Righto. Let’s begin with Michael Reaves’ sequel to The Shattered World. In THE BURNING REALM, Reaves takes up with his kooky cast a year later; Amber (symbolic love interest #1) has acquired the rank of Conjuress, Pandrogas has desperately researched a way to prevent the decay of the shattered world’s orbit, and Mirren’s started training as an assassin. Thankfully, Amber, Mirren, and the other female characters emerge as more complete characters. At times, Reaves use of the physical as a … READ MORE

I went home to New Orleans last week! It was great — then I found out why the tickets were on sale.

While visiting fam, I got to do a lot of reading. Most of it wasn’t memorable, and actually was completely full of fail, but I’m gonna use this to talk about one of the key points of awesome female characters.

The first thing I read were the three books in Barry Hughart’s Master Li series — Bridge of … READ MORE

My goal when I began rereading the Anita Blake books was to finally write up a post centering on Obsidian Butterfly. I wanted to talk about how OB stood out as an awesome treatment of mixed race issues. Because it takes Anita out of her surprisingly monoracial St Louis context, and plunks her down in the middle of New Mexico, you’d think there’d be tons of discussion of Anita as a mixed race Latina. Since the plot revolves around Aztec … READ MORE

I’ve been looking for a copy of this book since I first read a preview chapter online, several years ago. After such a long delay, the risk of disappointment is high, but this book met my expectations. Point of Honour is a period piece set in a period that never existed: Regency England where Queen Charlotte, not the Prince, was Regent.

Our Heroine is Sarah Tolerance, called Miss Tolerance throughout the book, a woman whose reputation has been ruined, … READ MORE

Janet Evanovich’s mystery novels featuring semi-hapless bounty hunter Stephanie Plum are sort of like my junk food. I know they’re fluffy and silly, but whenever a new one comes out, I have to read it, if only from the library. Stephanie is the kind of character that some will point to as a strong female character, while some won’t. I think there are arguments either way, even though I come down on the side of Stephanie-as-good-female-character.

For one thing, she is … READ MORE