Okay, enough complaining. Let’s talk about something else–books!

I don’t make that many book recommendations, but I’ve read two good ones recently (and a lot of mediocre ones, of which we shall not speak.)

The Court of the Air, by Stephen Hunt, was really entertaining. The writing was decent, the worldbuilding was awesome, the steammen–sort of steampunk robots–had an awesome religion based on the Steam Loas. (Loas are from Santeria–aka voodoo–and are gods/spirits/thingies that "ride" their worshippers. Divine Horsemen is arguably the seminal work on the topic, or was back when I was in college taking classes on it.) Furthermore, it did something completely novel for a dense fantasy/steampunk epic…it ended in one volume.

Seriously. I was blown away too. I was reading the final battle, waiting for the cliffhanger and…there wasn’t one. It was self-contained. I didn’t have to wait three years.

Madness.

I bought the sequel–same universe, not the same plotline–but haven’t yet dug into it. I’ll letcha know.

For a comic book, let me recommend The Stuff of Legend, which is still in the first volume, but a really neat premise about stuffed animals going into the darkness to fight the Boogeyman to get back their boy. Sounds corny, I know, but there’s a lot of blood and violence. Sort of reminds me of "A Game of You" in some regards. It gets the Damn I Wish I’d Thought Of That Award, which I hand out relatively rarely.

And that’s all I can remember for now, although I swear there was another one…wish I could remember what…