Comfort Books

The top shelf of one of the many bookcases in my bedroom back home is crammed to bursting with some of my all-time favorite novels.  Sometimes, when I’m mopey or just bored I’ll take one down to re-read part or all of it.  The following books are some of the most frequently re-read from that shelf.*  They all have some measure of fantasy (you may have noticed a trend in my media habits) and are also all rather dark.

 

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

A story about several werewolf packs/gangs in Los Angeles and the people caught in between.  Mostly it focuses on the people (including the werewolves) as their loyalties shift and their worlds collapse.  The take on werewolves is fairly fresh and well-considered.  Oh, and did I mention it’s written entirely in absolutely gorgeous free verse?  Yeah.

 

Maledicte by Lane Robins**

This is a tale of love and revenge.  There are also lost gods, nasty politics, lots of intrigue and gratuitous violence delivered with hauntingly beautiful prose.  The characters and their problems are frighteningly believable, despite the fantastic nature of the story.  Bonus points for an interesting pantheon and continuously sending chills down your spine.

 

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Possibly my first real introduction to urban fantasy as a genre, certainly the first time I read an urban fantasy that had something more than vampires in it.  Granted, there are vampires, but there’s plenty of other stuff, too.  It’s been a while since I read it, but I recommend it whole-heartedly.  I mean, it’s Robin McKinley, for crying out loud!

 

Tithe:  A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black (YA)

Like Sunshine in that it was a milestone in my consumption of urban fantasy.  The first book that had faeries in a modern setting.  Take some old-school scary faeries and drop them in the middle of New Jersey.  Now toss in an outcast teenage girl who’s far too clever for her own good.  There’s beautiful imagery, fascinating (and terrifying) faeries and a quest for self-discovery (with a detour toward romance).  I also heartily recommend the author’s graphic novel series The Good Neighbors.

 

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr (YA)

Another book with teenage girls and really scary faeries.  I found this one when it first came out (working in a book store at the time) and I ate it up.  Awesome imagery, interesting use of relatively obscure folklore and throughout all the magic and politics you never lose sight of the characters.  I particularly appreciate that Melissa Marr’s characters have some fairly unique problems in the rapidly-expanding arena of faerie-related YA.

 

Happy reading!
Phantastic Student

*Not included, but also freqently re-read is Vivian Vande Velde’s The Book of Mordred which I adore.  However, being Arthurian in nature it didn’t seem to fit with dark urban fantasy cast of the rest of the list (Maledicte maybe be set in a period similar to the Regency/Victorian eras but you can’t tell me it’s not urban fantasy).  So I’ll talk about it another day.

** When I recommend a book from a series I am recommending the whole series unless I specifically say otherwise.

Read Full Post »

(A Very) Late Eclipses Review

I just got back online after midterm break with a late review of Seanan McGuire‘s Late Eclipses.  The book arrived a couple days before I did and I started in on it Monday afternoon and finished it at about three o’clock in the morning on Tuesday.  So about twelve hours, including numerous breaks to bounce about the house with sheer giddiness.

Late Eclipses is the best of the series so far.  The mystery is more urgent and more personal, the character relations are tight and functional (though I admit Quentin got less air time this book) and Toby is finally realizing just how deeply immersed she is in Faerie.

What’s best about this book, I think, is the flow of it.  Usually, when I’m reading a book I’ll use Post-It flags to mark my favorite character quotes* and bits of prose I find particularly well-crafted or moving.  Late Eclipses only has four flags.  Not because there isn’t a lot of awesomeness in this book, but because the whole book is so good that only a few things stand out above the rest.  From the very beginning to the very end, this book has the usual rises and falls in pace and excitement, but it’s consistently good.  There are only four places that really stand out and say “hey, re-read this!” on their own, because everything else fits so seamlessly that I can’t reread it without rereading the entire book.**

After An Artificial Night I thought McGuire was getting better and more comfortable in her world but I was afraid to hope it would last.  Now that I’ve read Late Eclipses I’m convinced that, if it’s even possible to make a better Toby Daye book, the next one will surpass the others.  It’s really growing as a series.  So now I’m dying for September and the release of One Salt Sea*** because I know it will surpass the others.  McGuire will deliver some of the best urban fantasy around.  That said, if you have any interest in UF, you should be reading this series.  If you don’t, you should buy it anyway and give it to someone who does.

