Book Reviews

[lumineaux]

I've been reading a lot, and a lot of new stuff has come out, but I've been utterly remiss in posting reviews.  Well, I got motivated today to do two.  ;-)

Fantasy in Death by J.D. Robb
A virtual reality game turned deadly when a developer is beheaded while testing his latest game.  As I've said before, this series is like salt and vinegar potato chips.  Either you love it or you hate it and either way, it's for being exactly what it is.   More salt and vinegar here.  The murder mystery was, to me, painfully easy to figure out.  I think anyone with a sci fi background will likewise add up the numbers pretty quickly as well.  The clues seemed to me to be more screamingly obvious than in Robb's other books in this series.  But the characters are still their usual selves and Roarke is still phenomenly rich and sexy, and if you are a lover of the series you'll experience a mild disappointment at most (assuming that the solution comes to you as easiliy as it did to me).

Shalador's Lady by Anne Bishop
This is the second book following a group of characters struggling to rebuild Dena Nehele after Jaenelle's witch storm devastated the population.  It's more tightly plotted than its predecessor.  The B plot elements (i.e., the parts following Jaenelle, Daemon, etc.) are less jarringly out of place from the A plot elements as well.  Bishop's Black Jewels world has this weird duality to it -- on the one hand, it's brutal, bloody, violent and can be heavy on the sex.  On the other hand, there's an odd childlike sweetness to many of the characters.  Plus adorable talking animals.    This book works for what it is, and it's nice to see a story arc about the "picking up the pieces after the epic heroic victory" part of life.  The big bad guys have been vanquished, but the cleaning up has its own smaller but no less dramatic problems. 
 If Bishop is smart and comes up with more winning personalities, she could write books about the restoration of Terille for years to come.   The "villain" here isn't motivated by anything more than petty vanity and selfishness, but that causes more than enough troubles.   I like the series, although nothing will have the same power as the original trilogy, and I rather like the new characters.    It's not grand epic or thought-provoking literature, but it's a pleasant way to pass an evening.