Tep, do you mean this? Because it sounds AWESOME.
That's the one! Given my execrable knowledge of history, the AU plot of WWI probably isn't thrilling me the way it's intended to, but the rest of it is SO COOL. There's a whole scene involving bats (not baseball; the animal) used as weapons that is the funniest, most clever thing I've read in a LONG time.
...but maybe I'll wait until the whole trilogy is done.
Westerfeld has a pretty strong track record of finishing shit quickly. He's really prolific. I think I've read almost all his YA books. He's got a crazy twisty brain that I'd just like to run around in for a while.
Anyway, I'm incapable of delaying gratification, so I had to read it right away, and so come September, I'm going to have to re-read it to prepare for Book 2.
However -- and I get that this is authorial preference -- there were some aspects that I would have preferred to see fleshed out versus hitting the romance angle so hard.
I did think that was a weakness, particularly since it sometimes made the main character seem pretty shallow. I definitely wanted to know a lot more about the sisterhood, but I also liked the way the author released little bits of information about them that made me stop and say "whoa!" I was mainly impressed by her ability to keep the tension on through the whole book, in the best tradition of the horror movie.
Book two is scheduled for March.
Steampunk is certainly the big thing in the cosplay world, at least the large sample of it that I see at DragonCon.
I definitely wanted to know a lot more about the sisterhood
This! And their role in creating the super-zombies.
The Oughts will be the Zombie/Vampire decade. This decade? Something else. Apart from my opinion, it's almost inevitable with trends in horror. It always cycles off to something new.
Dude, careful what you wish for! [link]
What was that about steampunk being the next big thing?
The next Quirk Classic will be Android Karenina.
It's Android Karenina, which will transpose the tale of Anna Karenina to a steampunk-inspired alternate 19th-century world of cyborgs, robot butlers, and space travel. S&S&S scribe Ben H. Winters will be helping to mechanize the original text, and the new quirkified version (the cover, at left, has yet to be designed) is set for release in bookstores this June.
I also wish people would stop writing the ... extrapolations? ... of Jane Austen. And, in a continuation of the crossover theme, there's now a book out about Jane Austen as a vampire.
there's now a book out about Jane Austen as a vampire
A shame she wasn't. We might have more of her books.
