Books

Though I did not sign up for NaNo, it just so happens that I have been busy writing. I've done twenty-five pages in the past week-plus, some kind of record for me.

The muse, when she talks, doesn't like being ignored.

I've also been reading, though as of late my reading has been sort of meh.

Mine Until Midnight by Lisa Kleypas - Since the sequel to this just came out, I decided to play catch-up by reading the first one. It's the story of Cam Rohan, the Gypsy secondary character from a couple of past books, and Amelia, a put-upon proper English spinster trying to keep her family together.

My main problem with this book was that I just didn't get much sense of Amelia, or why Cam would find her all that extraordinary. She seemed nice enough. But really, being poor and worried does not a heroine make. I had the feeling Kleypas herself wasn't too interested either, judging by the number of scenes the siblings got, their separate character arcs, and the relatively few scenes that featured just Cam and Amelia together (other than sex, of course. Whew, the sex scenes in this book are like 7 pages long. I was tired.)

Cam is drawn a little better, though he had some vague spots. The villain could have been cut entirely and nothing would be missing. Hello, WTF with that tree stump scene? And hello, WTF with the bees? Bees? Really?

Still, even when Kleypas sort of phones it in, she phones in a pretty good book. I took this one to the dentist's waiting room, and when they finally called me I looked up wondering where I was. I'll still read Kleypas, starting with the ballyhooed sequel to this one, about the family gypsy of unknown origins and the daughter of the house (no plots lifted from Wuthering Heights or anything - no, really!)

Lord of the Fading Lands by C.L. Wilson - Speaking of ballyhoo, it's taken me a long time to get around to reading this series. I'm not big on fantasy romance, purely for the fact that until George R. R. Martin finishes his damn series!!!1 there is no other fantasy writer in my world. Still, this one got enough buzz that I picked it up.

Props to the well-developed and imaginative world here - I don't write fantasy, because there's no way in a hundred years I could come up with all the stuff that's needed, like currency, units of time, political alliances and enmeties, and smatterings of language. Also, props to avoiding many fantasy cliches. There are no elves, orcs, trolls, or other Tolkieny things in sight.

Wilson's world is much fresher, and it has a believable internal logic holding it together. (Actually, I think this is her debut - wow.) But again, it was the characterization that bored me a little. Rain, the hero, is actually a sort of god, or nearly so. He is just So Beautiful, So Powerful, So Strong, So Terrifying, So Wise. He also spent much time - this is a pet peeve of mine and the reason I've only read one Stephanie Laurens book - picking up the heroine, whisking her away from danger, grabbing her, shielding her from danger, moving her here and there, as if she were some kind of luggage.

And then Rain's arms were around her, sweeping her out of her chair and against his chest, and air blew in a cooling rush against her hot skin as he sped up the stairs and out of the palace...

He does this frequently. I would go nuts.

Ellie, the heroine, is a sort of Everygirl - shy, a little awkward, not very confident, a bit of a misfit. Rain sees her and Decides She Is His Soul Mate For Eternity. It's a fantasy, after all.

There are a few more books in this series, and at this point I'm on the fence. The heavy political conversations in the last 70 pages really bogged me down - talk about infodump. I'm not sure I can keep it all straight, and as the whisking promises to continue unabated, I may not try. There are too many other books in the TBR.