THE MARRIAGE SPELL, BY MARY JO PUTNEY

PUTNEY marries fantasy and romance in a near-perfect way. In an England where magical skills exist, the wizards are accepted everywhere except in the high aristocracy, where they are despised as "wyrdlings." The ton, however,will use wizard healers sub-rosa.

Jack Langdon, Lord Frayne, is a dashing army captain on leave from the Napoleonic wars. He showed some magical promise as a child, and so was enrolled in Stonebridge,a reverse Hogwarts where students have their magic beaten out them. Twenty years later he is nearly killed in a gruesome fox-hunting accident. He's taken to a local wizard, Abigail Barton, who's secretly admired him for years. He's disgusted with her and wishes to die, but his friends prevail upon him to reconsider and give his permission for the healing. As the price for her healing, she asks him to marry her. During the healing,Jack's magical talents begin to emerge.

She expects him to renege on his promise of marriage, and is willing to release him. But to her surprise he quickly marries her. When he takes her to London society,she's able to defy their scorn. Jack's sister quietly reveals that she is a wizard too, and Jack slowly accepts his own magical powers. By the time they leave London for his blighted manor home, he is ready to use all his power to heal the land. I'm not normally a romance fan, but MARY JO PUTNEY may convert me.

THE MILES VORKOSIGAN SERIES BY LOIS McMASTER BUJOLD

This engaging sci-fi series is my all-time favorite—I've re-read them so much they're tattering. The series focuses on personalities, not on technological marvels. Its scientific framework never overshadows the characters. The first two books feature MILES' parents, CORDELIA NAISMITH VORKOSIGAN and ARAL VORKOSIGAN.

In BARRAYAR CORDELIA has retired from her life as a Beta Colony Survey Captain, expecting a quiet and fertile life as the wife of a retired soldier. Then ARAL's career unexpectedly heats up when he's made Prime Minister. Now he has numerous political enemies. A vicious bioweapon attack by one damages the fetus CORDELIA is carrying. CORDELIA literally fights for MILES' life, and he survives when no one else thought he could or should. He's permanently damaged from the bioweapon, with bones like chalk and a stunted height, 4'9.” In the eyes of his world, he's a freak, looking like a despised mutant.

He survives by intelligence, wit, charm, devious manipulation and sheer force of his personality. He ruthlessly bamboozles others into carrying out his plans. Prevented from a normal military career, he spectacularly succeeds in galactic covert ops. Of course, the occasional failures are spectacular, too.

The only thing missing from the series is another book about CORDELIA. She's such a fabulous character and richly deserves a third book. EKATERIN VORSOSSION, a character introduced in KOMARR, provides some potent female viewpoint, and she may be the one to rein in MILES.

SOULESS, BY GAIL CARRIGER

ALEXIA TARABOTTI, with a deceased Italian father, is too darkly complexioned, forthright, and voluptuous for the VICTORIAN marriage competition. As a "preturnatural," she can turn supernatural being mortal with a touch. She has no soul to save for the afterlife, and conquers this deficit with yards and yards of courage, heart, intellectualism, and a strict regard for the manners of polite society.

She is therefore outraged when a newly made vampire attacks her at a party, violating all forms of social etiquette, with his clothing so terribly disarrayed he hasn't even got a properly tied cravat.

In the scuffle, she kills the vampire, a terrible social embarrassment. The very eligible but scruffy bachelor, LORD CONNAL MACCON, Alpha werewolf of the London Woolsey pack, is sent to investigate and helps her cover up the her gaffe.As more new vampires appear and old ones disappear, everyone holds ALEXIA responsible.

As she struggles to solve this problem, she is helped by applications of tea drinking, the flamboyantly gay vampire LORD AKELDAMA, judicious whacks with her trusty parasol, and the increasingly affectionate LORD MACCON himself. Part urban fantasy, part steampunk, this witty variation on the werewolf/vampire theme comes to us through JANE AUSTEN and SOOKIE STACKHOUSE.

