Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

The Animal Wife by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)

( Cover image cut for maybe NWS (side-boob shot of naked woman, no details shown but is clear it's a naked woman) )

The Animal Wife isn't so much a sequel to Reindeer Moon (the last book I read, reviewed here), it's a companion book. It's set in the same place and deals with the same group of people. The only difference is that it's set a couple years later and that it's told from a boy's POV instead of a girl's.

Turns out the gender of the character makes a big, big difference in how much I enjoyed the story. Set in prehistoric times (Siberia, roughly 20,000 years ago), of course women had few to no rights -- they (and their children) were owned by their husbands. That story told from a woman's point of view let us see how hard that was, how unfair and challenging a woman's life was. That story told from a male point of view was just unpleasant. The boy/young man went on endlessly about how useless women were (because they couldn't hunt, because they were concerned with "silly" and "pointless" things, because they talked and chatted too much). Yet in the first book we had learned just how not-pointless or silly those things were! So after learning how hard and unfair their lives were, in the next book we had to experience page after page of the boy looking down at them/insulting them/treating them poorly. While it was perfectly in character for the boy to think and act that way, it was not at all enjoyable to read about.

New in this book, the tribe caught a slave -- someone of a different tribe who couldn't understand their language, thus was considered to be Not A Person. This slave woman was from a people who were more advanced than the tribe, which made her conditions seem even worse. Held captive, made to do the worst work, barely given enough food, raped, and got pregnant and had her rapist's baby, etc.

While those elements were big, big things that I did not enjoy, most of the things I liked from the first book still held true for this second one. That this author was a scientist and an naturalist came shining through, as did all the research she had done. I loved the world they lived in (though it wasn't new, since we learned all about it in the first book, so my enjoyment was a little less).

I really enjoyed Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's writing style as well. While I didn't like the characters much this time, I believed them all as people. More than that, she wrote their limitations so well -- the foreign tribe, the one the slave came from, used bows. The tribe the story was set in used nothing but spears, had never seen a bow before, and their lack of understanding at how it would work was so believable. (They never saw one in use, just arrows killing someone and a broken bow.)

The Animal Wife was hard to rate on my hated-loved scale. I both disliked it a lot and enjoyed it. I settled on okay as a compromise.

---

Sometimes, once I'm done writing my own review of a book, I like to google and see the reviews others have written. This one said it up really well:

But it wasn't nearly as magical as Reindeer Moon, and at the end of the book I was left thinking: what a desolate story. ... She [slave woman] was seen as an animal because her captors in ignorance treated her as one, assumed she was stupid because she could not speak their language or understand their customs. It was really very sad. I was pleased at first to see the reappearance of the tamed-wolf theme, but it did not end well even for the poor wolf. Everyone was left with less in the end.

"Everyone was left with less in the end" sums this book up. Even the characters who got out of a bad situation (a number of them did, surprisingly) were still in a bad place -- worse than they were in at the start of the story. It was a bleak, desolate story... yet I not just finished the book, I read it fast. I enjoyed it more than I didn't enjoy it (how's that for a ringing endorsement?).

Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff
Rating: LOVED (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Before I get to the review: orangerful, you should stop reading this now. Know that I loved it and recommend that you read it, but I'd suggest that you not read my review -- I don't want to raise your expectations of the book and then have you maybe not enjoy it as much.

---

Everyone else still here? Good! Notice that I put the rating in all caps, something I've done only once before. This book made me wish I had a rating higher than 'loved'.

Guy in Real Life should not have worked for me. I can count on two fingers the number of times romance has worked for me in a YA book, and Guy in Real Life was all about a relationship. First person POV, let alone alternating first person POV between two (or more, technically) characters should have sent me running screaming. Fiction set in the real world very rarely works for me, too. Nothing about this book should have worked for me, yet I loved it to death.

The only reason I gave this book a chance at all was that the two main characters were into MMOs and tabletop RPGs. Even then, I worried the author would only make mention of those two things, but my worries were wrong: Gaming, both online and tabletop, were a third and fourth character in this relationship, and it was so so so wonderful.

