What I’m reading

I’ve had RL stuff come up this week, and have been distracted from my books. (Incidentally, I *love* filling out FAFSA forms. Except not.)

I’m alternately reading Kate Elliot’s King’s Dragon with MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead and Unappreciated.

The Elliot is wonderful! She’s a bit happy to exploit certain tired fantasy cliches, but, man, her characters. Our main protagonists in this volume are quite likeable kids, and I’m loving her world-building and plotting. I keep wanting to call the premise of her series a slightly less grim ASOIAF, which in this case is a compliment.

The MaryJanice, though. *Sigh* Betsy’s totally a caricature of herself in this book, and if I were a less tolerant reader, she’d have lost me. (As it is, I basically consider these books the literary equivalent of marshmallow fluff. They have no, y’know, depth or anything, but they’re fun to read.) Anyway, in the first two Betsy books, I identified with her struggle to have a life while still being queen of the vampires. Now… well, she lives in a mansion, she owns lots of random shit and probably has more money than God, tee hee, oh, whatever shall she do? I will definitely keep reading the book, but I’m not sure how many more in the series I’m going to be able to stand. Srsly, people, “Oh noes! I am living with a hot vampire who wants to smex me up!” is not a good basis for a conflict.