Urban Shaman, by C.E. Murphy

3.5 stars

If I’d read this book at any other time I probably wouldn’t have rated it quite so highly, but Urban Shaman gave me my reading mojo back (I inhaled it in a matter of hours at the start of a day off) and so it gets a thumbs up from me.

When police force mechanic Joanne Walker spots a damsel in distress from her aeroplane seat (yeah, I know, stay with me) she feels compelled to track her down and help. Enlisting the aid of an ageing cabbie on landing, she soon finds herself confronting her Celtic and Native American heritage (and real name of Siobhan Walkingstick) and newly awakened shaman powers (yeah, I know, shut up). Which is handy, as it turns out some Celtic deities have decided that they’re relocating to Seattle.

While the writing wasn’t always spectacular, I liked the sarcasm on display from most of our characters at the situations they were finding themselves in (Gary the elderly cabbie was a particular favourite) as well as the characterisation of the deities, even if I didn’t always enjoy the way some of the magic scenes – with vague metaphors of fixing cars – were handled (these were especially vague to me as I know nothing about cars and have no wish to rectify this). That said, I did appreciate that Joanne’s magic skills were all about healing, rather than the killing skills the heroines of these types of book usually develop, and found it a refreshing change that I hadn’t been aware I’d wanted from this genre.

I won’t be adding the rest of the series to the top of my to-read pile just yet, but they’re definitely in there somewhere, ready for the next time I need some brain candy.

Secret Lives, by Gabriella Poole

(Darke Academy #1) - 1 star

Despite barely showing anything approaching intelligence, a judgmental and jumped up eavesdropper from a poor background wins a scholarship to a prestigious but ridiculous school, The Darke Academy, where nobody learns anything because the teachers are too busy being intimidated by the clique of beautiful, blatant moustache-twirlers that lord it over the rest of the student body. Despite hating and looking down on the group, Cassie (our asshole-ish eavesdropper) is desperate to become one of them – ostensibly so that she can find out what their deal is, but mostly so she can make sure they know how much better she is than them because of her poor upbringing. There were so many things that made me rage about this book, I may need some counselling as soon as I finish this review.

In case you couldn’t tell, I despised our ‘heroine’, Cassie, and was at a loss to understand how everyone she met was so impressed by her, despite her doing nothing impressive whatsoever. I hated the stupid school, with its moving country every term (what a logistical nightmare that must be) and I hated the stupid ruling clique, The Few, and nearly strained my eye muscles through doing this every time someone called them by that ridiculously pretentious name:

I hated the ‘love triangle’, and thought its execution was particularly poorly done - although at least Richard, the ‘charming’ fop, actually spent some time with Cassie (even if I still couldn’t see any growth of feelings between them) as opposed to Ranjit who seemed to fall head over heels simply through staring at her (and the fact that she’s such a dead ringer for his dead girlfriend didn’t lend him the air of a tragic romantic hero, but that of a creepy weirdo who was about to pull a Vertigo on her).

And worst of all, I despised the ‘reveal’ which was so poorly executed that I’m still not entirely clear on what manner of monster The Few are – sort of vampire-like but feeding on souls, or life, or something equally vague and apparently something to do with some sort of spirit possession? Quite why an entire school would need to be set up to ‘teach’ these beautiful wankers how to be beautiful wankers was lost on me – as was how it was considered prestigious when the rest of the student body, there to be fed upon by The Few, learnt fuck all thanks to the tosspots derailing every lesson.

In case it isn’t staggeringly clear, I spent most of my time wishing that the school would burn to the ground with Cassie and The Few still in it, and if this had been a book instead of being read on my Kindle I’d have happily added it to the fire.

Prince Lestat, by Anne Rice

4 stars

It’s been some time since we last saw Lestat, acting strangely unlike himself in Blood Canticle (as if Lestat would ever say cool or dude. Although she wouldn’t say that either, I’m laying the blame for this solely at the door of the infinitely dislikeable Rowan Mayfair, who also unfortunately starred in that outing). It pleases me to say that not only is Lestat back, but this time it really is the Lestat we know and love, in all his lion-maned, arrogant and lace bedecked glory. And Rowan’s not even mentioned.

