Reportage

Instead of a review, an update, because I'm not wrapping anything up anytime soon.

Let's see, I finished Lock In, and also the tie-in novella, Unlocked: An Oral History of Hayden's Syndrome.  I basically stand by everything I said in my post from the middle of the book--it's a fascinating, well-written take on illness and identity, and the world building is amazing.  The mystery is good, too, though I definitely got lost in the middle, as I almost always do in a mystery, losing track of who we're talking about and which of them said what in an earlier scene.  But it's fine--a good mystery will carry you over those bumps, as this one does.

Unlocked came as part of the audiobook I listened to, and it was good, but I don't think it added very  much to the novel.  The viewpoints, the stories, and the process it described were all pretty much covered in the novel, and wound neatly in with characters and a puzzle, which made it more engaging.  It didn't really add anything, but I think it made a fine appendix to the main book.

I had started reading Otherbound, by Corinne Duyvis, and I was enjoying it a lot.  It takes a broad concept--every time this boy closes his eyes, even for a blink, he sees/hears/experiences someone else's life, a girl in another world entirely--and then addresses the very detailed nitty gritty around it.  It also shares major plot points with two other books I read recently; like the title character in Harrison Squared (review forthcoming), Nolan is missing a leg, and as in Lock In, the question of having control of your own mind and body is a significant issue here.

I did set it aside for a while, though, because I got my hands on Naomi Novik's new book, Uprooted, which I'm halfway through and completely in love with.  Whether or not you are a big fan of Temeraire (I loved the first one and kind of drifted away during the third), the first half of this book is a delight.  I'll let you know how the rest goes when I get there.

I read volume one of Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth, because the internet keeps telling me to (especially the Book Smugglers), and the first volume was good, though kind of disturbing.  I'll have a review when I've read more.  I've got a bit of a comics backlog right now, actually, with some ARCs and some library grabs and new volumes of Angel & Faith to get to.

Really, this is just a post of promises for real reviews that will be coming soon.  And they WILL be coming, honest.  I just need to get a little more reading in sometime soon.