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April 4, 2010

Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires Book 06) by Rachel Caine

Filed under: Reviews-Fantasy,Reviews-Young Adult Fantasy — Suramya @ 4:13 PM


Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires Book 06)
by Rachel Caine

Description:

In the small college town of Morganville, vampires and humans lived in (relative) peace – until all the rules got rewritten when the evil vampire Bishop arrived, looking for the lost book of vampire secrets. He’s kept a death grip on the town ever since. Now an underground resistance is brewing, and in order to contain it, Bishop must go to even greater lengths. He vows to obliterate the town and all its inhabitants – the living and the undead. Claire Danvers and her friends are the only ones who stand in his way. But even if they defeat Bishop, will the vampires ever be content to go back to the old rules, after having such a taste of power?

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Rating:

Review:

This is the 6th book in the Morganville Vampire series. It took me three attempts to start this series and now I am glad I did. At first I thought the series was quite boring and slow but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It started off slow but now its quite interesting. The book is based in Morganville where the last vampires in the world live. The vampires control the town completely and humans are virtual slaves to the vampires. In the previous books a vampire turf war had started between Amelie and her father Bishop. This book covers the final stages of the war. It doesn’t have a lot of blood and gore, which is a good thing. But it does cover a lot of soul searching on the part of the major human characters. Can’t cover more about the plot without giving out spoilers so will stop here. Final recommendation: A good read. Read the other books in the series before this one otherwise half the book won’t make sense.

April 3, 2010

Reserved for the Cat (Elemental Masters Book 06) by Mercedes Lackey

Filed under: Reviews-Fantasy — Suramya @ 1:17 AM


Reserved for the Cat (Elemental Masters Book 06)
by Mercedes Lackey

Description:

In 1910, in an alternate London, a penniless young dancer is visited by a cat who communicates with her mind to mind. Though she is certain she must be going mad, she is desperate enough to follow the cat’s advice and impersonates a famous Russian ballerina. The cat, it turns out, is actually an Elemental Earth Spirit, and leads her to minor stardom. Meanwhile, the real Russian ballerina has fallen victim to an evil troll who takes over her body and kills her patrons, drinking their life essences in order to strengthen his powers. And soon, the troll focuses his dark attentions on the young dancer…

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Review:

This is the 6th book in the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey and this was the second time I reread the book. Lackey is one of my favorite authors and I really like this series. It takes the world of early 1900’s and injects a bit of fantasy into it so that magic is real in that world. This book follows the life of Ninette Dupond who is a young dancer without any prospects and is in danger of starving to death when she is rescued by a talking cat who was charged by her father, an elemental mage to protect her.

The cat (Thomas) brings her over to England and helps her get in touch with a group of Elemental mages who have a Music house they are trying to revive with a new sort of performance. The storyline is quite simple and Lackey shows her skill in bringing the world of music dancers and ballet to life. One part I didn’t like was that the book seems to break continuity from the other books in the series. For example, in one of the scenes Jonathon fumes about how there is no way to communicate with other masters where there is an emergency and how it was impossible to get masters to work together on any issue that didn’t have global implications. Which is something that is already established in the other books. It could be possible that this book is set in an earlier time period but the reference to the ‘Old Lion’ puts in the same time frame as the other books. Other than these small issues the book was a fun read and I can’t wait for the next book in the series to be released. Final recommendation: A must read book, not as good as the other books in the series but still fun.

April 2, 2010

The Tree Shepherd’s Daughter (Faire Folk Trilogy Book 01) by Gillian Summers

Filed under: Reviews-Fantasy — Suramya @ 12:44 AM


The Tree Shepherd’s Daughter (Faire Folk Trilogy Book 01)
by Gillian Summers

Description:

When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Keelie Heartwood is forced to leave her beloved California to live with her nomadic father at a renaissance festival in Colorado. After arriving, Keelie finds men in tights and women in trailer trash-tight bodices roaming half-drunk, calling each other lady and lord even after closing time! Play-acting the Dark Ages is an L.A. girl’s worst nightmare. Keelie has a plan to ditch this medieval geekland ASAP, but while she plots, strange things start happening-eerie, yet familiar. When Keelie starts seeing fairies and communicating with trees, she uncovers a secret that links her to a community of elves. As Keelie tries to come to grips with her elfin roots, disaster strikes, and Keelie’s identity isn’t the only thing that’s threatened. One part human determination and one part elfin magic, Keelie Heartwood is a witty new heroine in a world where fantasy and reality mix with extraordinary results.