Catching up with not just my beloved but a host of other vampires besides, Prince Lestat finds the vampire world in an uproar – a mysterious voice is goading vampires into destroying one another and the Sacred Core, which animates all vampires and currently resides in the brain of the ancient and mute Mekare, is under threat. The vampires need a leader to take control – now who might that leader be, I wonder?

After the last few books in the Vampire Chronicles and the lacklustre second outing in the Wolf Gift Chronicles, I must admit I was a little nervous about this one, which is probably why I put off reading it for so long. Happily, I needn’t have worried. Aside from enjoying Lestat as much as I ever have, I also enjoyed the fleshing out of the pasts of some of the unnamed vampires from previous entries which brought to the fore Anne’s skill at embedding a sense of history in her characters – even if I couldn’t help but snigger every time one of them waxed poetic about how wonderfully complex and profound they found the previous Vampire Chronicles (which exist in this world as they were all ‘written’ by our vampires) and if the central mysteries (who is The Voice, and who started the Talamasca) were easily solved, I still found them satisfying.

The only minus for me was the story of Rose and Viktor, which didn’t really add anything new (she’s such a beautiful, delicate, battered flower and he’s….well, he’s really pretty too) other than giving Anne an option for a new series starring Lestat v2. Not that I wouldn’t read the shit out of that too, but for now they simply felt superfluous.

If you’re new to the world of the Vampire Chronicles, I really wouldn’t recommend starting here (although handy previouslies are provided throughout the text, you’d still be missing out on a lot of the backstories to these characters, as well as the two best books in the series) but if you’re a long-time fan, you’ll eat Lestat’s story up with a spoon.

Graveyard Shift, by Angela Roquet

1 star

Lana is a Reaper, living in Limbo City, making a living collecting souls on their deaths and delivering them to whatever Afterlife suits them best - it turns out that all religions were sorta right, you see, and so their believers are simply measured against their own beliefs before being ferried on to Heaven/Hell/Nirvana/Summerland etc. Unless they're unbelievers, in which case they're thrown into the Sea of Eternity. 

Despite not being a very good Reaper - she breaks rules, is insubordinate, lazy and generally a pain in the ass - Lana has somehow just been given a promotion. Grim, the boss of the Reapers, wants her to head a crew looking for a particularly special soul who can hold Eternity together.

This initially appealed to me because of its ideas, but unfortunately fell flat in the telling. We jump from plot point to plot point with most of the contents feeling like ideas for scenes and characters not yet fleshed out, and neither the relationships (be they the apparently romantic one that springs up between Lana and an angel she supposedly despises, or those with her friends and peers) nor the plot points felt remotely organic but simply appeared because Roquet wanted them to. Description wasn't a strong suit either, so I was left with only a vague sense of what this world looked and felt like, what happened in the battles that frequently kicked off, and no clue whatsoever why both Lana and the soul she was looking for were so ruddy bloody special.

On the plus side, this was free...

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

by Neil Gaiman, 4 stars

A genre-hopping collection of short fictions from Neil Gaiman, intended to unsettle and disturb, which overall worked very well (for me – someone who much prefers novels to short stories).

As with any short story collection, this is something of a mixed bag – I have zero time for Doctor Who, even if he’s written by Neil Himself, and so Nothing O’Clock was definitely not my kind of crack, and I could have also lived without the Sherlock story The Case of Death and Honey, but these were completely overshadowed by my favourites which either took already familiar tales and twisted them (The Sleeper and the Spindle) or took mundane-looking lives and shone a light on their weird underbellies (My Last Landlady, Jerusalem, Feminine Endings). But my favourite by far, and a tale which alone made the book a must-buy for me was Black Dog, in which we catch up with American Gods’ Shadow as he visits a typical English country boozer and gets drawn into the lives of a local couple.

