valarltd | books for 2010

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.

7) Eternal Darkness. Rob Knight, ed. Now how in the HELL did we ALL manage to make blind vampires so boring? Six novellas. And only Syd McGinley's stands out all with the inclusion of an imp.

8) Seti's Heart. Kiernan Kelly. GORGEOUS. Seti was cursed by the god Set to live for 5000 years. At the end of that time, he is rescued by a penniless grad student and wackiness ensues. Excellent characterization, well written. Definite keeper.

9) Tom Sawyer Detective. Mark Twain. Huck Finn narrates this little mystery novella as Tom gets swept into a family mess. Period racism, colloquial spelling, but very entertaining.

10) Paths of Iro 2: Carved from Gold. Mike Shade. Shade is an author I'm not fond of, simply because ze lards the books with endless sex. This book had numerous editing errors and it seemed to be basically: Hokonnen (whom I kept calling Harkonnen in my head) is having touble fitting into his new position. The solution is lots of sex. Something evil is trying to destroy him and the temple. The solution is more sex. He and the high priest are hit by lightening and the HP is comatose? Have an orgy to wake the HP. This could have been great, but it was all sex.