Cathy > Recent Status Updates

Oh, interesting. Has Augustine every shifted into a woman before?

Ok, I think I know as much of the history of the Mayfair witches as I care to. Can we pleeeeease return to the present? *sigh*

Seriously, too much family history. No, we don’t want or need to know this much detail.

TMI! Argh!

I am kinda done with the ice zombies. Can we be done with this book now?

Chapter 3, The Underworld Zoo—Bacteria are the Rulers of the World! And let’s not forget the nematodes, protozoa and arthropods, e.g. springtails, woodlice, and centipedes, also beetle larvae, land snails, slugs and bacteriophages. Less than 4% of life underground are mammals. For example moles, prairie dogs, gophers and almost 250 other types of mammals… 59% of all biological species live underground. Busy place!

I am reasonably sure that I read this book in the 90s.

As I have read Blood & Gold and Blood Canticle would be next in the Vampire Chronicles, it was time to refresh my memory of the Mayfair Witches.

I didn‘t expect to have this much fun! I though it would be a horrible drag I had to slog through on my way back to Lestat. Colour me surprised!

Made it to Part 2. Better than the first book so far.

A sentence of foreboding at the end of a chapter: I hate when authors do that. It’s such a boring way of trying to create suspense. It makes me roll my eyes every time.

Chemical communication between bacteria, fungi and root systems of various plants—how cool is that?
Plants calling nematodes for help, when certain bugs attack their roots, pretty nifty bodyguard-effect.

“Say you’ve got people getting tired of the war. Then you get a bunch of goblins showing up and wiping out a whole human village. Do you think those people are still going to be tired of it?”
Nessilka scowled. “That’s politics, Murray.”
“Well, yeah. Lotta people die of politics.”

She should never have let him name the supply goat. Once you started naming goats, it was all downhill from there.

“Perhaps we could go in disguise?” asked Gloober hopefully.
“We’re four feet tall and green. I think they’re going to notice.”

Her feet went out from under her, and she crashed into the wizard, who in turn crashed into the hole in the air.
The hole went “glorp!”
The wizard went “Arrrrgh!”
Nessilka went “Craaaap!”
Algol went “Sarge?”
The world went black.

Ominous!

“People have tried to set up wizarding schools, but rather than being charmingly quirky places with peculiar architecture, you just get a lot of very unhappy kids enduring puberty in an enclosed space, while wondering if their classmates are going to explode.“

The humans retaliated, the goblins retaliated for the retaliation, the elves got involved, the orcs got involved because the elves were involved, and by the end of six months it was a horrible, churning, entrenched mess, where troops on both sides sat around for weeks on end and occasionally ran at each other screaming.

The first half of this book was some clunky setup, wow. Getting good now, but I almost didn’t make it this far.

“Where the hell are the bad guys?“
Ever considered that this is a massive trap?

This is hard to get into, the current info dump is close to incomprehensible for me.

This has to be the lamest turning of a vampire ever. And it’s all telling and no showing.

Well, it can‘t be Baba Yaga, wrong country! I don’t trust her…

A very poetic sex scene.

Thenike telling and singing that story—that was pretty cool.

This felt like a wrap-up and cliffhanger for the next book. But no, there is more…