I also have read Mockingjay. I was very disappointed. I thought it was terribly slow compared to the other books. I didn't mind the darkness so much as stripping Katniss of almost all agency. Also, where did this world come from? It didn't seem to match the one created in the first book at all.

Hey, Neil Gaiman says he knows what the next "big fictional prose story" he wants to tell is.

Also: he's going to be on Arthur on October 25th.

I liked that one better than R&R, myself, and definitely intend to read the sequel.

I read the first chapter of the third one before I left. </Taunty McTauntypants>

I didn't like Rosemary and Rue as much as I did the second one. The character grows on you.

I loved Toby in the first book (she reminded me of Veronica Mars), but I'm enjoying watching her grow and change from book to book.

I just finished the third one, and other than one kind of weird scene, liked it even better than the second. I think the author's really hitting her stride.

She thinks it's the best of the three. Oddly enough, I have liked each book less and less in addition to more and more. I got so attached to the Chandleresque noir of the first book that I miss that in the other ones. I did enjoy the mystery aspect in ALH, but this last one was basically straight-up fantasy, with some maddening fairy-tale tropes like cryptic messages and contrived rules, although it was also an action-packed thrill ride, so that was fun. I do admire her ability to change styles so effortlessly, and I keep coming back for the interesting, likable characters and the intricately constructed world.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series, though, because, as this book showed, she's put enough into the worldbuilding that new stories can develop out of them rather than be used for the purposes of more worldbuilding.

Which weird scene do you mean?

(It makes me happy to see that people are enjoying Seanan's books!)

I'm about 80 pages into Blameless, and I'm finding it a bit difficult to get into, I don't know. It's kind of a big switch from the book I just finished, The Shadow of the Wind. Anyone else read it? It's really good, and I think Buffistas would dig it.

I have The Shadow of the Wind waiting on my nook. I love my nook. I get library books on it. I also have a couple of books I could lend, if someone here wants to borrow them.

There was probably more than one weird scene, but the one that really bugged was the one where she and Tybalt are talking about lies.

One of my LJ friends has an interesting theory about what Tybalt was referring to.

I dunno. That seems to be what she's been building toward...

I think Toby's going to end up not being a changeling; but hidden as a changeling for some reason to protect her. it's why she gets headaches when she does her magic. It's running up against some sort of magical block.

It bugged me that the lie bit was so Extra Mysterious because it seems kind of obvious something's going on with Toby's parentage. . I dunno. I am half-afraid the lie he thinks she's telling herself is that she's madly in love with him and pretending not to be. Which would make it a romance novel cliche.

Well, on PC's recommendation, I got R&R and liked it enough that I got the second one before I'd finished the first. I recently finished the third and thought it was the best, most memorable, of the three. I'm about half-way through Blameless and I like it, but I'm not as crazy about the series. And I - finally! - go to The Hunger Games and I'm planning on getting the next two at some point ... maybe after I've whittled down my to be read pile a bit.

I just read a couple of books by a new-to-me author. Kelly Meding. Three Days to Dead is the first. It's got a bit of a Nikita vibe--young criminals taken in and trained by a super-secret org to police the monsters.

I like the world-building quite a bit. This is the blurb:

She’s young, deadly, and hunted—with only three days to solve her own murder…

When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue – in a stranger’s body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there – her troubles are only just beginning. Before that night, she and the other two members of her Triad were star bounty hunters — mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives, but also convinced the city’s other Hunters that Evy was a traitor . . . and she can’t even remember what it was.

Now she’s a fugitive, piecing together her memory, trying to deal some serious justice – and discovering that she has only three days to solve her own murder before the reincarnation spell wears off. Because in three days, Evy will die again – but this time, there’s no second chance…

Forty of Garth Williams' originals for Charlotte's Web are being auctioned [link]

Want.

Oh dear, Fern bottle-feeding Wilbur. WANT.