dreams of pirate ships and patty hearst

::waves:: I'm home. With an upset stomach, because airports aren't conducive to eating well. Ah, well.

Vacation book count: four. Short reviews below!

1) Kushiel's Scion, by Jacqueline Carey. The last third of the book was AMAZING, luckily worth slogging through the first two-thirds. Not that it was a bad book up until then, but it just moved very, very slowly through Imriel's teenage angst. Once the whole thing moved to Lucca, it was awesome, and I was riveted. I don't know that I'll buy the second book in hardcover, but I'll read it as soon as I can get it in paperback!

2) The Sharing Knife, Vol. 1: Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Not quite as good as her previous fantasy series, but a diverting read nonetheless. Good characters, rather fluffy, very romance novel. The world is interesting, though, and I'm a bit sad that she only intends it to be two books.

3) Sebastian, by Anne Bishop. She's a master of erotic, dramatic fantasy, but I have to say, the relationship between Sebastian and Lynnea is similar enough to the one between Daemon and Jaenelle in the Black Jewels books as to nearly be indistinguishable, just moved along faster. It's obvious that Bishop enjoys the dynamic of seductive, sex-driven male and innocent unflowered female, and she's really good at writing it, but I kind of wish she'd gone elsewhere for this series. I found myself skipping over a lot of their scenes to get to other ones, ones that featured Belladonna, or Nadia, or Teaser, or others. Good book, though, and I'm interested to see where it goes next!

4) Moonshine, by Rob Thurman. dragonsinger described this series as "the Winchester brothers go demon hunting with Jack Harkness", and that's fairly accurate for the character dynamics. Heh. I kinda want to bash Cal's head in for being stupid every once in a while, but he's a really entertaining narrator, so I can forgive him. Everything except the ending. Gah. There'd better be another book coming.

I also brought Sherrilyn Kenyon's The Dream-Hunter with me, but I couldn't bring myself to read it. I've been doing that for about three months now, which makes me think I've reached my tolerance limit for Sherrilyn's books. Really, I just want her to write Ash's book so I can see if my guess for his partner is right, and then I'm done. She writes the same book over and over again, and I've read it enough times, thanks.