Svetlana was the tabletop gamer, the GM for her highschool gaming club (with just barely enough members to qualify for club status at all). Lesh was a new MMO player (WoW -- though the author never named his MMO, anyone who played WoW even briefly would recognize it). The two had a chance encounter, and later met again, and through the book their friendship and then more developed. Their relationship was never rushed, and it felt so very realistic and perfectly imperfect.

There's so much the author did right; this is one of those times I feel like there's no way my review will do the book justice. His descriptions of the MMO/WoW were so perfect -- "magical" was the word I kept wanting to use when I was thinking about how well he described it. It might be cliche to say this, but I felt like I was there in the world he was describing, that I could feel the heat and the dust of the wilds outside of Orgrimmar, the beauty of the night elf starter forest area.

When I started the book, I was worried that the author wouldn't be able to describe gaming/role playing well -- that he wasn't a gamer himself. It quickly became so clear that he was. Not just through his descriptions, but through the often wonderful, sometimes painful relationships the characters had. Not just basic things like Lesh discovering and then taking advantage of the extra help a female player can get, but how sometimes against your will online relationships can cross over into real life.

What sealed my being certain the author really understood these things was when he described how Lesh felt after his RPing leaked out into real life, when the adult man tracked down the player (who he thought was a high school girl) in RL, sending gifts and watching/interacting without permission. /end spoiler . Even when around people who had no way of knowing about his RP, he felt like it could somehow be read on his face. "I know that it's out there now, out of my head and my body and in the world." (As much as I love about the book, I think it's that [above spoiler] that sticks with me the most because it's so realistically scary and could have gone so very very bad.)

On top of loving how he wrote the characters and his general gaming knowledge, I loved the author's writing so much. For example, how he merged the "real" world of WoW and the way players act in it:

[She] imagines an undead rogue is riding on wolf-back beside them right now, watching them, laughing to himself, juggling his enchanted daggers, ready to kill them both in one fell swoop. He'll have the hunter bloody and dead in an instant, and his cat with him, and then he'll kneel on Svvetlana's chest, with his dirty blade against her long, white throat, and he'll say, "Lol. Fag."

The author did a trick I love: Playing with sentence lengths to add a beathlessness to some scenes. Also, such wonderful descriptions. This one is of the two sitting on a couch in a dark basement of the Garnet's house:

I find the throw on the arm beside me--it's musty and old and smells like a Garnet and my youth and generally like brown and red. Maybe in the dark, colors and smells are kind of the same thing.

I highlighted so many sections I loved, so many little wordings and long quotes. It makes me so happy when I find an author I can do that with!

I hope I haven't missed writing about any part of the book I loved. I loved the whole thing so much! Usually when I'm reading, I watch the percent left and usually I look forward to it counting down so I can move on to the next book, but with Guy in Real Life it was the opposite -- I kept dreading as the number got lower and lower, I didn't want it to end.

(Edit: Oops, I did forget to mention one more thing I loved. In writing there's a rule, Chekhov's gun. "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." This author did not follow that, and it made for a more realistic story. A character suggested a solution to Lesh's "guy in real life" problem, using a girl to speak for him on voicechat a couple times, and while that was an interesting possible solution, the character never got around to trying it. I love that that thread was out there but never followed up on! )

And speaking of the ending... Like the rest of the book, it was so good! I had been dreading the story ending, I didn't want to say goodbye to the characters, but it was open-ended enough that I feel like I haven't. A 'happily ever after' ending would have closed the door, that would have been the end of that, but this way I can smile and wonder what happens to them in the future -- I feel like I haven't lost the two of them out of my head.

Highly, highly recommended. This is not just the best book I've read this year, but one of the best books I've read in all the years I've been reviewing them.

Next up: Brooklyn, Burning by the same author.

Cloud Magic (Sky Horses) by Linda Chapman
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



With a title like 'Sky Horses' and a horse on the cover, I understandably thought this book would be about horses. I thought it would be a "talking animal" book, with some kind of element of magic. What it really was was a book about a young girl who loves horses. And magic. (Though I always link to the Amazon page whenever possible, this time I didn't get it from Amazon, so I hadn't seen the blurb there first.)

