Codex Born (Jim Hines)

The second book in this series lives up to the promise of the first. When Gutenberg developed the printing press, he made it possible for thousands of people to read identical copies of the same book, and their collective belief in the story made libriomancy possible. Those with the innate ability can reach into books and pull out the things inside; phasers, sonic screwdrivers, magic seeds. But there's a darker magic hiding in the books, something much older even than Gutenberg, and it is coming through and threatening the world. Isaac, Lena, Nhidi, Smudge, and a whole army of good guys have to fight not swarms of magical insects, but enemy forces that seemingly negate magic all together. Lots of fun.

Fool Moon (Jim Butcher)

Harry Dresden is a wizard in contemporary Chicago, working with the police to solve crimes that have occult elements. In this story, people have been torn apart by something with monstrous claws and teeth right around the full moon, and Harry has to figure out how to stop it. There are multiple kinds of werewolves in this story, some good, some bad, some in between, but the real complication comes as Harry tries to sort out his relationships with three women: his young apprentice, a smart and lovely reporter, and a tough, no-nonsense detective. I love this series, because the stories are engaging and Harry is someone I can really like.

Libriomancer (Jim C. Hines)

This is the first book in a series, and I expect to keep reading it. It's a contemporary fantasy based on the idea that books are magical. When enough people read the same book in the same form, and it's written well enough so that the story becomes real for them as they read, then people who have the proper magical abilities can literally reach into the book and pull things out into the real world. Isaac, the hero of this story, has pulled out things like sonic screwdrivers, blasters, and light sabers. There are magical creatures in the world, some naturally created and some book-based (such as the recent appearance of sparkly vampires), and there's a balance of power between the libriomancers who govern the magic of the books and other magical beings (vampires, werewolves, and such). This balance has been disrupted recently; both vampires and libriomancers have suffered attacks that they blame on each other, and before total war breaks out Isaac has to find out who's behind it and defeat them. Along the way he joins up with a dryad and his trusty pet fire spider. Isaac is a good hero, smart and engaging and sympathetic, and the idea of magical books appeals to me. Lots of fun.

Storm Front (Jim Butcher)

I've read a few of the books from this series here and there and liked them, so I'm starting over from the beginning. Harry Dresden is a wizard, all trained up and powerful and everything, living in modern Chicago and hanging out an actual shingle identifying himself as such. There are lots of other wizards around (he's got a very chancy relationship with the White Council that governs wizards' affairs), but he's the only one that's out and public. He's called in as a police consultant to study some particularly gruesome murders that have a magical basis, and also hired by a woman as a private investigator to look for her husband, an amateur wizard who's disappeared. Naturally, these two cases come together in an unexpected but satisfying way. I really like Harry's voice and attitude. He's a good guy with some serious skills who throws himself into problems way beyond his level when there are people in trouble. He reminds me a bit of Travis McGee, in John D. MacDonald's wonderful series, with a layer of cool magic on top.

River Marked (Patricia Briggs)

I still love this series of contemporary fantasies, featuring Mercy Thompson, who is tough, brave, sexy, and compassionate. In this story, the focus is firmly on Mercy's relationship with Adam, and on coming to terms with her Native-American culture and with Coyote, as they band together to fight an abomination of a river monster that's been returned from the dead to prey on people. Her mechanic shop, the vampires, fae, and even the rest of the wolf pack are secondary. The action is intense, the stakes are high, and Adam and Mercy are put through the wringer in every possible way, but they manage to come through in the end. I will definitely keep reading these as long as she keep writing them.

