To begin with, neither Amanda or William struck me as particularly nerdy. Amanda was rather single-minded about her schooling and career, and Will wears glasses, a hat with ear flaps, and has a good memory for trivia. In spite of this, I found it very hard to be disappointed with the book. Will makes for the sort of romantic hero I enjoy reading about: intelligent, confident without being arrogant, and a great sense of humour. He's the type of guy who's willing to put his desires aside in order to do what's best for the woman he's interested in, and if you ask me, that's hot.

Amanda was interesting too, a woman who consciously cuts herself off from everything that might distract her from her end goals. Watching her slowly admit her attraction to William in spite of her determination to avoid a romantic entanglement was a lot of fun. In spite of her fairly conservative nature, she found herself in a number of ludicrous situations but always managed to land on her feet. Amanda and Will seemed very well suited for each other, and it was easy to believe in a happy ending for the two of them.

The secondary characters were colourful and brilliant and constantly threatening to overshadow the heroes. Gloria was hilarious, her overbearing manner constantly embarrassing either Amanda or William (or both), but she really was a decent person underneath it all. Amanda's two elderly neighbours cracked me up, too. Mavis is a retired third-grade teacher who tries to create a sense of community in the apartment complex, and Chester is a crusty bachelor who resists every one of Mavis's attempts to get him to show some community spirit. They're both quite protective of Amanda, and go out of their way to annoy each other. I wanted these two to get together more than I wanted Amanda and Will to.

I only had a couple of minor quibbles with the story. First, I kept waiting for Amanda to hit number recall after her stalker phone her or to invest in some caller ID. She was trying desperately to figure out who it was, going through all the files at work for suspects and talking to the people at Geekland, but never once did she think that the phone number could be a significant clue. Evidently Amanda's intelligence only goes so far.

My other nitpick is that everything wrapped up too nicely at the end, with a big red bow on it. Not only is everyone and their dog happily in a relationship, they're all talking marriage, even the most unlikely candidates. And I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I like to date someone for awhile before I start thinking about exchanging vows. This didn't seem to be a problem for any of these characters, though.

Those few things aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was really a lot of fun, and the characters were more vibrant than even the yellows and reds on the cover. (Which, let me assure you, is saying something.) My Nerdy Valentine had me on page one, when Amanda's bag of sex toys and porn broke and scattered all across the floor. It really was the perfect way to open this funny and irreverant book.

Ok, the story itself was fascinating. Sawyer did a phenomenal job on the world-building, creating a believable and original society with fierce carnivores constantly fighting their nature in the name of civilization. He never tries to overload us with concepts or explanations, instead letting the smaller details fill us in on a need-to-know basis that sucks you in right up until the end. The Quintaglios are a fantastic invention, and I think I'm a little addicted now. I found myself reading to find out more about Quintaglio society rather than trying to unwrap the plot, which should speak volumes about the amazing world Sawyer has created. I was particularly intrigued by the Quintaglio belief that the flat Land was essentially a boat sailing down the endless River, thus explaining the frequent earthquakes.

The characters are all recognizably human, in spite of their dinosaur tendancies. Afsan is a brilliant, open-minded student, perhaps more naive than is healthy, but ultimately likeable and easy to relate to. His mentor, Saleed, is a harsh master of the "it's better if the student works it out for himself" school of thought. Afsan's close friend Dybo, the prince, is full of human fallibility along with his dinosaur instincts. The characters are all a fantastic amalgamation of human and dinosaur, and while they're easy to relate to, Sawyer never lets us forget that the Quintaglios are not human. It's a difficult balance to achieve, but Sawyer makes it look easy and feel natural.

I was, I admit, vaguely irritated by the ending of the book. It felt like Sawyer realized he only had fifty pages left to wrap everything up, so he did it as quickly as possible. It was all just too clean, with characters suddenly changing their mind about some huge issues. I realize it's the first book in a trilogy, and some of these things may be dealt with in more detail in future volumes, but it just didn't wrap up as tightly as I was expecting for a book with the incredible eye for detail that Far-Seer had been up until that point.

Far-Seer is full of fascinating concepts, enough that I probably missed a few things on my first read-through. It's definitely worth taking a second read, and I find myself hoping the library has books two and three stocked up so I can return to the world of Quintaglios again soon.

I dig fairy tales when they've got some bite to them. Trollbridge is a great example of this sort of thing, where the critters and situations aren't nice and clean. The original fairy tales are actually very dark, and this interpretation stays true to that. Without hearing too many graphic details, we're left with no doubt that the trolls have every intention of chopping up and eating the teens. The trolls and the fox are nicely handled, none of them being entirely good or entirely bad. They act on their own inhuman interests, which is really refreshing to see.

