The Readin Roos

Jake Marlowe discovers that he is the last werewolf on the planet, and sets out to put his affairs in order before WOCOP, the secretive organization that makes it their mission to kill supernatural entitites, hunts him down. As he does so, we ends up getting tangled up with vampires (yep, they exist too) as well as a young woman who holds the key to the survival of his species.

Reviewed by Buddy Pennington

I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog, and I do mean a lot. I've been off for a few months doing a number of things, and now I'm back in school working on my Master's, so I have lost tough with the phrase "spare time." Anyway, in the months before starting school, I read a load of books. Here are a few.

I tend to read a lot of chick fic as well as vampire lore, so naturally I was drawn to the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. Holy cow, what a great bunch of fun! I've read the first ... lemme count ... carry the two ...

Meh.

This series used to be entertaining, but it has lost me. I think it was the fairy wars that did it. They just weren't that compelling to me, but they've become an important plot element. The author also has a bad habit of introducing new & interesting characters and then just killing them off by the end of the novel. Harris may as well just dress any new character in a red shirt.

This book, the first in a trilogy, combines history, romance and mystery. While doing research in Oxford's Bodleian Library, Yale historian Diana Bishop comes upon an old, enchanted, alchemical manuscript titled Ashmole 782. She accidentally unlocks it. Diane prefers to use her intellect and is reluctant to use her magical powers since she is a descendent of one of the first women killed during the Salem Witch Trials.

Before it was a competent U.S. horror film, it was a great Swedish horror film. And before that it was a so-so horror book. The idea is so good it is amazing it hasn't come up before. Oskar is a twelve-year old boy in a suburb of Stockholm who is bullied at school. Everything changes when a mysterious girl arrives in his apartment complex, accompanied by an old man Oskar assumes is the girl's father. The girl only comes out at night and seems older and wiser than she appears. She befriends Oskar and he eventually learns her true nature.

Did I ever mention that vampire books give me the willies? I mean uncomfortable, squirm-in-my-seat and put-the-book-down agitation? So why am I reading Fledgling? The answer is the author Octavia E. Butler.

Octavia Butler writes a post-modern tale of vampires. What I thought I knew about the species referred to as the Ina in this book is only partially accurate, the result of long-term contact and misunderstanding between Ina and human beings.