The book opened well enough. Chapter one was about a group of "sky horses" talking about sky horse things. Then chapter two took a left turn. Spoiler: Clouds are actually horses! We just can't see the horses, only people with a hag stone (a stone with a natural hole in it) can see the clouds as horses. The main character, Erin, had a hag stone, looked up into the sky through it, and saw the horses. As she was a young girl who loved horses, no one believed her when she told people that clouds are really horses.

Chapter one was basically the last we heard of the horses. The rest of the book (at least the 60% I read) was about Erin and her special powers. Turns out she was not just human, she was a "Stardust Sprite". See, all humans have "stardust" in them, it's what lets us imagine things. When one human has a lot more stardust than everyone else, it means they have magical powers and an ability to turn into a Stardust Sprite. How does one turn into one of those? By repeating "I believe in Stardust!" three times. As far as I could tell, the only difference between a Stardust Sprite and a human was that the sprites can fly and their clothing turns into a dress.

The plot? One of the sky horses was stolen by an evil sprite, so the Stardust Sprites had to go save it. Yawn.

The writing was good (especially after the last book I read), but I just too far from the target audience. When I was a preteen, I likely would have LOVED the book. Erin was a book-loving, horse-crazy basically social outcast (who then got ~magical~ friends once she got her Starlight Sprite powers, and boy did they show all those people who were mean to her!). Any young girl who enjoys reading or loves horses would like eat this book series up, but for adult me, the magical powers both of the characters and the whole worldbuilding came off as ridiculous.

Since I read more than half, I can count this towards my 50 book goal. It was a short book and a fast read, I could have finished it in another half-hour or so, but I had no interest in the story and wasn't enjoying it, so figured I'd move on.

Reading now: Guy in Real Life, which I had worried about a little when I picked it up, but I'm loving it so far.

Child of Grass (Book 2 of the Sea of Grass Trilogy) by David Gerrold
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)

In book one of this trilogy (which I loved so much), Kaer and her family were getting ready for life on "another planet" (an alternate Earth), a very low tech world with a young culture. It was a slow story full of wonderful worldbuilding and very little plot. What plot there was I disliked, but there was so little of it, I enjoyed the book overall. Unfortunately book 2 was just the opposite: Nothing but that plot I disliked.

While I'm no fan of organized religion, I really, really hate the "all organized religion is evil and everything bad in the world is caused by it, and every single religious person is bad/evil/stupid/cruel" plot device. It smacks of lazy writing. That was the whole plot of this book.

In the first book, we learned that one of the families that went to the new planet had lied through all their training: They, like other religious families in the training program, never intended to give up their current religion (basically Christianity -- it had a different name, but the main figures in it were named Jesus/Mary/Joseph/etc) and adopt or pretend to adopt the local religion. People from Earth had to believe or pretend to believe the new world's religion, since no one was supposed to find out they were from a different planet.

I lost interest before I got 10% into the book, but forced myself to keep going because I had liked the first one so much. By 20% I found myself skimming more than anything and forced myself to slow down and read... at which point I encountered many pages of two characters talking about what 'empowerment' meant -- just two characters, father and daughter, doing nothing about talking about what that term meant. (Which fed back into the 'all religion is bad' theme, since religion disempowers people.) I gave up on the book at that point.

I loved the first book of this trilogy so much, but I couldn't even come close to finishing the second one. But what really pisses me off is that Child of Grass made me want to defend religion! Arg!

You know, it's almost odd to run into an accurate Amazon review anymore. I checked them after writing this post. One reviewer wrote:

Kaer proves herself to be one of the more deep-thinking and resourceful 12-year-olds you're ever likely to encounter.

Unlike last book, I didn't for a moment believe Kaer was 12. I constantly found myself thinking she was an adult. She was smarter and "deeper-thinking" than any adult I know. Moral issues, planning/tactical issues, everything.

"Child of Earth" ends rather abruptly and continues seamlessly in "Child of Grass."