Perhaps strangely, one of the others that really stood out for me was the book’s opener, Making A Chair, in which our author writes about – you guessed it - making a chair. Quite an odd one to become a favourite, but it illustrated perfectly to me how much of a writer’s work is less inspiration and more actual work and that, much like an aspiring athlete needs to train, the most important thing any aspiring writer can do is just that – write. This somehow makes my work chore of pulling ‘stories’ out of one word emails for the weekly bulletin so much easier to bear…

The Wolves of Midwinter, by Anne Rice

3 stars

Hmmmmmm. What did I think of this one? I'm not so sure that I know yet, so am hoping that as I write this review I'll discover what my true feelings were. On the one hand, it was deeply pleasurable to be reading Anne Rice again, with her vivid sense of place and sensual powers of description in full flow. But on the other hand, it all felt a bit (whisper it) pointless. Stuff might have happened, but it felt as though most of that stuff involved putting up Christmas decorations...

Following on from events in The Wolf Gift, Reuben is now fully ensconced at Nideck Point and surrounded by the Distinguished Gentlemen who share his gift. His girlfriend, Laura (she who likes schtupping while he's in his wolf form) is undergoing her own transformation mostly off the page, leaving Reuben and the lads to go about setting up a Christmas spectacle. Which they do wonderfully, for pages and pages and pages and pages and pages. And that's before the spectacle actually happens, which of course needs lots more pages devoted to it.

In the meantime, we're also introduced to some of the 'Ageless Ones' who've long acted as servants to the Distinguished Gentlemen (although what they get out of doing so is beyond me), the 'Forest Gentry'(spirits who inhabit the forest surrounding Reuben's home) and the others who are coming together to form Reuben's extended family. A bit of plot floats around during all of this - Marchent's ghost is haunting Reuben and seems to want to tell him something - but only in the loosest possible sense and the climax of this thread turned out to be completely underwhelming.

Continuing with the negatives, Rice's unfortunate habit of having her characters love positively everyone while pontificating at length on philosophy and morality was also present and correct and far more noticeable for the lack of much to get my teeth into, as was her insistence on including children who are terribly grave and precocious and speak like elderly Victorian gentlemen, who stretch my credulity far more than a bunch of Morphenkinder ever could.

Although it's probably starting to sound as though I hated this, I did still tear through this in just a couple of sittings and will still be making sure to read the next instalment. I just won't be getting as rabid as I did for Lestat.

The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe

4 stars

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,—

At the grand old age of 35, the only exposure I’ve ever really had to Edgar Allan Poe was in a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode. And so, as we shiver our way towards Halloween this week, I thought it was probably high time to rectify this.

I have to say that I’m really glad I did. I’m not usually much of a poetry fan (mostly to do with reasons as illustrated by the long and pompous introduction to the poem by Edmund Stedman that almost made me hate the poem before I’d even started it), but The Raven still stands the test of time with its wonderfully spooky atmosphere, mournful air, clever rhyme scheme and wonderfully musical rhythm that just begs to be read aloud. If anything, this would be my only complaint – I felt that there was something lost in just reading it, rather than hearing it performed.

And so without further ado I give you The Raven, read by Darth Vader (P.S. If anybody can track down Clancy Brown and make him read this, you will receive my undying devotion).

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Dead Witch Walking, by Kim Harrison

1 star

I think I must have been well and truly spoiled by the Jim Butchers and Kelley Armstrongs of the paranormal genre, as Dead Witch Walking is the latest in a long line of paranormal series I've attempted only to find myself rolling my eyes and tutting loudly nearly every time I turned a page.

In a world post-Turn, where the human population found itself hugely diminished thanks to and still quivering with terror at...um...tomatoes, they've now found themselves living side-by-side with a wealth of supernatural races collectively known as Inderlanders. The wildly irritating Rachel Morgan is a witch and runner for Inderland Security, which polices the supernatural community and tags its ne'er-do-wells. Except she's no longer wanted in the I.S. and, backed by her vampire colleague Ivy and tiny pixy partner Jenks, finds herself on the run from their many assassins (standard I.S. termination policy). Trying to buy herself out of her death, Rachel plans to take down and hand over local big-bad Trent Karramack, but as we'll soon find out Rachel's plans have a habit of being completely crap and falling apart quicker than something that falls apart really quickly.

