Various Thoughts

The first two books in Veronica Roth‘s Divergent series (Divergent & Insurgent) are an interesting window into an attempted utopian community that ends up dystopian in the extreme. You can clearly see both the good intentions behind the society’s structure as well as all of the myriad ways that they can (and do) get corrupted and ultimately fail. So; so far so good. Hopefully the areas outside the city limits (which the third book will presumably focus on to some extent) will end up just as believable as the city itself.

Silver Shark is a short novella by Ilona Andrews set in the Kinsmen universe. As with Silent Blade this story has a wonderfully detailed background setting that you really wish you could spend more time in. Where that lack of time really hurts though is in the romance arc, which ends up feeling incredibly contrived/rushed.

Lilith Saintcrow’s The Damnation Affair supposedly takes place in the Bannon and Clare universe. To me, it did not feel even the slightest bit attached to that series… and it’s not just the genre switch from Steampunk to Western either; the supernatural bits seemed to work completely differently. Putting that aside, I didn’t like this story for two reasons. The first is that it turns out I strongly, strongly dislike ‘cowboy talk’ while the second is that the female protagonist is extraordinarily strong-headed while lacking any real power or skill to back it up. While not exactly helpless, against what this book throws at her she may as well be.