That amused me. My one complaint about the first book was that the author seemed to have the whole story ("trilogy") finished and just cut it into three chunks to publish -- there was zero attempt to make book one into a complete story at all, it cut off mid-scene to be continued into book two. "Ends rather abruptly" indeed.


---

Game of Thrones: Season 5. No spoilers outside of the cut.

Oh man, this season. What a miserable mess. I heard nothing but bad from everyone about it, so my expectations were low, but the season was even worse.

There were a few enjoyable moments in the season (and I literally mean "moments" -- a good episode meant there was an enjoyable scene somewhere in the hour). But there was so so so much bad. Really bad. Unwatchable bad.

( Spoilers/details back here. )

I think by this point in the story I had lost interest in the books as well. I'm not intending to get the next book when it comes out, and it's highly questionable if I'll bother watching season six.

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chichiri posted a link to some beautiful, interesting music, perhaps from a video game:

The Kingdom of the Sun and Moon by Lowell Press
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



While this book didn't work for me, I didn't hate it while reading it. My real negative feelings towards it started when I was gathering my usual information to write this review.

First I brought up the Amazon page. In big, bold text, there are two messages about Kingdom of the Sun and Moon winning awards:

Winner of the 2015 Gold Benjamin Franklin Award for Teen Fiction
Winner of the 2015 Silver Benjamin Franklin Award for Young Reader Fiction

Never having heard of those, I googled it. "The IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, which include fifty-five categories recognizing excellence in book editorial and design, are regarded as one of the highest national honors for indie publishers and self-published authors." I could be totally off base here, but fifty-five categories? That's an awful lot of awards to give out, and that it's for "indie publishers and self-published authors" makes me even more skeptical.

So, looking at the Amazon reviews: 22 of them, almost all 5 stars with just a couple 4 stars. Suspicious. (Boy do I miss the days when I could trust Amazon reviews, before self-published books bought and traded for five star reviews.)

So lastly, seeing "Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.", I googled the "publisher". Parkers Mill Publishing. It has no mention at all online other than in relation to this book.

Sigh.

I'm really tired of the dishonesty in self-publishing. I'm tired of having to do all this detective work to figure out if a book is self-published or not. (Why does it matter? Because it's very, very, very rare that a self-published book is even close to worth its cover price, and I've been ripped off by them too many times. Remember that Zoo book? Now and then I reread my review of it just to laugh at how awful it was.)

Well, on to the book's plot. Another book about talking animals, but this time of the Redwall variety instead of "real" animals. Two mice, brothers, ended up on very different paths in life. One became a palace guard for the king, the other was banished from the kingdom.

While I liked how the mice were written (they came off as real mice doing these non-mouse things), the characters made such dumb decisions and didn't see such obvious plots and happenings, I just couldn't enjoy the story.

My biggest issue with the book (and the biggest thing that kept knocking me out of the story's mood) was that the author peppered in German words. Food was "Essen" ('to eat' in German), cheese was "Goldessen" (gold food), the mice had a König (king), and on and on. German nouns are capitalized, so it made it especially jarring. We'd get sentences like this: "All mice love Essen, but they especially love Goldessen." I do like it when a book uses words from a foreign language (especially if it's a fictional language), but it made just no sense at all here. Why did mice just randomly use German words?

I only reached the 50% mark of the book before giving up on it.

Tiger, Tiger by Lynne Reid Banks
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)


(There are a bunch of different covers, but I couldn't find one online that matched the one I read, so here's a random nice one.)

I had thought that a book's reading level was determined if not solely by, at least weighed very heavily by level of vocabulary. I must have been way off base on that, since this book (for grades 5-7, so even younger than YA), had a number of words I didn't know. To put that in perspective, I usually only have to look up 2-3 words a year. I looked up three in this book alone. Two of them were dated British words, and one I had seen before but wasn't certain about it (a word I generally only see associated with legal issues).

On top of the vocabulary level, I really, really enjoyed the plot. On the surface, it seemed like nothing much happened, but there was a whole heck of a lot of subtle stuff going on, stuff I suppose kids would miss.