The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell)

This is a deep novel, tracing the interconnected stories of several people who become more and more entwined in supernatural goings-on as they try to figure out what's happening and how to survive. I really enjoyed most of it as I dug into the mystery. Who are these mysterious voices Holly is hearing? What happened to her strange but beloved brother? How do some people seem ageless, and others seem to be able to manipulate people's memories? It all pulled together near the end in a cosmic battle between good and evil. The last section, though, let me down. After pulling for the good guys to win the epic battle (and then manage to survive their victory), the book suddenly became a dystopia about how the world is going to crash when resources run out. I didn't like that sudden left turn, partly because it was unremittingly grim and partly because it didn't seem to fit with the premise or the direction of the rest of the book. Up until that point I loved it.

Bone Crossed (Patricia Briggs)

I just can't get enough of this series. Mercy Thompson is tough, funny, vulnerable, resourceful, sexy, honest -- everything one could want in a hero. In this story she's coping with the aftermath of trauma she experienced in earlier books and trying to find her footing in the new relationship she has with the werewolf pack (and its sexy Alpha), so she doesn't need a threat posted on the wall of her mechanic shop indicating that the vampires have declared open season on her and hers. She has to try to find out what the vampires are after and how to protect herself from them, and also solve a seemingly unrelated problem brought to her by an old college friend who suspects her house is haunted. Of course, the two problems turn out to be related, and much worse than anyone thought, but through bloody-minded toughness and quick thinking, and with help from various expected and unexpected sources, she manages to make everything work out as it should. Mostly. Recommended.

Iron Kissed (Patricia Briggs)

Another story of Mercy Thompson, the shapeshifting mechanic and her world of werewolves, vampires, witches, and fae. She is called in to investigate a series of murders in the fae reservation: murders that have never been reported to authorities because the fae handle these things themselves, but Mercy's fae friend Zee thinks her special coyote abilities might be useful. Along the way Zee winds up imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit and Mercy finds herself a target of the real murdered, who stalks her for his own twisted pleasures. Mercy's ties to Adam, the Alpha of the local werewolf pack, grow ever tighter in this story. I'm really loving these books!

Silver Borne (Patricia Briggs)

After this, I will focus more on reading this series in order! Mercy Thompson, the shapeshifting hero of these books, has a life that progresses and changes, with the events of each book affecting the shape of future events, and dipping into her life at random is making me nuts! Here Mercy learns that a book in her possession is much more important than she realized and is trying to untangle that problem without getting anyone killed. In the meantime her roommate, an alpha werewolf she used to be in a relationship with, has become despondent, and Mercy must also struggle with resentment and outright hostility from the local pack since its Alpha took her as his mate. Briggs handles these relationship issues with skill, dodging any tendency for soap opera overindulgence, while delivering a thrilling life-or-death supernatural mystery to solve. I really enjoy these books a lot.

Finn Fancy Necromancy (Randy Henderson)

This rollicking fun trip of a novel involves elite necromancers, formless Fey, evil witches, brutish Sasquatches, and thuggish gnomes, set in modern-day Washington State under the blind eye of the mundane world. At the center is a mystery: who framed Finn for dark necromancy and got him exiled to the Other Realm for 25 years, and now that he's finally out, who's trying to get him sent back there again? Finn and his funky family and assorted other strange folks have just three days to solve these mysteries before he's dragged back to his non-life. As he tries to figure out what's going on people around him are dying, falling in love, discovering secrets, and speaking from the grave. I enjoyed the romp quite a bit, because although it feels very comic book I could really care about the characters (including several that are diverse in mundane ways such as race, orientation, and intellectual ability, without carrying Look At Me - I'm Diverse!! signs). The ending wasn't terribly surprising but satisfying enough and leaves open lots of directions for sequels, which makes me happy.

Night Broken (Patricia Briggs)

I've jumped ahead to this most recent book in the Mercy Thompson series, and it lives up to the others that I have read. Mercy continues to work with werewolves and other friends (in this case, members of the fae) to fight evil (in this case, the personification of a volcano god - really!). One thing I missed in this book was that Mercy didn't use her ability to shapeshift into a coyote much, though a big part of the story was about her relationship with Coyote, the actual trickster god. A big part of the book related to a confrontation with Adam's ex-wife, who has come home seeking help with a stalker and polarizes the wolf pack into Mercy versus the ex. I raced through it and had a lot of fun along the way.