Constantly overestimated by everybody despite the fact that all of her 'plans' end with her getting captured and having to be rescued by others, Rachel is also constantly jumping to incorrect assumptions as well as having some serious trust issues - as in she refuses to trust anybody who proves they can be trusted, preferring instead to trust people she has just met (but only as long as they act reallllllly suspiciously). In case you can't tell, Rachel made my shit itch as badly as if Jenks had pixed me. 

As Dead Witch Walking preferred to focus more on its characters and their relationships than driving forward the story, the fact that I hated pretty much everyone bar Jenks and his family meant that my only real enjoyment came in rooting enthusiastically for Rachel's death. I'll be pretending that that's what happened come the end instead of reading any more of her adventures.

Skin Game, by Jim Butcher

4 stars

Not many series, especially those set in the paranormal realm, manage to get 15 books in without showing signs of bloat, slump, or the author no longer feeling any enthusiasm for their creation (as in the case of the terminal decline of the Sookie Stackhouse books). As tall as he is, Skin Game sees Harry Dresden still standing head and shoulders above his contemporaries as we tear through the latest breakneck instalment in the continued development of my favourite wizard-for-hire.

Following the events of Cold Days Harry has spent a long time recovering on his island with just Mab, Demonreach itself, and the parasite that's soon due to burst from his head to keep him company. But not for long, as Mab has loaned Harry out for a job - a particularly awkward one, seeing as Harry will be working for one of his nemeses, the bastardly Denarian Nicodemus Archleone. Archleone has assembled a motley crew of supernatural types (including a not very friendly Yeti) for the heist of the century - he doesn't want to break into any old vault but one belonging to Hades, down in the Underworld.

Butcher yet again does a great job in raising the stakes for Harry while at the same time avoiding one of the more common missteps in the supernatural; while Harry is no longer just a wizard-for-hire but also a Warden of the White Council and Winter Knight, that doesn't mean that he's now nigh invincible and possessing every power imaginable (*cough* Anita Blake *cough*). Instead each new job has brought a different set of responsibilities, a new set of restrictions, and a new set of challenges (especially in the case of negotiating the moral pitfalls of being the Winter Knight).

Keeping us in touch with the human world are the friends Harry calls in to help - good old Murphy who's always got his back, Michael Carpenter, getting a last hurrah as a Knight of the Cross while also raising Harry's cute-as-a-button daughter Maggie (whose moments, along with Mouse, made it a little hard to swallow past the lump in my throat) and, most effectively, Waldo Butters who proves that you don't have to be the smartest, the strongest, or the most fearless to be a total hero. 

While I may have missed not having Toot, Thomas or Bob (except in a small but great cameo), these were minor niggles easily cancelled out by my glee at Harry's new habit of shouting 'Parkour!' every time he moves (as someone who shouts similar at minor movements like getting off the sofa, I wholeheartedly approve) with my biggest niggle being that I'm now up to date with the series, and am going to have to actually wait for the next to be written. Dagnammit!

Moon Called, by Patricia Briggs

2.5 stars

Mercy Thompson was raised by wolves. Werewolves, in fact, although she's not one herself. Instead she's a 'walker', able to slip from her human form into that of a coyote whenever she chooses. Her neighbour's a werewolf though, as is the young man that turns up at her garage needing help before turning up dead on her doorstep, and soon Mercy is up to her neck in them as she tries to thwart a plot against her local pack.

This was a decent enough paranormal outing that was probably all my run-down brain could cope with at the time, that starred a heroine that didn't particularly make my shit itch, but still spent far too much time dwelling on dominance, submission and hierarchies to completely suit. Much of its time was also spent over-explaining absolutely everything, although this did come in handy towards the end as the plot thickened and I was no longer able to keep track of - or care about - what in the gibbering flip was going on.

I'll probably come back eventually to give this series at least one chance to improve, but I won't be rushing.