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Review:
The first book in the Faire Folk trilogy is a light hearted book to read. Aimed at the young adult it was fun reading a book that wasn’t all gloom and despair. The characters in the book were mostly well written though some of the supporting cast could have been expanded a bit more. A lot of books have been written about elves and some of them even show the elves as a part of the Renaissance fair but still the book managed to stand out on its own and didn’t sound like a copy of other works. I liked the way the lead character takes time to work through her fears and finally accepts that she has the ability to magic after a lot of thought. In too many books it seems like the hero/heroine is told that they are magical and they accept it immediately which is quite unrealistic.

Final recommendation: A must read. Going to see if I can find the other books in the series, hopefully they will be as good as this one.

April 1, 2010

Shedding Light by Michael Edelson

Filed under: Reviews-Science Fiction — Suramya @ 11:35 PM


Shedding Light
by Michael Edelson

Description:

A combination of faster-than-light travel and an energy field telescope made it possible: outrun the light leaving the Earth and gaze back in time. For US Navy Commander Jack Roberts, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. Chosen as a last minute replacement, all he has to do is get the ship and its crew home in one piece and a promising career in space travel is his for the taking. But when the expedition is plagued with inexplicable and unlikely failures, the captain and crew suspect sabotage. The motive seems obvious, as the ability to look back in time raises a question that could undermine the faith of billions; did God really create the world? For the first time in history that question can be answered, assuming Jack can find the saboteur before he or she destroys the ship and kills them all.

Rating:

Edit (11th May 2010): Michael Edelson pointed out to me in an email that this was infact novella and not a novel, which was the impression I was under when I reviewed the book initially. Taking that into account I have changed the rating that I gave to the book from a 3 to a 6 and written a new review of the book

Updated Review: This novella was a quick read and doesn’t contain a heavy plot. The concept of the book was pretty amazing, basically there is a group on people on an experimental spaceship that allows them to travel faster than light and they use it to travel to different points in space so that they can see earth as it was at different points in time. During their journey they find a saboteur on board. As I pointed out in my original review most of the characters in the book were two dimensional including the hero and the bad guys. In my opinion the author should have removed some of the plot twists and used the space gained by that to expand the characterization a bit and give more details on the remaining plot items. Personally I think that he should consider expanding this into a full length novel as that would be very cool.

Original Review:

This book was a quick read and doesn’t contain a heavy plot. Actually it read more like an outline for a book than the actual book. The concept of the book was pretty amazing, basically there is a group on people on an experimental spaceship that allows them to travel faster than light and they use it to travel to different points in space so that they can see earth as it was at different points in time. During their journey they find a saboteur on board. However even though the concept was amazing the implementation was quite bad. All the characters were pretty two dimensional including the hero and the bad guys. To make it a better read the author should expand the story and add a lot more detail to the book. Final recommendation: Only read it if you don’t have anything else to read.

March 31, 2010

Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson Book 05) by Patricia Briggs

Filed under: Reviews-Fantasy — Suramya @ 11:26 PM


Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson Book 05)
by Patricia Briggs

Description:

Being a mechanic is hard work. Mercy Thompson, for instance, just spent the last couple of months trying to evade the murderous queen of the local vampire seethe, and now the leader of the werewolf pack – who’s maybe-more-than-just-a-friend – has asked for her help. A book of fae secrets has come to light and they’re all about to find out how implacable – and dangerous – the fae can be. OK, so maybe her troubles have nothing to do with the job. But she sure could use a holiday …

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Review:

This is the latest book in the Mercy series that follows the exploits of Mercy Thompson, a shape-shifter mechanic who lives in a world where Vampires, Werewolves and Fae exist among other things. The book is a light read without a lot of complicated plots to follow which makes it a perfect book to read after a long day at work. You don’t have to worry about remembering complicated relationships or anything so you are free to enjoy the book instead of wishing that you had a notebook where you could write down who was doing what to whom. Mercy is a character who doesn’t take crap from anyone and is what I would call sassy. She is quite independent and not without flaws. If written differently the character would have probably become very obnoxious and painful but the way Briggs has written it, the character is quite likable. Even her flaws have been dealt with in a way that doesn’t seem unreasonable. In a lot of the fantasy books magic is used as a cure-all for all ills but not in this series.

