Book roundup time again

[annathepiper]

Recently purchased in print from B&N, one in-store and the other by mail order:

• Unbroken, by Rachel Caine. Urban fantasy, Book 4 of her Outcast Season series.
• In the Dead of Winter, by Abbey Pen Baker. Mystery. This is a Holmes-universe novel that’s proposing that the daughter of Irene Adler is herself a famous detective, and has a loyal partner who helps her solve crimes and chronicles their adventures. So essentially, “gender-flipped version of Holmes and Watson without actually being Holmes and Watson”. Saw a review from Laurie R. King (who knows something about Holmesian novels, I daresay) speaking well of this, so I wanted to check it out. Ordering was my only option, though, since local libraries were for once not terribly helpful in tracking it down.

Meanwhile, picked up electronically from B&N, all re-buys of books previously owned in print:

• All three books of the Sign of Seven trilogy, by Nora Roberts. Paranormal romance. Y’all may recall I was a little wibbly on how much I liked this, but I do like me some Nora in general and I wanted to keep these around even if I didn’t want to retain print copies.
• The first three books of the Mercy Thompson series, by Patricia Briggs. Urban fantasy. Shifting Briggs over to electronic buying since she’s got a lot of work at this point, which translates to a lot of shelf space, and I think I want her electronically instead.

This brings me to 25 for the year.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[mmegaera]

I have to say that the Sign of Seven books are probably one of my favorite Nora trilogies (in spite of the mild horror-y aspects), and one of the few where I really like all three books. For some reason, I tend to love two out of three of each of her trilogies, and despise the third (not necessarily in that order -- I don't like Born in Fire, for instance, but I love Born in Ice and Born in Shame).

[annathepiper]

As a regular SF/F reader I actually found the worldbuilding a little weak in the Sign of Seven set--I felt like at the end, Nora kind of pulled her punch. But I did quite like the buildup, and in general I liked all of the characters even if I would have preferred less 'OMG ALL THREE OF THE WOMEN ARE PREGGERS because it's all MAGICAL and stuff'.

Another friend of mine has been reading the Born trilogy! I haven't gotten around to that one yet myself.

[mmegaera]

I read SF/F on a fairly regular basis, too, but I've read enough paranormal romance that I think my subconscious automatically makes allowances for world-building issues [g]. At any rate, it just slides by -- except for the bit about the magical pregnancies. I thought that was silly, too.

The Born In set is good, but I like the Gallaghers of Ardmore better of her two Irish trilogies.

[annathepiper]

I keep yakking with my aforementioned friend about one of the reasons that I don't read more romance than I do is because so much of it is very heteronormative, and there's always the expectation of the couple getting married at the end--and very often that the woman will get pregnant as well. To have that grafted in as a Magical Plot Point(TM) was definitely heavyhanded!

So noted about the other trilogies. :) I've got a couple other Noras on the queue that I want to read before I pick up more of hers, not to mention that I'm way behind on the J.D. Robbs! But when I clear out my queue of her books maybe I'll pick those up.