Street Magic, by Caitlin Kittredge

1 star

I've been casting about for a new paranormal series to start chomping my way through, but if Street Magic accomplished anything, it was to prove that Black London is not going to be that series. Set in a London in which the walls between this world and the shadow-world that runs parallel are very thin, children are going missing. And tough female cop Pete Caldecott is going to need the help of street-mage Jack Winter, who supposedly died in front of her 12 years ago, to get them back...

Some books, like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, dream up a shadowy parallel London that is wonderful and strange while still feeling plausible and recognisably London. Street Magic is not one of those books. Aside from a few mentions of place names and some mangled Brit-speak we could have been anywhere, parallel London - the Black - was a good idea that we then barely bothered with, and our main characters, Pete and Jack, were probably supposed to be charming assholes but unfortunately forgot to show any charm.

We know that Pete is a tough cop because she's always threatening to put her boot up someone's arse, being bitchy when it's not called for, and thinking nothing of indulging in a little breaking and entering or a spot of police brutality. Her detective work is based mostly around arching an eyebrow - it's certainly not based on anything like, I don't know, piecing together evidence or asking any pertinent questions (despite having apparently seen Jack die, it takes her 3/4 of the book to ask why the hell he's not dead, wonder why everyone keeps calling him a crow-mage, or what the hell that means anyway) and she seemed to forget all about the missing children for long stretches of time in favour of thinking about or looking at Jack instead.

The wildly off-putting Jack is a really crap version of Constantine who seems to have learnt to speak English solely through listening to Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Spike and, as well as having no redeeming features whatsoever, is responsible for some of the more unsuccessful attempts at being British (you won't find many of us who use 'fuck all' or 'bugger all' as exclamations - they're instead swearier ways of saying 'nothing', i.e: 

And as for all the magic, I've still no idea what gives Jack such super bloody special status amongst mages, how much of the magic worked, or why sorcerers are so supposedly badass when they can be easily vanquished, again and again, by someone with no clue as to how to fight them, as instead of building a plausible world or magic system we'd settled instead for pulling random plot points and magic rules from out of someone's ass.

To top it all off, with long stretches of nothing happening other than two unlikeable people bitching at one another and any action that did occur quickly becoming repetitive, what should have been a little piece of brain candy took forever to slog through. I won't be wasting any more precious reading time in this world.

Dhampir, by Barb and JC Hendee

3 stars

Apparently Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Lord of the Rings, everyone who knows me will realise that this is the exact kind of sentence designed to make me buy things. 

But, aside from the elf and the vampire slaying, I'd say this is more reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Brothers Grimm, with two grifters finding themselves trapped by the reputations built by their cons into battling the undead for real.

From the very first it's clear that Magiere, with blood-red highlights in her hair, isn't quite like everyone else. Shunned as a child due to suspicious parentage, she's since hardened herself to society and now makes her way from superstitious village to superstitious village, fleecing the inhabitants with the help of her half-elf partner, Leesil. Until one night when she's set upon by a creature not unlike those she's been supposedly killing, and she decides to jack it all in and start over as a tavern landlady. But the vampires living in the town she's chosen to settle in have other ideas, and so Magiere and Leesil (and his magic dog, Chap) must become what they've previously claimed to be.

Whilst I enjoyed this one - it had some decent action and characters, and I particularly enjoyed the bad guys and their group dynamic (in particular, the triangle between Rashed, Teesha and her dearly departed hubby who she's been slowly falling out of love with) - there were also a few niggles; Magiere's powers didn't really make much sense to me until they were fully explained near the end by the exposition fairy Welstiel, while the idea that someone tooling around with a half-elf would scoff at the existence of vampires struck me as a bit snort-worthy.

Not a bad read at all - in fact this was a nice, easy diversion for a few days, but it won't see me beating down the door of the bookstore for more.

Mr Darcy, Vampire by Amanda Grange

1 star

This was gifted to me a few years ago in the midst of the shoving the supernatural into classics phase and I can see why it was chosen - I love Pride and Prejudice and I love vampires. However, the twenty thousand games that took place yesterday in the Whatever Cup enabled me to find out that the two really don't mix well.

