Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon

This is BOOK TWO of the Outlander series. If you care about spoilers and have not read book one [or if you have only seen the show (whyhaveyounotseentheshowjustlookathim)], you've been warned.

Amazon Link

I first read Outlander on the longest. planeride. ever. back in 2003, but somehow I didn't realize it was a series because I was in my "punk rock journalist" phase and wasn't reading books (that didn't last long, Music is loud.). So back when book 6? 7? came out, I read the whole extant series. Now that the show is happening and there's a new book out, I'm revisiting over the holidays.

Here is how you feel when you finish Outlander:

And here is what happens when you start chapter 1 of DiA:

Then you go to Goodreads or Amazon or Diana Gabaldon's website and check to see if somehow the publishers are calling any old follow-up a sequel these days, and what is the language coming to? But no, this is definitely book 2.

If you'd asked me before I started this re-read, I'd have said that one of the strengths of the Outlander series is how Gabaldon avoids the trap of having her characters interact with Famous People from the Past at every available opportunity. By-and-large, that's still true as far as I remember, but I had forgotten this book.

Errrrone be famous in here. It's like one of those movies with the poster full of Name Brand Actors, and I'm really glad that Gabaldon shifted away after this book. There are dukes and duchesses and Ladies of the Court, two kings (or rather, a Real King and a Boy Who Would Be King), a bunch of Highlander chieftains, and probably some other famous characters I didn't recognize. And all of them looooove Jamie and Claire. Which is fine but you have to be willing to take your disbelief and put it on a slow ship to somewhere Far Far Away (Madagascar? Sierra Leone? Rio?). I like fantasy and time travel so I am very experienced at this particular trick. Plus Jamie is an idealized man and Claire is, of course, all of us ladies who deserve an ideal husband, so of course everyone would simply adore them both.

This is the book where the Frasers try to change history so that the massacre at Culloden doesn't happen, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that as much of an Anglophile as I am, approximately 98.7% of my knowledge of Scottish history comes from these books; Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Gaskell, and Hardy have all failed me in this regard and should be properly ashamed of themselves. Needless to say, those of us acquainted with the Rules of Time Travel know that there are fixed points in history that have to happen, and apparently Culloden was one of them. Something something about being able to change little things but not major events, blah blah.

Most of the book is spent at the court of whichever Louis was king at that point - I've returned the book so I can't look it up - and we get some interesting observations about What Life Was Like Back Then. Mostly cold and smelly, it would seem. We also meet Fergus, who is one of my favorite characters; I have a thing for plucky orphans.

The story is crafted well enough that by the end, you've mostly forgotten the WTF moment at the beginning, so when it comes around again at the end, it's a bit of a shock. - quite the clever little device.

Outlander is great fluffy fun with a main course of Historical Fiction, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. It is worth noting, however, that no one in these books gets the plague or sails down the river in a punt wearing a boater, so the Jury of Me is still out on whether Connie Willis still wins everything.

Just kidding. Of course Connie Willis wins everything. But the new show of Outlander has some pretty great knits in it, and also kilts.

8 out of 11 Highlanders in Full Regalia

I should also mention that I'm participating in the Cannonball Read 7's Full Cannon for 2015, wherein I intend to read and blog about 52 books. For those of you coming over here from there, a few notes:
- the alphabet tags are for the first letter of the title and the author's last name, respectively.
- I use my own rating system, which shifts around somewhat but always goes to 11.

Missives from Mexico

Hellooooo! After seventeen only somewhat grueling hours of travel, I arrived in Cancun, Mexico, where my life was ROUGH, let me tell you.

So rough.

I had a bit of a family emergency in the days before I arrived and ended up taking a quick 4-day trip to rural Illinois, where my grandmother was suffering from septicemia (/shudder). Thank goodness we're not living in a post-antibiotic world... yet.

My brother and I are genetically incapable of taking a normal picture, but Grandma is doing fine! 

ANYWAY. I got home at 11:30pm on Monday and left again for work at 9am on Tuesday, so there wasn't a lot of time for the languid "what shall I take to read?" decisions I had been anticipating. So instead of making a decision, I just threw all of the library books I'd checked out to "test" into my suitcase and figured I'd sort it out when I got here:

 

It's moments like this that make me grateful that international flights often allow one free checked bag. No carrying 25# of books across four time zones for this girl! But I did manage to do quite a bit of knitting and listening to the third James Herriott book during my layovers, as well as to start and finish the utterly delightful The River of No Return by the Bee Ridgway.

