![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jan. 4th, 2014 12:48 pm2013 booklogging catchup! A good fifty percent of my backlog is that headfirst plunge I took into Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, which is urban fantasy that starts out as pretty straightforwardly about werewolves and is then like "actually, also EVERYTHING ELSE."
This was pretty much a candy corn binge-reading project for me -- it turns out that pretty much all of the books are available in e-format from one or the other of my local library systems, which made it REALLY EASY for me to keep going. Honestly what I really wanted was to get to No Humans Involved, which is the one about a reality-TV show necromancer, because I LOVE BACKSTAGE TV HIJINKS, but because I'm a completionist I had to read all the ones that led up to it first.
Book-by-book:
Bitten: this is the one that's all about werewolves and was actually the hardest for me to get through, in large part because I HATE CLAY SO MUCH. Okay, so the plot of Bitten is that Elena's ex-boyfriend turned her into a werewolf without her consent, and she's mad about it, AS SHE SHOULD BE, and broke up with him, AS SHE SHOULD HAVE, but now there's a big werewolf pack war thing and the rest of her werewolf family needs her help. I like Elena fine. I am fine with her arc of learning to accept that she's a cranky murderous werewolf rageface who is fond of her weird werewolf family. IF ONLY THAT WEIRD WEREWOLF FAMILY DID NOT ALSO INCLUDE THE ASSHOLE WHO TURNED HER INTO A WEREWOLF WITHOUT CONSENT AND NOW REFUSES TO TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER. Anyway, that's my issue with Bitten.
Stolen: Stolen is about Elena getting an infodump on the rest of the hilariously arbitrary urban fantasy magical rules, and then kidnapped and kept in a top-secret evil science facility to study other supernaturals before they all break out. It is overall an enjoyable enough ACTION ADVENTURE WITH MAGIC, except when Clay.
Dime Store Magic switches protagonists to focus on Paige, a twenty-something witch who has just adopted difficult preteen witch orphan Savannah, except the problem is she might not be as much of an orphan as they thought, and her dad is maybe evil and his employees definitely are. So: magical custody battle! With the eventually romantic assistance of super nerdy super pompous terribly earnest do-gooder supernatural lawyer Lucas. I enjoyed this a lot actually; I like that the plot centers basically around Paige and Savannah bonding and creating a found family, and I find Paige and Lucas' earnest do-gooder romance charming.
Industrial Magic is the follow-up about Paige and Lucas reconciling with Lucas' giant magical Mafia family, and also solving a murder mystery. Not as charming as Dime Store Magic but still very enjoyable and also introduces my favorite character, GLAM MIDDLE-AGED TV NECROMANCER JAIME. Vampires feature, but not sexily.
Haunted is about Savannah's ghost mom, and made me really unfairly irritated because one of the things I really liked about the Darkest Powers books is how it's pretty creepy and ambiguous where the ghosts are coming from and what actually happens post-death, and this book is all about the afterlife is generally a cheerful kind of Disneyland where everyone hangs out and plays ice hockey all the time. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN, KELLEY ARMSTRONG!
Broken is the one where Elena and her werewolf family investigate a magical mystery having vaguely to do with Jack the Ripper and zombies and is fine, I guess, except of course again Clay. Notable for having a pregnant woman as an action-adventure heroine, though, which is pretty rare! Also notable for the lesbian vampire who is constantly hitting on married, pregnant Elena, which would have annoyed me, except she is clearly so much better than Clay that I was instead rooting for Elena to run off with her and into a different series.
No Humans Involved is the one I really wanted to get to and it did not disappoint! WACKY BACKSTAGE TV HIJINKS GALORE. The protagonist of this one is, as aforementioned, glam middle-aged TV necromancer Jaime, who is not urban-fantasy-badass like most of the rest of the women in the series but who is extremely canny and kind in her own field and her own strengths. And her love interest is a mild-mannered werewolf, and I have a tremendous soft spot for mild-mannered werewolves. And they're all hanging out in a mystery house with a couple other TV necromancers in a proto-reality show about contacting Marilyn Monroe's ghost, and it's all so delightfully cheesy, and knows it.
Personal Demon started out strong, with half-chaos-demon heroine Hope going UNDERCOVER in a GANG of REVOLUTIONARY SUPERNATURALS, but I got less interested midway through when everything spiraled out from heist hijinks into MURDER MURDER MURDER. That said, I have to give a shout-out to the love interest in this one for cracking me up by being not only a rogue werewolf, but a rogue werewolf DAPPER GENTLEMAN THIEF, like, being a werewolf is just not enough anymore! In my head he is played by Cary Grant.
And at this point I had sort of glutted myself out by binging on too much Kelley Armstrong in too short a timespan, so I stopped there. Wait, no, that's a lie, I also read one of the short story collections, Tales of the Otherworld, which made me angry with the extended tale of How Clay Stalked Elena and then even more angry by having a short story about likeable, fun werewolf Logan, who is the only black werewolf as far as I know, and who ... dies offscreen in the first third of Bitten. OF COURSE. (To be fair to Kelley Armstrong, three of her protagonists are not white -- Lucas is Latino, Hope is half-Indian, and Mild-Mannered Werewolf Jeremy is half-Japanese -- BUT STILL.)
