A couple of things occurred to me while reading Staked:  it feels like Herne doesn't really like his main character, Atticus; at least, not judging by the amount of existential pain he dumps on him.  The other is that I can see the inspiration, right down the the scatalogical humor, of the character in his new series that starts with Ink & Sigil - clearly in Owen, the arch-druid and Atticus' mentor. Owen is quite feral and off-putting, no matter how gold and good his heart may be.

Staked is told through the rotating viewpoints of all three druids: Atticus, Granuaile and Owen, and the meandering is epic.  We begin and end with the titular war with the vampires, but in between there's a battle-seer-horse needing rescue, ecological retribution being wrought, treaties being hammered out in Asgard, greek gods getting vaporised, and all matter of other trivia.  It wasn't boring but I disliked being passed off between characters, especially when I had little use for Granuaile's daddy issues and Owen's feral lack of expletives that didn't include his bollocks and backside, and those of everyone else's.

I do enjoy Atticus's adventures and character, and I like Oberon even more when I read him, as opposed to listening to a narrator scooby-doo his voice.  I enjoy his interactions with the various deities and villains, and especially enjoy the verbal sparring between himself and Leif.  It's a detriment to the books, if not the overall story arc, that Hearne felt it necessary to take all of Atticus' interesting friends away from him; he suffers from the lack of intellectually challenging interactions.   Overall, though, it was a good enough story to keep me reading, and I enjoyed the ending well enough.  If one chooses, one could end the series right here and everything save Ragnarok would be tied up neatly.  At this moment, I'm content to leave the series here, but I can't say I won't change my mind.

When I saw here on BookLikes that Sweep with Me was out, I went to Ilona Andrew's website to find out more, and noticed the release of a new anthology, published by Subterranean Press.  Yes please!

This is a compilation of the short stories Ilona Andrews has written, all previously published elsewhere, and for the first time in print, all the Curren POV's Gordon Andrews has written and posted on their website.  Interspersed are 3? full color illustrations.

It's a nice book - not the most impressive I've seen put out by Subterranean, but a good solid book.  I'd read some of the stories before, but enough of them were new to me to make me appreciate having bought it.

My only gripe with the book is with the Curran POVs.  As a character, these stories don't always flatter Curran, but that's trivial.  What is really disappointing, though, is the poor copy-editing of the Curran stories.  On the website, they're clear to state that the stories were written for fun, not edited, yada yada.  And that's totally understandable.  But I'd have though when it comes to publishing a limited release, numbered, signed, illustrated edition, the publisher, if not the authors themselves, would have wanted to take the time and make the effort to correct, at the very least, the most glaring omissions and errors (lots of the, a, an articles missing, or misplaced).

Ah well, a good collection that might have been great, but still welcome on my shelves.

Fun; brief but it packs a punch at the end.  This one is for those who've already read the other Innkeeper Chronicle books, though there's enough 'tell' sprinkled throughout that a first-timer wouldn't be totally confused.  They would be totally spoiled for the others though, as there are spoilers to previous plots in the text.

A lot of the secondary cast are 'away' for this story, so Orro gets a bit more attention, and it appears Dina is making new friends.  Not sure if we'll see them again, as this novella has a pretty tidy HEA ending, but they'll be welcome additions to any future Innkeeper books.

Not as good as the first, but definitely as rambling.  I listened to the audio, straight from the first book, The Rook and the narrator changed.  Moira Quirk does a credible job, but I listened to both too close together not to notice the difference in voices and styles and it was a bit jarring.

I was also disappointed that this story has multiple POVs and very little page time is given over to Myfanwy Thomas, even though the summary would seem to indicate she's the central character.  She is not.  Mostly this story is told from the POV of a grafter character.  Understanding came before acceptance, but once I did accept it, the story was interesting enough to keep me listening.

Ok, I did as Darth Pendant suggested; I read the book then I watched the trailer for the new Starz series.  She's right - the trailer makes absolutely no sense.  Or, at least, based on what I saw in the trailer, has very little to do with the book itself. 

I also agree with DP that the book was good overall, but omg, the rambling backstory.  I swapped back and forth between the printed book and the audio, checked out from the library, and the audio made the rambling backstory feel, at times, interminable.  The narrator was good though.

Overall, I enjoyed it enough* that I immediately checked out the follow up, Stiletto.

*Imagine my surprise when I discovered Daniel O'Malley is an Australian author.