Like Raych, I was somewhat disdainful of the idea that I could thoroughly enjoy a time travel book that didn't involve the plague or the Blitz. But this book was wonderful.

So, Nick is a lordling fighting for Wellington in Spain, and in the heat of battle gets jumped forward to 2003, where he is picked up by The Guild, whose job it is to monitor people who jump from one time into another. He spends 10 years settling in to rural Vermont on the Guild's dime, then gets a summons from his Alderwoman, who has some revelations for him.

Then there's Julia, who grew up (in 1815) with her craggy grandfather, the Earl of Dorchester. But he passes away, leaving her in the hands of his successor, who is a total dick and also probably nuts.

The Captain is pretty sure this is a terrible idea.

There are funny bits and surprising bits and a few naughty bits and the cover is gorgeous. Some of the characters that you think are for comic relief aren't, and the other way 'round. Ridgway leads the reader by the nose from one revelation to the next, and there were moments where I said, "HAH!" out loud in the airport or on the beach, then looked around furtively to see if anyone noticed.

A few people noticed.

The story spins out gorgeously. And it deals with cultural changes that we avid readers of historical fiction aren't always exposed to; I found myself thinking more carefully about my own assumptions and prejudices, and how they may seem absurd 200 years from now.

Good books make you think, regardless of what genre they get filed under.

I jumped straight from this to a Georgette Heyer and I'm disappointed in the Heyer because there's no time travel. That's how delightful this was.

10 out of 11 Secret Cupolas on Top of the Mansion

(Since I know you're all curious, I read 5.5 of the 12 books I took with me. /brushes off shoulders)

Eleanor and Park - Rainbow Rowell

I read this entirely in one day during the Mini Readathon at the beginning of July (it was great, we'll do another one, hurrah for permission to read and eat all day!).  My justification for this being "mini" was that it is about teenagers, who are basically mini-humans in mind if not in body. And while, yes, that is technically true, oh lord.

Ladies, you know how sometimes you're like, "WHY am I sobbing at this? What is going ON? How do I FEEL SO MUCH RIGHT NOW?!?" and then two days later your least favorite aunt comes to visit and you're like, "oh. Maybe I won't die alone and pathetic and be eaten by wild dogs after all. Bring me the chocolate and ibuprofen, feline companion!" 

No.

Those first few days of feeeeeeels are not the ideal time to read Eleanor & Park, people, because Eleanor & Park is a book about... 

Ok, here's the thing. I got into a Twitter discussion with Rainbow Rowell last night about the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary, and I said that the Ramona books are ABOUT Ramona, but Judy Blume's books are ABOUT growing up, and that is why Ramona sticks with us ladies of a certain age: because she is a real kid with a real range of kid problems. She's also the reason I can't look at a crop of Shirley Temple curls without wanting to boing them.

Which brings me back to Eleanor & Park, and what this book is ABOUT. The title characters are complete, which I really liked and which is surprisingly rare for most books - I was going to say YA books, but let's be honest: characterization is not currently in style in fiction, is it? 

But Eleanor and Park are not only well-defined and realized, they're also genuine teenagers. They do stupid shit, they think stupid things, they get stuff wrong, they're just trying to survive being teens, which is - as you may remember - HARD ENOUGH. But wrapped in all of this is Eleanor's family, which is broke and broken in a way that made me uncomfortable because I grew up poor and broken but not the same kind, so I empathized but also felt weird about my empathy because the shit that happened to me when I was a kid is nothing compared to what she is going through. Empathy is an odd thing.

So, Tika, what is this book about? You got all excitable about telling us and then went off on a tangent.

Well, my dear reader, first of all you cannot be surprised that such a thing would happen. And secondly, Eleanor & Park is a book about growing up and first love and whimsy and the awkwardness of being a teenager and parenting and preconceived notions and a definite hint of pride and prejudice (the emotions, not the book). It made my heart sore, and soar, and I had to stop a few times to ugly cry - sometimes for Eleanor and sometimes for Park.

It's a book teachers of high school students should read to remind them of what it's like to be the beings they're trying to connect to, and that's about the highest praise I can think of.

10.5 of 11 Mix Tapes from the Radio

Anna and the French Kiss - Stephanie Perkins

How cute was THIS book? YA is in this pattern, as Alice has pointed out , of following either the Stephenie Meyer or the John Green paths of fiction; that is, the Possibly Paranormal but Definitely Controlling Boyfriend and Mary Sue Path, or the Super-Witty Self-Aware-Teen Path. Two paths, someone once said, diverged in a wood, and Stephanie Perkins took neither of them.