The story, set in ancient Rome, was about two tiger cubs who were captured. Both were brought to Rome, one to fight in the Colosseum, the other as a pet for Caesar's daughter. For a book aimed at young kids, it's surprising what happened to the tigers. Brute, the brother destined for the Colosseum, was abused. Tortured by humans. Abused for weeks on end to make him mean enough and hungry enough to fight. Boots, the brother who was to be a pet, was castrated, defanged, and nearly declawed. While none of what happened to either brother was gone into in detail, it was perfectly clear what happened to both of them -- and that they both felt pain from the things done to them.

But, while the tiger cubs were the main focus of the plot, I liked the subplot best: A slave, Boot's handler, fell in love with Caesar's daughter. Of course he didn't even dare think about how he felt about her -- to give any indication at all about it would have meant his death.

As I was reading, I worried I could see the ending coming. A horrible "Happily ever after" ending, where everyone ended up with the most positive ending possible. I was dreading it, because based on the set-up of the plot, it seemed the most unrealistic outcome. But know what? The author had a very positive ending for all involved and was able to make it work perfectly.

I really, really love this author. She also wrote the The Indian in the Cupboard series, which I haven't read but would like to.

Wuftoom by Mary G Thompson
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)

(Sorry for the big, not great cover image. Oddly this cover doesn't exist much online in a reasonable size.)

When I saw the cover of this book, I didn't want to read it.

When I saw a summary of the book (about a boy who slowly turns into a worm), I really did not want to read it.

However, I kept running into reviews of it, and they kept including lines like "Even if you don't think you'd like this book, you should read it! It's good!", so eventually I gave in and bought a copy. Then it sat and sat and sat in my to read pile, sinking lower and lower each time I bought new books.

Now and then, when picking a new book to read, I go to the very bottom of my pile and pick something from there -- if I didn't, I'd never read those oldest books. Finally it was time to read Wuftoom...

While ebook readers like to start you on the first page of the story, I always go to the cover and start there. I like reading the "front matter" -- all that stuff before the story. The copyright info, the dedications, etc. In the middle of that front matter, I spotted the book's classification: Horror. Ugh! I never read horror! I don't like horror! (I know, I know, how can a book about a boy turning into a worm not be horror? I thought it would be more fantasy-ish.) But I owned the book, so I was going to give it a try.

Know what? It was actually darned good! The horror was subtle (and I think, because I'm older than the target audience for YA books, I saw it differently).

The first third of the book was about a boy trapped in bed, sick with some unknown disease that was changing his body. The reader spends months with him as he loses use of his fingers, then his limbs. As his body gets covered with a membrane. As his vision changes, his whole body changes... all except his mind. He's a boy trapped in a body that's turning into a giant worm.

But, for me, the real horror came through his mother. She had to work a horrible, dead-end job so she'd have insurance to pay for all the doctors trying to cure him. Her boss was awful, her hours were long, and the work was draining her soul. Then, in the last stages, when her son was 'dying', her boss was late to come in and cover for her, forcing her to stay at work while she knew her son was home alone, dying. To me, that was more painful to read about than the boy who was turning into a worm.

The first third of the book, about his transformation, was the best part. What happens after that would spoil things for you, so read only if you don't intend to pick up this book.



So turns out there is a whole second world on this planet, a Dark world full of Dark creatures. The giant worm the boy was turning into, Wuftoom, was one of those races. They get new member by infecting humans.

The main part of the plot was the struggle between two races, the Wuftoom and the Vic (short for something, I don't recall what and I don't have the book in front of me), a dark dragonfly? fly?-like race.

This part of the book worked a lot less well for me than the first third, and dragged in a few sections. I guess I just didn't believe all the Dark races of creatures, not after how realistic the first third of the book was. /end spoilers



Add onto an outstanding first third of the book, the author's writing was very, very good. It seems like fewer and fewer authors are able to craft wonderful sentences and pick just the exactly perfect wording for things.

