Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S.G. Browne (4.5/5 stars)

So being a fan of zombie books and movies I just couldn't pass up this book. It was a pretty darn good book and I really enjoyed it. It has some heart, a somewhat sweet love story, zombies dismembering people, and rotting body parts...all in all a pretty complete zombie experience.

Andy Warner wakes up in the funeral home just recently embalmed. He is one of the undead. He is not taking it very well; his wife died in the car accident that took his life and his daughter has been sent to live with relatives. His parents pick him up at the zombie pound and for months he is kept in their basement watching TV and drinking their expensive wine on the sly. That is until he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and meets Rita, a sexy suicide victim, and Jerry, a car crash victim that likes to let people touch his exposed brain. Rita especially helps Andy see the positive in his undead existence. When another zombie introduces the group to the joys of..err...venison, things start to change and full-out zombie mayhem ensues.

This was actually a very well done book. It is darkly humorous but touches on issues of racism (or is it species-ism?) and what it means to be alive. There are a number of human elements such as Andy dealing with the loss of his family, his parents' rejection of his condition, and society's cruelty to zombies. That's not to say that it's all serious. Browne doesn't shy away from pieces of brain flying out of noses, cigarettes being put out in empty eye sockets, or any of that gory goodness.

To those who think the book starts out a little tame (with Andy picketing for zombie rights), just hold on eventually the book gets to a point of total flame-throwing zombie mayhem. What fun it is when it does!

I really enjoyed this book. All zombie lovers should give it a go. I think this would be a great book for everyone to read (except for the younger age set) it really helps to brooch the topic of what would happen if zombies entered human society. Oddly enough the next book on my list to read is "Kiss of Life" the next book in the zombie series "Generation Dead" by Daniel Waters...so onto more zombie reads for me.

I will be watching out for future books by Browne, I liked his writing style and the way everything flowed in this book...definitely a writer to keep an eye in the future.

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith (3/5 stars)

This book is about food and vampires, so I thought it sounded interesting. I mean the two things don't usually go together all that well. Overall it was a mediocre read, nothing fantastic but okay.

Quincie's parents are dead and she and her uncle run a restaurant that was previously owned by her parents. Only thing is the restaurant isn't doing well, so Quincie and her uncle decide to redo the restaurant into a kitschy Italian Vampire restaurant name Sanguino's. Unfortunately a few week before opening the lead chef is murdered in the kitchen and it looks like it was done by an animal. The police are all over Quncie's best friend, a werewolf name Kieren, but he swear he wasn't involved. Then a new chef turns up and Quincie is stuck juggling school, work, and the task of turning the new chef into a passable vampire chef. While all this is happening the police are still struggling to figure out who murdered the original chef and are getting increased reports of disappearances.

Everything about this book was mediocre. The characters are kind of halfway characterized but not very engaging; there weren't any character in this book that sparked my curiosity or made me want to know more about them. The plot was very predictable. The writing was straight-forward but didn't deliver any of the sensual description for food or otherwise that I expected given the title. The development of a vampire menu was a main point in the book, yet the food was treated in a very cursory way. The world itself (and the inclusion of vampires and were-animals) was never really developed and was very limited in scope, basically we rarely see outside the restaurant.

That being said, the book was nothing special but was somewhat amusing. It is a very quick read, so I didn't feel like the book was a waste of time...it just wasn't anything all that interesting or special.

I probably won't read any more books by Smith. There was just nothing in this book that felt at all creative, inspired, or even engaging. The book didn't offend me either and was an okay read, but just kind of blah.

Selling Out (Quantum Gravity, Book 2) by Justina Robson (3/5 stars)

This is the second book in the Quantum Gravity series by Justina Robson. I liked the first book really well, but I wasn't as impressed with this book. The plot was too hacked up, and the storylines that the different characters followed seemed unrelated. Despite that, the world is still really intriguing and the characters re-joined at the end of the book making me want to read more about them. I listened to this on audio book, and while the audio book was okay, it wasn't the greatest reading I've ever heard. The reader had trouble doing male voices without making them sound annoying.

Lila Black is sent to Demonia on a mission to find how Zal became part demon. Meanwhile Zal gets stuck in the elemental realm (after having words about Lila with Malichi over an odd game of cards) and spends time there trying to get out. Malichi journeys to the Interstitial realm to learn more about ghosts. Eventually they all end up back together, but how all this is related to the problem of the cracks in the six different worlds is all a mystery to me.

I had some trouble understanding what this book was getting at. Lila didn't do much in Demonia besides get into trouble and meet an imp; okay so she gets into *a lot* of trouble. Meanwhile Zal (who is on his way to meet her) ends up in the Elemental Realm and spends a lot of time there trying to get back out without dying. Zal's part was kind of boring and dreamy and really only had one important reason for happening as far as I could tell. Totally unrelated to all of this Malichi ends up in the in-between Interstitial space learning about ghosts. If all of this stuff sounds unrelated, well, it pretty much was. I am fairly certain that everything that happened will play a major part in later books, but for this book it was mainly just disconnected and random.

The way Robson switched between Lila, Zal, and Malichi was hard to follow. She stopped at odd places in one character's story and then switched to another character. I just found the switches to be unnatural and, at points, it made the story hard to follow. I also got kind of sick of Lila's constant whining. It was crazy how she followed what the Agency told her blindly; although this is finally explained late in the book. Zal and Lila barely see each other the whole book and that was also disappointing. Another odd thing was that the game between Zal and Lila (which took up a good portion of Book 1) was rarely mentioned in this book.