If you're coming to this book hoping for a bit of throat-ripping to go with your socialising, or even a bit of bodice-ripping, you're going to be disappointed. Instead you'll get 200+ pages of Lizzy being dragged around Europe on her honeymoon, wondering if Darcy still loves her as he fails to consummate the marriage and looks tormented, before a quick flash of fang at the end when Lizzy realises he's a vampire and turns him human again through the power of - you guessed it - true love.

It probably doesn't help that a book with Vampire in the title only got bite-y for a wee bit in the last quarter, but it definitely doesn't help that Grange chose as her basis a book and a heroine that both sparkle with wit, when hers really doesn't. 

Still, it did distract from the fact that there's still football on my telly, so there's always that.

Angelfall, by Susan Ee

4 stars

You can usually guarantee that when you pick up a book starring angels, it's going to be lame. As such, and having bought Angelfall for less than a quid, I came to this with seriously low expectations (seriously. After nearly suffering an aneurysm through violent eye-rolling when reading Hush, Hush, and even starting to think that Anne Rice was shit while reading Angel Time, the bar had been set so low you'd have had to start digging to find it). I settled back, relaxed, and prepared to snark and snigger my way through...only to find myself tearing through the book in two sittings with nary an eyeroll and harbouring a secret regret that I'd spunked away book money on the rest of the disappointing Divergent series and therefore wouldn't be able to justify immediately buying the rest of this to my despairing boyfriend (who has just spent months decluttering our flat and could really do without more books already, thank you).

Penryn is a teenage girl in a post-apocalyptic world - one that's been annihilated by angels. It seems Judgement Day has been and gone and the human race been found wanting. In the aftermath of the devastation, survivors not only need to avoid the uber-violent angels still patrolling the skies but human gangs and scavengers too, as well as trying not to become one of the growing number of bodies found gnawed upon by teeth that aren't those of animals.

Penryn is already something of a survivor - she's had to be. With a paranoid schizophrenic mother and a disabled younger sister, Penryn's long taken on the responsibility of taking care of her family. She's also taken virtually every type of self-defence class imaginable, signed up by a mother terrified that Penryn could be the subject of an attack by her own hand. This is going to come in handy from now on, especially after her sister is abducted by angels. To track her down, Penryn must form an unlikely alliance with the angel Raffe, saved by Penryn after being attacked by his own kind and left wingless and dying in the street.

Building a brilliant post-apocalyptic world that doesn't shy away from being horrific when it needs to, starring a heroine that's feisty and funny and lacking inexplicable powers, and a take on angels that I really appreciated (these aren't beings of aching goodness but a bunch of dicks, who amusingly aren't really even sure God exists but would jump off a cliff if Gabriel told them to. Not that jumping off a cliff would affect them in any way what with the wings and all, but you get the drift). There's no insta-love and, although the central relationship between Penryn and Raffe is clearly building towards something more romantic, it's a slow-burner that doesn't feel the need for constant melodramatic pronouncements as well as managing the astonishing feat of only making me 'ugh' once.

Well played, Susan Ee, well played!

The Don't Bother Bin: Hush, Hush

1 star (read in Sept 2010)

This one well and truly proves the old adage that you can't judge a book by its cover as the one on this is truly gorgeous, whereas the contents are some of the lamest writing I have ever read. I shall try to avoid slipping into a rant, but judging by the way this book had me yelling at it every five seconds like a deranged person I can't make any promises.

Borrowing heavily from Twilight including meeting via partnerdom in bio class, rescue from danger in Portland (what is it with Portland?) and a heroine whom everyone inexplicably sees as intelligent when she actually displays the IQ of a stone, this is the tale of Nora Grey, a girl with the power to make fallen angels abandon their plans of murder and fall in love with her instead simply by being an apparently schizophrenic, blushing and spluttering moron. The angel, Patch (kudos on the sexy name there, doesn't at all put me in mind of a small, yappy dog) apparently has eyes that 'didn't play by the rules' (what, they smell instead of see? Or are they Marty Feldman-esque?)

Patch (snigger) is meant to come across as a sexy bad boy, but instead comes off as a psychotic creep in desperate need of a shoeing - and this is coming from somebody who was desperately in love (lust) with 90% of the population of HBO's Oz (ahhh, Ryan O'Reilly...now that's how you do a sexy bad boy).

