Neuromancer by William Gibson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This took me awhile to get through because it was so dense, science-wise.

Not that there was anything too unique; it was the terminology and way it was written that made it seem so tough. I felt the entire time I was reading that I should be understanding what was being said, but I was missing something important that made it so I was confused.

The science fiction and ideas were interesting enough, though, to keep me reading.



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Made fried green tomatoes for the first time ever today. Also first time ever eating them. I think they’re an acquired taste – I don’t think I’m quite to the acquired part yet. But they weren’t all bad – just different than I expected.

They were a good use of all the tomatoes growing in my garden though. Need to get stuff ready so I can make Grandma’s tomato juice/sauce now. I can’t wait to have spaghetti with it!

I got to lead my first board of review on Tuesday night. I don’t know about the boy, but I was sure nervous. I ended up letting the others do more of the leading than I should have, but I think it went fairly well. Next milestone will be a Court of Honor. And I really need to go get trained. I feel “naked” without it.

New Spring by Robert Jordan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought it would be nice to get a little back story before the final books come out.

And this small volume (yes, it is not the huge tome that I had grown accustomed to when reading this series) did a good job of giving some back story on Lan and Moraine and Siuane and the Black Ajah.

I wanted a little more (like a second prequel) but, maybe it will be made known in the final books. Or maybe I need to go check out the online wikis to see what I missed in my reading.

The book did take a long time to actually get going, and then the ending came on very suddenly. However, that just made me more enthusiastic for the next book.



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I Don’t Want to Kill You by Dan Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. This had double the creepy scary coolness of the previous two books. Definitely an awesome way to end the series (or is this just the beginning?).

And I think the series should be made into a movie.



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Don’t Blink by James Patterson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an exciting read. It was more for pleasure than for analysis, so I shan’t include as much as normal.

This is about a reporter who is trying to find the truth about a murder, and he gets pulled in farther than he wants.

The action is pretty much non-stop and each short chapter seemed to end on a cliffhanger (making it hard to put down – but also frustrating when information was being withheld from me on purpose).

There wasn’t a lot of character development or deep thinking going on here, but then that is not what this book was for.

If you are squirmy about reading about brutal murders involving eyes, then you may want to pass on this one, otherwise I say give it a read!



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Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had already read the Tamir triad/trilogy by Lynn and liked it, so I thought I’d start in on this one since I found it at my awesome library! I didn’t realize that this was set in the same "universe" except hundreds of years later (I think), so I was pleasantly surprised. And apparently, this one was written first even though it is chronologically later. So I found that a bit serendipitous. However, I don’t think that you need to read any other book before starting in on either series. They seem to be fairly well self-contained.

Setting: This is a medieval quest-type book, with some of the standard tropes of journeying from place to place and having a newcomer experience different parts of the world. There was some nice homage to Tolkien and Jordan in the setting and such, which was fun. I thought Lynn did well with depicting locations and telling what the characters saw – I didn’t feel confused or lost at all.

Plot: In some ways this is a boy’s coming of age story. But it is also a mystery, where they are trying to discover who is after them and who is responsible for certain "bad" deeds. There are lots of open plot lines to take us into the next book (I kind of wish it would have had even more of a resolution in this one though).

Conflict: All sorts of conflicts are going on here, from inter-personal to national. I was keep guessing through most of the book on many of the conflicts (and am still guessing on some). There are some moments where the author tries to create suspense when in the viewpoint of a character "in the know" that fell a bit flat for me because it felt like the facts were being hidden (the character knew but we don’t get details).

Character: This is one of the author’s strengths, I believe. I really liked the characters. Many of them felt real to me and acted real – even the psychotic ones.

Text: I could tell this was some of Lynn’s earlier work because the writing wasn’t quite as good as before, however it still held up rather nicely. There were some POV errors and confusion by switching POV within chapters and between paragraphs, but these were few and far between.



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