[tag]Brave Men Run[/tag] is a free audiobook that I listened to this summer while working. It’s the tale of Nate Charters, a high schooler with a few extra abilities, like heightened senses. After years of hiding his abilities, it turns out he’s not alone, and the Sovereigns (other specially-powered folks) are a political force to be reckoned with. Charters, though, is rather more concerned with the strange homeless man that’s following him around, school bullies, and a pretty lady that thinks he has nice eyes. WO pushed this story at me because of my interest in the X-Men, and I’m appreciative. [tag]Matthew Wayne Selznick[/tag] has created a fun ‘verse here,…

[tag]Taken Liberty[/tag] is a free audiobook that I listened to (mostly) at work this summer. The summary from the above-linked website: The Confederated Worlds are unparalleled as a society of free people, yet, somehow, slavery still manages to exist. Aer’La, a non-human, was bred to serve as a pleasure slave. Years ago, she escaped her masters and masqueraded as a human, joining the Confederate Navy, where she worked her way up to ship’s Bos’n under the heroic Captain Jan Atal. Now, Aer’La’s secret has been discovered by Atal’s superiors, the media, and the world at large. Branded a sociopath, she learns that even a free society isn’t willing to grant…

Last September, I reviewed [tag]Wen Spencer[/tag]’s Tinker, a fantasy novel. This summer I picked up WO’s copy of [tag]Alien Taste[/tag], Spencer’s second novel. She’s grown a decent amount as a writer, in my opinion. Gone is the awkwardly-inserted sex and the overpowered main character. [tag]Ukiah Oregon[/tag], the main character in [tag]Tinker[/tag], does a good job of having limitations and not having sudden personality changes. This book is really a lot of fun if you’re looking for some light reading. It’s not a book that induces a lot of finger-biting over what’s going to happen next, but the characters are fun and do evoke sympathetic reactions. Spencer has evidently turned this…

And by “owned”, I mean held my attention obsessively for a few weeks as I read, back to back, the books of the [tag]Dark Tower[/tag] series. I loved the first four. I liked the last three, although I felt their flaws increasingly as the series progressed. The ending… the ending in the epilogue rather floored me. It wasn’t original, and may have even been clichéd, but it was… fitting, I think. Or fitting enough. I felt that King had gone through all the trouble of changing Roland through his friendships, only to make the series selfish again at the end with Susannah’s departure and Oy’s death. I was disappointed. I…

Tinker is an 18-year-old human living in a world where two dimensions meet and mesh: the dimension containing Earth, and the dimension containing Elfhome. She runs a junkyard in the special city of Pittsburg–special because it spends most of the month on Elfhome instead of Earth. To Tinker, Earth is a dangerous place filled with too many people and not enough magic. Tinker is important, though, because not only does she know how to manipulate magic as much as any human can, but family secrets make her a wanted woman among elves and humans alike. This was a weird book. It wasn’t bad, but there were some noticable imbalances. For…