There was also a lot that was done well in this book. The descriptions of Demon culture were very interesting. Where "Keeping it Real' focused on the Elven world, the majority of this book is about Demonia. Also you get to learn a lot more about both Zal's and Lila's past. It was great to finally meet some people from their past and learn more about what shaped their backgrounds and drives them. Teesil was an awesome addition to the story, as the lead assassin of Demonia, and I look forward to him being a bigger part of the next book.

The ending of the story was absolutely fantastic; I was impressed with how Robson brought the characters together and set things up for a great book 3. Really the ending was the most exciting part of this book and is the only thing making me interested in reading the next book of the series.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this book. Some things were awesome, some things not so much. I will read the third book because this book seemed to be setting things up for a great story in the third book.

Waiting on Wednesday - 12/16

Okay "Waiting On Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

This week my WoW book is "White Cat" (The Curse Workers, Book 1) by Holly Black. I absolutely loved Holly Black's Modern Fairy Tale series. This is the first book in her next series called "The Curse Workers". I am really, really looking forward to this book :-) It sounds like an awesome series!



"White Cat" (The Curse Workers, Book 1) by Holly Black
Pages: 320 pages
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Release Date: May 4th, 2010


Synopsis: "Cassel comes from a family of curse workers—people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they’re all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn’t got magic, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail—he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He’s noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to out-con the con men.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love—or death–and your dreams might be more real than your memories."

Divine Misdemeanors (Meredith Gentry, Book 8) by Laurell K. Hamilton (3/5 stars)

This is book 8 in the Meredith Gentry series by Laurell Hamilton. It was an okay book, about par for the course in this series. It was entertaining, but had some plot problems and some pacing problems.

This book takes up where the last book left off. Merry and crew have chosen to move back to LA. After choosing to save Frost instead of become the King and Queen of the Unseelie court, Merry and Doyle (along with Merry's male harem) are in exile from fairy. They are working on setting up a place for themselves when Merry's contact at the LA police department, Lucy, calls and asks Merry to investigate a crime scene with multiple fey dead. The scene of the crime leads both Merry and Lucy to believe that a serial killer is loose. Can Merry and her guys figure out what is going on before more fey are killed?

Like many of the previous book this book has a loose plot interrupted with numerous mediocre sex scenes, as Merry tries to keep all six fathers of her unborn twins (and a few other new guys) happy. The murder plot goes on pretty well for the first 100 pages and then for the last fifty-or-so pages. In between that is a lot of sex, and a lot of Merry trying to get her overemotional man harem in check. Merry uses her normal combination of sex, pleading, humor, over-the-top proclamation, and prayers to the Goddess to do this.

I liked the murder investigation overall, despite the fact that it took backseat to the management of Merry's household for parts of the book. Reading about how Merry keeps her household running and how she deals with all these emotionally scarred guards from the Queen of Darkness, was somewhat interesting. Although, like previous books, too much time is spent on this and too many new characters are added in. It is like Hamilton has just added so many players to this story that it just takes up way too much time to juggle them all and there is no way she can give each character good page space.

I did like that there was less of Merry praying to the Goddess to solve all her problems, Merry actually had to work some of the issues out herself. I did like that some of her male leads (Frost, Doyle, Rheas) have overcome their insecurities and are actual acting like stable, supportive people.

I wasn't sure if I would keep reading this series of not. I thought "Swallowing Darkness" would have been a great stopping point for this series. This book is very much a transitional one; it deals with all the characters adjusting to their new lifestyles. There really isn't much of an over-arcing storyline that makes you interested in the next book...it makes me wonder what future books hold in store for Merry. I enjoyed the book some, I liked some of the characters. So, I will probably read the next book in the series just because these are a quick read and somewhat entertaining.

Teaser Tuesday - 12/15

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser this week is from "Divine Misdemeanors" (Meredith Gentry, Book 8) by Laurell Hamilton.

Here it is: "The spicy smell of Eucalyptus could almost hide the scent of blood. If it had been this many adult human-sized bodies the Eucalyptus wouldn't have had a chance, but they weren't adult-sized." Pg. 1

Genesis by Bernard Beckett (4.5/5 stars)

I had heard that this was a really interesting book and looked forward to reading it. It took a few pages to really get into it, but it ended up being a very interesting and engaging read. The ending totally threw me for a loop and made me want to go back and re-read it.

The whole book occurs as a young historian, Anax, takes a four hour examination in front of the Academy in hope that she will pass and be admitted to the Academy. Her four hour dissertation is on a prominent historical figure, Adam Forde. The book is literally a dialogue of what the Academy asks her and what she answers.

The above may sound a bit strange; I mean to write a book solely about one exam is a bit weird. When I started reading the book it took me a bit to get engaged in the story. As Anax delves deeper into the history of Adam Forde the story becomes more engaging and then you are on the edge of your set trying to figure out what happened and is going to happen.

Much of the dialogue delves into debate on what it means to be human versus AI. Adam Forde spends time in seclusion with an AI that is self-teaching. Many of the discussions between Adam and the AI are what Anax spends time debating and disclosing. Almost the whole of the book centers on what turns a society governed by fear can take, what it means to be human, and how to protect humanity from itself. Some of the discussions get a bit drawn out and some of the same points are made over and over again; but I found the majority of the discussion to be very interesting.

I can't say a ton more about the book without giving things away. Needless to say the ending was awesome; it was very unexpected and caught me by surprise. After you read the ending you will definitely have to rethink the whole book, and most likely will want to read through it again.

This book was written in a very creative way, delves into the philosophy of human versus AI (which for me is a topic that never gets old), was very engaging, and had an ending that you will either love or hate. It takes a bit to get into the story so be patient. The book is very short and is a quick read. I would recommend that everyone pick up this book; it gets you thinking and will surprise you in the end.