Category Archives: quotes

Soul Music (Terry Pratchett)

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Soul Music by Terry Pratchett is the first Discworld book about Susan Sto Helit. [My reviews of the other Discworld novels here.]

Plot:
Death has one of his episodes again and left his post, which means that his granddaughter Susan has to take over his job without really knowing what she’s doing. In the meantime the young musician Imp Y Celin comes to Ankh Morpork. When he meets up with the dwarf Glod and the troll Cliff, they start playing a new kind of music – Music with Rocks In. And with that they start events much bigger than they thought at first.

Soul Music was a good, entertaining read. But I mostly just don’t connect with Pratchett in the right way, and this book is no exception.

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Frost Moon (Anthony Francis)

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[To be perfectly honest: I got a copy of this book in an Early Reviewer give-away at librarything. I don’t think it’s tainted my judgment, though. It was an ARC, however, so passages quoted might have changed.]

Frost Moon is the first book in the Skindancer series by Anthony Francis.

Plot:
Dakota Frost is a magical tattoo artist. That doesn’t only mean that she’s a damn good inker, it means that her tattoos are actually magic, which is easily noticeable because they move. Her normal life gets disrupted when she gets drawn into a murder investigation because the killer likes to keep those magical tattoos. At the same time, she gets involved into shapeshifter and vampire politics and everything gets pretty damn complicated.

Frost Moon is not necessarily a good book. I mean, it’s okay, it’s decent but objectively, it’s nothing to write home about. At the same time, though, it’s a hell of a lot fun. Dakota is a great character and I really enjoyed the story. It also helps that the author seems to be quite a nerd. That means that  Magic: The Gathering jokes are just sprinkled on top of the whole thing.

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Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)

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Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood.

Plot:
Snowman is sitting in a forest, surrounded by rather naive and simplistic people he calls Crakers – and whom he feels strangely responsible for. Slowly, he takes us back to a time when he was Jimmy and to his friendship with a guy called Crake, his obsession with a woman called Oryx and a world filled with strange animal splices and powerful corporations.

Oryx and Crake is an excellent read. It’s well-written, interesting and has great characters. What more can I say?

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Teaser Tuesday

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It infected the cultural consciousness, Sophie said. Zeitgeist was the German word for it. Happened to an extent after WW2. The whole country, maybe the whole world, has occasion to think ‘Where do we go from here? What happens now?’, and a lot of folks got scared because they don’t know, can’t see, can’t imagine.

Christopher Brookmyre – Not the End of the World

Teaser Tuesday

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Serving dishes were placed on the table. Each of the diners were given a small painted tray on which was some tarnished cutlery, to place on his or her lap.

Neil Gaiman – American Gods

Admittedly, one of the less exciting passages.

Anyway, I decided to join the whole 1 Book, 1 Twitter thing, mostly because I’ve been meaning to re-read American Gods for a while now. It’s still really awesome.

Teaser Tuesday

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VLADIMIR: A dog came in-
Having begun too high he stops, clears his throat, resumes.
A dog came in the kitchen
And stole a crust of bread.
Then cook up with a ladle
And beat him till he was dead.
Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb-

Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot

[Yes, I’m being intellectual. I do that sometimes. In other news, * got me the book and tickets for Waiting for Godot for tomorrow for my birthday. So actually, it’s her being intellectual that’s rubbing off on me.]

Teaser Tuesday

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Look at this remarkable image for a moment. Now close your eyes and conjure it in your memory.

Philip Zimbardo – The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil

[So, I’m making an effort to read more non-fiction. (Which means any non-fiction at all.) This is my getting started book: it’s about the Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib and situational forces that affect people’s behaviours in a negative way. In other words, fun!]

[Oh, and the title really sucks, imo.]