Bits and bobs

TV Heaven!

Hurrah, NCIS is back for a new series! FX, Sundays at 9pm or repeated on FX+1 at 11pm....
But seriously, did anyone actually believe for one minute that the corpse was DiNozzo? And the continuity fairy has been having the day off as some of the hair?! Shocking!
Oh yeah, there was a plot, wasn't there... :-> Despite the fact that anyone with half a brain guessed the Frog/Jeanne relationship somewhere quite early on last season, it wasn't a bad follow through. The post-explosion scene of crime bits were very well done, the DiNozzo entrance and barney with the creepy CIA guy also good. The Madam Director bits were the usual cringeworthy stuff but the DiNozzo / MD smack down was very good, accented by that Gibbs 'attaboy' smirk. The ending boat scene seemed needlessly tacked on, though. (There's a joke there somewhere...)

And Doctor Who!
Agatha Christie and giant wasps!! The vicar was a boring gink though.
It did also remind me that I've never actually read an Agatha Christie. (Shock, horror!) Had no idea that Murder on Nile & Murder on the Orient Express were Poirot mysteries either! (Wiki is my friend. As is Amazon.)
And next week looks cool. (Except it's not next week, it's the week after, bloody useless Eurovision thingy.)

Bookity Book

More thumbnail reviews!
Smoke and Mirrors - Tanya Huff. The mystery portion was of the good, the protag wangsting about his love life, not so good. Luckily, not much of the latter, so a damn good book.

Empress - Karen Miller. Crikey. Fevered or what. Despite the protag being not the most pleasant of peeps, it's got a frantic pace and it was only towards the end where our girl is much older and more deranged that it started losing it a bit. Want next one. Now!

Halting State - Charlie Stross. Once you get used to the second person p.o.v. it's a lot of fun.

However, The Atrocity Archives by Mr. Stross totally hits it out of the park.

Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres. Found myself skipping half the p.o.v.s but still got a good story out of it. This one will benefit from re-reading (and including those other p.o.v.s now that I've got the drift of the story...)

Small Favor - Jim Butcher. Loved loved loved it! Am a total Dresden groupie! More please. Soon please!

Midnight Never Comes - Marie Brennan. Wow. That was a surprise. Faeries in the court of Elizabeth, all very smoothly done. Excellent!

Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton. Never speak of this book again. Unless you have brain bleach handy. You can pretty much tell from the first paragraph how dire it's going to be. On the plus side there are less sex scenes (I think. I skipped over the portions that threatened to be the usual boring step by step blather...) And poor Jason. Resident of village of the damned! It's those blond identical children... Strangely, I think you get more plot in the epilogue then you do in the whole book. If you're looking for a continuance of the more interesting Mother of Darkness plot rather than the how-many-more-men-can-we-add-to-the-orgy and just what super power will it give us this time plot. Oh Anita, what have you become...

Shadow Gate & Spirit Gate - Kate Elliot. Gosh. I'm now a fan! Excellent stuff. When's the next one out?

The Burning Man - Mark Chadbourn. Better than the last one (whose title currently escapes me). Alas, Jack and Ruth still very irritating. Expecially Ruth, who managed to be both bland and sanctimonious. Laura, however, still bringing the winning snark!

Last Argument of Kings - Joe Abercrombie. Make this man king! This was a fabulous ending to the trilogy. Glokta! Dude! Bayaz! Bastard!!

(One day I'll remember how to do proper length reviews... )

Little Brother

As reviews go, I'll keep this short and sweet.
Cory Doctorow's Little Brother - read it. It's a mind-bomb of a book.
But don't take my word for it, you can download it for free and gratis from here.