This was pretty much a candy corn binge-reading project for me -- it turns out that pretty much all of the books are available in e-format from one or the other of my local library systems, which made it REALLY EASY for me to keep going. Honestly what I really wanted was to get to No Humans Involved, which is the one about a reality-TV show necromancer, because I LOVE BACKSTAGE TV HIJINKS, but because I'm a completionist I had to read all the ones that led up to it first.
Book-by-book:
Bitten: this is the one that's all about werewolves and was actually the hardest for me to get through, in large part because I HATE CLAY SO MUCH. Okay, so the plot of Bitten is that Elena's ex-boyfriend turned her into a werewolf without her consent, and she's mad about it, AS SHE SHOULD BE, and broke up with him, AS SHE SHOULD HAVE, but now there's a big werewolf pack war thing and the rest of her werewolf family needs her help. I like Elena fine. I am fine with her arc of learning to accept that she's a cranky murderous werewolf rageface who is fond of her weird werewolf family. IF ONLY THAT WEIRD WEREWOLF FAMILY DID NOT ALSO INCLUDE THE ASSHOLE WHO TURNED HER INTO A WEREWOLF WITHOUT CONSENT AND NOW REFUSES TO TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER. Anyway, that's my issue with Bitten.
Stolen: Stolen is about Elena getting an infodump on the rest of the hilariously arbitrary urban fantasy magical rules, and then kidnapped and kept in a top-secret evil science facility to study other supernaturals before they all break out. It is overall an enjoyable enough ACTION ADVENTURE WITH MAGIC, except when Clay.
Dime Store Magic switches protagonists to focus on Paige, a twenty-something witch who has just adopted difficult preteen witch orphan Savannah, except the problem is she might not be as much of an orphan as they thought, and her dad is maybe evil and his employees definitely are. So: magical custody battle! With the eventually romantic assistance of super nerdy super pompous terribly earnest do-gooder supernatural lawyer Lucas. I enjoyed this a lot actually; I like that the plot centers basically around Paige and Savannah bonding and creating a found family, and I find Paige and Lucas' earnest do-gooder romance charming.
Industrial Magic is the follow-up about Paige and Lucas reconciling with Lucas' giant magical Mafia family, and also solving a murder mystery. Not as charming as Dime Store Magic but still very enjoyable and also introduces my favorite character, GLAM MIDDLE-AGED TV NECROMANCER JAIME. Vampires feature, but not sexily.
Haunted is about Savannah's ghost mom, and made me really unfairly irritated because one of the things I really liked about the Darkest Powers books is how it's pretty creepy and ambiguous where the ghosts are coming from and what actually happens post-death, and this book is all about the afterlife is generally a cheerful kind of Disneyland where everyone hangs out and plays ice hockey all the time. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN, KELLEY ARMSTRONG!
Broken is the one where Elena and her werewolf family investigate a magical mystery having vaguely to do with Jack the Ripper and zombies and is fine, I guess, except of course again Clay. Notable for having a pregnant woman as an action-adventure heroine, though, which is pretty rare! Also notable for the lesbian vampire who is constantly hitting on married, pregnant Elena, which would have annoyed me, except she is clearly so much better than Clay that I was instead rooting for Elena to run off with her and into a different series.
No Humans Involved is the one I really wanted to get to and it did not disappoint! WACKY BACKSTAGE TV HIJINKS GALORE. The protagonist of this one is, as aforementioned, glam middle-aged TV necromancer Jaime, who is not urban-fantasy-badass like most of the rest of the women in the series but who is extremely canny and kind in her own field and her own strengths. And her love interest is a mild-mannered werewolf, and I have a tremendous soft spot for mild-mannered werewolves. And they're all hanging out in a mystery house with a couple other TV necromancers in a proto-reality show about contacting Marilyn Monroe's ghost, and it's all so delightfully cheesy, and knows it.
Personal Demon started out strong, with half-chaos-demon heroine Hope going UNDERCOVER in a GANG of REVOLUTIONARY SUPERNATURALS, but I got less interested midway through when everything spiraled out from heist hijinks into MURDER MURDER MURDER. That said, I have to give a shout-out to the love interest in this one for cracking me up by being not only a rogue werewolf, but a rogue werewolf DAPPER GENTLEMAN THIEF, like, being a werewolf is just not enough anymore! In my head he is played by Cary Grant.
And at this point I had sort of glutted myself out by binging on too much Kelley Armstrong in too short a timespan, so I stopped there. Wait, no, that's a lie, I also read one of the short story collections, Tales of the Otherworld, which made me angry with the extended tale of How Clay Stalked Elena and then even more angry by having a short story about likeable, fun werewolf Logan, who is the only black werewolf as far as I know, and who ... dies offscreen in the first third of Bitten. OF COURSE. (To be fair to Kelley Armstrong, three of her protagonists are not white -- Lucas is Latino, Hope is half-Indian, and Mild-Mannered Werewolf Jeremy is half-Japanese -- BUT STILL.)
