Chicks Kick Butt Edited by Rachel Caine and Kerrie L. Hughes, 2011

 

Collection of urban fantasy stories featuring strong female protagonists, some human and some not, pitted against the darkest of the dark. Their victories are sometimes pyrrhic, but each gain, keeps our mundane streets safe.

I found all of the stories eminently readable, with nicely varied examples of the theme of the anthology.

Some are improved by an acquaintance with the author’s universe, such as Rachel Caine’s Weather Wardens. Carol Nelson Douglas’ Monster Mash was frenetic yet hysterically funny. Lilith Saintcrow is an author I’ve heard lauded, but haven’t read – and will be. Her “Monsters” was atmospheric, complicated and moving. Another new-to-me writer, Rachel Vincent, has a nice take on the hunter-turned-hunted trope.   I thought Jenna Black’s “Nine-tenths of the Law” was a perfect – and perfectly enjoyable - example of urban fantasy.

3.5 out of five.

The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Schola

I need this book for its introduction, which reviews and summarizes the elementary school to college building blocks of grammar and writing in a mere 38 pages!

This really is a reference work, not a “read”, but I found it very informative.

Covering fiction and non-fiction, Turco first reviews the historical basis of modern forms of writing, and explains and defines those forms and literary ideas. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that all English majors have a copy of this work on their bookshelves!

3.5 of 5

Doc: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell

“When he arrived in Dodge City in 1878, Dr. John Henry Holliday was a frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who wanted nothing grander than to practice his profession in a prosperous Kansas cow town.  Hope – cruelest of the evils that escaped Pandora’s box --- smiled on him gently all that summer.”
At its best, “Doc” exemplifies Russell’s work as both elegy and advocacy of the refugee.  A southern boy fleeing the effects of the Civil War, his mother’s death, and the humid Georgia weather that exacerbated his worsening tuberculosis, Doc Holliday wanted only to breathe – and exercise his not-inconsiderable dental skills.  Russell gently humanizes but never lionizes the iconic black-hatted villain of the Wild Wild West. 
Holliday isn’t the only refugee in the maelstrom of personalities, money and politics that is Dodge City.  Russell deftly distills the locale and people from fable to dusty, sometimes bloody, reality.   Unlike many western tales, the women are given at least as much attention as the men, even if, in the end, their motives are equally inscrutable. 
I’ve said elsewhere that I am not particularly fond of the third person omniscient voice which Russell uses here.  Too often that narrative voice becomes a personality of its own.  Here, it’s unobtrusive and serves only to insert the reader into the story, ghostlike, beside the characters.
If you could only read one book this year, this is one I'd recommend enthusiastically.