I worked hard on that metaphor

Anna’s dad is a pretentious author who decides that she needs to spend her senior year at a school for Americans in Paris instead of in her own hometown. Anna, being a teenager, vigorously protests this move because she didn’t think of it first.

I really liked how… teenager-ish this novel was. Anna does stupid things, kids drink without someone dying (it’s legal in Paris which is why no one has to Learn a Lesson about Drinking), characters miscommunicate and then figure it out – or not, and despite the setting of Paris – which seems not quite like a real place to me – it’s realistic and adorable.

“Beautiful. He called me beautiful! But wait. I don’t like Dave.
Do I like Dave?”

Being a teenager is so confusing.

“We stop at a red light. Mom stares at me. ‘You like him.’”
“OH GOD, MOM.”

And embarrassing.

So good for you, Stephanie Perkins, for creating interesting teenagers upon whom adults can smile sagely, and to whom teenagers themselves can relate without reinforcing their terrible relationships or their self-satisfaction.

And hey, congratulations for actually completing NaNiWriMo!

8 out of 11 Lost Dorm Room Keys

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

I’m pretty sure I thought this book and The Book of Blood and Shadow were the same for a long time. Oops.

SO! There's a story, and it's not that one! Alina is an orphan and a soldier in the Border Wars army, along with her best friend Mal who, of course, never notices that she’s a girl with feeeeeeelings. Specifically, feelings for him. Men!

Good call, Liz. 

There’s this thing in their homeland called The Fold, and it’s basically a wide piece of hell full of darkness and scary harpy-like creatures that have been known on occasion – every occasion – to try to kill anything human that tries to cross it. Alina’s division tries this journey because the coast is on the other side and it’s not really clear why, but during the battle Mal gets hurt and Alina’s long-hidden power presents itself: she can push back the darkness, possibly eventually enough to destroy The Fold and reunite the country.  Hurrah! But she is only a teenager and already behind in her studies of... magic stuff... because she's been busy kicking ass instead.

And then The Darkling, whose very TITLE screams BAD GUY but does anyone notice? NO, takes her to his little palace to help her learn how to use her power at something like a school for magic people, but since she’s the only one of her kind and he’s the only one of his kind, she falls for him a little right before Alina realizes that The Darkling is an anagram for King Lard (not really but it is) and runs away because he wants to control her. Seriously, MEN!  Always trying to make the ladies put their lights under bushels!

Alina runs away and meets up with Mal in the woods, there’s a bit about a stag with magical antlers, and then the end happens which I won’t spoil for you because I’m nice.

The front of this book trumpets, “Unlike anything I’ve ever read.” – Veronica Roth, Author of Divergent. On the flip side, if goodreads is to be believed Bardugo did about .35 hours of research into Russian Naming Conventions and Onion Domes before basing her world squarely in Mother Russia + Magicland. Here’s the thing: if Ms. Roth hasn’t ever read anything remotely like this before, then she doesn’t read enough, although that seems to have worked out pretty well for her own writing since she's wicked popular and all (MORE ON THAT LATER...). A second thing is: goodreads people are ridiculous. It’s a fantasy world, and while it may be based on Slavic culture, it’s pretty much the prerogative of the author to change things as she sees fit. Regular WASPy people wouldn’t be throwing a fit if the author had co-opted some Traditionally Western Stuff for her setting, so if you’re either 1) basing your knowledge of Russian culture on a fantasy novel or 2) not smart enough to figure out that this is FICTION, then you have bigger problems and should probably read a nonfiction book or Wikipedia or something.

Rant-y ran rant rant.

Anyway, this was interesting and the world was, for my money, very prettily realized and richly populated. I will pick up book 2 when the Internet starts jumping up and down about it, and I will hope for the best.

7.5 out of 11 Pseudo-Russian Patronymics

Ruby Red - Kerstin Gier

Well hello there, Young Adult Novel Cover. You’re looking very pretty today! Oh, what? You’ve got an interesting story between your covers?  Well don’t we all, sweetheart.  Don’t. We. All.

The way time travel works in this book is similar to the way time travel works in The Time Traveler’s Wife except for the minor difference that this book is awesome and that other book sucked. What I mean to say is that in this world, if you have the time traveling gene, you will travel in time without knowing where you’re going or when you are going there, so it makes living a regular life a wee bit difficult.

Especially when you don’t know you’re the one with the gene, and your snooty cousin has been preparing for her time travelling future for her entire life while you’ve been watching movies with your friends.

