Truly. Deeply. Madly

Finished	Book Title	Author	Genre	Pages
Dec 30	Butcher Bird	Richard Kadrey	Urban Fantasy	257
Jan 09	Territory	Emma Bull	Historical Fantasy	Audio
Feb 15	A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects	Cat Valente	Faerie Tale Poetry anthology	163
Jan 09	Jigs and Reels	Joanne Harris	Short story anthology	273
Mar 03	Watchmen	Alan Moore	Fantasy/Horror graphic novel	12 issues
Mar 30	The Witch's Familiar	Raven Grimassi	New Age nonfic	155
Apr 20	Too Many Curses	A. Lee Martinez	Fantasy/humour, YA	316
Apr 28	Jane-Emily / The Witch's Children	Patricia Clapp	Supernatural	273
May 7	The Magicians and Mrs. Quent	Galen Beckett	Fantasy / suspense	498
June 2	A Madness of Angels	Kate Griffin	Urban Fantasy	458
June 8	Pride and Prejudice and Zombies	Austen and Grahame-Smith	Horror	Abandoned @189

---

I finally threw in the bloodsoaked towel on P&P&Z. I just could not choke down any more of it, and frankly, life is far too short to actually suffer through fiction if you aren't getting graded on it, or paid for it! Here's the thing; it's crackfic -- that much is plain the instant one looks at the cover. But crackfic must be brief and punchy in order to carry it off, and this just... draaaaaaags. The random insertions of crack into Jane's original text soon lose the name of 'clever' or 'wacky', and become annoying instead. They become so boring, they give the reader time to examine with dusgust the author's haphazard research, and ignorant, poorly done cultural appropriation. When I bloody well CARE that Elizabeth shouldn't be carrying a fecking Katana if she was schooled by Chinese masters instead of Japanese, then the sad fact is that your prose sucks, Sir. A tiny bit of attention to detail, or research would have smoothed it over, just like a bit of attention to character, plot speed, and continuity would have likely gone over well, but Mr. G-S couldn't be bothered, clearly. Pardon me if I sound overly harsh. It's disappointment speaking; I really did have enormous hopes for this book. And worse, I can see where he could have really made this idea high-larious, if only he'd taken the time and trouble to do so. Add to that, the fact that this DOG is on the bestseller lists, and, well, you have one annoyed Clue. People snapped it up on the basis of its edgy conceit, just like I did, and all I can think is that I hope, for the sake of my faith in humanity's intelligence, that they're all rather regretting that impulse now. In short; a neat idea, and I wish a better writer had thought of it.