But ya know what? I hated that answer. I would have preferred it been, I don't know Winkies on the rampage. Or we find out the people killed were persecutors of Animals and the scrapings were part of the Elphaba Lives! movement. SOMETHING besides "Uh...the Emperor needed a weapon to get the flying things and well, dragons fly." Also, there was none, and I mean NO chemistry between Liir and Trism to justify a love affair. None. And that screamed to me like, "Well, I'm gay, so someone in this book has to have the gay sex." I don't mind gay sex, mind you. (So many doors open with that statement.) but I need ANY sex in my books to have chemistry. That whole scene read to me as, well, you're here. Peg A, Slot B.

Dammit.

You're not wrong. The whole book was just random events happening randomly. And not in a "Life sure is funny" kind of way.

What bugs me on the whole about it is that obviously (to me, anyway), he wrote it because of the pop-u-larity of the musical. Here's some more Wicked - watch it fly off the shelves. I enjoyed the premise of Wicked because I like the other side of any story. But this isn't the other side of any story. This is a novel with characters from other novels in it. Wicked at least made references to The Wizard of Oz. This had nothing to reference. And the story lacked because of that. If it had been a different story of someone other than the Son of Elphaba , it might have evoked altogether feelings from me. On the other hand, I might not have read it, either.

The second Alatriste book is out in translation.

(I saw it at Barnes and Noble this weekend.)

Has anyone here read Octavia Butler's The Fledgling? Did I miss a whole discussion about it?

There's new Butler? Hooray!

I was wondering -- what did people find to be their best reads published in 2005? I never read the book section of any publication, because I don't read in a timely manner. I think I read the latest Harry Potter, the latest Bujold, and if Crusie published in 2005, then hers too. Unless Kat slipped something by me. I'm appalling. Or old school. Whichever.

One of my best reads of the year was definitely The Half-Blood Prince. Also loved Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, and Crusie's Bet Me, but I think that might have been a 2004 book, officially.

I'm terrible about reading books in the same year they're published. This would be because I almost never buy books in hardcover, and because I'm incredibly clueless about what books are new and what aren't.

Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and Their Victims by Katherine Watson.

Excellent, excellent book: one of those astonishing social histories that take a tiny fragment of a society and use it to shed light on the society as a whole. Also, poison.

I can't recall any fiction that had me dancing up and down. Okay, the new Laurell K. H produced a Dance of Rage, but that doesn't count.

I'm terrible about reading books in the same year they're published.

Me too, but for me it is either because I buy stuff and then let them sit while I read something I bought a couple of years ago or because I wait for them to get the the bargain rack. I almost always buy hardcovers.