sims. I occasionally do a replay of FFX. I'm not good at FPSs and I don't play WoW. (Jesus, isn't this blog supposed to be about books?) Because of this, I can't really appreciate some of their jokes without an explanation, which sometimes tears a joke apart.

However, it did get points for referencing Arcanum, an RPG I wish I liked the gameplay of more, because the world needs more steampunk RPGs, and a game I had never heard of until Bryan lent it to me before I moved out of my parents' house.

Overall, it was a nice way to kick out some time. I had actually been reading something else, but when something like a Penny Arcade book lands in your lap, post-apocalyptic zombie fiction can go suck it for a night.

There were two things I had problems with. The first is less complex than the second. First, during the part about Jerry's first child's birth, there was a conversation documented about how their first sons were born on console launch dates. Mike's first son was born on the anniversary of the Dreamcast's launch. But the way that this was presented made it sound like Gabriel was much older than he could have been, somewhere in the vicinity of 11. Kid is 7. I had to do some Wiki searches to confirm this, because the book made it very weird to wrap my head around.

The second is something that I actually feel shame about. The last section of the book is dedicated to immortalizing the world of Battal, which was a high fantasy setting that was essentially community-built. The Elemenstor Saga strip came into being in 2005, and began a creation of a fictional franchise that was essentially a parody of the development of other fantasy franchises. There was a fictional cartoon series, a fictional fetish community, and apparently a thirteen-book cycle that was present in this section, including the first book of said cycle being rewritten four times. There was a four page timeline! Four pages. That's too long.

I do feel shame in not wanting to read it. I understand that most of the data in this community-built world was lost to server crashes, and I appreciate that it was included in the book for those that like that kind of thing, but GOD. That was boring. It was high fantasy, which I already don't like, and that timeline killed me. Timelines are not for me. They are the pizza crusts that get left on my plate and other people berate me for not consuming. I imagine the comments may feature some of this argument, but I just don't enjoy shit like that.

Like I said, I appreciate that they included it for the people it is for, but it isn't for me. (Do you see what I did there?) But it is still a Penny Arcade book that includes text by Holkins, who would instantly dethrone Anne Bishop as my favorite author if he would just get off his ass and release a novel.

9.25/10