Someone at some point in time

created a chronograph that allows time travellers to  burn off their need to be in a different time in a safe place – or, y’know, in 18^th century London. Whichever. But it’s powered by the blood of the time travelers, and there are mysteries, and a creepy dude with mind powers, and it’s just pretty great.

It turns out that Kerstin Gier is a big chick-lit novelist in her native Germany, and the Ruby Red trilogy is her foray into young adult literature. And foray she does, meinen damen und herren. I thoroughly enjoyed this one – enough that when my cousin [who emigrated to Germany and married a Czech guy – she’s very international (hi Paige!)] asked for book recommendations for her sister, I suggested this one without knowing about Gier’s German roots. Paige hauled off and read ALL THREE BOOKS in German, which I feel is distinctly unfair as the third book isn’t out in English until next year.

And speaking of translations, a HUGE shout-out to Anthea Bell, whose translation is utterly flawless. I tip my fan to you, madam.

8.5 out of 11 Fancy Feathered 18^th Century Hats 

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

My experience with reading Gone Girl was long and sporadic. I got the book from my library's 7-Day Checkout shelf back in July, then returned it unread because I didn't want to read anything disturbing. I put my name in the hold queue (#65 of 65) and forgot about it. Then in December it showed up again on the 7-Day shelf, but I had to stop reading 90 pages before the end because I have a very wibbly relationship with time. And then 2 days ago, my turn in the queue came up and I got to finish the book, so yay serendipity?

Megs has read this, and so has Alice. I think mostly everyone has? But for those of you who have not, I am declaring this post AND the comments a Safe Zone for Spoilers, because  I want to talk about the rampant Whiskey Tango Foxtrot that happened in this book and no one else has been able to do it.

You've been warned.

All right, People Who Are Left. What a roller coaster ride that was. I think I might have whiplash. 

First, we sympathize with Amy because she’s smart and trying so hard, isn’t she? How sad it is that her relationship is so different from how it seemed. And then BAM! Somewhere around page 140 we find out she’s the elected president of the Democratic Republic of Liarland and we start to sympathize more with Nick, who after all isn’t really thaaaaat bad. And then Desi comes along and we’re like, holy shitballs, that guy has a Bates complex and his Mommy Dearest is a little overbearing, isnt’t she? But he’s not sooooo bad – just a minor character who’s a little obsessed, and who hasn’t been a little obsessed with someone, y’know? Remember when she threw herself down the stairs?

And then Amy gets robbed and we’re like, YES! You deserved that, you whorecrux! And then… wow Desi ends up being cah-razy. Like, Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood crazy, drinking milkshakes out of other people’s yards and such, and we think, maybe Amy’s not so awful that she deserves THIS.

And meantime, Nick is planning to kill her when she comes back and we still kind of think she deserves it a little, but she shows up and then we think she pretty much DEFINITELY deserves it, that crazy bitch. And then we’re not sure who is awfuler, but maybe Nick will get out of there and Amy will go to jail because she murdered someone in cold blood and faked rape wounds now we have to feel sorry for that crazy, horrible mother about her crazy, horrible son, which is distinctly uncomfortable.  

BUT she does not go to jail because Nick decides to stop pursuing this line of thought because – oh my sweet nutbar Aunt Matchi, you guys, the Crazy Train stops twice a day in this town – Amy is preggers despite them not having sex for eeeehver. She is a psychopath whom I have to admire a little – that bitch thinks of everything. 

And in the end, I was strangely satisfied that they ended up together because that amount of sociopathy should NOT be loose upon the world at large. 

8 out of 11 Romantic Treasure Hunts

Attachments - Rainbow Rowell

This is a book aimed at people who read the internet, who love snark, have a soft spot for the cute IT guy down the hall, who are lonely for romance sometimes but know they have great friends, who are flawed, and who have the ability (along with said friends) to find themselves endlessly entertaining.

Basically, Rainbow Rowell wrote a book-cannon that is aimed in my exact direction. A paginated SCUD missile with the coordinates of my person embedded in its little wiry bits.

And it. is. great. Like, Kirsten Bell-loving-sloths-great.

Lincoln is the "internet security" guy hired to read and send threatening responses to any emails that get flagged through his company's email system - when really he'd pictured himself as a white hat hacker, saving his company from the Evil Internet. For you babies out there, this used to happen back in the 90's when bosses thought that if people had unlimited access to email, they would chat back and forth all day and not get any work done. (They were not far wrong, we've all just moved to gchat.)