THE PATRIOTIC MURDERS,BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

Even though I've read almost all of Christie's books, I still enjoy a re-read. It's fun to be beguiled again. When Poirot's dentist, Morley, dies, is it murder, or suicide over a fatal complication one of his patients had? It's a time-table story, with all the patients' comings and goings noted. One patient is a bird-brained middle-aged lady. Another is a suspicious-looking Greek. There's a finance minister, a quiet government employee, and a belligerent young man who wants to have it out because the dentist has tried to keep his secretary away from him. And an Irish dentist who's often drunk and may have killed Morley to cover his own mistakes.

A long time ago I read a space yarn about a colony which wouldn't allow classic books because they were thought to be an extinct form of entertainment. Vexed, the purveyors starting shooting partial plots to the colonists, and soon the authorities were getting questions demanding to know whether Odysseus ever made it home, whether Jane Eyre married Rochester, and WHO KILLED ROGER ACKROYD? And if it's possible that you've missed Christie's ACKROYD, find it immediately.

UNSEEN ACADEMICALS, BY TERRY PRATCHETT

I really wanted to like Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, but the humor misses its beats. I don't know whether Pratchett's increasing Alzheimer's is to blame.

Unseen University needs to play a football game or lose the bequest which supplies most of their food budget. Since the wizards have nine meals a day, this is a serious threat. Lord Vetinari chooses this occasion to tame the violent street game, not because it's lethal—that has no downside for him—but because it's started to damage property.

The side plots are more fun. Glenda, the plain-looking cook in UU's Night Kitchen bosses and takes care of her beautiful but dim co-worker, Juliet. Trevor Likely is Juliet's star-crossed admirer. They support opposite football teams, a deadly problem in Ankh-Morpork. A small goblin, Nutt, works in UU as a candle dribbler (no real wizard uses a plain, undribbled new candle), talks like a professor, and has a secret history.

Lord Vetinari shows a previously unknown human side, which really doesn't work. It's fun when he allows Glenda to barge in on him because he has fond memories of her mother's cooking at the Assassin's School. But there are other scenes which aren't believable. This book was only fair

A TREASURY OF DAMON RUNYON, BY DAMON RUNYON

Damon Runyon writes of the Broadway types of the 1930's, of guys and dolls, bookies, bootleggers, double-crossing sweethearts, race touts and more. A sample of his witty writing is "Hold 'Em Yale," where the narrator's friend is looking for a ticket scalper who cheated him. "In fact, the nearest Sam ever comes to a college is once when he is passing through the yard belonging to the Princetons, but Sam is on the fly at the time as a gendarme is after him, so he does not really see much of the college." Runyon is a forgotten genius, and I recommend him highly.

MOVIE, THE HUNGER GAMES. Suzanne Collins

Just read Entertainment Weekly's first look at the GAMES. Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, and the readers initially protested her choice as being "too pretty, too pale, too blond, too curvy." Haven't any of these people ever heard of hair dye? The director chose her because of her work in Winter's Bone, and EW remarked "Lawrence's role there included taking care of younger siblings when her parents can't, hunting in a forest, and skinning and eating a squirrel--basically an audition tape for the GAMES." Look at the EW cover for her transformation--she's not too pretty or superficial there. The movie comes out in March 2012 and I'll be there.

PERSUASION, BY JANE AUSTEN

I started reading Austen late in life, and am at the re-reading stage now. PERSUASION is not as dramatic as PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, or EMMA, or as memorable as the parody NORTHHANGER ABBEY. PERSUASION slowly unfolds the tale of ANNE ELIOTT, the unloved daughter of a vain and stupid father, who's ignored by him and her older sister, and used by her younger, married, hypochondriac sister. Eight years before the story begins, ANNE's friend Lady Russell persuades her to give up her love for Frederick Wentworth, then a young navy officer, because she thought he couldn't provide for Anne, and so discouraged them.

When the now wealthy Captain Wentworth returns to her village, she looks for any sign that he still cares for her. There are mistaken "attachments" and much unspoken longing until the pair reunite in the last few pages. The narrator reports Anne's thoughts and feelings in third person. This and the lack of dialogue slow the pace.

