Tag Archives: Simon R. Green

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Holidayish linkity

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Make sure you enter the contest for Even the Score (Knight Errant #3) by KD Sarge! Closes 7 pm CST, December 29.

Stop by and enter the contest for Dear Alex (2nd ed) by Clare London! Closes 7 pm CST, December 29.

Don’t forget to enter the contest for the Brit Boys: On Boys box set by Clare London, Ashe Barker, MK Elliott, Lucy Felthouse, KD Grace, Lily Harlem, Sarah Masters, & Josephine Myles! Closes 7 pm CST, December 29.

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Reading Update
Ghost of a Chance (Ghost Finders #1) by Simon R Green. Made it to page 66, then put it down for a few weeks and have no interest in going back to it. Elspeth’s review nails it.
The Atrocity Archives (The Laundry Files #1) by Charles Stross. Good paranormal thriller about Bob Howard, a guy who works for a secret British intelligence agency, the Laundry, in a world where mathematics can open portals to other, far less friendly, universes. Inspired by HP Lovecraft and the Cold War-era British spy thrillers (and acknowledges such). This edition also contains The Concrete Jungle [The Laundry Files #1.5].
The Jennifer Morgue (The Laundry Files #2) by Charles Stross. Good paranormal thriller as Bob teams up with a partner from another secret agency and is caught up in a very specific hero archetype geas… This edition also contained the short story PIMPF, which I’d subtitle Bob Gets an Intern and Almost Lets Said Intern Die…Whoops. (Because of the book’s title, I had “27 Jennifers” by Mike Doughty stuck in my head for a few days.)
The Fuller Memorandum (The Laundry Files #3) by Charles Stross. Good paranormal thriller, leaning toward horror as Bob learns an awful lot about his boss after his boss goes missing. And then he has to deal with fanatical Elder Gods’ cultists, leading to Bob’s Very Bad, No Good, Completely Horrific Day.
The Apocalypse Codex (The Laundry Files #4) by Charles Stross. Good paranormal horror thriller in which Bob, our computational demonologist, heads to America to check out an evangelist who’s taken an interest in the British Prime Minister.
Hockey Confidential: Inside Stories from People Inside the Game by Bob McKenzie. Good collection of true stories about an assortment of Canadians related in some way to the NHL, from Karl Subban (PK’s dad) to Connor McDavid to a skating coach.

“…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…” -Mayhem

Reading, Reviewettes, Those Cats

Linkity’s guide to gift guides

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Make sure you enter the contest for The Working Elf Blues by Piper Vaughn! Closes 7 pm CST, December 16.

Stop by and enter the contest for Blood in the Water (An Act of Piracy #1) by Tami Veldura! Closes 7 pm CST, December 18.

Congrats to Missy1980, who won When Love Flue In (2nd ed) by Lillian Francis! When Love Flue In (2nd ed) is being released today by Totally Bound.

Randonymity

I’m ready for some nice quiet weeks! While I am feeling much better, this week’s drama was Chaos rubbing his face so hard he scraped his cornea again – second time this year and third time ever. 🙁 Because he kept messing with it and making it worse, he ended up in The Cone of Shame.

The hard plastic cone didn’t go very well – he spent a lot of time walking backwards after running into things and getting stopped in his tracks. If he’d had it on more than a few hours, I would’ve had to repaint the lower two feet of my condo. Fortunately Jeanne stopped over with a soft cone – much better.

He’s feeling pretty sorry for himself, especially because I put ointment in his eye four times each day… Mayhem is completely unfazed by his bizarre accoutrement.

I got tagged for the Tumblr Lockscreen Challenge.

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More Gift Guides Than You’ll Ever Need

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Reading Update
Property of a Lady Faire (Secret Histories #8) by Simon R Green. Ok continuation of this series about supernatural enforcer Edwin Drood and his complicated relationship with his extremely large and secretive family. The next book in the series doesn’t come out until sometime in 2015, by which point I won’t remember anything in the ongoing story arc. 🙂

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Linkity gives thanks

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Congrats to tea58, who won Baited by Tami Veldura! Tami will release Baited today.

Congrats to Jess1, who won The Fifth Son (2nd ed) by Blaine D Arden! The Fifth Son will be released by Cayendi Press today.

Congrats to Sally, who won Stardust by Andrew Grey! Stardust will be available as part of the Dreamspinner Press holiday collection Celebrate! on December 1.

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  • Briefish linkity today because of my holiday weekend. 🙂

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Reading Update
Casino Infernale (Secret Histories #7) by Simon R Green. Another ok addition to this series. Once again, only Eddie can save the family Drood and the world, blah blah blah.