She was raped and Briggs shows the reader that it effected Mercy a lot. The amount of emotional scarring left behind by the attack was dealt in a matter of fact way and not made into a woe is me cry fest that certain other authors like a lot. Final recommendation: Read the book. You don’t need to have read the previous books in the series to understand and like the book but it would make it more enjoyable.

March 30, 2010

Death Blows (Bloodhound Files Book 02) by D. D. Barant

Filed under: Reviews-Fantasy — Suramya @ 11:12 PM


Death Blows (Bloodhound Files Book 02)
by D. D. Barant

Description:

FBI profiler Jace Valchek was pulled into this parallel realm to hunt for Aristotle Stoker, a human serial killer who preys on vampires and werewolves. Now she works for the National Security Agency of the Unnatural States of America – and her boss is a vampire. At a bizarre crime scene, Jace finds a bloodsucker murdered by magic, fried to the bone and dressed in the costume of the comic book hero the Flash – a character who isn’t supposed to exist here. Comic books have been outlawed for their powers, including crossover spells like the one that transported Jace to this world. Soon, she’s following a trail of dead bodies into the sinister underworld of black-market comics – where a deranged madman gives new meaning to the term ‘super-villain’ .

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Review:

This is the second book in the Bloodhound series following the life of Jace Valchek who is an FBI profiler specializing in dealing with mentally deranged criminals. In the first book we find out that she has been pulled to an alternate universe where humans are an endangered species and the world is ruled by Vampires and Werewolves. In this book she is still the only one in the world who has the skills to deal with insanity which is effecting the Vampires and Werewolves as a result of the events in the first book. Then she finds a dead body that is dressed in the superhero Flash’s costume from her home universe which doesn’t have a counterpart in the new one. Soon more bodies turn up that have been posed as other superheroes. Plus since comic books are banned in this universe she doesn’t have a lot of help in figuring out why the bodies are posed in a certain way. I am not going to go into a lot of details about the plot as it might spoil the book for those who haven’t read it. That being said I liked the book and it was a nice read with a lot of comic history thrown in. You don’t need to be a comics fan to enjoy the book but if you are then the book gets to be a bit more fun. Some parts were confusing at the time especially the one where they are talking about revisionist history but they make sense later on in the book. So if you don’t understand something just keep going eventually it all gets explained. It helps if you know about the way franchise reboots work in the comic industry. The characters were mostly well developed. What I didn’t like was the way a character got a complete personality overhaul and not in a good way. I guess it gives the author more leeway and opportunity to develop the emotional depth in other characters (Jace) in future books while adding a small amount of drama in the story but its still something I didn’t like that much. All in all I do recommend the book to others but caution them to read the first book before this one otherwise a lot of it won’t make any sense.

March 8, 2010

Another Hindi Book Scanned (#4)

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews — Tags: — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

This is the 4th book I have scanned so far. This one is called “Bado Ke Jeevan Se Siksha” (Lessons from lives of your elders ). This is about 110 pages and has been scanned with two pages per image except for the 1st and last pages. A couple of pages are missing from the end of the book but I have scanned all the pages still available.

You can download the book from here: “Bado Ke Jeevan Se Siksha” .

In the new version of the site I am going to put all these files on the suramya.com mirror. That should make it easier to track all the book releases. Will post a note here when the new site is live.

– Suramya

March 7, 2010

Common Misconceptions About Publishing: Thoughts on a writeup by Charles Stross

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:29 PM

I have talked about books and publishing industry before but since I am not an author I can’t give you first hand views on how the publishing industry works. Luckily others can. Charles Stross is an author who I really like and he is doing a series of posts on his blog about Common Misconceptions About Publishing (CMAP). He has made 4 posts so far and each gives a fascinating view of the industry from an author’s perspective.

Check them out here:

Out of all the posts listed above I like and #3 the best. explains how a book gets from a concept in an author’s mind to a finished product in the market. I think its a great read for anyone interested in publishing and how it works. #3 explains what authors sell to publishers and what a standard contract consists of, again quite interesting how the entire thing breaks down and how the remuneration works.

I don’t write fiction, but if I did I would find these posts quite informative on how the entire process works and knowing that gives a person advantage when they try to sell their manuscript to a publisher. So if you write or are planning to, do check out the posts above.

