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Maggie is a high-school teenager who loves animals (especially her dog Mongo), and doesn't like her new step-father Val. But Maggie is far from normal. For one thing, the reason she dislikes Val is not just because he's from Oldworld or dresses terribly, but because he has too many shadows that seem to move on their own, and have too many legs or hands or other appendages, and that almost no one else can apparently see. For another thing, Maggie lives in Newworld, where magic is illegal and magic-using genes were removed two generations ago, and where there is a danger of "cohesion breaks," gaps in reality that are common enough they have their own slang term, "cobeys" - which the government handles with military teams and scientific equipment; but which just might be more of a problem than the government is letting on.

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Pullmann throws you into a fascinating new world and just lets you learn the details as the story goes along-- like the animal daemons that accompany each human, as life-long companions. Or the panserbjorne, the intelligent, armored polar bears who are mentioned a few times before we learn who and what they are. The story is a great adventure ride, and there are many fascinating characters - although the main character, Lyra, is pretty selfish and doesn't have qualms about lying. Lyra's uncle comes to visit the Oxford College where she has grown up (half-educated and mostly wild) and she gets to overhear (because she snuck in where she shouldn't be) about some of his research from the Arctic, involving "Dust." Soon, some of the children from the town go missing, and eventually Lyra decides she wants to help track them down, and go find her Uncle. Before she leaves Oxford, the Dean of the college gives her an "alethiometer" - a strange device with numerous symbols, which he says will tell the truth if she can learn to read it, and which is clearly the "golden compass" of the title (at least in the American version).

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Doctorow has created a fascinating society, where death has been "cured" (just make sure you have regular backups so you can be restored to a clone if anything happens!), the economy is based on the esteem of others (their money-equivalent is called "whuffie"), and things are run be adhocracies. Unfortunately, the characters and plot don't quite hold up to the promise of that amazing setup. Julius is a guy with multiple degrees, who's written symphonies, and died a few times - and usually goes back to Disney World to reboot himself; now he's living at Disney and working on a crowd-control thesis with potential application to the wider world, which is getting a bit crowded due to people not dying. While he's there, a conflict develops with how to renovate or redo the park, and Julius takes things a little bit personally and obsessively.

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In a near future with wearable technology and pervasive technology, someone is developing mind-control tech and successfully field-tested without causing a stir, and almost by accident, Indo-European intelligence stumbles upon it, and figures out what it is. Because the labs are on U.S. soil, and might by backed by U.S. allies, they decide to investigate in a round-about fashion - a deniable third party, known only as "Rabbit" (aka "Mysterious Stranger" or "Mr Smart-Aleck"). This character may be a very smart hacker kid, may be a group or a coalition, or possibly even a playful Artificial Intelligence. Rabbit works to develop a network of affiliation to enter the biolabs and get the information. One person in that network is Robert Gu, a former Nobel poet laureate who is just coming out of the haze of Alzheimers - the latest technology is being put to use to cure his other deficiencies and illnesses - and Gu has to learn to adapt to a new technological world.

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A delightful fairy tale retelling that takes the familiar story of the twelve dancing princesses and fleshes it out-- adding completely plausible reasons for just about every aspect of the story: why the princesses dance every night, whey they can't tell anyone, and even why there are twelve of them. It even adds to the mundane aspects of what life must be like if you had to go dance every night-- what if you get sick (as the oldest, Rose, does) but still had to go dance every night? And with twelve sisters, the youngest are quite young - one dancing since she could walk, and hates balls because she has had to dance every night.

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In the kingdom of Er'Rets, being a stray, with unknown parentage, means that you are lower than a peasant or a slave. Strays are forced to wear orange, branded, and given a last name from an animal. Such is the fate of Achan Cham-- he serves Poril, the cook in the house of Lord Nathak until Sir Gavin the Great Whitewolf takes an interest in him and begins to train him as a squire. At the same time, another is in hiding as a stray under the name of Vrell Sparrow-- a young girl of nobility, hiding as a boy in the lowest of places (a plan devised by her mother) in order to avoid being forced to marry Prince Gidon. Both of them are also discovering they have the gift of "blood-voicing," a kind of mind-to-mind communication that can take place even over long distances. Vrell knows at least a little bit about it from her mother, but not how to control it; Achan thinks it's a myth, but he doesn't know he's been given a tonic every day to suppress the ability. The story really starts to pick up when their paths cross. Achan has now been forced to serve as squire to the selfish and vindictive Prince Gidon, and they travel to Mahanaim where the Council will ratify Gidon as king. Vrell has been summoned by Macoun Hadar, an old, conniving master of blood-voicing who sensed her presence and ability in the coastal town where she was hiding with a friend of her mother's and summoned her to be his apprentice. Eventually the Achan and Vrell meet and become acquainted when Achan is held in prison for (supposedly) endangering the Prince's life while fighting off an attack from the Darkness, and Vrell tends to his wounds with the medicines and salves she has learned to make while apprenticing to an apothecary. It seems everyone has an agenda: Gidon wants to kill Achan and claim the throne; Macoun Hadar wants Achan for an apprentice because his blood-voicing gift is so strong; and Vrell must continue to hide her true identity for fear of discovery or being forced to marry.

