Hey all, popping in before the baby abuse starts to provide a warning. Stephanie Laurens got a hardback deal. She wrote historical romance paperbacks about the Cynster family and they weren't bad. I don't remember them clearly, which probably means beach readability, fun, light, not too many glaring historical errors. Unfortunately, the hardback, her first, reads like the Nikita fanfic Dana's been sharing in the fanfic thread.

If the author has one thing consistently the same, it's that she tells rather than shows. Her descriptions of the heroic couple's sexual encounters are marvels of vocabulary abuse. I found myself shrieking, "blah blah blah!" at it. The bad guy was obvious by halfway through, despite the fact that our heroes never even considered the person. Really, really bad book. Scarily bad. I read the whole thing because I'm an idiot and couldn't imagine how an author I'd previously enjoyed could change so drastically, kept thinking there'd be some last minute salvation. Unfortunately, even the happy ever after ending was boring.

I'm tempted to post this review on Amazon. It's that bad.

Wow. That's bad and I wonder what happened?

Also, Cinescape has rumors of HP6 in September.

Not very likely. Rowlings had a new-ish baby for the beginning of this one, she has ALWAYS run frantically late, and the publishing publicity engine hasn't geared up. By this point in the last book, the title had been leaked, tantalizing snippets were being dropped, and the book was available for preorder on Amazon.

I read the whole thing because I'm an idiot and couldn't imagine how an author I'd previously enjoyed could change so drastically, kept thinking there'd be some last minute salvation.

Barbara Hambly, Dragonshadow. IJS.

Oh, yeah. I keep hearing bad things about the continuation of that series. I've managed to stay away from it so far.

She better not mess with Antryg, that's all I'm saying.

I liked "Sunshine" just fine.

She better not mess with Antryg, that's all I'm saying.

Damn straight. Joanna's probably running her own business so that there's enough time to haul him to the ocean and the desert, and every so often she goes out to the shooting ranges and goes through a box of ammo, just to keep her edge.

Ahhh, twelve bucks a year for all the books you can read

Your library has a yearly fee? I'm appalled (to a ridiculously disproportionate extent). Wow. I thought subscription fees for libraries went out with the nineteenth century. Is this common in the US?

On re-think, the libraries in Scotland only let you check out three books at once (a truly hideous crime), so I guess different countries just do these things differently. Not that my library's approach isn't the one true way, because that's just obvious.

I liked "Sunshine" just fine.

So did I. I thought it was entertaining, even if Raye's constant talking about what she bakes made me overwhelmingly hungry.

Ouise, a lot of the libraries in the US these days are down to the bare bone in financing. I'm actually awaiting more libraries going sub; I check the numbers on "Weaver" across the US on a monthly basis, and if you want disheartening, check out something like the Pennsylvania library home pages, where the first thing one sees is "Updates on newest budget cuts and how this will affect your library" notices.