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I don't mind long books--as long as what is in there is GOOD and not just pointless, random shit that doesn't add anything of value.

I like long books, too. The longer the better.

Just with this particular series, they are always 30% rambling boring mess. Really just a ruthless editor is needed.

I have generally found if you read the first 20% then skip the next 25% you won't have missed anything and will have skipped the boring stuff. If I can skip 25% of your book and be happier for it then that 25% needed to come out. Just repetitious stuff. And their page counts always come in fatter than others in the genre, even.

Ooh, Trent. I will definitely read that one.

One that came to bore me is the Weather Warden series. Great, good, fine, can we get rid of David the Genie? OMG no we have to have a *KID* with him? He's the *only guy*? Then again her little superpowered college friend was the only other guy around and I wasn't exactly longing for that coupling either.

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 12:15 AM, February 13th (Sunday)]

Asking again because it got buried up there under the Four Horsemen...lol.

Anyone read S.J. Day?

Looking into her now. Oh, I see, we're fucking Cain and Abel. We will leave no ancient bone unturned. And she turned supe because basically it's an STD but not like vampirism for which the STD model is trite? Awesome.

Has anyone ever tried a series where your choices are Adam or Satan? Like *that* Adam and *that* Satan? If not DIBS DIBS DIBS.

I look forward to the inevitable Rama vs Ravana series and hope that an Indian writer will do it so it's not heinous cultural appropriation. I give them 5 years and if I see nothing then I may consider perpetrating this heinous cultural appropriation myself. I have a friend from Hyderabad, that makes it okay right? I THOUGHT SO. We'll bone Shiva too, of course. Shiva is the hottest.

Oh! Okay, this is not exactly along our trashy line of thinking here as it is likely to get nominated for the Hugo this year, but NK Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms does something well that I've never seen attempted: fucks the shit out of the God of Chaos.

Now consider how in the world we would go about fucking a God. A God of Order, a God of Fucking (like Barrons), sure! We can fuck those Gods. But a God whose essence is that he is change and to whom taking *form* is problematic...how we gonna manage that? That'll make you deaded quite quickly. You can't handle all that jelly.

OH BUT SHE HANDLES ALL THAT JELLY VERY BELIEVABLY AND PERFECTLY. YES SHE DOES.

It's a terrific book all around, and that's not *all* it's about, but all us posting in this thread will find the exact same need being serviced here.

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 12:48 AM, February 13th (Sunday)]

Can't believe I just now found this thread!!! Oh how much I must have missed!

And Lady V, you had me a bit confused there for a minute...

I think I might also be in the mood to read some Methos-like characters

I read Menthos-like and was before I realized you didn't actually say Menthos...

How about Lisa Kleypas? She has 3 or 4 contemporary romances that are pretty sexy. She also writes a lot of historical romance.

I've read the Black Dagger Brotherhood books and thought they were sexy. I agree that the names were silly and the female characters are not well-developed. But some good sex scenes.

Love the Fever series. Barrons is the man. This is probably my favorite romance series.

I could not get into Sherrilyn Kenyon. I found her writing tedious.

Julia Quinn writes great historical romance, but very formulaic...but I guess that's romance novels in general.

Karen Robards is a pretty good romance writer and there's usually an element of suspense in her books.

The Gargoyle was a FANTASTIC love story, but its not a raunchy book. But it is a phenomenal story of unconditional love and faith (not in the overtly religious sense). I would highly recommend it. Beautiful work of fiction.

For a great all-round series, how about Georg R.R. Martin's series beginning with A Game of Thrones? It's long, there's sex, fantasy, deceit, incredibly well-developed characters. Awesome fantasy series.

Kleypas is one of the two who write historical I like. The other is Kinsale. Oh and your one-offs like Lord of Scoundrels, that's a pretty perfect book.

I liked Kleypas's whole Dickensian heroes thing. Nice break from Dukes.

BDB is going well, have stopped seeing the names so much, but still...boring ass females. But whatever.

I am just popping in to ask exactly why the fuck NONE of you have EVER mentioned this Zsadist person to me before? Seriously, none of you care about me AT ALL.

Have I not made clear my predilection for exquisitely suffering bastards? What part of "give me more delicious supernatural manpain" has gone unheard all these years?

I thought you had already given her a complete pass so I didn't even think of it.

She really should've saved him for later. Now I have no reason to go beyond 3. I got mine, done.