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Lily Sanderson is a high school pining for the school jock, Brody-- but unlike most normal high school girls, Lily is half-mermaid. Her father only told her a few years ago that her mother was huma, and gave her the option to live with her aunt Rachel and attend high school to get some experience with the human world and the other half of her heritage. Lily has been plotting with her best friend Shannen how to ask Brody out to the spring dance, but she can't quite get up the nerve. Then, for some reason, her neighbor Quince Fletcher-- whom she hates because he is always teasing her and giving her a hard time-- decides to help her out. Naturally, things don't go quite as planned; when Quince goes to check on Lily he ends up kissing her (because, of course, he likes her). But what he doesn't know is that she's a mermaid, and merfolk have a magical mate-bond which is triggered by a kiss. Lily has to take Quince to her home, Thalassinia (where of course she is a princess) and present him to her father the king in order to ask for a ritual separation that will dissolve the bond between them. But that doesn't go quite the way she planned it, either.

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This book picks up shortly after Trading in Danger (which I read and enjoyed last year). Newly minted space captain Kylara Vatta survived a civil war and even a mutiny by dangerous people temporarily housed on her ship, and acquitted herself well enough that the mercenary company in the area offered her a job, but she decided to stay with the family business of trading, for now. Shortly after the book opens, there are multiple, coordinated, devastating attacks on Vatta ships and on their main offices and palatial home on the planet Slotter Key. Ky and her ship manage to escape unscathed, but because the ansible communications are down she doesn't know exactly what's happened, she decides to proceed with taking her cargo to Lastway as planned. Soon, she's embroiled in a much bigger war to try to save what's left of her family, find out who was responsible and why, and see if she can somehow start rebuilding the family empire.

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A humorous, entertaining, satirical look at the music industry by way of a science fiction adventur romp, complete with aliens and thef ate of the Earth at stake. Here's the setup: there is a Refined League of aliens who have mastered the siences and now focus all their highest energies on the Refined Arts-- but they aren't very good at music, and when they discover Earth's music (by way of the theme song "Welcome Back Kotter"), they are blown away - some of them literally die in ecstasy. They spend the next several decates listening to human music, and when they finally recover enough to start studying other aspects of Earth culture, they discover that -- due to our anti-piracy laws -- they owe all the wealth of the galaxy to Earth.

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The humorous, entertaining, and occasionally insightful story of Montgomery Brewster, who has to spend a million dollars in a year. Monty Brewster, the son of parents who made a "romantic runaway match" and then died when he was a child, was just one of the rich young bucks in New York, until he inherits a million dollars from his grandfather. Shortly after that, he discovers that he has another inheritance from an uncle on his mother's side-- but, due to the poor relationship between the two sides of the family, there is a condition attached. Monty's uncle James Sedgwick didn't want any of his fortune mixed with that of Monty's grandfather, Edwin Peter Brewster. In order to inherit Sedgwick's five million, Brewster will have to spend his inheritance within a year. But, he can't tell anyone (besides his lawyers) what he is doing, and his uncle's friend Swearengen Jones will monitor to make sure Brewster doesn't gamble too much, give too much to charity, or otherwise break the conditions of Sedgwick's bequest.

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Kyreol and Terje grew up as children together in the Riverworld, but left it many years ago and now live in the Dome City, where Kyreol has trained as a pilot and to travel to other planets and study other peoples. Terje still visits the Riverworld to observe the hunters and their rituals while staying unobserved himself. Terje is beginning another visit to the Riverworld just as Kyreol is about to leave for her first off-world trip, to the planet Xtal. Kyreol's mother, Nara, has some presentiment or dream of danger but doesn't know what exactly will happen or what to do about it; and both trips end up being quite different than anyone expected.

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I wanted to re-read Emma after watching one of the many movie adaptations, especially when it occurred to me I hadn't read it in quite some time. After watching and then reading in a short time period, I feel that the movie versions invariably make Emma seem to be a bit of an idiot -- whether due to the fact that the story is compressed for time, or the need to visually telegraph what is going to the viewers. In the book, it's rather more subtle. Emma is a lively, intelligent, imaginative creature who makes some errors in judgement - which are actually fairly reasonable, especially when you consider the fact that your perspective is usually rather skewed when your involved or close to what is going on, and particularly when someone is actively trying to deceive you.

