This one was picked for me for a swap on Swap Bot. I honestly can’t think of much to say.
Set in a high fantasy world, one of the main characters, Snow, is what I’d guess to be a Drow, or dark elf. Her people live underground, are matriarchal, and the gods sound like Drow gods. Snow is trained in healing as well as magic, and is what seems to be a drug runner. She arrives in a town where everyone has been slaughtered, and ends up having to fight against a contingent of soldiers. While there, she meets an outcast from another land, and they end up teaming up to… fight for or against gods?
I don’t know, it started to blur together, and I don’t remember the last 25% of the book. The writing was fine, but the world took a little bit to grasp, and I think I wasn’t in the mood for high fantasy. I can’t tell you much about it, other than it was simply okay, and Snow’s weird flying snake thing was neat.
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
I have no idea what to think of this book. Really, I just don’t know what to think. I know a lot of people love it, but I don’t know, I don’t get it.
Billy Pilgrim is in the military and it taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans during World War 2. During this time, he is taken to Dresden, and housed in Slaughterhouse Five. Then he survives the firebombing of Dresden. While he’s doing this, he’s also traveling through time, to before the war, after the war, and when he was abducted by aliens from Tralfamadore and installed as an exhibit in their zoo.
The book following Croak, where Lexington Bartleby learned to be a Grim Reaper from her uncle. It’s fun, although I didn’t care for the end.
Lex has gotten used to Killing people and is used to Croak, but the townsfolk hate her, because of a slip up of at the end of the first book. Things go from bad to worse when the fountain in the middle of town explodes, killing some of the residents of Croak. They blame it on the rogue grim that’s been terrorizing Croak and other places.
Lex and her friends have to go on the run to avoid being locked up and charged with all kinds of problems, so they end up going to DeMyse, which is like Las Vegas. All kinds of glitz and glam abound, as well a herd of junior grims that think the Croak juniors are silly and out of place.
A lot goes on in this book, and I really enjoyed it. Also, the stakes are high, and Lex has to figure out what’s going on before the Grimsphere takes a giant dump into the Afterlife and destroys it all.
Well, I didn’t expect the ending of the book, but it was one hell of a way to go out. Lex and her friends, as well as Uncle Mort, have to figure out how to close the swirling rips in the Afterlife, otherwise it’s going to be destroyed. They travel to Necropolis to start there, as the only way to reset everything is to close the Portals the Grimsphere has opened up.
While in Necropolis, there are all kinds of interesting things. There’s a restaurant that I wishe really existed: A Ferris Wheel. You get in on the bottom, get your drinks, and then it travels around. When you’re ready to order, you do it by speakerphone, and then at the top of the wheel, your food is delivered. It sounds really awesome. There’s also a training section for the junior grims that is really neat: it mimics some of the worst places the grims go to Kill and Cull souls. There’s a sad part to the end of it that I didn’t really like though.
In fact, the last of the book is a real tearjerker. The way to close the Portals isn’t pleasant, and there’s a lot of sacrifice to reset the Afterlife and undo the damage the original Grim did. I cried during the last few chapters. I guess that’s good though, shows I was attached to it.
I’m a Johnathan Maberry fangirl. I discovered Patient Zero this year, the beginning of the Joe Ledger Series, and I was hooked. I’ve been through all the books, and wanted a zombie book, so I settle for Maberry’s tween series, Rot and Ruin.
The series follows 15 year old Benny Imura in a world where zoms (zombies) are the norm. He lives in a small town of about 28000 people in California, where they’re protected by a chain link fence. At 15, everyone must get a job, and after trying all the jobs in town and being turned down or hating them, Benny reluctantly becomes an apprentice to his brother Tom, a bounty hunter and professional Zombie killer.
I knew Maberry’s books were good, but this one is especially good. The characters are complicated, and Benny acts like a fairly young teen who’s grown up resenting his brother. He thinks his brother’s a coward for running on First Night, when the zombies attacked, instead of saving their mom. By the end, Benny’s more of an adult, and he realizes why Tom did what he did. The character growth of Benny is good, and a large part of why I enjoyed it.