The Fuller Memorandum (Charles Stross)

I'm reading the Laundry Files series out of order, which is a little confusing, but I love them anyway. The mixture of humor, pop culture, computers, science geekery, Lovecraftian horror, James Bond, and soul-deadening bureaucracy really works for me. In this one, we learn a little about Angleton, Bob Howard's very scary boss, and find out why he's even scarier than we thought. Along the way Bob's wife Mo proves her badassery with the demon-killing violin and Bob has to face an army of cultists bent on sacrificing him to the ultimate dark lord, armed with nothing but his knowledge of computational demonology. Great stuff.

Side Jobs (Jim Butcher)

I've become a real fan of the Harry Dresden series, so I checked out this collection of short works. It begins with the first-ever Dresden story, written as an exercise for a creative writing class and never before published. Butcher acknowledges that it's not a strong story and didn't deserve publication initially, an opinion I could agree with, but I enjoyed seeing where the story began. It finishes with a novelette that Harry never even appears in, with Murphy and others of Harry's friends dealing with his apparent murder, trying to cope with the kind of evil he usually fights without him. If you like the Dresden series you will like these stories.

The Apocalypse Codex (Charles Stross)

Another in the Laundry Files series, which I love for its humor, its intelligence, and its willingness to twist genre boundaries into Moebius strips. Bob Howard is again the narrator, telling how he is threatened with promotion within the more-secret-than-secret British agency charged with protecting England and the world from Lovecraftian horrors that constantly try to breach the boundaries between the worlds and munch on our tasty human souls. In this version, the charismatic leader of a splinter faction of an evangelistic American church is demonstrating a distressingly effective ability to rally the faithful. It turns out that the Second Coming is not quite what they think it is, and Howard and a beautiful, powerful witch named Persephone have to shut them down. If you like humor and horror woven together, you'll love this one.

Blood Bound (Patricia Briggs)

This second book in the Mercy Thompson series is as good as the first. Mercy is resourceful, brave, and likeable as she faces a murderous demon, with the help of her werewolf, fae, and vampire friends. And with her own ability, which is that she can shift at will into a coyote. I like her as a strong female character, though the cover of the paperback annoyed me. Mercy makes her living as an auto mechanic, but I doubt she works with her overalls zipped down below the navel. I also like that the supernatural creatures are not just stereotype. Each individual has a unique personality that comes through even when overlaid with things like the rigid pack hierarchy of the wolves. Briggs has a deft hand with contemporary fantasy, and I will definitely read more.

Darkfever (Karen Marie Moning)

This is the first book of a fantasy series by the author of the Highlander books, which is very popular though I haven't read it. I was looking for contemporary fantasy to read so I thought I'd try this. I have to say, I had problems with it. Most of the problems could have been fixed with a bit of editing. The author used inappropriate words in phrases like "the bed perched under the window" (beds don't perch). Phrases were padded with vague adjectives or unneeded words, as when she said the driveway was "framed by huge, ancient trees on both sides" (could it have been framed on one side?). I had to laugh at a tense moment when the narrator said that she had been sprinting to keep up with a monster, but now she would have to break into a run to catch it. Some basic facts were just wrong, as when it was 7 pm in Dublin at midsummer and she called it sunset (in Dublin at midsummer the sun sets three hours later). More serious than these problems, which could have been easily fixed with a sharp blue pencil, was the general attitude of the protagonist. Nearly a third of the way through the book, having had up-close interactions with fantastic monsters, she was still pretending that there was nothing supernatural going on. I wanted to slap her. There is a good story under here, and I won't say don't read it, but it's not for me.