 

Eagerly awaiting the next installment,

Phantastic Student

 

*I am a bit of a Tybalt fan.  He’s snarky and he’s gorgeous and his conversations with Toby are always hilarious.  For example, my copy of A Local Habitation is bristling with flags, the vast majority of which highlight Tybalt quotes.

**Which is why I left it at home when I came back to school.  If it were here, I’d reread it constantly instead of doing any work.  This is, in fact, the only reason I’m not listing the four flags by page and line number (I could probably type up the actual quotes from memory, but then there’d be spoilers).

***I had to force myself not to read the excerpt at the back of  Late Eclipses to retain what little remains of my sanity.  I already can’t wait for September and the next book because I know that if there is any possible way to make a better Toby Daye book, the next one will surpass the others.

 

Read Full Post »

Things To Look Forward To

March 1st

Two of my all-time favorite urban fantasy series release their latest installments!

Seanan McGuire‘s Late Eclipses.  Toby Daye gets in trouble, yells, curses and bleeds.   Faeries are snarky and scary.  Yay, faeries!  (Also, Seanan’s posting some really fun/informative lists on her blog as she prepares for the book release.)

Patricia Briggs‘s River Marked.  Mercy Thompson gets in trouble, yells, fixes some things and breaks others.  She gets yelled at by werewolves.  Yay, werewolves!

March 4

By the end of the day, I’ll have finished off all my tests for the week.

The end of the day also marks the beginning of the first real break of the semester.

I get to go home, where my copies of Late Eclipses and River Marked await me.

I have a week to read whatever the hell I want.

I have a week to sleep.

And I have a week where I get to eat food that someone else cooked – or at least raid a well-stocked kitchen.

 

In other news…

I’ve started and caught up on a whole ton of webcomics since my last post, but I feel that dumping a bunch of links with no reason or rhyme is unfair to the stories and their creators.  So for now I’ll just link to two of them.

Free Mars, written by Dave Pauwels and art by Nicolas R. Giacondino.  I think it was originally called The Sisters Grim.  Mars is colonized and the militant government is upsetting some people.   There’s an attempt at revolution.  An all-girls band gets caught in the crossfire.  Good art, good story and developing characters.

FreakAngels, written by Warren Ellis (yes, that one) and art by Paul Duffield.   This is amazing.  Yes, I am late to the party on this one (when am I not?) but I’m glad I had the chance to read so much of it at once.  The art is gorgeous, the story is complicated, the themes are clear without necessarily reflecting a definite opinion, and the characters are well-written.   In the two evening it took me to get through the archives, I quoted bits of dialog to my roommate…  Well, I lost count.  Also, our neighbors are probably really nervous right now.

Everyone’s busy this weekend, so I suppose I’ll spend the time alternately sleeping and gorging on media.

Gleefully,

Phantastic Student

Read Full Post »

Silver Borne

Just finished Silver Borne, the latest installment of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs.  It’s yet another wonderful installment of the series, this particular book focusing on issues with the fae, and with Mercy’s new pack-b0nds.  I liked it better than the last book, Bone Crossed, for the simple fact that I barely remember the contents of BC, but Silver Borne is going to stick with me as well as the first three novels.

For the purposes of full disclosure, I feel that I should warn everyone that this is one of my all-time favorite urban fantasy series and the series that introduced me to UF as a genre.  I won’t claim that it’s particularly literary, because it isn’t, but I can say that it is an amazing series.  The world-building/updating is amazing, and the characters are easy to connect to, despite the fact that most of them are some supernatural Other.  They still have a lot of the same issues as the rest of us, and their problems with the Other are believable.  Also, this series isn’t half as racy as a lot of other UF series tend to be, which I view as a good thing.