Onward! Lincoln starts reading the email exchanges between Beth and Jennifer, discovers that they're talking about... him, and adorable hijinks ensue. I read this over Christmas and had to return it before I wrote down quotes, which is probably for the best because I would have just quoted the whole damn thing and that would probably have landed me in hot water with Rowell, who - aside from being a charming author - is an absolute HOOT on Twitter.

SO! Attachments. If you have not yet read it, you should do so! Tout de suite!

9.5 out of 11 Late Night Snack Machines

The Flight of Gemma Hardy - Margot Livesey

One of the fun things about reading a lot of (awesome) book blogs with the library request page open is that books show up on the hold shelf for me and, depending on how long I was in the queue for, I don't  remember anything about them - there's just a vague feeling of "positive" hanging about the title. SO, when this one showed up, I was surprised (probably for the second time) that it is a re-telling of my beloved Jane Eyre. And then I got suspicious! And then decided it can't be worse than Wide Sargasso Sea, and by "worse" I mean "more preachy," so just read it already, Self.

Just so we're all on the same page (HAHAHAHA I crack me up), my official Jane Eyre Re-telling Scale goes from Wide Sargasso Sea at the bottom to Rebecca at the top, with The Eyre Affair somewhere around the 85% mark.

Unlike in Rebecca, the events of this book follow Jane Eyre pretty closely for the first 2/3 of the book, and since we've all read the original or at least seen the movie with Michael Fassbender, I don't need to worry about spoilers for a book written in 1857, RIGHT? Good. Okay.

Then please come in and let's begin. Is it warm in here? Please feel free to disrobe, sir.

You've got your evil aunt, your wretched school, your Helen Burns - who in this context dies of asthma, your graduation/leaving of said wretched school, your governess in the remote wilds of a place, your inappropriate relationship between master and servant, etc. etc., and your wedding-that-wasn't.

But it's different, you see, because it all takes place in Scotland, which is further north than Yorkshire and so is colder and even more remote! And herein lies my first quibble with this book - there will be more, as should be expected with a re-telling of a beloved text - it could have been set anywhere, and I feel like a book deliberately set in northern Scotland needs to evoke the feeling of that place. I'm not demanding kilts and rugged, sexy time travelers - FOR NOW - but Livesey didn't capture the distinctive cadence of the Scots or their feelings about their country, which I understand from reading a lot of Diana Gabaldon are vehement.

And then there's the issue of the Mad Woman in the Attic, which was shocking and (barely) plausible in 1857 but definitely not going to work in 1965. I won't spoil how it was dealt with, but I will say that it made Gemma more petulant than her predecessor; the offense wasn't equal to her reaction.

The OTHER thing that I had difficulty with is that the female cousins were not sisters but they were *whispers* lesbians. WHY, Livesey? This is unnecessary. Ok, first of all I fully believe that there need to be more homosexual characters in literature - that fictional homosexuality is less obviously challenging (because it's in a book that you can put down and walk away from when it becomes "too much") and so it helps to encourage acceptance on a subconscious level. BUT. The story wasn't enhanced by the sexuality of these characters, and while their relationship taught Gemma some things about love, it stuck out as an anachronism. So I am torn; on one hand, yes please more positive homosexual relationships, Fiction! and on the other, don't fuck with canon if it's not going to forward the cause,

Overall, I walked away from this one feeling like the story would have stood better on its own feet and not pasted on top of an iconic story arc. The last 1/3 of the book - after Gemma runs away - took on a tale of its own and I liked it better than the previous section. I'd have also liked to hear more about Rochester's Whasshisname's stint in WWII and a deeper discussion of their age difference, as would have been appropriate for something set in the 60's.

6.5 of 11 Ferry Trips to the Orkneys

Cinder - Marianne Meyer

Oh, dystopian re-telling of a fairy tale, how I was prepared to snub my nose in the air at you! How prepared I was to skim your pages, picking out parts of the Cinderella story, identifying characters as this or that archetype, and then pan you in the end as Yet Another Dystopian Re-telling of a Fairytale,

/EYEROLL.

And at first, you didn't (or did?) disappoint. Here was that same weird use of sentence fragments, the hating of which makes me a huge hypocrite because it's okay in my published-only-on-the-internet writing but not in a BOOK. With PAGES (or maybe e-pages - and hopefully a COPY-EDITOR who is trained to spot sentence fragments posing as stream-of-consciousness writing.) In fact, when I came across the Sentence Fragments of Potential DNF, I flipped immediately to the dust jacket to see if... yep, a first novel.

