![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogBook 23 of 2013 (eek, I'm behind even my pitiful 2012 pace) was a special one. Because I named it:)
Doing so, I might add, without having read a word of it- just having the author's plea-of-query to her friends and fen to come up with something with a nautical theme for our vampire-staking heroine.
I admit- I know Maggie a little. Maybe a lot- I did, after all, get to sink my teeth into her unguarded neck and infect a little of my own sick DNA into her while editing her 2011 debut, Maggie for Hire. Last year's Maggie Get Your Gun expanded the Other Sideverse's world into werewolves and various permutations of them and vamps- in ways that Stephanie Meyer could only dream of doing in a way that was intentionally funny. And now, it's off to sea for Number Three!
This boat never really floats; it's a thinly disguised Queen Mary, docked at Long Beach on this side of the 'verse divide and turned into a haunted hotel. Maggie and her now clear co-star, Killian the Elf, are hired on account of a serious ghost problem on the ship. But you can't stake ghosts, or kill them!, I hear you complain. Weyull,.... the manager of this place doesn't want them dead, or undead- he wants them back. Somebody is killing our Caspers, and Our Heroes quickly figure out it's those pesky vamps again.
Kate clearly enjoys writing this stuff, and reading it, it goes down like Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bomb tasty goodness- not a lot of literary nutrition, but boy you get a buzz off it. It's a save-the-world-before-dinner plot, with plenty of hints of interspecies nookie (no elves are actually aroused during the making of this story, however) and pretty much the author's standard one AOH* to the page. You will be going up to random individuals on the street after this book and saying "Shut up, elf" to them. Try it- it's fun! **
Books One and Two did their job of introducing this unique yet familiar 'verse to us. Its own rules of world-walking and killing/unkilling are established enough for Maggie to not have to spend a lot of time recounting them in her first-person narrative. I think, though, that you can Just Jump In to this one without having read the first two; it'll take longer, and won't be as much fun, but I still read as an editor*** and found enough explanatory exposition for this one to work on its own.
There's also less need to exposit (expose? mmmm, elves....) as many of the minor characters as we met in the first two books, so this is pretty much just the story of a Girl and her Elf. There's much less involvement with Maggie's family (with one exception I shall not spoil), and hardly any with other alien subjects of various sizes and colors. We do get a Psycho Ward full of new ones, though, from Organ Leroy (At His Organ Again)**** to a talking gargoyle that Kate really takes for granite. My only disappointment is that Pipistrelle is kept out of the tale and is only mentioned once, that to get in the obligatory brownie joke.
Yes, there were spoilers under there. Not many and not much, though.
Other than that, Mrs. Howell, the play is great. And you can probably knock off the whole book during a three-hour tour.
First, though, you gotta buy it. As of last week, here's where:
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Nook
Kobo
(Shit, grrl, that's a lot of code for five words.) iTunes and paper versions COMING SOON TO A BOAT NEAR YOU!
----
* AOH= "A-ha! Or Ha-ha!," a standard literary measure I created, mainly from discovering it in the pages of Joshilyn Jackson's books and have used since as an over-under measure of whatever I'm reading at a given moment. Anything even close to one AOH per page is very good.
** Not recommended for use on judges or blood spatter experts.
*** I will be sending Kate my comprehensive Kindle notes of all of Killian's accidental contractions, as soon as I can figure out how to remove DRM protection from a copy you're trying to send BACK TO THE !#@$$ AUTHOR :P
****Not his real name, and I don't know where I'm getting that reference from- Firesign Theater, maybe?
Doing so, I might add, without having read a word of it- just having the author's plea-of-query to her friends and fen to come up with something with a nautical theme for our vampire-staking heroine.
I admit- I know Maggie a little. Maybe a lot- I did, after all, get to sink my teeth into her unguarded neck and infect a little of my own sick DNA into her while editing her 2011 debut, Maggie for Hire. Last year's Maggie Get Your Gun expanded the Other Sideverse's world into werewolves and various permutations of them and vamps- in ways that Stephanie Meyer could only dream of doing in a way that was intentionally funny. And now, it's off to sea for Number Three!
This boat never really floats; it's a thinly disguised Queen Mary, docked at Long Beach on this side of the 'verse divide and turned into a haunted hotel. Maggie and her now clear co-star, Killian the Elf, are hired on account of a serious ghost problem on the ship. But you can't stake ghosts, or kill them!, I hear you complain. Weyull,.... the manager of this place doesn't want them dead, or undead- he wants them back. Somebody is killing our Caspers, and Our Heroes quickly figure out it's those pesky vamps again.
Kate clearly enjoys writing this stuff, and reading it, it goes down like Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bomb tasty goodness- not a lot of literary nutrition, but boy you get a buzz off it. It's a save-the-world-before-dinner plot, with plenty of hints of interspecies nookie (no elves are actually aroused during the making of this story, however) and pretty much the author's standard one AOH* to the page. You will be going up to random individuals on the street after this book and saying "Shut up, elf" to them. Try it- it's fun! **
Books One and Two did their job of introducing this unique yet familiar 'verse to us. Its own rules of world-walking and killing/unkilling are established enough for Maggie to not have to spend a lot of time recounting them in her first-person narrative. I think, though, that you can Just Jump In to this one without having read the first two; it'll take longer, and won't be as much fun, but I still read as an editor*** and found enough explanatory exposition for this one to work on its own.
There's also less need to exposit (expose? mmmm, elves....) as many of the minor characters as we met in the first two books, so this is pretty much just the story of a Girl and her Elf. There's much less involvement with Maggie's family (with one exception I shall not spoil), and hardly any with other alien subjects of various sizes and colors. We do get a Psycho Ward full of new ones, though, from Organ Leroy (At His Organ Again)**** to a talking gargoyle that Kate really takes for granite. My only disappointment is that Pipistrelle is kept out of the tale and is only mentioned once, that to get in the obligatory brownie joke.
Yes, there were spoilers under there. Not many and not much, though.
Other than that, Mrs. Howell, the play is great. And you can probably knock off the whole book during a three-hour tour.
First, though, you gotta buy it. As of last week, here's where:
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Nook
Kobo
(Shit, grrl, that's a lot of code for five words.) iTunes and paper versions COMING SOON TO A BOAT NEAR YOU!
----
* AOH= "A-ha! Or Ha-ha!," a standard literary measure I created, mainly from discovering it in the pages of Joshilyn Jackson's books and have used since as an over-under measure of whatever I'm reading at a given moment. Anything even close to one AOH per page is very good.
** Not recommended for use on judges or blood spatter experts.
*** I will be sending Kate my comprehensive Kindle notes of all of Killian's accidental contractions, as soon as I can figure out how to remove DRM protection from a copy you're trying to send BACK TO THE !#@$$ AUTHOR :P
****Not his real name, and I don't know where I'm getting that reference from- Firesign Theater, maybe?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 03:16 pm (UTC)"Oh Blinding Light
Oh Light that Blinds
I cannot see
Look out for me ---" >thump