Dragon Haven

Title: Dragon Haven
Author: Robin Hobb
Series: Rain Wilds Chronicles, vol 2
Genre: Fantasy
Published: 2010

Recommendation: A fitting continuation to the Dragon Keeper's adventures.
Rating: 8/10

Summary: The dragon keepers, hunters and the ship continue up the Rain Wilds river looking for the long-lost city of Kelsingra, overcoming trials, and learning more about each other and the dragons.

Reactions: Dragon Haven is the second part of Dragon Keeper, which I read and reviewed in February. I've been looking forward to seeing some of the plot threads resolved in this book. The results are somewhat mixed. Some of the secrets became known and relationships evolved, but far from everything got resolved within the book. In fact new conflicts have been introduced and clearly there are more books coming in this series.

The most enjoyable part of Robin Hobb's books for me is not the plot, but rather the character development within each book. Her ability to introduce a character and then keep making subtle changes to them until at the end of the book they've changed quite significantly is remarkable. I've seen this happen in her previous series and The Rain Wilds Chronicles is no exception. I enjoyed following Alice's and Sedric's transformations in particular, though the dragon keepers undergo a number of changes as well.

Following character development and changes in their relationships with each other and the dragons kept me engrossed throughout this tome. I wish more got resolved at the end, but nevertheless the book was enjoyable with some interesting twists and I am looking forward to seeing where this series will be heading next.

Song of Scarabaeus

Title: Song of Scarabaeus
Author: Sara Creasy
Genre: Science Fiction
Published: 2010

Recommendation: Solid sci-fi adventure with a strong heroine to boot.
Rating: 7.5/10

Summary: Edie is a cypherteck, a person able to interface with biocyph technology that controls terraforming of new planets for humanity. The technology allows to create habitable worlds and is controlled by the all-powerful Crib. A band of rovers kidnaps Edie to steal some of the technology from Crib and attaches a bodyguard to her who is leashed to her side. Together they will travel to her first mission world, Scarabaeus.

Reactions: I received Song of Scarabaeus from Carl, who kindly offered to send me a free copy of the book. I rarely pick up books I haven't heard much about, but the description sounded sufficiently interesting to give the book a try. I am glad to report that this debut didn't disappoint.

I like picking up books with strong heroine leads and this one certainly fits the criteria. The main character is smart, resourceful, strong, and likable if naive at times. Getting ahead of bad guys by outsmarting them rather than by brute force is certainly something I like to see. The male lead is a somewhat stereotypical bad-ass on the outside, but soft and chewy on the inside, type of guy. The author does a pretty good job with the fairly minor romance portion of the novel, so overall interaction effect is quite enjoyable.

The book is plotted fairly well. I had some trouble putting the book down and going to sleep last night and I finished it the first thing this morning. Throughout the author keeps the action going fast and there is a pretty good twist towards the end of the book. It also becomes apparent at the end that this is planned as a first book in series. There is some feeling of closure, but plenty of things are left unresolved and I expect there will be more action to come.

Overall, Song of Scarabaeus is an enjoyable space opera with plenty of action and a compelling main character. It's entertainment pure and simple, but of good quality. I will certainly watch out for Sara Creasy's future novels.

Changeless

Title: Changeless
Author: Gail Carriger
Series: Alexia Tarabotti, book 2
Genre: Steampunk
Published: 2010

Recommendation: An easy read for those who enjoyed the first book.
Rating: 6.5/10

Summary: Something strange is happening in London, where part of the city turns all supernatural creatures into humans. Alexia and Conall Maccon travel to investigate the strange occurrences.

Reactions: I imagine most readers who enjoyed the first book of the series would also enjoy this one. The atmosphere, humour, and characters are mostly unchanged and a few interesting additions have been made. There is adventure, Alexia solves a mystery (though a rather obvious one) and there is a resolution.

There were two things I disliked about the book. The first was that throughout the book Alexia and Conall call each other husband and wife as part of the dialogue. It's like they forgot each other's names upon getting married. There's plenty of: "What are you doing here, wife?" or "Husband, don't be alarmed" style dialogue that I found pretty irritating. My second gripe with this book is its ending. Firstly, I dislike that the author felt the need to start a new story at the end of the book. Secondly, Conall's reaction to the event is poor and there's quite an obvious explanation to the phenomenon that someone should have thought of pretty much immediately.

Changeless is a quick and entertaining read, but somewhat formulaic and predictable overall.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Title: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Author: Stieg Larsson
Series: Millenium Trilogy, book 3
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2010 (US)

Recommendation: Vivid. Gritty. Intense. Will not disappoint.
Rating: 10/10

Summary: Lisbeth Salander and her father Zalachenko are both brought to the hospital in critical state. Blomkvist and other friends of Lisbeth group together to prove her innocence at the upcoming trial, while a group at Sapo, Swedish secret police works very hard to cover their tracks and send Salander back to a mental institution. Who will prevail?

Reactions: I have been looking forward to this book ever since reading the first two books of this trilogy in February. There are many ways to describe this book, but disappointing isn't one of them. In fact, Larsson makes a come back and I would call this the strongest book of the whole series.

For one, the ends get wrapped up to my satisfaction, but at the same time the plot doesn't sizzle out early the way it happened in book one of the series. My only disappointment is that there aren't any more books with the same characters I grew to enjoy so much.

There are a few new players in this book, but mostly we see the characters we've met before. There are large parts of the book devoted to Mikael Blomkvist, Lisbeth Salander, Erika Berger and other major players we've met in The Girl Who Played With Fire. Their interactions with each other and the connected whole they create in this book made for very fun reading.