First time authors, STOP DOING THIS. And the rest of you, too, unless it is for emphasis and please only once per chapter at a maximum.

And then the story got rolling and it was fun and I stopped muppet-flailing over grammar (which is how you know I actually liked it). Cyborgs, an evil stepmother (natch), one good stepsister a la Ever After, and a prince-sometimes-in-disguise! People who actually die of the scary disease!

Meyer doesn't just walk the fine line between re-telling and re-packaging; she dances along it like a tightrope walker  from Cirque du Soliel. Not every character is recognizable from the original (or Disney) story, and the world-building is done with plausible elegance. The biggest quibble I had - once the sentences started having a proper structure as sentences should - was that it's set in Future Shanghai, but there was very little actual Chinese culture folded into the story; I would have liked to read more about how Meyer envisions Chinese culture adapting (or NOT adapting) to the future she has created.

As an added bonus, it's book #1. If there's one thing I like, it's seeing "Book 1" on the cover of a book I thoroughly enjoyed.

8.5 of 11 Creepy Moon Queens

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

Soooooo this book is all about atmosphere. It's beautifully conceived, and the author is clearly super-creative, which I am... not. At all. This is why I majored in art history instead of art. I like the scribblings and paint splashings of other people, but not my own.

Pretty sure this is how Raych's Sister of the Art paints.

Did you ever get into the FIMO/Sculpy clay thing? People were making all of these incredibly elaborate creations, and I was the kid in the back going, "lookit what I made!" and my mom would be all, "oh... that's a nice mud-colored blob, dear. What is it?" And I'd answer, "it's a RAINBOW!"

This is how I feel criticizing highly imaginative work. But someone's got to before Pinterest goes all crazy with The Night Circus-themed weddings, y'know? Oh, wait...

With all of that said, I feel like it was missing... something. Like maybe actual main characters? The Circus itself was uh-mazing, and all the secondaries were wonderfully realized, and the whole thing just oooooozed imagination like... I dunno because I'm not imaginative.

But I didn't dig the love story, ducklings, and I don't know why because I luuuurve a good tragic love story. Except it wasn't tragic and I felt like the lovers didn't really love one another so much as they loved their images of one another, and that always ends in tears.

I am totally That Girl who Side-Eyed this book.

6.5 of 11 flaming cauldrons full of ghosts

A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

I ordered this book from the library because the second one came out (triple decker novels, how I love you!) and I didn't want to read the reviews of book #2 without reading reviews for book #1, and since I couldn't find the reviews (I didn't look very hard) I just ordered the book instead.

This is what comes of finally getting a library card!

Diana Bishop is the last of her line of witches, descended from the infamous Bridget Bishop, who was executed in the Salem Witch Trials. She's a historian (yay! you get one Tika point, Harkness!) who is interested in alchemy, which means she gets to muck around in old books all the time. At Oxford. Like one does.



And then she meets this vampire

HA HA HA I crack me up. No, not that vampire. Bella never went to college, remember? She's doomed to an eternity of finishing high school because she chose was chosen by was written into the wrong vampire family. My apologies for the Twilight sidebar; here is Alexander Skarsgard holding a cat.

Do you feel better now? I know I do.

Anyway. So Diana meets a vampire who is SOOOOOOOOOOER OLD, you guys. And he falls in love with her (did I even need to say that?) and at first I was all, "if there are vampire/witch sexytimes in this book, I may set myself on fire."

But then 437 pages went by and there was only a little over-the-shirt action even though they were married by like page 230, and I found myself beginning to despair over the LACK of vampire-on-witch sexytimes.

I am nothing if not consistent.

Harkness created a good world, EVEN IF her vampires can go out in the day and don't have fangs.  I begin to suspect she may also be a Student of the Past because the detail, my sweet pie-fillings. the detail! It made my historian heart happy. Wine cellars, antiques, references to super-famous historical figures - they're all there and astonishingly not overdone so good job, author.

In penultimate closing: I liked it and I'mma read the next one (in which there is TIME TRAVEL and KIP MARLOWE so how could I not?).

Oh Rupert. I wish you were mine.

A Discovery of Witches gets 8 out of 11 covens for being pretty damn good indeed, but only 1 out of 4 Delaneys for smut. Up your sleaze game in book 2, Harkness!

And in ultimate closing, I got you this because I still feel bad about Edward up there giving you the side-eye, and because I read approximately a zillion pages waiting to imagine this...

And this!