Vicious (V. E. Schwab)

A very comic-book story, where people have super powers and make dastardly plots against a nemesis, and I loved it. Victor and Eli were brilliant college students when they started studying the origin of people with extraordinary abilities. Their research turned to experimentation, and then turned to death and destruction. Along the way we meet a pair of sisters joined by love and death, a giant tattooed man whose specialty is computer hacking, and a dog with the lives of a cat. The larger-than-life plot played out with just the right mix of inevitability and surprise, and the ending held as much tenderness as you could hope for. This is the author's first adult novel; I hope for more.

The Jennifer Morgue (Charles Stross)

Another Laundry Files novel from Charles Stross. These stories are always a mind-twisting blend of horror (many-tentacled creatures from the murky deeps), police procedure (griping about pencil-neck desk-jockeys who don't know what it's really like out here in the field), and geekery (what else from someone who writes sidekicks named Pinky and Brains?). Bob Howard works for a top-secret British intelligence agency but he's no James Bond. As a computational demonologist, his specialty is understanding how mathematical formulae and computer programs breach the walls between worlds and let those horrors through, forcing the good guys to stop them and clean up the mess according to the proper bureaucratic rules, in triplicate. In this story, Howard starts out attending an international meeting of similar organizations, expecting a boring weekend of conference rooms and PowerPoint, but winds up soul-linked with a demon assassin and dragged to a Caribbean island to stop a megalomaniacal billionaire from stealing a deep-sea artifact that can destroy the world. Of course.  Stross scatters every page with gems that are as smart as they are funny. I have to love an author whose narrator describes the experience of driving a rented Smart Car on the German autobahn "while a jerk is shooting at me from behind with a cannon loaded with Porches and Mercedes."

Summer Knight (Jim Butcher)

I'm not reading the Dresden Files novels in order, but I'm enjoying them a lot. Harry Dresden is my kind of hero: unreasonably strong and competent, but with realistic flaws and foibles and deeply concerned about other people. He is a wizard in modern-day Chicago, dragged into a war between the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie that threatens the very existence of the Earth, not to mention the lives of everyone Harry cares about. In order to save the day Harry has to solve a murder mystery: who killed the Summer Knight? The Queen of Winter is the obvious suspect, but she's the one who hired Harry to solve the crime, so maybe not. As usual, Harry is helped out by an assortment of people: Murphy, the CPD cop; a pack of enthusiastic young werewolves; the mystical Mothers of Winter and Summer; and a small coven of changelings still balanced between the human and the faerie world. The action is nearly nonstop, and I enjoyed the ride.

Elfland (Freda Warrington)

There is a magical Otherworld called the Spiral, inhabited by beings known as Aetherials. There is a Gateway that allows these beings to visit modern-day Earth and even to live here, undetected, for generations, raising their Aetherial children. Rosie is one of these Aetherial children, born here to Aetherial parents who love Earth and have set up lives here. Every seven years there is a ceremony in which the great Gateway is thrown wide and all the Aetherials who live on Earth go into the Otherworld to recoonect with their magical roots--only something is wrong, and the stony, unlikable Gatemaster refuses to open the Gateway, claiming that there is a danger on the other side and he must protect everyone. Cut off from their source, Aetherials begin to fade. As Rosie grows up she faces the usual angst and issues of young people, amplified by the internal turmoil of the Aetherial community over whether the Gatemaster's decision is justified or not. As rebellion brews, Rosie is torn over her relationships with various others: the Aetherial boy she is hopelessly in love with who doesn't acknowledge her, his brother who is impulsive and scary, her brother's human friend who adores Rosie, her brother's human wife who hides a frightening secret, and another brother who is not what they think him to be. If this all sounds like a soap opera, that's my only complaint about the book. I love the magical worlds and the sense of mystery and power they build. I didn't love the whole I'm-in-love-and-there's-nothing-I-can-do-about-it mythos; that's a view of life I find misleading and dull. Why is everyone so helpless in the face of their impulses? But overall I can recommend the story; I was caught up in what will happen next and how everything is going to be resolved.