PERSUASION is not so much a love story as it is a social commentary. Poor but high ranking, haughty aristocrats, wealthy, low ranking gentry, houses, carriages, parties, happy marriages versus unhappy ones, all come under the Austen microscope. She paints her society with unerring detail. A very rewarding book.

HOW RIGHT YOU ARE JEEVES, BY P.G.WODEHOUSE

I've returned briefly to PGW for a sugary read. The imbecilic but filthy rich Bertie Wooster constantly gets into hot water and needs his valet Jeeves, of the large brain, to get him out. This offering presents Bobbie Wickham, a redhead dynamo who's gotten Wooster into scrapes before, Aunt Dahlia, Bertie's "good" aunt, Reginald "Kipper" Herring, Bertie and Kipper's old headmaster, Aubrey Upjohn, broken engagements, a libel suit, and much fun. The plot of a PGW novel scampers along brightly with G-rated froth.

Bertie is relaxing at home when Bobbie's mother calls crying. There's an announcement in the London Times that Bertie is engaged to her daughter. First time that Bertie's heard of it, because she said no to him before. But it's a ploy to make her mother more accepting of her real fiance, Kipper. He doesn't know it's a ploy, sends her a scathing letter, which crosses in the mail, and before you know it, Kipper is engaged to someone else. Then Kipper, in his position as editor at a small literary magazine, savagely criticizes an article sent in by Aubrey Upjohn. Unfortunately, Bobbie has heated up the review even more, by repeating the lads' claim that the Sunday sausages were made of pigs which had died of glanders, botts, and tuberculosis. Hence the libel suit. Only Jeeves can sort all this out.

THE HUNGER GAMES, BY SUZANNE COLLINS

My God. I just finished THE HUNGER GAMES, and I am completely in awe of this writer. I thought it was another youth phenomenon like the TWILIGHT series, but it's so much more complex. Katniss Everdeen would eat Bella for breakfast, if the rules of the GAMES didn't prevent cannibalism. She's a fantastic heroine, strong, so often frightened but fighting not to show it, hungry all the time, an Olympic-level archer whose battle skills are the only things which will keep her alive.

Astonishing book, amazing writing.
It's what SURVIVOR would be if contestants were really eliminated--and all of them were children. COLLINS understands our sick morbid fascination with reality TV, and writes it large in letters thirty feet tall and dripping with blood. The games...
I sneaked ahead to read a blurb on the second book CATCHING FIRE, and the reviewer said that it ratcheted up the tension from the first. And the first one was a tiny little rubber-band wrist-slap? It's a fight to the death! A mandatory nationwide TV spectacle fought by teens! I can't wait for the sequel and it scares me silly to imagine it.

LAW AND THE MULTIVERSE, JAMES DAILY AND RYAN DAVIDSON

READ THIS BLOG! Lawyers James Daily and Ryan Davidson, who were interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered today, have created the blog "LAW AND THE MULTIVERSE: Superheroes, supervillains, and the law" to discuss what kind of laws might govern a superpower multiverse. For example, would BATMAN be liable under child abuse laws for endangering ROBIN? No, because both BATMAN and ROBIN are highly trained and experienced, and BATMAN prevents ROBIN from working in really dangerous situations. Does he have to pay ROBIN? No, because he doesn't take payment himself.

And in SMALLVILLE, CLARK gets into trouble when he throws a baddo onto the top of a sheriff's cruiser. He's sentenced to community service. Now the jerk wants to sue CLARK's family for damages. CLARK uses his X-ray vision to see that the "victim" takes off his brace--he's faking it. How they they get that information to the court? In SMALLVILLE this is an important plot point, but Daily and Davidson parse that concern. It is very difficult to fake injuries, they claim, because a person who complains of injury has to be examined by a competent medical examiner.

There are posts on Superhero estate settlement, and whether Superman's heat vision is protected by the Second Amendment, and how "finders-keepers" laws might work for those who get their superpowers from an object (Green Lantern and others.) Very fun.

HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT DESERVED IT, NON-FICTION, BY MIKE BROWN

Astronomer Mike Brown's novel is awe-inspiring and very funny. His research took him years to complete, and not all of it could be automated. He had to use a jeweler's loupe to study star maps, just like the astronomers a century ago. He finally found a world larger than Pluto, in the Kuiper belt, which is way out beyond Pluto's orbit, and called it Xena. Then he discovered that there may be several hundred objects of Pluto's size out there and decided that they couldn't all be planets.