One the reasons I adore this series is because the secondary characters keep coming back and the author never stops developing them (including my favorite character, who I won’t name for the sake of anyone who hasn’t read this series yet).

Another reason I like it is because this particular UF world, in addition to having the usual vampire and werewolf citizens, also has the fae and other, non-were, shapeshifters.  Plus it has the distinction of being one of relatively few series in which the everyday human is aware, at least partly, of the supernatural element of the world around them.

A spin-off series featuring the Marrock’s son, Charles, and his Omega mate Anna is also available (the first books is called Cry Wolf).  This series looks more closely at the structure of werewolf society and is still very good.  It has a different feel than the Mercy Thompson books, with romance taking center stage, rather than being a subplot, and therefore isn’t quite as high on my list as the Mercy Thompson series.

Briggs also has a graphic novel prequel to the Mercy Thompson series called Homecoming, which depicts the events of Mercy’s first visit to the Tri-Cities and her meeting with Adam Hauptman and his pack.   More graphic novels, based on both series,  are on the way.

I highly recommend the Mercy Thompson series to anyone who enjoys UF featuring werewolves and fae (the vampires aren’t in the forefront here), or UF with strong character.  Hell, I recommend this series to anyone who wants to give UF a shot but is wary of detective-centric UF and the racier stuff.

Happy reading,

Phantastic Student

Read Full Post »

An Artificial Night

I’ve been bouncing up and down waiting for the third book in Seanan McGuire‘s October Daye series since I finished reading the second book, A Local Habitation, back in March. I pre-ordered An Artificial Night
but didn’t receive it until Thursday. I promptly stayed up reading it too late, went to bed, got up early to read it some more, and read it every moment that I wasn’t in class or at work. I finished it about twenty minutes ago and I can assure everyone that it was worth the wait.

I know I’ve mentioned the October Daye series before. It’s hard-boiled urban fantasy starring a half-fae detective. The first book was dark (well, I did call the series hard-boiled), with the sensuous imagery and twisting plot that you expect in hard-boiled detective fiction. The magic not only fit in brilliantly (with McGuire referring to fairy tales, nursery rhymes and folklore both well-known and obscure) but was a necessary, living part of the world rather than something tacked on for marketing purposes. It was edgy, gritty and frankly I found myself whining to my mom because I can’t write anything that dark and beautiful.

The second book, A Local Habitation, wasn’t as awesome as the first. It was still dark and gritty, still showing a beautifully broken protagonist trying to find her place in a world that’s moved on without her, but it was missing something. It didn’t have that distinct edge that made Rosemary and Rue to memorable. I didn’t mind this overmuch because some of my favorite minor characters from the first book got more screen time (what do you call it in books, anyway?) and because we were given a better background of the world the characters inhabit.

An Artificial Night took the background from the second book, used it and added to it. It took the toughness, grittiness and heartbreak from the first book and compounded it. It took the best of both books, used it and made it better. It totally kicked ass. McGuire’s hit her stride and is going to keep going. Reading the preview to the next book, Late Eclipses (due out in March of next year) I have faith that the author will keep going, building on what she’s got and making the series better with every installment. And I can’t wait to be along for the ride.

I want to list all the great things about this book. I want to tell you what fairy tales and nursery rhymes come into play and how beautifully they fit. I want to tell you what happens to our heroine and everyone else. I want to tell you how freaking amazing this book is. But I can’t because that would ruin it for you and no one deserves that. All I can say is that if you’ve read the other two books in the series you should run out and buy this one. Now. If you haven’t read any of the October Daye books yet you need to go out and buy them, check them out from the library, whatever. They’re worth reading. Urban fantasy not your cup of coffee? That’s fine. Buy the books for someone who does like them. Support this author, because she’s brilliant and we need to see more of her work.

Open roads and kind fires,
Phantastic Student

 

Read Full Post »