– Suramya

February 4, 2010

Amazon pulls all Macmillan books from its listings

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:56 PM

Last weekend Amazon and Macmillan Publishing got into an argument about the correct pricing for ebooks. Amazon wanted to limit the cost to $9.99 while Macmillan was pushing for $15. If I was just looking at this portion of the debate then I am firmly on Amazon’s side because as I have said before pricing ebooks at hardback prices makes no sense.

However Amazon lost all my respect and future business when it decided to throw a tantrum and removed all books from Macmillan and its subsidiaries from its listing (about 1/6th of the books in its listing) without telling anyone about it. Basically one minute the books were there and the next they were gone.

By this move instead of being gaining support for its stand for reducing costs they gained a lot of bad publicity and really pissed off a lot of authors whose books were removed from the listing without any fault of theirs. A lot of these authors posted about this on their blogs/twitter feeds/Facebook pages (I came to know about it from Mercedes Lackey’s posting on FB) and their fans are calling for a boycott of Amazon and are asking people to buy their books from other online stores instead. A lot of them have removed the Amazon affiliate links from their sites because of this.

Amazon then made a statement on Sunday that they are putting the Macmillan books back but at the time of this writing (4th Feb 2010) you still can’t purchase their books from Amazon except for used copies for which the Authors don’t get any royalties but Amazon still makes money on the sales.

When Amazon started off I did buy a couple of books from them but over a period of time I stopped because I was getting better deals at other sites. Then when I moved back to India their shipping costs made it unfeasible for me to buy anything from them.

Since I don’t buy anything from them any more, I can’t really boycott them, but if you do then do consider one of the alternatives listed below (Suggested by Mercedes Lackey):

From my side I suggest the following additional stores:

  • flipkart.com/: A Good store but only delivers within India.
  • Barnes and Nobel: Used to be my Favorite store. Haven’t really tried to get them to ship to India but within US they are awesome.

Here are some posts that explain what is happening in a little more detail:

Support the authors. Don’t let amazon bully its way to the top.

– Suramya

January 31, 2010

Books & Piracy. Yes, this is another post about it

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 10:29 PM

I have talked about books and book piracy a lot of times earlier on this blog and this is yet another post about it, but it has some additional insights and comments on the phenomenon.

A couple of days ago I saw this article called Confessions of a Book Pirate. Check it out, its a really good read on what makes a book pirate tick.

On a personal note, a few days ago I made a comment in a forum suggesting that all members of the forum to purchase actual books in addition to downloading them. My idea was that if all the members purchased a book a month then it would help the authors and encourage them to write more, which is what all readers want.

Imagine my surprise when I received replies from the posters stating the no of books they purchase each month. The top two posters buy anywhere from 10-15 books a month. and most of the other members on the forum purchased between 3-10 books a month.

Imagine that. That’s a lot of sales!

Now some people might say that these people are robbing the authors by posting their books but they are one of the biggest purchasers of the same books that they post. I myself download a lot of books but then I purchase most of the books written by any author I like. I have ebook copies of most of the books I have because they are portable.

To give you an idea of the no of books I buy, I just shipped a container weighing 599.66 pounds from my storage area in US to India that mostly contains just books. (An average paperback weighs about 4-5 pounds) BTW this is in addition to the books I have purchased in India

Baen publishing, Tor books and others have embraced the trend by making non-DRM protected books available for a very reasonable prices ($5-$6 for a book at Baen) However other authors/publishers seem to miss the lessons that the Music industry is being taught. They are pushing for higher prices and delayed ebook releases to push up the physical book sales. Which makes no sense.

According to Amazon they sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books when both copies are available for sale. Physical books cost money to sell, you need to print them, store them and ship them. For an ebook the only cost is the initial cost of creation which in any case negligible because the ebook can be created from the digital manuscript submitted by the author. However once an ebook is created, you never run out of copies. If you expected to sell 10 but end up selling 100, you still don’t have to worry about anything the same master copy can be copied a 100 times at no additional cost to the publisher.

eBooks are the future. Deal with it. If you (The publishers) don’t then you will go the way of the dinosaurs to make way for publishers who actually listen to what their customers what.

– Suramya

PS: For some reason I managed to get WordPress to loose this post the last time, so restoring it again from the DB.

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