Book Log #99: The Down Home Zombie Blues, by Linnea Sinclair

"But Anna," I hear you cry, "What happened to Harry Potter?" Fret not--this is simply the result of not wanting to take spazzkat's hardbacks out of the house, while at the same time not wanting to go without something to read on the bus, either. Rest assured I'm still working on finishing the Potter series. It'll just be that Deathly Hallows won't be book #100. Oh well. ;)

And as it happens, Linnea Sinclair's The Down Home Zombie Blues was actually a bit of a welcome break after the Harry Potter read-a-thon I've been on. It calls itself a romance on the spine--but don't hold that against it. For me, it read like a good solid love story as well as a halfway decent little skiffy one, and I think I actually like it better than the previous Sinclair I've read this year.

We have your basic covert First Contact plot here, in which Earth or at least a tiny fraction of the population thereof discovers that holy shit there's an entire spacefaring civilization out there, and not only that, but part of it's sending killer critters down onto the planet. Florida police sergeant Theo Petrakos meets up with Guardian Force Commander Jorie Mikkalah, and I'm tellin' ya, it was a refreshing change of pace to see a romance in which the involved parties never have hugely stupid misunderstandings that leave them snarky at one another for half the book. There's no time for that crap here--Theo and Jorie, after all, have a planet to save. Creatures called zombies--not to be confused with the shambling, brain-consuming undead, but rather, critters that were originally engineered to guard the transit Hatches used by the aforementioned spacefaring civilization but which have now gone horribly, horribly wrong--are on the loose. Worse yet, they may have been hijacked by the enemies of Jorie's people, who are themselves at large on the planet.

Critter hunting ensues. Things go splody. Theo swears a lot in Greek, and both he and Jorie have snarky things to say about their exes, and in between laser battles and some surprisingly well-handled bringing in of Theo's superiors on the crisis at hand, we also get smooching and sexx0rs. All in all the romance was in just about the exact right balance for me with the bigger story, and all in all I enjoyed it quite a bit. Four stars.

Book Log #100: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling

It took me a few days to finish it off, since I had to read it a few bits at a time, but as of tonight I've also finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. An erratic read for me, all in all. It had a good strong start for me, a middle that was frequently leaden and seemingly pointless, and an ending that, on the heels of the aforementioned leaden middle, was robbed of some of the darkness and grit it should have maintained.

Which is not to say I didn't like the darkness and grit of this ending--because oh my yes, it was quite effective. And I'll cheerfully say that the final funeral bit did bring active tears to my eyes, and any book that can do that gets extra points. The ending, also, was a decent enough followup to the good stuff at the beginning. But that middle stretch... guh. A lot of it read for me as if Ms. Rowling suddenly found herself realizing holy crap the series is almost done Lassie's still in the well and I haven't paired everybody off yet AIGH!

Don't get me wrong--I don't mind that a lot of pairings get set up in this book, on general principle. And with the main younger members of the cast getting old enough that they're starting to get interested in such things, it's totally plausible. But my gold standard for "high school romance"--which this essentially is, even if it's in a magical setting--is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and hey, what can I say, ol' Joss brought a lot more Funny to the whole thing. And, more importantly, integrated it better into the overall plot. In this particular book, especially in regards to Harry, it felt forced.

In fairness though I shall also say that there are very good points to this book: backstory on Voldemort makes it worth the time spent for the reading all by itself. Watching the older Harry and Ron and Hermione react to younger students is occasionally quite snicker-worthy. The most notable of the older-character romances that crops up actually interests me enough that I wouldn't mind seeing decent fic on that, just because I like the characters involved. (The other older-character romance, the one that drives everyone batshit, also was kind of fun but for different reasons--I like how the tension there finally got resolved.) And, for the first time in the entire series, Draco actually, finally got interesting. ;)

All in all, though, I find this the most uneven of the series. Two and a half stars.