What's baffling to me is exactly why Pluto and Xena had it coming. Brown and other astronomers simply objected to a solar system which contained too many planets. They decreed that "planet" means "one of a small number of large important things in our solar system." This does not make sense to me, and I'm unclear how the definition will be used in the new star systems we'll discover.

Many pages of the book record the sleep-deprived Brown's obsessive notations on his newborn daughter Lilah. It's been argued that if a female astronomer emoted so much about her baby, her professional reputation would suffer. Double standard, even if the Lilah posts are cute.

NIGHT AT THE OPERATION, BY JEFF COHEN, A DOUBLE FEATURE MYSTERY

In a continuing effort to find new humor writers, I checked out NIGHT. This is another cozy mystery series where the unlikely detective is a guy who owns an old movie theater which only shows comedies. He rides everywhere on his bicycle and must manipulate friends for car rides. I'm not quite sure why I'm not warming up to ELLIOT FREED, but I found this book annoying. The supporting characters, especially his theater employees, are quite endearing, but superfluous to the plot. FREED'S ex-wife, Dr. Sharon, is missing and a suspect in the murder of one of her patients. FREED and Sharon are so close that they still celebrate their wedding anniversary. His tender feelings for her are a huge motivation for solving the case. I've known many divorced couples, both professionally and closer to home, and I've never known any like this. Not happening for me.

I don't know why I can better believe in a Victorian housekeeper surreptitiously solving crimes for her Scotland Yard employer than I can in a down-on-his-luck English major who owns a movie theater, but I do. I might try another DOUBLE FEATURE mystery, but maybe not.

THE GHOST AND MRS. JEFFRIES, BY EMILY BRIGHTWELL

I'm well into this cozy Victorian mystery, and it's quite fun. Mrs. Jeffries is the housekeeper for the harassed Inspector Whitherspoon. He hates murder cases, but always has good luck in solving them, even if he can't quite remember how he did it. That's because the real detective is Mrs. Jeffries, who organizes all the servants into a crime-solving team. Then she feeds Inspector Witherspoon all the clues so that he can solve the mystery. It's her challenge to help him in such a subtle way he doesn't suspect a thing. It's a bright and funny concept.

If this works out well, there's a whole series ahead. EMILY BRIGHTWELL has written over twenty MRS JEFFRIES. My only concern is that they might begin to get a little silly. I'll keep you posted.

I'VE GOT A BAD FEELING

I've been noting how often the "bad feeling" phrase crops up--I can find it in most books. I knew I had heard in in Star Wars, but I wasn't aware that it had been spoken at least six times in Episode IV: A New Hope (the original Star Wars), and had become a running joke. I was thinking of:
"I have a very bad feeling about this."
―Luke Skywalker, when the Millennium Falcon approaches the Death Star
but had forgotten it had been said earlier:
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
―Han Solo, before the walls of the trash compactor start to close in

The latest place I noted it was in GHOST OF A CHANCE, on p.53, where Happy, the depressed telepath, says, "I've got a bad feeling," when the trio enter the haunted London Underground. Melody the tough tech nut replies, "You've always got a bad feeling. It's your standard default pattern. You probably had a bad feeling as you left the womb behind and headed for the light."

I thought I was really on to something no one else has noted, and then found out there's a website. I've got a bad feeling about that.

RELIEF TIME: HUMOR

As mentioned, I'm leaving SFF behind for a minute.* I really don't like horror and need a break. I checked out several humor books at the library and a couple of mysteries which seem to be light-hearted. More anon.

*Which won't stop me from mentioning CHRISTOPHER MOORE again, if your horror quotient isn't filled. One of the funniest, weirdest, authors I've ever encountered, it's typical for him to blend humor, terror, and very moving moments in the same novel, not to say in the same page even. I love him, in small doses.

