Intersection Logs

A huntsman and seriously abusive father/husband dies mysteriously in the forest, to no one's dismay. Unfortunately, he manages to leave his widow and heirs in a fairly impossible situation through an unreasonable will, and a neighbor starts to take a suspicious interest in the widow. Somewhere along the line, I forget how exactly, Dame Frevisse the detecting nun gets involved. I wonder if it says something about the construction of the plot that I can, at a few months' remove and after reading a couple more in the same series, neither remember how she got there nor what if anything she accomplishes once there; the family tragedy unfolds regardless, and the dogs are the most interesting characters, on the whole.

Re-weaving of Bram Stoker's Dracula largely from the viewpoint of the lunatic Renfield, incorporating parts of the original but with a lot of new material. I'm not a huge fan of vampires in general, but I make an exception for authors I already enjoy, and I even went to the length of reading the original Dracula in preparation for this one.

( Spoilers for both versions. )
Worth reading if you like Hambly, vampires, or both. I read it in hardcover , but it was small enough for a purse book. (I wouldn't have wanted it for bedtime reading)

Bookblogging big books by Neal Stephenson is where I came in, nearly five years ago. I'm not finding this one much easier to discuss coherently, particularly because there doesn't seem to be much I can say even about the nature of the setting without getting deeper into spoiler territory than I like. It was an enormously entertaining read, full of ideas, with the sort of sneakily brilliant incluing that provided some wonderful "Aha" moments. The ideas and setting were mostly more interesting than the people, but I don't mind that, and at least some of the more technical digressions were shunted off into appendices that I must admit I mostly didn't bother with.

( Spoilers )
Would probably have made good travel reading, and I've recommended it as such to a colleague, but I read it in hardcover.

Sequel to Scar Night, and I believe the middle volume of a trilogy. Surreal dark fantasy, somewhat in the Mieville vein but weirder and gorier, with a slightly steampunk flavor. (Trains, airships, giant robots!) Apart from the gore, the main problem I have with this series is that it's so over-the-top weird that I keep looking for some hint that there's actually a rational explanation -- nanotech? computer simulations? for the gods and demons and trapped souls. So far, there doesn't seem to be one.

I think this one would be a bit too strange for travel reading -- airports being surreal enough as it is.

Opening entry of a fantasy trilogy; I think the title was subsequently given to the whole trilogy and this volume was retitled, but I got an older used copy -- mostly because it was the first of the tor.com giveaways and they hadn't quite got the formats down, so I was trying to read a very mangled copy on my Palm and getting frustrated.

( Spoilers! )

Entertaining, not completely run-of-the-mill fantasy; the prose is competent but nothing special. Decent travel reading.