The kids themselves have very modern attitudes, with virtually no knowledge of the way the old fairy tales fall out. All they have with them is their wits and their varying musical abilities, and dubious help from Foss the fox.

The book is very short. I finished it only a few hours after first picking it up, and that time includes the many interruptions from my small herd of troublemakers at home. The story progresses at breakneck speed, and there were a few times I would have liked to see things slow down a little. Fast paced is nice, but the occasional lull would be a welcome change of pace. The book moved along so fast the ending felt more abrupt than it should have, because it was the first time the plot wasn't motoring along.

Moira and the three boys were likeable enough as heroes, although because of the length of the book, I didn't feel like I got to know any of them particularly well. They felt more like snapshots than full characters to me. Jakob, the youngest brother, was a very interesting character with a lot of potential, and I'm kind of sad he didn't get explored a little more thoroughly. The same could be said of the others, but he was my favourite pretty much from the beginning.

A lot of the book centres around music. Jakob and Moira are musical prodigies, and Erik and Galen have their own musical abilities, as well. Songs based on the adventures are liberally dispersed through the book, as a collection put together by the kids after the fact. Adam Stemple is a rock musician, and this is clear by the way the songs are written. Even without the accompanying music, the lyrics are well-written and worth glancing over. I'm not usually a fan of songs or poems stuck in the middle of my story, but these ones were worked in nicely, without feeling like the authors gratuitously stuck in some old poem written years earlier.

Overall, Trollbridge was a fun romp, and worth looking at if you're at all interested in fairy tales that don't follow the Disney rules of prettifying everything. And most importantly, for a YA novel, it's absolutely something I'd give to a teen or pre-teen. I'd have no hesitation as far as content, language, or anything else goes. I'd even go so far as to say they'd find it entertaining and enlightening. I know I did.

Ok, first things first. While the plot itself is pretty interesting and fast-paced, it gets weighed down by the sex scenes. There are a lot of them, and never once is there a fade to black effect. Every single time Thomas and Isabel have sex (and trust me, it's a lot), we hear the full play-by-play. With 275 pages of novel, that many sex scenes really weighed everything down. I realize if they were all cut out, the story might not actually be novel-length, but by the time I was halfway through the book, I was already to the point of rolling my eyes and going "yeah, ok, another sex scene..." They're well written, and the situation never seemed particularly contrived, but I don't need to hear a detailed description each time the hero and heroine knock boots. After the first two or three times, trust me, I get the point.

Isabel herself was a nicely complex character, with a decently crafted backstory and understandable motivations for the choices she made. We get to meet her mother during the course of the story, too, which was a great moment that added a lot of depth. Thomas wasn't as well developed, but what we did get to see of him was likeable enough. The two of them suited each other well. Isabel's wildness forced Thomas of the type A personality to loosen up, and he in turn stabilized her. As a couple, they were the type you like to see together.

The world-building was nicely done, and I feel like what was uncovered in this book is just the tip of the iceberg, if you'll pardon the cliché. I understand Bast has a full series planned for the world she's created (Witch Blood is actually the second book), and I'm eager for the next book so I can learn more about the way the witches and the demons work.

While I had a full gripe about the huge amounts of sexing in this book, I will admit the slow romance coming from it was well done. It annoys me to no end when the author uses sex as a replacement for romance, and we're supposed to accept that simply because these two people hopped in the sack together, they are Meant To Be. Witch Blood does not fall into that trap. Isabel and Thomas begin sleeping together purely for lust's sake, and it's only later that they begin developing feelings for each other. Kudos to Bast for that touch.

I really enjoyed the plot (when it wasn't overshadowed by sex scenes), but I feel like it was wrapped up too quickly and conveniently. Close to the end, we have Thomas gearing up for a big final battle, and then the scene skips to Isabel's perspective in the aftermath. I really felt cheated at this point. I hear about all the sex but not the climactic demon face-off? Seriously? It was so abrupt, I actually flipped back a few pages to make sure I hadn't accidently skipped over something.

I think if I'd been in the market for some erotica, I'd have marked this book higher. Then again, if I were in the market for some erotica, I would have been in a different section of the bookstore altogether.

At the back of the book, there's a section of questions designed to be used as discussion fodder for a book club. This is that sort of book. It's eloquent, though-provoking, and an excellent start to all sorts of interesting conversations. Tink, the alien and a permanent outsider, has a different view on people, their motivations and their desires. DiCharnio tackles some big issues here, seen through Tink's eyes: euthanasia, racism, life after death, and what it is that makes us human. At only 231 pages, this book is very short, but it packs a powerful punch.