NOT RECOMMENDED: A ghost of a chance, by SIMON GREEN

Oh, rats. I hate it when a book doesn't pan out, as it did for me with GHOST. It's about the ghost-hunting trio I mentioned, but it goes very quickly into real horror, not just urban fantasy. There is a definite line, even if both involve fighting monsters in a gritty present-day setting. This is a fill-the-London-Underground-with-the-blood-of-tortured-commuters type of book. Also, the main viewpoint character, JC, leaves his team alone for huge stretches of the novel, which is frustrating. SIMON GREEN'S Nightside novels have some, okay, a fair amount, of horror, too, but John Taylor is a fierce knight who stands by you and chases the terrors away.

WICKED, MUSICAL

I saw WICKED this afternoon, and can't find enough superlatives for it. It's the unexpectedly moving story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. She wasn't always wicked--she was green, ugly and smart, and Glinda, the Good Witch, was the clueless and selfish blond type. They became enemies--or was it friends? No spoilers--just go see it when you have a chance. Or buy the DVD. It's good. I mean wicked.

It's been out since 2003, so I'm a little late getting to it; seeing it as a stage production was splendid.

SERVICE WITH A SMILE, PG WODEHOUSE

My Wodehouse group is meeting this week, and this book provides a great break. I actually can't summarize the plot because Wodehouse himself says his books are like musicals without the music.

It's set at Blandings, the stately home of absent-minded Lord Emsworth, (Clarence) who loves his enormous pig, the Empress of Blandings. There are impostors, ("Blandings has impostors like other castles have mice")and star-crossed lovers. Two imperious old competitors of Emsworth are trying to steal the Empress, and Lady Constance Keeble, Lord Emsworth's bossiest sister, is trying to run his life. The usual, in the Blandings stories.

But Lord Emsworth's old friend, Fred Twistleton, is here to sort things out, in his own special way, by introducing the impostor to Blandings in the first place. His job is to re-unite lovers, provide them with financial add, foil the would-be-Empress thieves, and sort out the blackmailing secretary and bossy sister.

It's Wodehouse's genius that another outing with the usual suspects is still fresh and fun. And re-readable decades after I first found him. Did you really need to know the outcome?

THE HIDDEN FAMILIES SERIES, BY CHARLES STROSS

Charles Stross is another SFF author with several series to his name. THE ATROCITY FILES stars office workers in a banal cubicle-hell office whose job is corralling horrors, but The HIDDEN FAMILIES series is more fun.

In the first book,THE FAMILY TRADE, Miriam, an investigative journalist, looks at an old locket and is transported into a parallel world of apparently medieval culture—where guys on horses have machine guns. Miriam has been lost to this world because her mother escaped to the United States. Now that she's back, she is valued as a broodmare for more "world-walkers." The alternate world's economy comes from drug-smuggling, and when Miriam bravely tries to modernize it, the aristocracy plops her into a gilded prison.

Tension ramps up with a bloody civil war, and then it's learned that a faction has spirited away US backpack nukes. Now Miriam is fighting for the lives of the family she never knew.

LOOKING FORWARD TO: HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT HAD IT COMING, NON-FICTION, BY MIKE BROWN

Today NPR interviewed astronomer Mike Brown, whose discovery almost came to be the 10th planet. It was bigger than Pluto, but new observations showed that hundreds more similar-sized objects could be found. Brown realized that he couldn't let his discovery become a planet. Instead, he campaigned successfully to have Pluto demoted from planetary status. This has become a new verb: when you're demoted or fired, you're "plutoed."

I love popular astronomy books, and I've put this on hold at the library. In the meantime, let's applaud Mike Brown (or more likely his publisher) for the coolest title of the year.

DESIGNING THE PERFECT PET, National Geographic Article

A long-running Russian genetics experiment (okay, hang on), has investigated animal domestication. Dmitri Belyaev chose the never-domesticated silver fox and bred each generation's least aggressive pups. In four generations, the foxes showed dog-like behavior of wanting to be picked up, wagging tails, and licking faces. Changes in color also came about, because the adrenal gland, which controls aggressiveness, also controls melanin.