All in all, I enjoyed Wuftoom. It wasn't 100% perfect 'BEST BOOK EVER!' level for me, but so few books are. It was really good, especially the first third of it (I still feel icky in my stomach about parts of it). There was zero romance in the book (so rare for YA stuff!), and it was just so original and different. Plus, while it ended open enough to allow for further books, Wuftoom stands alone as a self-contained story as well -- too few YA books do that nowadays.

Ratha and Thistle-Chaser by Clare Bell
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



It pains me to give a book in this series anything other than a 'Loved' rating, but I'm just about to stop reading it.

The thing I love best about this series, about all talking animals books, is when the animals are really animals, not just people in animal shape. Animals that talk? Great! Animals with societies? Perfect! But animals that know too much or don't act like animals (er, talking animals...) and I lose interest.

Unfortunately for me, the Named (the self-aware prehistoric cat series) just knew too much. One of them did basically physical therapy for another cat (made her exercise in water, stretching exercises, exercises to strengthen her injured limb). The cats made fences, pens, and rafts.

On one hand, I understand it: The author had covered more basic cat-like things in the previous books, so the cats needed to do and learn more. Unfortunately this path leads to the next book, where the cats get mental/psychic powers (another subspecies of them, like the Named/Un-Named), and the next (unpublished) story where they met another subspecies with wings. I like just basic cats.

Speaking about the plot in this book would spoil the earlier books (which I do highly recommend!), so I'll put it behind a cut. ( Plot talk = spoilers for earlier Ratha books. )

The plot didn't work too well for me. I didn't like, enjoy, or buy the interactions between Ratha and Thistle-Chaser.

Ironically, as I've used the name online for 15+ years, I didn't like the Thistle-Chaser character at all. I didn't like her when I read the books the first time, I didn't like her this time. So why did I ever use the name? Because I loved the series so much, I wanted a name from it. Most of the cats had sound/meaningless names (Ratha, Thakur, Fessran, Meoran), which to me didn't have as much character as 'Thistle-Chaser'. Plus, Thistle-Chaser got the name because she kept pouncing thistles -- she never learned to stop doing it and save herself the pain. That rang true with me (sadly :P ).

I don't think I'm going to continue with the series. My opinions of them are the same as they were when I first read them decades ago, which means I'll like the next two even less. I do highly, highly recommend the first book in the series, and the second is good as well. A number of folks liked this third one best, so it could just be a poor match for me.

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G.I. JOE: The Fall of G.I. JOE by Karen Traviss (Author), Steve Kurth (Illustrator) (Link goes to volume 1, volume 2 doesn't seem to be online anywhere.)
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Book received free for review from IDW Publishing.



While I don't like reviewing graphic novels (they're too hard to read online), I can't ever pass up IDW Publishing's GI Joe titles. I've enjoyed every one I've read, both graphic novels and that one non-graphic novel (I really want to reread that non-graphic novel one again soon).

The artwork was interesting, I think it's by an artist I haven't reviewed yet. I really like how they handled clothing, vehicles, background, and most everything in the art, it's only the style used for the people that didn't work well for me. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't my taste. Anyway, I still enjoyed the art overall -- I spent an almost embarrassing amount of time looking at the coloring on a close-up of a chain link fence. Look at the use of yellow, and how many different shades there are in this:



Anyway, unfortunately this wasn't just volume 2, it was part 5 of volume 2, so I can't give you too much of an idea about the plotline. I did enjoy what I read of it though.

Clan Ground by Clare Bell
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)


(These books have been reprinted so often, there are a bunch of different covers around. This isn't the edition I read, but I like this one a lot.)

Second book of the Named series, sequel to Ratha's Creature (which I reviewed here).

In the first book, we learned about the Named (prehistoric, self-aware big cats) and the Un-Named (the same species, just supposedly not self-aware). The main character discovered that not all Un-Named were dumb animals, which lead to her taking one briefly as a mate. By the end of the book, she was back with the clan of the Named.

Clan Ground was about an Un-Named male who came to join the clan. He recognized the true power of the "Red Tongue" (fire, which they had just started using as a tool), and used it to take control of the clan.

