First the warning: skip the introduction. It’s like a bad movie trailer that spoils half of the movie. You’ll be better served reading it as an afterward; it has points that work and reinforce the story.

On the good side: it is well written and easy to read even today. It doesn’t have lots of fluff or strange terminology—and it doesn’t bog down like many victorian novels. It’s solid and direct. She does address the reader directly and makes asides about the then current state of laws, but it works.

The book is well written and engaging. A lot has gone on in the last 20 years of Biology research—this book summarizes a lot of the facts.

The book’s a thorough look at the loaded words—and the assumptions they make—used in politics and persuasion. (Examples include: pro-choice, pro-life, terrorist suspect, etc.)

The focus is narrow, teasing out specific examples in larger categories and working through the assumptions and prejudicial implications. Our discourse is pruned, reasonable points are made extreme or unspeakable, due to the loading of the phrases. There’s an appeal to avoid loaded phrases—and an admission that politicians won’t do so, so we need to listen more carefully.

The story’s a good one, filled with complex characters who are trying to deal with a world that is changing dramatically. For Hambly this is a middling series; for someone eager to read her, I’d start them on The Time of the Dark.

The book is an interesting end to the series. It feels more disjointed than the other two; it has several “jumps” that are similar in scope to the Taledras visit in book one. To me, it’s almost a collection of 3-4 short stories with a few (subtler) running themes.

However, each of the chunks is well written and solid. Vanyel’s relationship with his father continues its drama, Stef is an interesting development on the romance front, the villian is an impressive foe, worthy of The Last Herald Mage.

This continues the series; it’s a solid book that does a good job of advancing Vanyel. It’s a bit slower and has fewer incredibly emotional scenes. It’s still solid, with an interesting mystery tied in, and clear threads of plot leading off into the future.

In the end, it’s a very good bridge book.

This is one of my favorite re-reads, but it can be a bit embarassing to read in public. There are sections of the book that make me cry, every time I read the book. Even though I know it’s coming.

It’s an excellent book, with a hero who grows on you. As a teen the protagonists my age felt real (which can be tough to do), and they’re still powerful to me.

I left lunch with this in a side pouch on my bike. By the time I’d returned to work, it had fallen out. In the less than 15 minutes it took me to retrace my route, it had vanished.

A detailed examination of the New Deal cabinet, especially during the first two or three years of Roosevelt’s administration.

Trickier, because the action splits between Nina and Kit (as usual) and Dairine. The “gee whiz” of computers is fun (and amusing from today’s point of view).

There’s some friction early on, when the author’s establishing Dairine’s independent point of view—there’s some duplication of events and the like, but it works out. The ending, even given the repeated pattern, still managed to suprise me.