It appears that primitive man, too busy with survival, did not domesticate wolves. Wolves who crept closer to refuse piles to feed, and their less aggressive pups, may have helped domesticate themselves. Fascinating reading, and video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR-GHmuumAw&feature=player_detailpage

GHOST OF A CHANCE, DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE, BY SIMON GREEN

Is there no end to Simon Green's creativity? He shoots, he scores with one-off novel DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE, a fantasy about an ordinary man who follows a beautiful woman through a door into a magical realm and suddenly finds he's the focal point in the battle for the fate of the world. It's a little too weird in the end when a vicious character is unexpectedly revealed as a good guy, but still a wonderful tale.

In GHOST OF A CHANCE, which I'm still reading, he launches a trio of ghost hunters who destroy evil hauntings. In the first chapter, an ordinary grocery-store parking lot is the locus for an ancient horror. Believably menacing shopping carts! I love his great characters, J.C., the self-important but courageous leader of the team; Melody, who's comfortable only with the massive amounts of technology she brings to the hunt, and Happy, the nearly deranged telepath, who's frightened all the time by what he can see, and is only mellowed by his numerous drugs.

Um, I've got to lay off Simon Green for a while after this. He goes into real horror here, and actually has horror scenes pretty much in every book. I have to read some pages peeking through my fingers.

MAN-KZIN WARS IV, created by LARRY NIVEN

Going back to the classics: LARRY NIVEN, a notable SF writer has created the KZINTI, berserker “felinoids” of upright eight-feet-tall tigers.

SURVIVOR is a reverse My Fair Lady story. A rejected Kzin, unable to compete with other males, finally succeeds in neurochemically modifying a human slave into a semblance of a female kzin, a kzinrett. Very sweet, unless you know that that the kzinretti are subsapient and can speak only a few hundred words.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN, much lighter, is the story of Lawrence Halloran, a telepath who infiltrates a kzin ship by impersonating a dead kzin, Fixer-of-Weapons. Halloran can convince anyone they're seeing anything, as when he portrayed his headmaster parading around nude. He muses, “(Kzinti) could be dominant, vicious, and competitive. THEY were allowed to have fun.” If only the ship's own Telepath doesn't find him.

He defeats a challenger by projecting damaging blows through the strong claws he doesn't have. Yow! As the Halloran/Fixer personalities intertwine, Fixer jerks his hand back from data with a Shame/Disgrace sigil, or Top Secret. Halloran forces it forward. Likewise, a puzzled Fixer tells Halloran that screaming fights are normal greetings.

When Halloran finally drives the crew insane, the Halloran/Fixer entity battle Telepath for control of his body and mind. And Telepath has always been weak. It's a wonderful story about masquerade and reality.

QUICK TAKE: BLUE MOON RISING, BY SIMON GREEN

ANOTHER series by Simon Green is this typical fantasy world where a prince must slay a dragon and rescue a princess, with a twist. The prince, a second son, is sent off on his quest in the hope that it will kill him and remove him as a rival to his brother. And the gentle dragon wants nothing so much as getting the the princess, who's a terror and dangerous with a sword, taken off his hands. But there are other monsters to compensate, primarily the demons of the DARKWOOD, who seek to control the prince's Forest Land.

THE LIGHTNING THIEF, by RICK RIORDAN

Percy Jackson has always been able to think better around water, and be calmer near it. That's a very good thing, because his high school academic record has been dismal, mainly due to his ADHD and dyslexia. He doesn't know yet that he's a demi-god, the son of Poseidon. As he soon learns, the whole Greek mythological world exists today and always has, and the gods brawl and love as they always did.

When Percy discovers his heritage, he has to flee to Camp-Half Blood, a training camp for demi-gods, children with a Greek god for one parent. Here he's protected from the monsters who hunt demi-god, but must learn to fight them. He learns that his ADHD is the sign of his “battle skills” coming out, which help him pay attention to everything at once, and that his dyslexia is due to his brain being hard-wired to read ancient Greek. He must quickly develop all the fighting skills he can, because he's accused of stealing Zeus' thunderbolt, the mightiest weapon ever forged, and has ten days to return it before there's a war between the Big Three gods, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. In a quest which spans the continent, Percy goes after the lightning bolt with his new friends Grover, a satyr, and Annabeth, the daughter of Athena.

