Mike's Random Scribbles

_The Will of the Empress_, and idiot publishers...

2005-10-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

...or editors, or mapmakers.

Type: Young adult Fantasy (Ages 13 and up? I'm not an expert.)
Rating: PG (some violence, some adult relationships of various flavours alluded to, nothing graphic)
Target Gender: Either (It's about 3 girls and a boy (well, young ladies and a young man), and there's enough intrigue, action, and romance to keep anyone interested, I think)

It's a young adult book, I'd guess targeted at the same age range as the Harry Potter or Diane Duane books.

The Will of the Empress is Tamora Pierce's new book,
set in the world of the Circle of Magic and The Circle
Opens series.

Good book! She created great characters, and it's been
fun watching them grow up over the last 8 books. They're
adults now, and their problems, conflicts, and situations
are all getting more adult as well.

I enjoyed it a lot.

EXCEPT...

!@$!@#$!@!@, some IDIOT put a major spoiler on the MAP
in the FRONT of the !@#$!@ book!!

ARRRRRGH!

I don't know if the blame goes to Pierce herself, or
to "L. Kubinyi", who created the map, or to someone
in Scholastic's production department. No clue. But
it's REALLY annoying to be reading a book, trying to
figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad
guys, when you know from the map that "so-and-so
ambushes the good guys here". And the book's trying
pretty hard to make so-and-so look like one of the
good guys, early on.

Idiots.

In any case, I heartily recommend the book, if you
liked the earlier Circle series. Just don't look
at the map. You don't need it anyhow, the action's
not that geographically complicated.

Reading...

2005-08-09T18:11:00.000-04:00

I've been reading way too many books for a long time, now. It started in grade school, with Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, and it's still going on these days with SF and Fantasy novels of various flavours.

The main thing that's changed is that now, I read about as many e-books as paper books. PDAs have gotten to the point where reading is very comfortable on them, at least for me. I've got 2 very useable reading devices, my Sony Clie palm os device (model PEG-TH55 to be more precise) and my new phone, a Samsung SCH-i730.

The Clie has a much bigger and higher resolution screen, with a 320x480 pixel resolution. But the phone is, well, a phone :) So I might eventually put the Clie away and just carry the phone, cutting down on the number of gadgets I need to charge every night.

I bought my first ebooks many ages ago from PeanutPress, which became Palm Books (I think) and is now EReader. But nowadays, I buy most books at Fictionwise, since they support more ebook formats.

Another decent source of ebooks is Embiid, but their pipeline of new books has gotten pretty sparse in the past year. They're still the only game in town for Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Liad ebooks, though.

I'll probably post a few articles later about the "fun" I've been having getting the Samsung phone working correctly. Tracking down a decent web browser and e book readers for it has been an interesting challenge.

"Princess Academy"

2005-08-07T19:51:00.000-04:00

(This is the first "book review" post I'm making, so I'm experimenting with Amazon links. Hopefully they won't be too messed up.)

The book I just finished is The Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale.

Type: Children's Fantasy (Ages 10 and up? I'm not an expert.)
Rating: G (some violence, nothing graphic)
Target Gender: F (It's about girls and for girls, but not so mushy that I couldn't read it)

It's a children's book, I'd guess targeted at the same age range as the Harry Potter books.

Basically, a prophecy reveals that the new queen of the kingdom must come from a very poor village on the outskirts, so all the girls in the village are dragged off to princess school. :) It's a good premise, and it leads to a well-written and original story. The setting is well fleshed out, with an interesting mix of characters.

Avoid the Amazon reviews if you can; as usual, one of them winds up revealing the "final twist", although the book was still a good read with that spoiled.

I'd recommend it.

Welcome!

2005-08-07T19:41:00.000-04:00

A new blog gets created every second, "they" say. I guess this is my second :)

My name's Mike; I'm a programmer from Canada living in Connecticut, USA. 6% sales tax beats 15%, any day. More books for me! :) (I also tend to overuse smileys. I'd hate for anyone to think I'm saying any of this seriously...)

I've got no idea what this blog's going to be about; or even if I'll manage to post updates at all. I'm a great procrastinator.

Odds are, I'll post a note when I finish a good book. Or abandon a bad one. Or when my girlfriend drags me to see a movie.

Comments welcome, once there's something here to comment about!