Initially I thought the way the narration flips back and forth between time periods (from 1845, when Tink and his parents arrive on earth to the 1860s, when the book ends) would be distracting, but it had an easy flow to it and the two stories worked together nicely to build up to a pretty intense climax. The twist at the end fitted naturally, more of a satisfying "oh, of course" moment than a "wait... whaaat?!?"

When it comes down to it, this is not just a book for fans of science fiction; this is a book for people who like to read, especially those who like to think about what they're reading. Pretty much everyone should at least give it a look.

Ok, first things first. Kelley Armstrong is Canadian. I am also Canadian. This book? Predominantly set in Canada (Toronto, to be specific). I always get excited when that happens. I don't know Toronto particularly well, but I've been there a few times, and being part of the same country, I'm up on Canadian current events, which come up a few times in the book. It just makes the world more real to me, in a way that a story set in New York just can't accomplish, because I know nothing about New York beyond what I've seen on tv. What really made it ring true, though, is that Armstrong knows what she's talking about and understands the nuances of her setting, and she puts it all into the story. The result is a rich, satisfying world and me sitting here half wishing, half believing vampires and werewolves really did prowl around Toronto like that.

Broken has a pretty good mix of new and recurring characters, and as interwoven as the supernatural world is in these books, I suspect we'll see more of both in future volumes. Jaime Vargas, the celebrity necromancer, is fleshed out a little more in this story. I really enjoyed the chance to see something beyond the flaky exterior she puts up, since she's always seemed like a really interesting character. Zoe the vampire was a great new addition, playful and gutsy, and I'm very much hoping we'll see more of her.

I found Broken a good read, but not Armstrong's best. The other books in the series felt like they had a destination; this one felt more like a detour. It was fast paced, there was plenty of adventure and some great action scenes, but I kind of felt like the book ended in a similar place to where it started. I think it might have something to do with Elena; as the protagonist, she didn't really seem to grow or change at all, aside from the pregnancy aspect. She's clearly come a long way from when she first appeared in Bitten, but that progression has already happened before she even discovers her pregnancy. If this were another book, from another series, I might have rated it higher, but the Women of the Otherworld series has set a pretty high standard for itself, and this isn't the one I'd take off my shelf to read again and again.

This book was awful. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Yes, it was one of those books. By all rights, this should have gotten a much lower rating, but it was so unintentionally hilarious, I could not stop laughing.

I seriously don't think any plot summary I'm doing justice to just how many "wait... what just happened? Are you kidding? But that makes no sense!" moments there were in this book. The prose was so purple I was amazed the pages hadn't been stained that colour, there was some excessive abuse of exclamation points going on, and the dialogue was wooden and awkward. Christina was annoying and immature, her eighteen-year-old incarnation apparently not having grown emotionally from the twelve-year-old version we meet at the beginning of the book. Marco whined and suffered from severe mood swings, and did I mention he's not only a pacifistic pirate but a blonde Italian?

The book more or less ends with a James Bond-esque villain speech, followed by a last minute heroic escape from death involving much swashbuckling. Literary-wise, I don't think this book had any redeeming features. It was horrible. And it lived up to all the hopes and expectations I held for it. I mean, come on. The biggest selling point this book has going for it is that it was "written" by Fabio, what do you expect?

It took me awhile to figure out what time period this book took place in, since it seemed a bizarre amalgamation of past and present. When I finally got it narrowed down to turn of the century (late 1890s), the reading went much smoother, because suddenly it had a setting. Drake has clearly done a lot of research on the time period and the places the characters visit, but when no definitive clues are dropped until the reader is well into the story, it doesn't actually serve to deepen the setting, it's just very confusing. They have cars, but their buses are pulled by horses? What?

Hunter was an interesting character, strong, intelligent, and I probably would have liked the book a whole lot more if the story had followed him more than Kat. Kat annoyed me to no end. The other characters went on and on about how smart she was, what a quick study, but she kept doing one stupid thing after another. She's the type of heroine who thinks it's a good idea to rush off by herself to confront the hoard of bad guys, without even bothering to tell anyone whereured 's going, and then when she's inevitably captured and having her life threatened, she sits and thinks "oh well, they'll come for me." The only thing remotely intelligent she did was learn to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs into English in one afternoon. Fluently. I'm thinking this doesn't qualify her as a smart person, though, she's more of a savant.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes a rather gratuitous appearance, presumably to highlight the mystery portions of the book. In truth, the plot had potential and kept me turning pages despite wanting to bash Kat over the head with something blunt and heavy, but the ending aimed for something too large and just wound up feeling overblown. Some of that might have to do with Kat's insistence on plunging headfirst into danger when it wasn't necessary, but considering there was only one character in the entire book who is introduced as unlikeable, it's hardly a surprise when the villain is finally revealed.