I loved this brilliant young adult novel, the first in a series. It's even sweeter to know that Riordan conceived this world out of bedtime stories demanded by his son, who struggled with ADHD and dyslexia.

The movie is not quite as good, but it has Chiron, Percy's centaur tutor, played by Pierce Brosnan in an award-winning role for best chest.

UNNATURAL INQUIRER, by SIMON GREEN

I'm enjoying the NIGHTSIDE series so much I'm posting twice on this. John Taylor, the classic noir PI of the seductive and grotesque NIGHTSIDE, enjoys himself greatly in his capers and isn't afraid of the NIGHTSIDE'S evil. GREEN has so much fun that the exposition often gets in the way of the plot, but it really doesn't matter.

In one scene Taylor is waiting for a train and comments, "The platform was crowded, as usual. Half a dozen members of the Tribe of the Gay Barbarians, standing around looking tough with their leathers and long swords, complete with shaved legs, nipple piercings, and heavy face make-up. A silverback gorilla wore an exquisitely cut formal suit, complete with top hat, a cane,and a monocle screwed firmly into one eye. A Gray alien wearing fishnet stockings and suspenders, passing out tracts. And a very polite Chinese demon, sipping hot steaming blood from a thermos. The usual crowd."

It's a typical throwaway line which has nothing to do with the plot, but which I'll chortle over forever. Enjoy. With or without a thermos of hot steaming blood.

FURIES OF CALDERON, BY JIM BUTCHER, continued

I finished the entire series in page-leaping gulps. Tavi's voyage from apprentice shepherd to something entirely different is breath-taking. I especially like the fourth book, CAPTAIN'S FURY, where he fights epic battles with the Canim, a warrior wolf-like species. Being Tavi, he uses his clever brain and imagination at least as much as military power. In CF story lines coalesce and mysteries are revealed in a very satisfying manner. And there's a lot of Kitai, a Marat girl close to Tavi who is always amused by his culture. Her derisive "Alerans" is very close to Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan's "Barrayarans" whenever Cordelias's annoyed by Barrayar's military mind-set. The last book, FIRST LORD's FURY, had so many battles fought that I began skimming, but it's still hugely satisfying. I was skeptical of this series at the outset, but now I'm a fervent fan. This more than makes up for BUTCHER's knee-capping CHANGES, the most recent DRESDEN FILES offering.

WARNINGS, NON-FICTION, BY MIKE SMITH

Weather warnings have become so ubiquitous that they're annoying, so reading this book is unexpectedly bloodcurdling. Mike Smith, who holds eighteen patents in meteorology, communicates his fascination with weather in every page. He gives us the development of weather forecasting and warning, and the bureaucracy which has many times prevented progress. I can't begin to described the excitement and sheer terror I experienced with this book. It is well written, informative, and riveting. I cannot think of any other non-fiction book I've ever read cover to cover.

Having lived in Tornado Alley all my life, I was stunned to learn that for decades the National Weather Service prevented its meteorologists from issuing tornado warnings, thinking this would cause more deaths due to panic. There was much in-fighting between aviation meteorologists, the National Weather Service, and the media about announcing warnings. I'd never known of this idiocy. Astonishingly, the first completely successful tornado warning was in Topeka Kansas, in 1966. Smith also recounts the mostly unsung story of genius Ted Fujita. He created the F-scale for tornado intensity, and his research into dangerous downbursts directly reduced death from airplane crashes.

The author also relates the unbelievable fact that ten years before the millennium, the National Weather Service was still using dilapidated WWII equipment with vacuum tubes, purchased from a single manufacturer in the Soviet Union. Because of governmental delay, advanced Doppler radar was not completely installed until 1996. Dear Lord in Heaven!

He describes many advances and reverses, and has a long discussion about the tragedies of Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, which were well predicted storms.

Closing on a high note, Smith recounts the story of Greensburg, Kansas, which was obliterated by a tornado in 2007. But because of modern warning systems the lives of over 200 people were saved, compared to a similar Kansas tornado fifty years earlier.
I will never complain about TV weather interruptions again.