Something about this book didn't work. It didn't work for me when I had originally read it in 1984, and something about it still didn't work for me today. I'm having the darnedest time putting my finger on what though. It's likely one of two things:

- The bad guy, the Un-Named male who took over, never really was defined as a character. He's never even really seen much in the book at all, just the effects of his actions.
- The way he takes over the clan (subtly, slowly, through words and being sneaky and underhanded) was so different than the clan had ever dealt with before (law of tooth and claw -- might makes right, you're the leader until someone kills you, then they're the leader), I might have felt bad for them? Because they were so unprepared to deal with that kind of thing?

I suspect it's my first guess, though I'm far from certain. Maybe it's something else, too.

But, my issue aside, it's still a darned good book. I never didn't want to read it, I read it nearly as eagerly as I had the first book.

A subplot of the book was how they tamed "treelings" (lemur-like creatures) to help them do stuff. That was really interesting, along with the Named in general -- I just love the world and all the characters in it.

I really, really want to read the third book in the series, but I agreed to read that Chihuahua dog shifter vs evil werewolf ebook pirates one next, so I started that one. While it's quite amusing, it's also slow to read and I feel like it's going to take me forever to get through it. Once I'm done with that, I'm move on to the third Named book, and the introduction of the character I got my user name from: Ratha and Thistle-chaser.

Lady Numbers vs The Lawn by Madison Keller
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Back in the early days of reading Flower's Fang by the same author, I had been enjoying the book enough that I went in search of other things by her, and stumbled upon this free short story.

Free? D&D based? By an author I liked? Sold!

While it turned out that, by the end of the book I didn't like Flower's Fang so much, I still had this story downloaded, so I checked it out.

Interestingly, it followed the same pattern of Flower's Fang: I loved it in the beginning, but by the end my enjoyment quickly cooled. I still liked it overall, but by the end I was ready to be done with it.

Lady Numbers vs The Lawn did something I loved: It wove the main character's imagination seamlessly with reality. She went into a pawn shop to buy a gardening tool, and in a blink was seeing the store owner as a half-bugbear, and paying in gold instead of dollars. Step out of the store, and she was back to seeing the real world again. Not insanity, just imagination.

The plot was simple enough: The main character, Lady Numbers (her D&D character name), had to tame a very overgrown yard. Through her imagination and gaming experience, she took on the task as if going to battle against a monster named The Lawn instead of in a more mundane manner.

It was a quick little read (15 pages), and I'm totally cheating by giving it a book number for the year (but there's no way I'll come close to 50 this year, and numbering it will make my end of year post easier, so no harm in giving it one). Seeing how it's free to download, if it interests you at all, grab a copy! (Reminder: I get nothing if you use my links to Amazon, I do not have a referral system set up.)

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Lost: I'm still chugging away at the series. I'm in the middle of season three, and while I'm really not enjoying it, by hook or by crook I WILL finish the series this time! I loved season one, but season two was pretty joyless to me, and season three is a little less enjoyable than two.

I know, I know, why keep going if I'm not really enjoying it? Because I want to know how everything will turn out and I want to know the answers, but I'd rather see the show first instead of just reading spoilers.

I think part of my issue is that I dislike so many of the main characters. Jack? I wish the smoke monster would eat him. Kate? Oh lord please get eaten by a polar bear. Blond 'Others' woman currently handcuffed to Kate? Sorry, zero interest in you, too. Desmond? Sorry, brother, I hope a hatch door falls onto you and kills you.

I kind of like Charlie still, but I remember reading he's getting killed, so that puts a damper on that. Hurley is spiffy, but we've not been seeing much of him lately. Sawyer? I think he's the only character who I like more now.

Maybe because I'm getting so much of the show so quickly (two and a half seasons in just over a week), but Locke is really, really getting on my nerves. How much bad crap can happen to one person? When his father pushed him out a window, that was about my last straw. (And how, exactly, did that even work? High rises have unbreakable windows to prevent things just like that. There are an annoying number of issues like that with the show.)

Oh well. Seasons four through six have half the number of episodes than one through three have, so I'm more than halfway done with the series. I just hope the payoff is worth it.