A Reader Is Me!

Title: Snuff
Author: Terry Pratchett
Number of Pages: 416 pages
Book Number/Goal: 3/10 for 2012
My Rating: 3/5

Summary: When Vimes takes a holiday to his wife's family manor in the country, he's expecting to be bored out of his skull, but when a goblin girl is killed, he finds himself with an investigation on his hands.

Review: This was enjoyable, but I just didn't love it. The theme of a species previously looked down upon and treated badly by humans and everyone else becoming more accepted has been used in many Discworld novels and it's really geting old. If the surrounding story is good enough, then I'm happy to go with it, but I just really found the story lacking in this. I kept putting it down and not reading for days or weeks because it just wasn't keeping me interested. I really like Vimes (I used to say he was my favorite character, but that's now Moist), but Vimes on his own is much less fun than Vimes with Vetinari and/or the rest of the Watch. I like Sybill all right, but I really dislike how anything with Vimes and Sybill together turns into all this stuff about gender stereotypes and "oh those women, how can we ever understand their ways!?" I guess that's part of Vimes' characterisation, since Pratchett doesn't do that with other female characters, but it's not something I enjoy and it makes me dislike any time Vimes is with Sybill (which was a lot of this novel). I do like Young Sam, but he wasn't in this very much. And I love Willikins. He was probably the best part.

Title: Witch Eyes
Author: Scott Tracey
Number of Pages: 336 pages
Book Number/Goal: 25/50 for 2011
My Rating: 3.5/5

Amazon Summary (edited for spoileriness): Braden's witch eyes give him an enormous power. A mere look causes a kaleidoscopic explosion of emotions, memories, darkness, and magic. But this rare gift is also his biggest curse.

Compelled to learn about his shadowed past and the family he never knew, Braden is drawn to the city of Belle Dam, where he is soon caught between two feuding witch dynasties. Sworn rivals Catherine Lansing and Jason Thorpe will use anything--lies, manipulation, illusion, and even murder--to seize control of Braden's powers. To stop an ancient evil from destroying the town, Braden must master his gift despite a series of shocking revelations.

Review: This isn't a book I would have picked up on my own, but it was the first book for rachelmanija's Permanent Floating YA Diversity Book Club, so I decided to give it a go. Aside from the fact that the romance is between two boys, there isn't a single original thing about it. I felt like I was reading an amalgam of a bunch of current supernatural-themed things, including Supernatural, but also Lost Girl and Twilight, which are not terribly original things to begin with. But despite kind of rolling my eyes at everything, I found myself getting drawn in, and as it is unsurprisingly the first book in a series (no one has any love for stand-alone books but me, or at least no writers/publishers), I will definitely be checking out the next one when it's released. If nothing else, it's nice to see a book with gay characters that's not about being gay (as much as I do enjoy those stories, too).

Title: Wolves of the Calla
Author: Stephen King
Number of Pages: 960 pages
Book Number/Goal: 22/50 for 2011
My Rating: 5/5

Jacket Summary: Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World, the almost timeless landscape that seems to stretch from the wreckage of civility that defined Roland's youth to the crimson chaos that seems the future's only promise. Readers of Stephen King's epic series know Roland well, or as well as this enigmatic hero can be known. They also know the companions who have been drawn to his quest for the DarkTower: Eddie Dean and his wife, Susannah; Jake Chambers, the boy who has come twice through the doorway of death into Roland's world; and Oy, the Billy-Bumbler. In this long-awaited fifth novel in the saga, their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a tranquil valley community of farmers and ranchers on Mid-World's borderlands. Beyond the town, the rocky ground rises toward the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is slowly stealing the community's soul. For Calla Bryn Sturgis, danger gathers in the east like a storm cloud. The Wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to, and they can give the Calla-folken both courage and cunning. Their guns, however, will not be enough.

Review: I was unspoiled for this book, not even reading the jacket summary beforehand (because why bother when I already know I'm going to want to read it?), so I was totally surprised by Father Callahan's appearance. So I even cut that mention out of the summary above just in case anyone else is similarly unspoiled. XD (Not sure how likely that is at this late date, but who knows.)

I read Salem's Lot in high school, so it's been aaaaaages, but Wikipedia plus the story given in Wolves of the Calla itself were more than enough to get me up to speed. I know the Dark Tower books link to other King works all the time, but I never suspected a crossover as big as this, with Callahan becoming a major character.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this. I'm not thrilled with the Susannah plotline, and there are a ton of things I could talk about if I had any interest in doing anything other than going awhrjewhqjkerhejqwhekqw DARK TOWER, but I really don't. :p I love this series SO MUCH and this installment was definitely not disappointing at all.

Oh! And I loved that the sneetches turned out to be SNITCHES!

Now to read Song of Susannah. :D