My heart was beating so fast at the end of the first section of The Quick, and Lauren Owen’s ability to write a ripping cliffhanger at section ends was phenomenal. She also has a gift for developing characters that feel real and compelling; to be fair, not all characters – I thought James Norbury, around whom much of the action revolves, was kind of a drip, for example. However, when I thought back over what I read, there was little there there. To take a […]
Fun Junk with a Hint of Handmaiden
God Save the Queen is junk, but it’s fun junk. 3.5 stars really. It reads sort of like a Janet Evanovich novel, not terribly well-written but entertaining because of some interesting characters and narrative possibilities. In a world where vampires and werewolves are in charge (Queen Victoria is one of said vampires), goblins run the underworld (literally), and humans are viewed with suspicion (because they hate the monsters and half-breeds), of course Xandra the half-breed daughter of an aristocrat would discover something unusual about herself […]
If Buffy the Vampire Slayer were written by Raymond Chandler….
My sister has been pressuring me to read this book for a couple of years. I think I put it off on principle. It took me a couple years to convince her to read The Lord of the Rings (when we were much younger), but it was the release of the movies that finally did it. She also rejected my suggestions of A Game of Thrones (too political), Harry Potter (not interested), Brandon Sanderson (she keeps forgetting about it) and John Scalzi (ditto). So I […]