The Mirrored Road into the Interior

So, I picked up several books from the library the other day. Two and four of the Vampire Earth series (3 was out so I put a hold on it. The other person reading the series ahead of me is slow. I can read books 3 and 4 in a couple of days. If I waited for three and he or she grabbed 4, I'd have to wait 2 weeks for the last book.)

I also grabbed His Majesty's Dragon and the new Stackpole novel. I've been waiting for it, though I did forget about it until I saw it on the shelf.

Choice of the Cat was in part much better than Way of the Wolf. More tightly written, I didn't have to work as hard to suspend my annoyance with the psychic mutant space vampires this time.

His Majesty's Dragon? Well, early this year I read 1602, Identity Crisis, and Kingdom Come. In that order. This was absolutely the wrong thing to do. Kingdom Come was wonderful, one of the best books to come out of DC. Had I read it alone, or even first, it wouldn't suffer from an acute case of nicebut (as in "That was nice, but it was no Dune.") Sadly as I was reading it, I couldn't help but compare it unfavoriably to Identity Crisis and even more so to 1602.

Choice of the Cat could have fallen into the same category had I been unlucky enough to read it after His Majesty's Dragon.

About HMD... Novik and Webber appear to share the same source material. There is a scene that is essentially the same except for setting where the problem Lieutennant sees the error of his ways, shapes up and asks for forgiveness. I suspect that this is straight from Hornblower, but I can't bring the exact scene to mind at the moment. This isn't a criticism. Both Webber and Novik have their main characters do something that Hornblower didn't do, at least as far into the series as I have currently delved. They grow and change and shed the bits of their prickely persona that make them less good at their jobs. I think hornblower does too, but only after he marries his second wife and I've not gotten to the bit where he meets her.