The writing and plot is as bitty and all over the shop as Nora's personality, with events cropping up and characters making decisions that are wildly implausible even within a story set amongst the supernatural, functioning merely to get us to the next 'plot' point. Amongst the many, many things that irked me are:

* Coach, the bio teacher, making Patch and Nora tell the class what they look for in a potential mate, simply so we can shoehorn in some sexual tension. Shut up Coach, and behave like a teacher actually would.

* Nora taking iron pills in front of Patch, while thinking her anemia is her vulnerable secret and that she should try to keep him from finding out. 

* This is an 'intelligent' girl, remember, and yet we have her walking down a dark alley in a scary neighbourhood during a freezing cold night and trading her hat and coat (with her phone in the pocket) with a homeless person in exchange for directions, simply so we can shoehorn in another mistaken identity attack.

* Nora instantly wearing less make-up the moment Patch tells her she should, and continuing to spend time with him even though she's mostly ultra-paranoid and terrified of him because, after all, he's hot. Next she'll be cutting herself off from all her friends and excusing her black eyes because it just shows how much he loves her really.

* After beating Patch's chest with her fists we have him telling her that, having seen her moves, he's sure she can take the angel of death that's after her. Angels of death are either nowhere near as badass as they sound, or their Kryptonite is being punched in the tits. Don't try and make us believe that our heroine can defend herself when you've actually only shown us that she is completely incapable.

* After spending most of the book thinking Patch is trying to kill her, he confesses to both wanting to and nearly doing so twice already. In return she strokes his scars.

On the plus side, my edition had a strange habit of sometimes replacing the y's on the end of words with a ). This led to the best moment of the entire book, when Patch told Nora:

You're getting cock).

Childish, but awesome.

Cold Days, by Jim Butcher

3.5 stars

No longer mostly dead thanks to the combined efforts of Mab and Demonreach, Harry's back in the material world in time to save it, again.

Now Mab's Winter Knight thanks to the deal he made back in Changes, his first mission is an ugly one - going after Mab's own daughter. But Maeve's a slippery customer, and may have some compelling reasons up her sleeve (I guess that would be her Wizard's Sleeve, as she spends the book mostly naked)  for Harry to take out Mab instead.

To make things even simpler, he has an awesomely deadly new assistant for his mission (the Cat Sith) who isn't best pleased to be serving him, and most of the Winter Court is out for his blood. Oh, and Demonreach is about to blow, which doesn't bode well for the world considering that the island's purpose is to serve as a demonic Oz - a maximum security prison for the most nightmarish beasties to have ever been unleashed on the world.

Bursting to the seams with action, sometimes I felt there was a little too much this time around, with wave after wave of assault sometimes disorienting me and making me forget just who was after Harry now and why it was important.

I was also a little nonplussed by his friends reactions to his reappearance in their lives. Considering how fucked up we found them all in Ghost Story, and the hoops they made him jump through to prove his really was Harry, I was expecting a bigger reaction than the collective shrug that came from everyone bar Thomas and Mouse.

And finally in my list of niggles, whilst I'm aware that Harry has always been a bit of a dick when it comes to women, I am really not keen on the new, rapey Harry that's been wrought by the mantle of Winter, nor the reactions of the ladies he'd quite like to rape (or the fact that women everywhere are constantly either oozing sex or defined by the lack of sex they ooze). Harry is, in fact, getting dangerously close to me wanting everyone to punch him in the throat.  With the set-up for the next book that came at the book's climax, it's a situation that will probably only get worse as he works out the dynamics of his relationship with the new Winter Lady.

Still, I do love the fantastic flourishes we get whenever dealing with the fae, and with Toot still around and managing to not want to rape everyone he meets, there's still someone at least for me to wholeheartedly throw my support behind. 

But Harry - consider yourself warned...

Ghost Story, by Jim Butcher

3.5 stars

After being a good girl and reading a classic it's time for my reward, which naturally means more Harry Dresden. Be warned - if you haven't yet read Changes it's time to click away, as here be spoilers...

