I Am Not a Serial Killer: John Cleaver, Book 1 by Dan Wells
After meeting somebody that knew they author, I decided to check out his first book. It is a book involving supernatural horror, which is usually something that I don't care much for. However, this is well grounded in reality and psychological exploration which makes it good. The protagonist, John Wayne Cleaver is obsessed with serial killers. He also has difficulty relating with people and has been diagnosed with psychological conditions. His family owns a mortuary in the small town, so they are familiar with deaths. After mysterious deaths take place in the town, he becomes intrigued. He chases things down and discovers that their peaceful next door neighbor is actually some sort of demon that can replace parts of his body with parts from other people. (The neighbor could also consume others in their entirety. However, he has fallen in love with his current wife and wants to continue it.) John regular does chores for the neighbors, and thus sees their peaceful existence. However, he also tracks down his activities to see the neighbor's demon behavior. Eventually, he helps to defeat the neighbor, but not after many people have died. It is an intriguing story as he finds out more about himself as he works to stop the crime.
Seth joins the darkside in this third Dragonwatch book. A "dark unicorn" took him away and has him continue to run errands to support the undead and other dark creatures. Seth has lost his memories and is not sure who is telling the truth. He feels it is bad to have people imprisoned, so helps free the creatures and run other errands for the dark.
The dragons have declared war. They want full control and don't want to be controlled by humans. They are after a special stone that will all them this power. The humans don't want them to have it. They are seeking it also. However, the troll guarding it has other things in mind. Those that do something bad on their own are forever cursed by his game, but those that had something bad happen out of their control are restored. We also get to see many more fantastical creatures, such as talking animals and a living forest. The cousins gain the ability to see the magical creatures, but cause some havoc on their own. A "memory loss" door causes interesting things to happen. Like a typical middle book, it opens more questions than it closes.
The Dragonwatch series kicks off where Fablehaven ended. Seth goes on a mission to return the sword, and discovers that he will have a future with Dragons. Back at Fablehaven, the kids are with both sets of grandparents. Things get interesting when their cousins visit. They don't believe in the fairy stuff. However, this eventually becomes a benefit when hunting for gold or playing a "super VR capture the flag".
I had gone through most of the original Ender's Game series pretty close together. I wasn't super engaged with the first book, but I really liked were things went with the end and into the other books in the series. The post-formic wars exploration of the universe made for great stories. I also enjoyed the Ender's Shadow. Recently, I've listened to the new Formic Wars novels. However, it has been a while since I've listened to the core series. These events were not very familiar to me. I had some trouble getting engaged with this novel.
Tech business books from a decade ago are always a fun read. Crowdsourcing looks like a great concept. The public will use their spare cycles to do things that they enjoy doing. Companies will benefit from "free labor". Only it is not that simple. People will catch on. They wont provide free labor just to help a corporation reduce labor costs. They want their own recognition. They also need appropriate freedom to do it. Computer software has had great success with crowdsourcing. Open Source software is created primarily with free labor. Anybody that wants to code can do so. Corporations will often employ workers to create software that is released as open source. The goal is to more quickly create higher quality software, primarily that which undergirds the "proprietary" software.
Trollhunters is essentially a children's version of del Toro's Strain series. There are a bunch of supernatural beings that are much more powerful than humans. However, they have limitations to their power and can use human assistance to carry out some tasks. They have lived in relative peace with humans. However, one of them decides that is enough and is going to destroy humanity. Luckily there are others working with humans to prevent that from happening. The tone of the two works, however, is much different. Trollhunters is much more bright and fun. The protagonists are two geeky kids. They like to sneak through the San Bernadino historical society. They notice a new bridge being assembled. They later learn about trolls. The bridge can enable trolls to do even more badness. They meet a lost uncle who became a troll fighter after the last "milk carton kids" epidemic. They have an epic battle and team up with the good trolls to defeat the bad ones. And in the process discover that the class bully is a troll in disguise. And even better, they discover that his "crush" is actually a troll hunter also. They are all able to live happily ever after.
The Battle of Ampere is one of the darkest of the Michael Vey books. Hatch takes over the Elgen company by brutally overcoming the board. Characters that we have got to know are killed (as are entire groups of people.) The book starts with Michael Vey hanging out with a native tribe. There he meets another electric child who had escaped from the Elgen compound. They meet up with Jaime who can communicate with the "Voice". They also find the other children are caught. Peru has lost power, and the whole country is against them. This can be both good and bad. (The military are less knowledgable about the "special powers", but they have a lot of military firepower.) Eventually, they escape. Then they have a grand mission to complete to help save the world. However, the bad guy escapes and the book ends with a new mission.
Visitors started out promising and then ran out of steam at the end. While it did neatly wrap up the series, it opened up many new threads to do so. It is as if a big ball of twine was considered "tied up" because it was made into a big mess. We have time travelers splitting themselves and others into multiple copies. We have the earth getting destroyed by aliens, then getting undestroyed. We have a baby getting killed by an evil king, then getting unkilled, but disowned by his own mother in another time stream. Yes, it does provide plenty of thought points concerning time travel, but that is about all it does.
