when real life sucks, there's always books...

[jencat]

...and tv.  Definitely tv.

Although this week was mostly a total book binge, really.  An urban fantasy book binge because, hell, when do I buy anything non-genre these days, after all.

Although, book number one was Winterstrike. And it was actually rather fabulous (and yay, SFX actually loved it too, shock horror!).  The end didn't matter, after all that, as it was first in a trilogy, so it all held together better than Banner of Souls.  Minor, minor quibble that yep, Essegui and Hestia's narrations sounded so similar after a while it was only by the location that you could really tell them apart, but hell, pretty minor.  Anything that has a version of La Malcontenta as its first chapter can pretty much do no wrong.

Next up was The Sweet Scent of Blood, which gets an automatic extra star from me for being set in London... And another one for the goblins' flashing trainers :o) Did love those little guys...

I think I enjoyed most of it overall... the reveal about Genny's heritage was played just about convincingly, although the whole supernatural smackdown thing at the end was slightly WFT.  Way too much was happening offscreen that we really needed to see, and, dare I say it, Suzanne McLeod didn't quite use the setting as effectively as she could.  I mean, the whole alternate history thing wasn't tapped into quite enough (although the 80s riots thing was) considering the past practically jumps down your throat with every street name in town.  I probably read it a bit close to Midnight Never Come, which used the location better, even if it did fall down a bit at the end.

Lol, what did Greenwich ever do to warrant being Suckertown, I wonder? Going by London's history, the East End is the traditional no-go area, but I'm just being picky.  And there was a slight.. lack of ethnicity, which felt strange.  Every supernatural species you could think of, but it was all fairly white bread.  And London, as a rule, is anything but.

Oh, except all the Russian stuff, and Malik, wherever he comes from.  I kinda liked Malik, as he was about a million times less annoying than Finn...

It was in the Kim Harrison mould, I think, which is great as I love Kim Harrison... In traditional UF style, there was waaay too much angst heaped on Genny in a ridiculously short space of time, and she was so isolated it seemed a little unbalanced, but I'm done bitching now.  It was fun, and weighted down with a lot more angst than I expected.  The trolls were cool, the vamp mythology/science was all thought out to such a degree that I'm kinda awestruck, the Alter Vamp spell stuff wasn't flagged at all and was way too big a twist to jump straight into; it's intrigue you should be trying to create, not downright confusion...

But I love the goblins!! And it's all been left open for the sequel next year (although I'm still not entirely sure what's been left open exactly, but there you go).
 

Next up was Embrace The Night... which leads me onto a whole "hell, I'm actually totallly shallow" epiphany,  I think, mainly from the last Carrie Vaughn Kitty book.

 

Last weekend I read Kitty Takes a Holiday.  And now, having loved the first two Kitty books, I kinda hate the series.  I hate to say it, but they just broke the cardinal rule of UF,  and made the love interest insanely boring.  I really don't care if you want to do the whole 'wolves mate for life' thing; I can even buy the whole 'soulmates destined to be together' thing at a pinch (thank you, Twilight), and I thought I was so into the 'go for the non-insane guy you can actually build a life with' thing recently... but omigod I was tearing my hair out by the end of Holiday.  I'm being shallow, but there was zero chemistry between Kitty and Ben, and precisely zero buildup to them suddenly being joined at the hip.  Hell, if I was Cormac, I'd have done a runner too.

Er yep, sorry Ben has so much trauma adjusting to being a wolf, but god it made him irritating.  And basically, Kitty still pretty much doesn't like being a wolf, so we're not gaining much.  It works in Bitten, because it has resonance, and history (and Clay cracks me up) - but not here.  And yep, I flicked to the back of Kitty and the Silver Bullet in the shop last week, and woah, turns out I'm pretty much done with the series now.  Shame, and all... they used to be fun.
 

Which brings me back to Karen Chance, who hasn't done that at all, and I'm actually enjoying them more with each installment.  Except for the way she absolutely has to shoehorn some random vamp!sex in there somewhere, for purely metaphysical spell reasons, obviously... But lordy, her vampires are fairly dull and geis or no, can Cassie please stop drooling over half the male characters.

 

Oh hell, she can drool over Pritkin all she wants, actually.  Yes, he has a crappy name, and his backstory is just this side of WTF, but the story gets sooo much more fun when he's around.  Now that's the kind of progression I like... He was mad as a box of frogs in Touch the Dark, and pretty damn obnoxious with it, but I'm guessing Chance actually saw the way it got that much more interesting to have a character who wasn't chasing Cassie (at that point, anyhoo) and realised they should totally hook up in a professional capacity.  It's fun! And now he's, er, half incubus! and Merlin! and anything else you care to name (I'm starting to think I imagined the stark naked ley line chase around Paris, but I really didn't, did I...)

Okay, aside from the shipping.. I love how messing about with the timeline is just beginning to pay off - I'd been waiting for them to show how the pixie got locked up in that cage back in book one, and it just finally got picked up in the third book... although I really don't think she planned the Pritkin stuff, the rest of it is pretty darn carefully plotted.  Added to the nice sense of the absurd, with the Greciae and the mad Vegas casino.. I'm kinda loving it.  Roll on book four!!
 

And the tv... sooo much good tv! 

Prison Break is still keeping me hooked (yep, it's mad, but I care!) and even if Sarah Connor had a bit of a dip this week, I'm pretty sure it's only a temporary thing.  Waiting for Daisies to come back still, but oh my god, I finally found True Blood today and I spent most of the first two eps with a big daft grin on my face... lordy that was good!

Talk about Southern Gothic...! It was so deep in the backwoods I was having flashbacks to The Gift... And Anna Paquin finally remembered how to do the accent, all those years after massacring Rogue (I almost kinda forgave her, after this). She was good, too; all fey and off kilter (little bit like Anna Friel in Daisies, maybe) Also slightly amusing that two of the leads (Paquin and Ryan Kwanten) are  Aussie/NZ...

I think I've been waiting for someone to finally do a proper tv take on vamps so long, I just hadn't realised it.. And there it all is.  The sex and the death and it just about washed the taste of Moonlight away at last, thank god (nope, can't remember why I watched it either now).
 

 

Of course it was Alan Ball who came up with it, I just didn't think he'd manage to pull it off quite so classily... Truth is, Dead Until Dark annoyed me to the point where I read five chapters about five years ago, and gave up.  As i can't even find my copy of it now (although, weirdly, the unread Living Dead in Dallas is still sitting on my shelf, right next to Bitten) I have no clue how it compares to the book, and I don't really care.  They fed the telepathy, and the sense of menace, in perfectly -- I kept wanting Sookie's hair do (cos, hello, shallow!), and oh my god, Bill was perfectly cast.  Yes, this is a guy who looks... kinda hungry (Alex O'Laughlin, please take note).  And a little old fashioned.  And, bar a couple of minor accent slips, he absolutely sounded like he was in the Civil War.  There was fantastic chemistry, and that odd tension the whole time he was on screen.

Truth be told, I've heard someone compare it to Sunshine, and while this version of Sookie has a little Rae in her, Bill wasn't nearly other enough for that comparison to fly.  Most of the other vamps were a little silly and OTT (the end of the second ep was slightly daft with that), but not half as OTT as half the sex scenes... the whole thing felt sticky and grubby, and when you pair it all up with Bill's restraint and the hysteria of the evangelism in the title sequence... it's freakin' powerful.

I might have to go watch it again now... Except the last ep of Dexter starts in a bit, and I so want to see Lila get thoroughly squished!