Impressive Range
May. 17th, 2010 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dsrtaoI've mostly dropped out of the habit of mentioning what books I've read, but I'll pop these up.
Two are urban fantasy, slightly hardboiled; one is SF/horror. All three are really really good, and they're all by the same author.
The SF/horror is _Feed_, by Mira Grant, a pseudo for Seanan McGuire. Drawing a little on the Brooks notion that zombiehood is a contagious viral plague rather than a curse, the world-building is wonderfully detailed and the main characters all too believable. Technology is all plausible, clearly delayed but not destroyed by the 1/3 reduction in the world's population and aimed very clearly at the practical side -- although there was a point where I wondered why one character didn't carry a boar-spear in his inventory... It would be hard to boil this down to a 2 hour movie, which is a slight pity as there are some wonderful action scenes. Highly recommended. Not a huge quantity of gross-out -- for a zombie novel.
The urban fantasies, complete with snarky first-person narration, are _Rosemary and Rue_ and _A Local Habitation_, under the name of McGuire. The tone is completely different. The style is completely different. And it's very good. Hidden fae folk, mostly in San Francisco, have intrigues and wars and lives that span the ethereal and mundane realms. Wandering around in this mess is a private investigator who happens to be a halfling.
Final oddity: it appears that I ran into Ms. McGuire, by accident, in the company of Liam at Boskone in 2008. We chatted briefly -- she's short, like most of the world, but has a brother my size or larger.
Two are urban fantasy, slightly hardboiled; one is SF/horror. All three are really really good, and they're all by the same author.
The SF/horror is _Feed_, by Mira Grant, a pseudo for Seanan McGuire. Drawing a little on the Brooks notion that zombiehood is a contagious viral plague rather than a curse, the world-building is wonderfully detailed and the main characters all too believable. Technology is all plausible, clearly delayed but not destroyed by the 1/3 reduction in the world's population and aimed very clearly at the practical side -- although there was a point where I wondered why one character didn't carry a boar-spear in his inventory... It would be hard to boil this down to a 2 hour movie, which is a slight pity as there are some wonderful action scenes. Highly recommended. Not a huge quantity of gross-out -- for a zombie novel.
The urban fantasies, complete with snarky first-person narration, are _Rosemary and Rue_ and _A Local Habitation_, under the name of McGuire. The tone is completely different. The style is completely different. And it's very good. Hidden fae folk, mostly in San Francisco, have intrigues and wars and lives that span the ethereal and mundane realms. Wandering around in this mess is a private investigator who happens to be a halfling.
Final oddity: it appears that I ran into Ms. McGuire, by accident, in the company of Liam at Boskone in 2008. We chatted briefly -- she's short, like most of the world, but has a brother my size or larger.