The prose suited the tone of the book, and the dialogue was appropriate to the time period. I briefly touched on the attention to detail before, but it bears mentioning again that Drake clearly knows how to enrich the world she's created without forcing lengthy descriptive passages in there. In all honesty, this book would likely have scored much higher if Kat hadn't been quite so -ahem- reckless. As it stands, I would have called the book Bull-headed Idiot, but I suppose it might not have sold quite as well that way.

For anyone who's unaware, Strange Relations is a collection of two novellas and several short stories, all of which were originally published in the 50s and 60s. At the time, they were considered groundbreaking and incredibly controversial, and they've been said to belong in every science fiction library. Well, I just so happen to have a science fiction library, so I figured I'd better check 'em out.

Strange Relations is essentially a series of stories about first contact between humans and aliens. They take place on different worlds with different life forms, but each one entails the struggles of man when he comes up against something for which he has absolutely no frame of reference. The results are always perilous and often deadly to one side or the other.

Farmer seems to hold a dark view of humanity, and his characters act accordingly, making them hard to like. I'm honestly not sure if we're expected to like the characters, but we're clearly meant to understand and sympathize with their actions and decisions. I just found myself appalled by most of them. Instead of sympathizing and rooting for the protagonists, I felt bad for the secondary characters who had to deal with them. Perhaps this is Farmer's point, though: when we feel nobody is looking, the decisions we would make are selfish, the sorts of choices we wouldn't want others to know we secretly want to make.

Farmer has a fantastic imagination. Each alien species is unique, not only unlike anything on Earth, but vastly different from each other. Since these are short stories, the alien worlds are not explored as fully as they might have been, but the small details thrown in make them memorable.

Something to be noted is that all the characters are very much a product of the time in which they were written. Every character is middle-class, caucasian, and Christian. Homosexuality is right out. All significant characters are male, with female characters relegated to hysterical young girls, unfathomable aliens, or overbearing mothers. To be fair, the men don't seem dismissive or contemptuous towards women, they're just never the strong adventurous kinds, the way the men are.

For the record, I can see how these would have been groundbreaking at the time they were written and published. However, that doesn't necessarily mean they remain relevant today. It's perhaps unfair for me to hold something written 50 years ago to today's standards, but I'm not only a modern critter, I'm woman, so my bias is going to be very different from Farmer's. They're not a bad read, and I do admire the different cultures and alien species he's created, but the flavour of the 1950s is so strong in these stories, it's sometimes hard to look past.

Everyone at school is utterly fascinated by the new girl, especially the male population, which has me shouting at the book. In reality, all 300 some-odd self-absorbed teenagers would not be staring at her and following her around between classes. It's established that Bella is unique, and everyone in the school is drawn to her, but we're never given a reason for that. I don't mind a unique protagonist if we're told what it is that makes them so unique, but Bella has no particular skills or abilities, and there's no reason for everyone in the world to think she's soooo very special.

Edward has no personality. Bella's obsession over him seems to center entirely around his looks, and they really don't have enough in common for me to sympathize with their ignoring the danger in order to stay together. In fact, vampire issues aside, Edward is exactly the type of guy girls should be running away from, not obsessing over. He sneaks into Bella's bedroom to watch her sleep, he shifts from passively happy to furious with no warning, and lest we forget, he's a 100-year-old vampire chasing a girl in high school. I don't think we could crank the creepy factor up much higher.

As for the quality of the prose... well, the whole book is full of writing which sounds like Meyer opened a thesaurus and used every synonym listed in the book. The prose could have been considerably tightened, and at times I was wondering if the editor even read the book.

I know the age difference is more or less ignored in most vampire love stories, but it really bothers me in this one. I think partially because Bella is jailbait as opposed to an emotionally mature adult, and partially because it's established this is the first time Edward has ever really cared about someone else. The guy is over 100 years old. Don't try to tell me Bella is the only "special" person to have been born in the past century. Also? 100 years ago, 17 was not considered particularly young. Girls got married at that age. Granted, it was less common for men to marry quite that young, but a seventeen-year-old at the turn of the century would have had his eye on someone, or people would have been wondering what was wrong with him.

Also? Why are the vampires in high school? They mention moving into a new area is easier and they can stay longer if they claim to be younger upon first arrival, but there isn't much difference between 17 and 18, except that an 18-year-old wouldn't have to go to high school and forge transfer papers. I don't care what age I look like, I wouldn't want to go back and do high school over again, and I find it hard to believe this group of vampires does it voluntarily every so often.

I wound up buying my own copy of Twilight because the waiting list for the dozen copies at the public library was freakishly long. Needless to say, this book is not going on my keper shelf. I don't want to chance letting it infect my other books with its many, many flaws.