Dangerous Women Review #2

I've just about finished reading the rest of Dangerous Women. You probably remember the first part of my review, which was probably the longest post I've ever written. This one shouldn't be as long.

1) Virgins by Diana Gabaldon
I was only halfway through this story when I did the last review, and I said I didn't like it too much. After finished it, I liked it much more. The females came in later in the story, and there was a lot of extra that I feel could have been cut out without hindering the story. However, that extra did help, if not to move the plot along, at least to make it interesting. After reading this story, I might be more interested in reading the book series that it's based off of.

2) Hell Hath No Fury by Sherrilyn Kenyon
I've read a couple of Kenyon's books, and they're definitely heavy on the romance. This one was lacking that, mostly, so that was a relief. However, it read like a teen fiction, and anyone who knows me, or has been following this blog for long enough, knows that I hate teen fiction. It was tacky, and worst of all, it used modern references. This isn't so bad for now, but in ten years those references won't make any sense. I like reading stories that mostly don't age.

3) Pronouncing Doom by S. M. Stirling
This story was very confusing and hard to get into. I read like it was the second book in a story, or like the first few pages had been omitted. Normally I don't care for a while spiel on the history of the world and what events happened to bring us to this point, but I think this story needed a bit of this to start off with. We are eventually told throughout the story, but it doesn't help if I've already read five pages and then find out what happened to throw the world into a post apocalyptic setting. The characters were great out, even if their culture confused me a bit.

4) Name The Beast by Sam Sykes
Yet another very confusing story, and this one barely got better as it went along. For the majority of the story I thought that it was written in the present, then going into flash backs. At the very end I learned it was always in the present, but switching between two places. Throw in a whole other species that is only briefly described, and it's just too much with too little explaining.

5) Caretakers by Pat Cadigan
Normally I don't care for modern stories, but this one was fairly entertaining. Not speculative fiction, with magic or anything of the sort, so really not my cup of tea. It was closer to a comedic drama. Not much else to say.

6) Lies My Mother Told Me by Caroline Spector
Near the middle I was forcing myself to read this story. It' about superheroes, and although the idea is good, the way it's put into action is tacky. The whole idea is that a virus infected humans that gave some of them super powers. The ones who received good or helpful powers are called Aces, while the ones with bad or unwanted powers are called Jokers. The problem is that it goes into the old style comic type superheroes, with tacky names and tacky powers. Near the end it really picked up though, and despite everything, it was pretty good.

7) The Princess and the Queen by George R. R. Martin
I'm only halfway through this one, but it's shaping up to be decent. Just like another story in this collection, it reads more like a history book than a fictional story. There is very little dialogue, so it's basically all descriptions of what had happened, rather than what was happening. But of course, it's Martin, so no matter what, it's entertaining to read... And there are dragons. It's also interesting because this story takes place before the events in his series A Song of Ice and Fire, so I can relate back to the series and understand what is going on.

Much shorter this time, right? Martin's story is the last one in the collection, but I would love to read more short stories. I'll probably pick up something from Value Village from time to time, since short stories are (mostly) easy to read and easy to review.