The plot follows the steps of two factions. One faction trying to tell the truth about Lisbeth, and The Section who are trying to clean up after themselves and Zalachenko. There are a few unexpected twists and turns the story takes early in the book that I very much enjoyed. There are several major surprises towards the end of the book as well. I had trouble putting the book down and finished all the reading within a couple evenings of reading late.

Overall, I really wish I could pick up more books by Stieg Larsson, but sadly this is all there is. I do encourage everyone to pick up this book or the first book in the series if you haven't read it yet. Stieg Larsson will blow you away.

User Interface Design for Programmers

Title: User Interface Design for Programmers
Author: Joel Spolsky
Genre: Non-fiction
Published: 2001

Recommendation: A very simple introduction to UI design with amusing anecdotes.
Rating: 6.5/10

Summary: An 18-chapter explanation of various UI design principles with examples.

Reactions: This is the first book review on this blog dealing with a computer science publication. I don't necessarily think this would be interesting for the general readership, but the blog is all about what I read, so I decided to include the technical reading.

It actually amazed me that this is the first computer-related book I have actually read from beginning to end in last year and half. There are two reasons for it. First is that I get bored half-way through many books and stop reading them and if applicable start using them as references instead. Second is that it's much faster to learn whatever you are trying to learn from Internet articles, code samples, and documentation than by reading a book from cover to cover.

I was only able to finish reading User Interface Design for Programmers because it's thin, has high picture to words ratio, and has plenty of amusing anecdotes. On the other hand, I am straining to think what I learned from the book that I didn't know about before and I am coming up short.

There is some useful information on UI design in the book, but it's very very basic. Rules such as "A user interface is well designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would" and "When you try to use metaphors, try to make them behave in predictable ways like objects in the real world." are not exactly earth-shattering revelations. In many situations the rules are just difficult to implement for your current problem.

Overall, if you've read about any basics of UI design, you can probably pretty safely skip this book unless you are interested in Joel's anecdotes about how various Office UI features and mishaps came around. It might be almost worth reading the book just for that.

The Prince of Mist

Title: The Prince of Mist
Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Genre: YA horror
Published: 2010

Recommendation: Good read primarily for those who enjoy YA novels.
Rating: 7.5/10

Summary: It's 1943 and Max's family decides to relocate out of Madrid into a small town where his father buys a house that stood empty for years. Very soon some very strange things start to happen...

Reactions: My first reaction on receiving this book was surprise in how short it is. Unlike The Shadow of the Wind, it's a shorter novel of about 200 pages in a large-ish print. Upon reading the introduction, I found out that this is the first novel Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote for young adult target audience. This was surprising only because I bought the book on the strength of the author's name alone without learning much about it beforehand.

The young adult target readership is noticeable in the writing style of the book. While Zafon attempts to create an atmosphere surrounding the events of the novel, the language is much simpler and there's less depth to the descriptions. But the language flows quite well and I don't know whether to thank Carlos Ruiz Zafon or the translator Lucia Graves, but the book reads very well.

The plot of the novel is somewhat simple. The action takes place within a few days of the family's arrival to the town and quickly progresses to the end. In parts, I felt the plot and the actions of a few characters weren't quite rational or justified, but overall the plot read well. Do expect it to be much simpler than any previous plots. The character development wasn't a large part of the book either, which was slightly disappointing. Throughout the book the main character Max makes several allusions to not understand anything about his sister, but at the same time his actions show that he understands her just fine.

To sum it up, The Prince of Mist is a pretty entertaining read directed at YA audience. I would only recommend it to those who like YA novels or readers like me, who cannot pass by a book written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

The Magicians

Title: The Magicians
Author: Lev Grossman
Genre: Fantasy
Published: 2009

Recommendation: An adult version of Harry Potter you shouldn't miss.
Rating: 8.5/10

Summary: Quentin Coldwater is an academically gifted junior, but unhappy about his bland life. Until one day he gets invited to participate in entrance examinations to The Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. This day he discovers a new dimension to his life and his adventures as a magician begin.

Reactions: The Magicians has topped many of 2009 favorites lists and I found myself immersed in the book from the very first pages. Quentin is a bright, but unhappy teen who spends his time reading and re-reading Fillory books. Fillory story is analogous to Lewis' Narnia -- a bunch of children discover a new magic world beyond their own where they have adventures.

One day on the way from school, Quentin gets plunged into the magical world of his own, where he becomes a student at a prestigious school of magic. I very much enjoyed the part of the book dealing with Quentin's time at Brakebills. There is a coming of age story and reader's introduction to a set of characters who will be important for the rest of the novel.

Quentin comes off as somewhat goofy and unsure at the start, but grows with the story. The supporting cast is diverse, each with a strong back-story. Their nature get revealed through various events throughout Quentin's school career. No one is perfect and the novel goes into somewhat gritty details of the students' lives at school.

I found this first part of the book to be the most enjoyable. The book continues on when Quentin and his friends graduate. This takes up the larger part of the book, but I liked the story less as the time went on. Perhaps the perpetual bleakness of Quentin's outlook wore down on me. His actions take toll and I found him a lot less likable later on.

The book is well plotted, except for the ending which I found rather anti-climatic for my taste. There just isn't enough feeling of resolution. Nevertheless, The Magicians really stands out from other fantasy books due to the captivating writing, gritty characters, and the wonder of magic all in one.

I definitely would recommend this as an excellent read and would pick up any sequels if such should appear.