Things have changed a lot for Harry since Changes...for one thing, he's dead. But, being Harry, that doesn't mean his troubles are anywhere near over and before he's been in the Inbetween for five minutes he's been sent on a mission - to solve his own murder and protect his friends. Lacking a body, Harry finds he's also somewhat lacking in mojo but that's not about to stop him. Even if that means risking dying. Again.

While some things have changed in the Dresden universe - as well as Harry being dead there is now a new, formidable group called the Fomors who are filling the vacuum left by the annihilation of the Red Court, and virtually no-one that Harry left behind is in a good place - thankfully the excitement hasn't diminished for me thanks to all of the usual twists, turns and heart-racing action scenes (including an awesome ghostly version of the D-Day landings). This one also included some more quietly touching moments that must have made the room dusty because I totally wasn't crying, I swear...

The only down side for me was the ending, and the reason that Harry's body was never found. While it's not really much of a down side (I'm glad that it can only mean a return to a state that will allow for a continuation of the storyline I was so invested in before death intervened), it's also made everything I've just read a little redundant.

Still, it's not enough to keep me from diving straight into Cold Days.

Side Jobs, by Jim Butcher

3 stars

I've just realised that I've spent a month and a half reading nothing but Dresden. I'm turning into a bookier version of Superhans...

A few short side jobs from the case files of Harry Dresden, taking place from before Storm Front all the way up until after Changes (which you should definitely read first, as Aftermath deals with the, um, aftermath of a pretty huge plot development from that book), this was a fun diversion but didn’t make me feel anything near the brain-shrieking levels of glee that the series has been delivering lately.

My favourites were easily It’s My Birthday Too (as Harry attempts to give Thomas a birthday present, interrupts a game of vampire LARP and has to hit some bad guys with those gravity anvils that I love so much) and Backup (in which Thomas runs around trying to help Harry without him realising, and lets us in on the Oblivion War) although I swear I’m not a Thomas fangirl (my heart belongs to Toot). Our opener, A Restoration of Faith, was also notable in that it showed the germ of what would later come while also demonstrating just how much Butcher has improved over the years.

Not as much of a must-read as the series itself, but a pleasant way to spend a few days if jonesing for a quick fix of Harry. And on that note, it's probably time for a self-imposed intervention before I turn into Gollum.

Changes, by Jim Butcher

5 stars

Holy shit. Those stakes? Just got well and truly raised.

When Harry's ex-lover Susan Rodriguez calls, his world changes overnight. Finding himself in a truly desperate situation, he's forced to make hard choice after hard choice after hard choice...and still the best outcome he can hope for is bleak. I can't say any more than that without dropping a ton of spoilers but trust me, it's a doozy.

While not exactly the most fun entry in the series to date, this probably made it all the more effective for me and besides, just because Harry was having the worst time of his life it didn't mean there weren't moments that nearly made my head explode with glee. Including that cliffhanger, although that also had a dash of...

(and this, even though I'd known something like that might be coming thanks to a couple of hints in Bombshells)

I keep telling myself I'll read something else for a little while. But like any addict, I also keep telling myself, 'just one more...'

Turn Coat, by Jim Butcher

4 stars

I’m continuing my tear through the Dresden Files, and the latest to be devoured was Turn Coat.

As far as Wardens go, Morgan has always been something of a dick. But one capable of murdering a Senior Council member? Harry doesn’t think so, and uncovering the real killer could also help to expose the existence of what Harry’s been calling the Black Council. Trouble is, as far as the people after Morgan go, the Council is the least scary…

While this entry was missing the holy swords and Merlin hints that really tickle my excitement buds, this entry still builds brilliantly upon and hints at a bigger mythology to be discovered (Demonreach!! And Ebenezar’s journal entries. Oh, the possibilities…) as well as starring a particularly dashing appearance by my favourite, Toot.

Ending on something of a bittersweet note, I don’t think I can stop here. While marvelling at the fact that this is the 11th book in the series and that I’m more addicted than ever, I need to get my ass over to the Kindle store and download Changes!