Blood Rites

Title: Blood Rites
Author: Jim Butcher
Published: 2004 in book form but this was an audio book
Genre: Noir urban fantasy
Pages: 372 says Wikipedia.




This book opens with a scene of Harry rescuing a box of puppies for a Brother Wang from a monkey demon hurling its fiery poo around. From there we move on to the set of a porn movie where people are dying strangely. Drop in a family of White Court vampires, some nasty Black Court ones as well, and Harry's up in it to his neck again. And it is awesome.


Listened to about half of the book in one sitting, while drawing on my summer holiday, trying to ignore the guy wreaking havoc in our poor bathroom which kinda has to be built again from the basics. Didn't even notice the time going by, Mr. Marsters' voice is so hypnotic. And the story was such a wild ride once again.




There was a sound of impact, a raspy, dry scream, and the vampire went down hard. It lay on the ground like a butterfly pinned to a card, arms and legs thrashing uselessly. Its chest and collarbone had been crushed. By an entire frozen turkey. A twenty-pounder. The plucked bird must have fallen from an airplane overhead, doubtlessly manipulated by the curse. By the time it got to the ground, the turkey had already reached its terminal velocity, and was still hard as a brick. The drumsticks poked up above the vampire's crushed chest, their ends wrapped in red tinfoil. The vampire gasped and writhed a little more. The timer popped out of the turkey. Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils." 

(Courtesy of Wikiquote)

A Feast for Crows

Title: A Feast for Crows
Author: George R. R. Martin
Published: 2005 originally, this paperback ed. 2011 by Voyager.
Genre: You win or you die.
Pages: 776 + family trees and such until the page count is 852




Welp, back into the saddle with A Song of Ice and Fire! This was the fourth brick, and I hurt my wrist with it, trying to hold the bastard up with one hand while lying on the sofa, reading. Should have stopped when it started to hurt, but like the previous books, it was a hard one to put down.

Happening simultaneously as the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, A Feast for Crows concentrated on a bunch of characters in and around King's Landing, whereas the fifth will concentrate on the rest. Therefore there weren't so damn many characters running around as before, and it was easy to keep track of everyone. But it's going to be a looooooong wait for the sixth book, to find out what happened to some of my favourite characters from this book, who were left hanging in some really nasty spots. Literally, for some.

Tempted to start the fifth straight away, but considering I just started two other books, I should probably finish some of those first...


"What little peace and order the five kings left us will not long survive the three queens, I fear."

Mrs Fry's Diary

Title: Mrs Fry's Diary
Author: Mrs Stephen Fry
Published: 2010 originally, 2011 in paperback by Hodder.
Genre: Well it's a diary...
Pages: 346


Finally! The truth is out on Stephen Fry and his secret life! Never mind the books and documentaries and movies and TV-shows (I've been hooked on Qi the whole summer), here's the chance for the world to find out what the real deal is! Mr. Fry is not the national treasure he's made out to be, oh no: he's a womanizing drunkard of a window cleaner, and has six -or possibly seven- children with his wife Edna, who's diary I'm holding in my hands right now. Well I would be if I weren't writing this.

Mrs Fry's Diary takes us through a year in her life: marriage with Stephen, troubles with children, poetry classes, seeing Mrs Graham Norton and Ex-Mrs John Barrowman and her other friends, Spam, trips around Europe, and her relentless hunt for the truth about her husband. It's a touching book, the true story of a courageous woman, and it brought many a tear to my eye. 


April
1 Friday

We told the kids a homicidal clown lives in their wardrobe today. It wasn't an April Fool, we just thought they should know.

Death Masks

Title: Death Masks
Author: Jim Butcher
Published: 2003 in book form but this was an audio book
Genre: Noir urban fantasy
Pages: 374 says Wikipedia.


I love how the Dresden Files books are basically just a huuuuuge helping of And Then It Got WORSE. Ive been listening to them as audio books now and then, and this is the fifth book in the series. Listened and reviewed the first one in, let's see, September 2009. Wow. I'm slower at listening than Mr. Butcher is in writing...

In this book! Professional wizard Harry Dresden is in his usual state, which is broke, so he appears on a TV program regarding all things magical. The other guests seem veeeery interested in talking to him, except for the one he actually went there to talk to. And soon enough, Harry's hunting for the Shroud, being challenged into duels with nasty Red Court vampire dukes to start or avoid a war between the vamps and wizards, battling fallen angels with Knights of the Cross and if that's not enough, his old sweetheart Susan is back in town.

And if that's not enough fun, it's read by James Marsters. Mmm. I could listen to him for hours. And hey, I just did. Halfway through the next one, actually...

The Good Fairies of New York

Title: The Good Fairies of New York
Author: Martin Millar
Published: Originally in 1992, this edition in 2008 by... umm, Tor?
Genre: Urban fantasy
Pages: 273 pages and over too soon




Whee, finally! There are only a few books by Mr. Millar that I haven't read, so I'm kinda saving them for a rainy day, but I've been looking forward to reading this! Oh, wait, I still have all the Thraxas-books to read!

(Three sentences, all ending with exclamation marks. You know, the first time I rented The Big Lebowski, the Finnish VHS tape cover had only a three-sentence description in the back, and all three ended with exclamation marks. The description was utter crap, but the movie rocks.)

A bunch of fairies from the British isles accidentally end up in New York, including Scottish Heather and Morag, who just love to hate each other and are constantly fighting. This costs them several family heirlooms, and not just from their own families. Which just creates a whole lot of other trouble. They soon find themselves pursued by local Chinese, black and Italian fairies. Solace can luckily be found at Kerry's, who's desperately trying to finish her Celtic flower alphabet to win an arts competition, and at Dinnie's, where there really isn't so much solace as there's drunken swearing and bad fiddling. Plus there's a struggling performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a bag lady on a roaring rampage of WAR!, a dead musician after his guitar, and a lot of drinking. Oh, and the Cornish king of fairies really wants two of the New York escapees back. Opressing all his subjects just isn't enough.


Like with other of his books, Millar has about a dozen characters running -or flying, especially after that damned poppy- around the place, but everything comes together to tell a lovely story which makes me all happy inside.




"Two fairies just came through my window and were sick on the carpet!" he screamed on reaching Fourth Street, not fully realizing the effect that this would have on the passers-by till the men sweating with sacks round a garbage truck stopped to laugh at him.
"What'd you say?"
"Upstairs," gasped Dinnie. "Two fairies, with kilts and violins and little swords... green kilts..."
The men stared at him. Dinnie's monologue ground to a halt.

The Back Passage

Title: The Back Passage
Author: James Lear
Published: 2006 by Cleis Press Inc.
Genre: Murder mystery and sex of the gay variety
Pages: 199 pages


Yes! Again! I'm fairly sure this is the third time I've read The Back Passage since I started this blog, but I can't find the entry for the second time around. Oh well. I'd borrowed this one to a friend, and once I got it back last... Tuesday, I immediately read it again. Jolly good times.

I still agree with everything I said about this book in the first proper entry to this blog, and find it somewhat amusing that I still, third time around, couldn't remember who the killer was. I'm starting to remember the order of Mitch's sexual encounters, but murderer? Umm...? Ehh, details. This book is very much of a case of the journey being much more important -and interesting- than arriving at the destination.



"How was that, copper?"
"I fucking loved it, sir. Please don't stop."

Fight Club

Title: Fight Club
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: Originally 1996, this edition 2003 by Vintage.
Genre: Someone describes this as "...American urban nightmare..." on the back cover. That sounds good.
Pages: 208

"We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact," Tyler said. "So don't fuck with us."