Emlah, yes! It makes no sense, especially thinking back to the first book and all the rules that were set up there. It seems like the BookWorld is totally unstable--like the ProCath movement attacking the house in Wuthering Heights, and then being eaten by Big Martin... WTF? And the townspeople in the Enid Blyton book being emotion junkies made no sense either. It all falls apart if you try to think about it logically.

Edit: Megan, I'll be interested to see what you think of it. I find myself wanting to figure out the rules of the book and being thwarted again and again.

I was having those sorts of problems with the second book. I needed the book world to be much more stable than it was, otherwise it made no sense at all with the way the first book was set up.

The word for "boring" in Romanian is "plicticitor" so I've modified the title to Order of the Plicticitoarele.

(laughs out loud and scares cube-mate) Thanks to all for articulating my feelings about OotP.

I find the Snicket books meh. I read two or three of them just to see what was going on, but haven't bothered about the rest of the series. I did buy volumes 5 - 13 of the Snicket books at Dark Carnival, the coolest independent fantasy bookstore. It was Christmas and the nephew is all excited over them, so the family Book Fairy provided.

On a Lucius Malfoy note, the actor who played him did a fine turn as Captain Hook in the latest Peter Pan movie. He serves up some tasty manly onscreen evil. Yum.

Hey, thanks Betsy et al! I got Nerd In Shining Armor from the library today, am about halfway through, and it's SO CUTE. Loving it.

In less-good news, I just read this book Outburst by R. D. Zimmerman, and it was just not very good. It's part of a series, apparently, about this gay reporter in Minneapolis. The book was just kind of lame, and there were the kind of editing things that drive me bugfuck, but I was most bothered by this Tragic Tranny character...who had been castrated in a freak accident. Dude.

Hey, thanks Betsy et al! I got Nerd In Shining Armor from the library today, am about halfway through, and it's SO CUTE. Loving it.

Oh, good, I'm glad to see it mentioned. I've been debating about picking it up but it seemed like it could be good or really awful. Will add it to the list.

Jesse, I have that other book, too, but I think I dropped it about twenty pages in. Definitely won't pick it back up again now.

My sister recced NiSA, and while we are usually pretty simpatico on our reading picks, I was dubious. Guess I'll give it a whirl.

It's goofy as hell, sweet and cute. With sex.

Jesse, I have that other book, too, but I think I dropped it about twenty pages in. Definitely won't pick it back up again now.

Probably a good call. I found myself unreasonably annoyed by the most jackass things -- at one point there's a reproduction of an article found in a Nexis search, and the word count in the header is way too short.

So I just finished The Steerswoman's Road, which is an omnibus edition of The Steerswoman and The Outskirter's Secret, by Rosemary Kirstein. It was marvelous. I couldn't put it down. I loved the writing, the world she built, the characters, and the plot.

Oh, the plot! So cool and sneaky and I figured out a bunch of it but not the last twist, which made perfect sense given what she'd set up.

In some ways this series reminds me of The Book of Ash by Mary Gentle, which also (spoilers for both) presents as a fantasy and turns out to be science fiction. Good stuff.

Now I need to find the 3rd one, and I bet I won't before I come back from my vacation. t pouts

So great to have something meaty and fun and smart to read.

Suela, I enjoyed Kirstein too. Although I was kind of annoyed at finding out it's not a self-contained series, but an ongoing one. It's one of those things where, having glimpsed the denouement, I'm plenty ready to see it now, and am impatient with all the stuff that happens in-between.

Is that a crappy attitude to pull? It's about half "skip to the end!" and half worry that the author will get mired in her own ideas and never make it to the end at all.

Yeah. And I just read the Amazon reviews of the next one, and discovered that that's not the end either. Feh.

Want more! Now! grrr.

Nutty, have you read Mary Gentle?