Book: Soulkeepers

The Soulkeepers by G. P. Ching was a good surprise. It starts out a bit bland, almost typical ‘teenager discovers powers and hidden fantasical world’ sort of way. However it avoids being cliche by the tips of its fingers and has several nice surprises along the way. It draws on some of the same concepts as The Facade, a book I read earlier in the year and disliked, but in a much better fashion. The same christan concepts of the fallen angels as selfish decievers and the mixing of angel and humanity to make what are basically superheroes. The down side of the book was that there wasn’t a whole lot of substance to the story when all is said and done. It starts bland and picks up, but never gets anywhere near epic or complex. It makes up for this with being a quick read.

 

Book: Libriomancer

Libriomancer: (Magic Ex Libris Book 1) is another urban fantasy. Enjoyed this one. Lots of the cliches. Main character is a lone wolf guy more or less isolated from the rest of his magical associates. No real close friends, not too lucky with romantic relationships. The standard boilerplate. It doesn’t come off as shallow, so it doesn’t get in the way of the story. Cool premise as well. Magic that can pull things out of books. Both good and bad. So you get a scene in the beginning where he is using a laser gun from a scifi pulp story to shoot sparkly vampires trying to kill him.

 

Book: Baen nonfiction 2012

Free Nonfiction 2012 is a collection of essays from Baen Books. Picked it up for free and got plenty of interesting stuff from reading it. Mostly science fiction stuff. A combination of military and cosmological topics. Highly recommended if you enjoy reading nonfiction for pleasure and enjoy science fiction.

 

Book: Escape

Escape by Jasper Scott was something of a disappointment. Not as big a disappointment as other recent books. Another interesting premise defeated by not very good writing. This book was just plain bland. Fair warning, this review had more spoilers then I have been putting in others. Not that I would consider that a huge problem for this particular book. The only mysteries here are because the author doesn’t give enough information or continuity to make guesses from.

 

Book: Hole in the World

A Hole in the World by Sophie Robbins took me a while to get through. I actually tried reading it a few months ago, but got bored and wandered to other books. Took me until now to finally finish it up. This story was a cheap ebook I picked up during a rush of grabbing free and cheap books off amazon. This one was only a dollar and the blurb grabbed my attention. Turns out the blurb was the most interesting thing about the book. Not that the book is bad exactly, but it could have used an editor to tighten it up a bit.