Sillybean

Books

Empire of Ivory was better than Black Powder War, lots better, but I still don’t think the Temeraire series is living up to the promise of the first book. I am enjoying them, but I thought the first book was mind-blowingly fun, and the subsequent books have been pretty low on whiz-bang-wow. Novik says that Victory of Eagles will be published in hardcover next year, which irritates me. Memo to publishers: readers dislike it when you switch formats midway through a series. Quit that.

An Ice Cold Grave was waiting for me in its little Amazon box when I got home late last night, and I finished it early this morning. It did exactly what the third installment in this series needed to do, and in a very satisfying way. That light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train, and when it hits there will be one hell of a mess to clean up. This is how mystery series should be written, paranormal or no.

Amazon is up to its old tricks, reporting that the sequel to Hugh Laurie’s The Gun Seller was published earlier this week. The problem is that he hasn’t written it yet. He’s been, y’know, preoccupied. Amazon is always reluctant to admit they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, though. I note they’re still making up release dates for The Captal’s Tower. They’ve been pulling dates out of their asses since 1998; I don’t expect they’ll stop anytime soon.

Back to work now…