“I disapprove of this bear and of the coworkers who sent it to you with all of those terrifying ‘Get Well Soon’ balloons.” -Mayhem

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Linkity limps along

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Congrats to Melandra, who won Out of Time by Clare London!

Congrats to Ardent Ereader, who won Making It Pay by JL Merrow!

Randonymity

  • I spent Wednesday evening in the emergency room with what they initially thought were kidney stones, but which turned out to be a ruptured hemorrhagic ovarian cyst. Yay, painkillers!

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Reading Update
All Clear (All Clear #2) by Connie Willis. No reviewette I write can possibly do this book (or really, the single book composed of Blackout and All Clear) justice. Amazing. Epic. Subtlety of detail that had me paging back to confirm something hinted. Love. Loss. Loyalty. Uncertainty. Hope. Humor. Tragedy. The triumph of the human spirit. Connie Willis has outdone herself with this amazing tale of time travel so deeply rooted in place. Her Hugo and Nebula awards for Blackout/All Clear bring her lifetime totals to eleven Hugos and seven Nebulas. Make sure you have both books on hand and clear your schedule for a few days…
Fire Watch by Connie Willis. Pretty good short that introduced us to the time-traveling historians of Oxford. When comparing this to Blackout/All Clear, you can really see how much Willis has honed her craft over the years.
To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis. Delightfully excellent romp through 1888 and 1940 with the time-traveling historians of Oxford. If you’re reading it for the first time, don’t be concerned when you have absolutely no idea what’s going on for the first quarter of the book. You’re in the narrator’s headspace and he has no idea, either.
For Heaven’s Eyes Only (Secret Histories #5) by Simon R Green. Ok continuation of this James Bond-inspired paranormal series. Yet another cliffhanger. Don’t be surprised when I suddenly stop reading the series, even if I have the next book on hand. Cliffies really piss me off.
Live and Let Drood (Secret Histories #6) by Simon R Green. Another ok continuation of this paranormal series. At least it wasn’t a cliffie!

“…zzzzzzzzzzzz…” -Chaos

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Linkity is taking a four day weekend, falalalalala!

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  • Finished a Christmas gift:

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Reading Update
The Spy Who Haunted Me (Secret Histories #3) by Simon R Green. Ok paranormal thriller in which Eddie is teamed up with five other agents, who must work together and compete against each other to solve five great mysteries. The best part of this was Walker from the Nightside being one of the agents.
From Hell with Love (Secret Histories #4) by Simon R Green. Ok continuation of this paranormal thriller series. I would’ve been severely annoyed about the cliffhanger ending if I hadn’t had the next book on hand.
Blackout (All Clear #1) by Connie Willis. Very good story about the delightful chaotic time traveling historians of Oxford. Of course things go terribly awry. 🙂 Be warned that this is the first half of a story and things stop at a precarious point, so have All Clear on hand to continue. *hopes that someone returns an ebook copy to my library very, very soon*

“Socks socks socks socks socks!” -Mayhem

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Linkity fears winter is drawing nigh

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Reading Update
Daemons Are Forever (Secret Histories #2) by Simon R Green. Pretty good continuation of this paranormal suspense series loosely (very loosely) based on James Bond: Eddie Drood is Bond, the Armourer is Q, Penny is Moneypenny, the Matriarch is M, and the books’ titles are hauntingly not-quite-familiar.
Libriomancer (Magic Ex Libris #1) by Jim C. Hines. Good contemporary fantasy about a wizard whose power is being able to make things from books real. Due to a magical mishap, he’s been relegated to working as a librarian in the UP (Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) and not using magic… until the shit hits the fan, of course.
Codex Born (Magic Ex Libris #2) by Jim C. Hines. Ok continuation of this contemporary fantasy series about a UP book mage and the dryad he loves. That’s a radical simplification of things, but I’m still annoyed about the ending – it wasn’t a cliffie, but things were left way too wide open. If that happens with the next book, I won’t continue reading the series.

“Mom, I’m pretty sure you should back away slowly from the photo effects.” -Mayhem

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Halloweenity!

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Reading Update
The Man with the Golden Torc (Secret Histories #1) by Simon R Green. Good paranormal thriller about Eddie Drood, the black sheep of a massive family that quietly protects the world from the supernatural. I was completely surprised by all of the turns this one took! *still  boggled* This isn’t rated higher because there was an awful lot of exposition that felt unnecessary and at times unending.

