Jul. 19th, 2006

osaraba: (mystery to me)
Back in 1985 when Kay Hooper used to be a romance writer, she wrote a 4-book series revolving around a museum exhibit of an old family's famous collection of precious stones... as a trap to catch a certain thief. Each book was -- as the romance format goes -- about a different couple, but the characters would make cameo appearances throughout the four books. The couple from the fourth book was really my favorite, so I was very pleased that they had a lot of screen-time throughout the first three books.

Now that she's a writer of "suspense" novels she's re-edited and re-written parts of the books and combined the four shorter books into two novel-length ones. Once a Thief and Always a Thief were good; I enjoyed re-reading them even though they turned out to be more like the originals than I thought they'd be. It was nice to revisit the characters, especially since I feel like Hooper developed my favorite couple's personalities a bit more deeply.

I also bought the third book in the Tamir Trilogy, The Oracle's Queen by Lynn Flewelling, but I haven't yet actually started to read it. Coming off of a romance high, I felt like I needed more of a transition.

So I went hunting for another book and bought The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglass. I had read the back of her Wayfarer Redemption series books many times before, but was never interested enough to buy it before. Now, having a bit more experience in how she writes with her Troy Game series and the stand-alone Threshold (although I still feel like they are not necessarily representative of her writing style), I was more willing to take a chance on the first book in this 600-pages-per-book/6-book series. Why? Because they reprinted a "special edition" of the first book at a $3.99 sale price. At half price, I am more than willing to take a chance that I won't want to continue with the series. That's how I initially got into David Weber's Honor Harrington series, (which is loooove♥ in military SF format) anyway.

So I'm now about 200 pages in and it's actually quite good. About which I am very relieved. Although I have come to love her Troy Game series, the first book was kind of irritating, and I had tried to read the first book in her Crucible series, but the beginning at least was too boring to continue with. I may try to revisit it later in case it was my mood and not really the writing itself.
osaraba: (harumichi love)
I just wanted to say that I saw The Lake House last week and I thought it was really good. For being an unashamed reader of romance novels, I really tend to hate romance movies (and romantic comedy movies even more), but this one was really well done. It did leave some of the time travel aspect questions unanswered, which would annoy me more if the story hadn't been so good. My biggest complaint is that it needed one more line at the end, just one more line of (slight) angst, to completely satisfy me.

If you're interested in a time travel romance that actually ANSWERS those paradoxical questions, read Suzanne Brockmann's Time Enough For Love. It's a short 250-page read, perfect if you've got 4 hours to kill. It really is excellent.

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