Books for 2010

[valarltd]

1) Hawg. Stephen Shrewsbury. Stephen is a lovely man, smart and funny. And this book is totally gross. It's the book he wrote when he couldn't place his well-researched and written historical novel. It's a page-turner and quite possibly the goriest thing I've read. Lots and lots of horrid gorey deaths. Massive rapes. Kinky sex. Drug use. Small town corruption. Bad Formatting. (I counted at least a dozen editing errors and more formatting ones) As I tweeted "When [name drop] and Shrews sever penises it's all in a day's work. When I do it, I'm a crazy radical manhater."

2) Deviations III-Discipline. Jodi Payne and Chris Owen. More fun, this time in Paris, with Tobias and his sub, Noah. Hot and sexy.

3) Urban Gothic. Brian Keene. Not so hot on this one. Keene is hit or miss for me. When he hits, he hits big. When he misses, it's because he's being derivative. And this time.... Let's just say moving The Hills Have Eyes to inner city Philadelphia and crossing it with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did not improve it. Go read Ghoul or Dead Sea instead.


4) Deviation IV-Bondage. Jodi Payne and Chris Owen. Last in the series. Short on bondage, long on relationship. Very good.

5) Alfred Hitchcock's Witches' Brew. A collection of 11 stories about magic and witches and the fae. All excellent quality and included Robert Bloch's "That Hell-Bound Train."

6) Eastern Standard Tribe. Cory Doctrow. I liked the world building but at heart this is just a cyberpunk edisonade. Smartest-kid-in-the-room is sitting on the roof of the asylum and tells us the tale of how he ended up there. An enjoyable read but doesn't hold up under contemplation.