“I wish the windows were open. Mom is mean.” -Mayhem

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Pink fluff of linkity (I have no idea what that means, either)

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Thanks to Ralph at The Dancing Dove, where I won a copy of Journey To Compromise by Mira Ismine, and to Kim Dare, at whose blog I won a copy of one of her books for only being a sort of bad guesser.

Contests

  • Authors Bronwyn Green and Paige Tyler gracefully dealt with both having released books called Just Right based on Little Red Riding Hood by having a joint contest! Visit both blogs by March 29 for your chance to win copies of both books.

Books & Reading

  • Really excellent post about DRM over at An American Editor. My favorite quote from the post: “Right now Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and publishers are able to ignore the consumer in the nascent ebook market. But the backlash is coming.” (As an aside, I’ve chosen to reward publishers and bookstores that make and sell DRM-free books and avoid those that don’t have DRM-free offerings.)
  • Nice post over at Dear Author reacting to the complaint that ebooks and “the loss of the public nature of the physical artifact will result in the loss of culture.”
  • Gizmodo had a blurb about “online music industry giants” making a plea to stop music piracy. I couldn’t help but read the following sentence while thinking about the publishing industry and authors: “…it’s tough to take an earnest plea for buying music seriously when it comes from business middlemen rather than, you know, musicians.” So, authors, keep spreading the ebook anti-piracy message, because you are the people most likely to be heard.
  • Emily candidly discusses that topic we all avoid – book addiction (and there’s a great comic included!).

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Reading Update
Reading Update Update: I’m slowly working on adding my wee reviewettes to my LibraryThing. (Would that I had thought of this quite some time ago…) Depending on the tone and formality of said reviewettes, they’ll either be in the Reviews or the Comments field. When you view my LibraryThing, click on the various available styles until you find one that shows the comments. (Which letter that will be varies by browser, weirdly.)
The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny (Nightside, Book 10) by Simon R. Green. PI John Taylor’s back in another dark noirish urban fantasy; what else is there to say?
Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger. Excellent m/m romance told in epistolary style about two boys (a nerd and a jock) who fall in love in high school and then lose touch with each other after going to college. I’d heard nothing but good about this book, yet I still wasn’t prepared for how it sucked me in. Highly recommended.
Hideout by Katie Allen. ebook. This excellent m/m romantic suspense is about a cop who’s guarding one of the characters from Private Dicks for seven months until he can testify in a trial. Really, why aren’t there more witness protection books that include remodeling the safe house? 🙂 Highly recommended. Hopefully, now that Katie’s writing full-time, she’ll give us some more of her excellent m/m romance soon. (Oh, and you really need to read Private Dicks first to get the most out of this book! I promise, it won’t be a hardship.) As if you hadn’t guessed, highly recommended.
Sex and Sexuality by Willa Okati. ebook. Ok m/m romance about a professor who went through “homosexual deprogramming” when he was younger and is now trying to follow the straight life, complete with evil bitch fiancee (more caricature than anything else). Published in 2007, this is definitely not one of Okati’s stronger books.
From Afar by Ava March. ebook. Very good historical paranormal m/m romance about a vampire obsessed by a young lord who has to change the lord into a vampire to save his life. The ending was a bit abrupt – perhaps there’s to be a sequel? (I know, I know, another historical!)
The Hit List by Anne Brooke. ebook. This m/m romance was a mixed read for me. I found the first third very frustrating, not really knowing what the heck was going on. In fact, I put the book aside and read the previous two books. When I returned to The Hit List, the middle third wasn’t quite so frustrating, and the final third was quite good. In fact, I started to suspect that the first third was meant to put the reader into the very confused headspace of the narrator.
Paul’s D’Marco by Leiland Dale. ebook short. Ok short m/m romantic suspense about a police detective and the psychic that’s called in to help the police find a serial child killer. A titch more editing and fleshing out the story would’ve moved this from ok to good.
Persistence Pays by Mara Ismine. ebook short. Very cute m/m romance about a martial artist who’s been trying for years to avoid spending too much time with his irresistible but slutty best friend.
Emergency (A City Hospital Novel) by Drew Zachary. ebook. Typical sweet’n’steamy m/m romance from Drew Zachary about an EMT who’s good friends with a doctor going through a divorce and questioning his sexuality. Very low angst.
Caught Running by Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux. ebook reread. Good m/m romance about two guys who went to high school together who are now teaching and coaching at that same school. (I noticed headhopping this time, but don’t remember noticing it the first time I read the book.)

“Pink fluff, I devour you!” -Mayhem