Girl less pointless than the others, but still...I just have a hard time when they're such total ciphers.

Doesn't make me like WANT like Barrons because I really don't want to heal someone with my vagina, I just enjoy watching someone else's healing vagina do its thing. The abundance of oral was also greatly appreciated. *That* is how it's done.

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 6:15 PM, February 13th (Sunday)]

Okay then you need to check out Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series.

Massive Mecca of Manpain.

They don't seem to be numbered on Amazon, where to start? If no particular order give me either the biggest asshole or the most tortured.

The Darkest Night is the first in the Underworld series. Good stuff, that.

1. The Darkest Fire (2008)

2. The Darkest Night (2008)

3. The Darkest Kiss (2008)

4. The Darkest Pleasure (2008)

5. The Darkest Whisper (2009)

6. The Darkest Passion (2010)

7. The Darkest Lie (2010)

8. The Darkest Secret (2011)

Okay, about halfway through the first one...I think I tried to read some Showalter Atlantis stuff? Maybe? And hated it, but this is tolerable.

I think one reason I prefer the (tired, I know) first person POV is that while I like spending time in the guy's head, I don't necessarily want to jump right in there and stay. It's a Pride & Prejudice thing. Austen overall, really. Her characters observe and report but they don't *see*. She leaves it to the reader to see. It's a joy to read a character's POV and come to greater understandings than they themselves have.

I like not knowing who/what the guy is a bit longer, unless he is a SUPER strong POV. Blood slave boy was a very strong POV, the first two were just average. Other than that I really want to have to wonder about him.

KWIM?

Anybody read Laura Kinsale?

I read her a long, loooong time ago.

She took a huge break, I think. I liked her. Innovative heroes. The stroke victim who could only communicate in mathematical equatiions was my favorite.

I honestly was a different person when I read then back then.

You know how you read a book and then you personally grow and evolve and you come back and read it again and it's like a whole different book?

Maybe I should try her again.

I was like that with her, actually. I first picked up something by her when I was 20ish maybe, and the hero turned out to be a guy who used to be a famous warrior who'd gotten badly injured and lost his confidence and gained a bunch of weight and couldn't fight at all, and the woman was looking for the guy he used to be to come and maybe save her village or whatever, and was terribly disappointed, and was some sort of inventor, and there was a da Vinci type in there, may have been her dad. Vague on this one. Anyway. I was too young to appreciate A. That an old guy who used to be awesome and can be awesome again is a *great* hero and B. A bad-tempered, disappointed inventor chick is a *great* heroine even if she's French and I don't like books set in France for some reason. I also think I may have perceived her as too old.

Then a bit after that, the next one I picked up from her had dialogue written entirely in Middle English, and the guy was some sort of virginal knight and genuinely sweet, and the woman had lived a necessarily trampy, evil live in the Venetian Court or something where she'd been thrust at a young age and had some sort of old pervert husband. And she was 10 years older than he was. And I was like ugh, I can't read this plus she's old.

One or two after that struck me better as one was written largely in correspondence and struck me like a 19th century internet romance, complete with one party being a gigantic liar.

But then about 10 years ago after going through some beatdowns I picked her back up and realized that she actually writes interesting, unique, *specific* books, and that she was not writing anything for a 21-yo to read, even a pretty weird one like me. There is nothing generic about what she's doing which is why she can't do much of it. I just happened to pick up the two most inaccessible ones first.

Oh, and I mucked through the first Lords of the Underworld and was not into it - awful, awful women, manpain not psychological enough, first almost-sex scene and she chooses to inform me that A. His scabs from his nightly murder had fallen off (way to make me think of SCABS, very sexy) and B. That he had an "innie bellybutton." First of all, an innie is assumed. Second, you just said "innie," "belly," and "button."

But I am glad I had already gotten the second one (Anarchy goddess and Death) because...if you watch Fringe, I keep picturing her as Fauxlivia, and she is hilarious and exactly the kind of heroine I like except I don't care for virgins outside of YA. But her POV is very funny and I get why this particular match-up would spark. That's what I miss when I'm disappointed with the female lead. Male lead, why *this* woman? If I want "Well, she's hot" or god forbid "Well, she's hot and naive" to be the answer, I'm not sure why they're characters in a book written for women.

NA, I feel like you're my primary physician in charge of book prescriptions. I wish you were my local used bookstore owner!

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 4:56 AM, February 16th (Wednesday)]