She had been a goddess the whole time in that she had the soul in there with her affecting things like how she looked and how she reacted. Which I thought I could handle, but then it all resulted in her ascension, and just fuckit. I grew to hate it in Dean has really been Michael this whole time but didn't know it stories in SPN, and it just...I end up feeling like I've lost a significant part of my investment in the character, and then when it all climaxes for the end, I end up even further away.

I can see that. However, if you liked the writing and the worldbuilding, I do think you'll like #2. There's no pussyfooting around of that nature.

I may grab the sample off B&N.

Not only did that trope remind me of a hated SPN fic one, but her Trickster was very much like Gabriel to me. More than any other trickster I can recall reading/seeing recently. Which worked both for and against the book.

I am finally reading Cold Kiss, and I cannot get The Hush Sound song with that lyric out of my head!

And, I finished reading Cold Kiss. It was so good! I want to know more about the family now. (very late) Yay Amy!

Aw, yay, Sophia! And you will, in the next book!

Isn't that lyric perfect, though? First time I heard it, I thought, "Ooh, that's it, that's the song."

I've been re-reading The Pliocene Exile Saga by Julian May, and I really love it. I am a huge fan of her Galactic Milieu Trilogy (well, really Pentology), which is set in the same universe, as well. I think that a lot of you might enjoy the books - they are epic science fiction, with the central SF concept concerned with what the book calls meta-functions; telepathy, telekinesis, etc. I think she writes great characters (most of whom are decidedly NOT in the normal range of human psychology), and her stories are really quite grand in scope. The science isn't based on anything remotely realistic, as far as I know, but it still feels like hard SF, in that everything is internally consistent and logically thought out; this isn't The Force.

I read a series once I really enjoyed I considered "hard science" even though it was set in an alternate universe where alchemy worked, and it was the future of that universe with starships and supercities and what have all based on alchemical principles. Because it was done consistently and not treated as magic.

Because it was done consistently and not treated as magic

Where is it done inconsistently?

I just got into a way tl/dr; discussion with a guy who's insisting that magic is usually presented as something unknowable in fantasy, but I'm pretty sure that Gandalf understands his spells better than I understand my car. We don't get it, and the mundanes in the fantasy world don't get it, but wasn't a big point of HP watching him achieve a measure of expertise along with everything else as he grew up? And magic was treated as a repeatable predictable system as long as you knew what you were doing and had the requisite inborn talent?

(Which isn't an argument with you, TB, just a question raised from discussion elsewhere)

I just got into a way tl/dr; discussion with a guy who's insisting that magic is usually presented as something unknowable in fantasy

Not in books where the wizards/witches/sorcerors are protagonists.

In Wizard of Earthsea the magic is all about learning the true name/nature of things.