Also reading the fourth Felix Castor novel. Felix (Fix) is an exorcist in London. His best friend is possessed by a nasty demon due in part to a poor done exorcism on Fix's part. There are zombies, ghosts, and loup garous (werewolves) who inhabit his London too. These books are fun and the authors take on the supernatural is fresh in a genre that is now dominated with the likes of The Twilight Series, The Anita Blake Series, etc. In other words, the Castor books are supernatural mysteries that don't revolve around sex with vampires, werewolves and Fae. Fix is a sarcastic shit who is far from a being a heroic good guy. FUN!
Finished Embassy World by China Mieville - one of my absolute favorite writers. I got hooked on his fiction when introduced to The Scar which fast became one of my favorite novels every - up there with Clive Barker's Imajica. These are books I reread every few years! Embassy World was phenomenal. Not only is it dealing with humans in residence on an alien world and having to interact with a species fantastically different from humans, it focuses on language. The aliens speak in similie and can't speak to one human as an entity as they have two mouths and so there lanuage uses words spoken simultaneously. therefore, humans have had to create specially raised clones to act as ambassadors in order for the aliens to "hear" them - to twins, clones, speaking simultaneously. But something goes wrong when the new ambassador isn't a set of clones but a set of two very different humans who have been trained to speak as the clones do. It creates a very negative reaction from the aliens. But the true essence of this story to me is how language is used and how the aliens are forced to learn metaphor instead of similie in order to save themselves. They have to change the very nature of how they THINK in order to change how the communicate. It manages to catch what I have always loved about language and psychology. Needless to say I HIGHLY recommend this book as well as the rest of China Mieville's works!!!
Granted, I've already read and finished several other books this summer and it's only 7/22, I don't think I can write about all of them in this one post. So, more later!
