Ohhhhh there will be Nobby Nobbs. More than that, I shall not say. 

You have no idea how happy you have just made me.

Violent Partners.

Next in my queue are Prayers and Lies and The Erotic Silence of the American Wife.

I'm tearing through Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.

So it looks like I may have to give David Weber's Bahzell series a try.

And well worth it was, with Oath of Sword somewhat more so than with the second book of the series, The War God's Own, but still. The main difference between the two? The first one is nicely free of Weber's infamous info-dumps, while the second one has quite a few of them. Mind, even The War God's Own is not the worst offender in that regard, seeing as at least some of those info-dumps where interesting and even relevant to the plot, but some more tightening up would have been good for the book.

My other complaint is about the shoddy preparation of the e-books - they are some of the worst I've seen from Baen in a while. The chapter divisions in Oath of Sword are broken, and both books suffer from typographical errors that a couple rounds of search&replace could easily have fixed. And that leaves aside all the broken accented characters which, following no discernible logic whatsoever, are represented correctly in one paragraph and are replaced by a question mark in the next one.

But as it happens, the third book of the series will have to wait a while. Because this morning I found the beta of MeiLin Miranda's next book in her Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom series, Son in Sorrow, in my inbox. Which I'll devour over the next couple of days; doubly so since she's aiming for an official release - at least of the e-book, the print book might take a bit longer - around Valentine's Day, which only gives me so long to mail in corrections...

Just finished the last page of Habibi by Craig Thompson. Aching and beautiful.

The Graveyard Book was a lot of fun. I do love Gaiman.

I'm about halfway through Cammie McGovern's novel Neighborhood Watch.

I just finished Old City Blues, a cyberpunk comic set in 2040 Athens.  It's published by Archaia, and i won a free copy last fall.  They're quickly becoming my favorite comic company(not that I pay much attention to Marvel and Co.).

MeiLin Miranda's next book in her Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom series, Son in Sorrow

Gods, that was great. Sad and depressing, but great. And since I've all but rushed through the book, I'll have to go back for a second reading in the next couple of weeks.

But for now, I'm back with Wind Rider's Oath, the third book in David Weber's Bahzell series. I still love the character and quite a few of the supporting cast, and it's still an entertaining read over all, but unfortunately it looks like Weber is getting wordier and wordier with every book in the series. This time, it's not his infamous info-dumps - or not that many of them at least - but a general sense that the whole plot is entirely too complicated (as remarked upon by some of the characters in the book. General hint to authors everywhere: when your characters complain about some aspect of the book they're in, listen and pay attention. They're often right.) and takes entirely too many words to get where it's going.

I finished David Weber's Wind Rider's Oath yesterday. And yes, the book takes too long to build up to the great finale, which is also not quite as satisfying somehow as one would wish after all that build-up. Part of that is probably that while the bad guys are dead now, the whole political aftermath - which in a way was the focus of the book - has still yet to happen.

Now I'm reading Duncan Long's Antigrav Unlimited, which feels kinda... off to me. The idea is neat, and judging from his web site Mr Long doesn't lack self-confidence or publishing credit, but the whole thing still reads more like a good amateur story than a professionally made book. Part of that are the grammar and spelling mistakes, and with the way the quality has been going with the last couple of Baen books I've read, I honestly do think that Baen Publishing could benefit from having a few more capable editors at hand. But the story telling, too, feels like it could have used some polishing before publication. Still, the idea is interesting enough to keep me reading despite those minor annoyances.

Update: with the increasingly frequent plot holes and spelling/grammar/sentence structure errors, this reads exactly like something off an amateur fiction web site like storiesonline.net, complete with Marty Stue, wish fulfillment and all that jazz except the awkwardly written sex scenes.

I am a few chapters into the novel The Sometimes Daughter.