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In a dismal future, with an economy and environment in shambles, people live in "stacks" - vertical scaffolding of trailer parks - or are homeless, and they spend all their time in the virtual world of OASIS. When the inventor of OASIS, James Halliday, dies with no heirs, he releases a video explaining he has hidden an "easter egg" challenge somewhere within OASIS, and the first player to find the three keys and complete the three gates will inherit his wealth and majority stake in the company. This world reminded me somewhat of the movie "The Matrix," but in this case everyone chooses to take the blue pill because reality is so terrible and the many worlds and galaxies of OASIS are so enticing. The story is told from the perspective of Wade Watts, aka Parzival (the name of his OASIS avatar, referencing the grail quest) or "Z" to his friends, the person who found the first key.

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Arthur Penhaligon is the asthmatic new kid at school. He didn't know about the Monday run and doesn't have a doctor's note explaining how very bad his asthma is - so the teacher makes him run. When he's lying in in a field, collapsed and barely breathing, something strange happens that might be a hallucination, but isn't. A fragment of the Will left by the Architect has escaped the dead sun where it has been imprisoned for millennia, and manages to trick Mister Monday into giving the lesser key to Arthur, fulfilling the bare letter of the law of the Will (since Arthur is an heir and very near death).

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By the end of Starcrossed (which I read last October), Helen has learned that not only is she a Scion, a member of a superhuman race descended from the demigods of Greek mythology, but also that she is the Descender-- a special Scion who can physically enter the Underwold and may be able to end the curse on the Houses, the blood lust incited by the Furies which forces them to kill members of other houses or any family members who are kin-killers. This book picks up shortly after that, and Helen is exhausted because she spends every night in the Underworld, stuck and and in pain; she's emotionally upset because she is still incredibly drawn to Lucas (the Paris to her Helen), even though they are apparently cousins and now they really can't be together-- since inbred Scions tend to be the dangerous kind of crazy, in addition to that whole problem of uniting two of the Houses resulting in a war. Eventually, Helen finds a new ally to help her with her quest in the Underworld: a young man named Orion.

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The story of the cool, collected, imperturbable Englishman Phileas Fogg and his passionate, good-hearted, sometimes hapless manservant, the Frenchman Jean Passepartout, and their famous trip around the world. Fogg lives his life completely by regimen, every day the same down to the minute he arrives at the Reform Club (he fired his previous servant because he couldn't keep up that schedule). Then, suddenly, on a bet-- to prove it can be done, and that "the unforeseen does not exist"-- he sets off around the world. He doesn't do it for the money that is wagered; in fact, he spends nearly all of the remaining half of his fortune that he didn't wager, so by winning he just breaks even. He doesn't do it for the adventure or to see the sights; Passepartout does quite a bit more looking at sights than Fogg, who is simply planning his next train or steamer. Certainly, Fogg doesn't shy away from adventure-- he saves Auoda from suttee because he has time, and he calmly and repeatedly bails out Passepartout, even to the point of chasing after American Indians to rescue him.

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Kylara Vatta is about to graduate from Spaceforce Academy on Slotter Key at the top of her class when a scandal erupts that she unwittingly, innocently played a role in - and, to save face, they kick her out. Her family has a vast shipping empire, and to get her away from media attention and give her something to do, they make her a captain and send her on a "milk run" with an experienced crew to babysit her-- she's taking the Glennys Jones to Lastway. At the first stop she comes across a possible money-making venture and decides to risk it, hoping to make enough money to buy the old ship she's captaining for herself and repair it, rather than scrap it for salvage as she is supposed to do. Naturally, something goes wrong-- and Ky's military training ends up being very important.

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An introduction to the bizarre and entertaining Discworld (a world that is actually shaped like a flat disc, carried by four elephants who stand on the back of the great turtle A'Tuin). We follow the hapless (but lucky) tourist Twoflower, his semi-unwilling guide, the wizard (of sorts) Rincewind, and Twoflower's luggage made of sapient pear-tree wood, as they traipse about and see various parts of this strange world - from the seedy, greedy inhabitants of Ankh-Mopork, to a forest with dryads and a temple for an ancient, unspeakable evil, through the dry seas to the Rim of the great disk, where the waters spill off the edge of the world into space, and finally they become the unwilling guests of the Krull, who have constructed a metal fish to fly off the edge of the world and take a closer look at the great turtle.

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Honor Harrington is thrilled to take command of her first space cruiser in the Royal Manticoran Navy, the light cruiser Fearless. She is a bit dismayed, however, when she learns that they are gutting her normal armaments and defenses to put in a grav lance - a powerful new weapon that can only be used at very close range, the whim of an admiral currently in favor. They test out the new ship in some war games, and with some cleverness and subtlety, Harrington is able to get close enough to take out a superdreadnought. But as soon as the other side knows about the grav lance, it's useless, and they lose exercise after exercise, which is demoralizing for Harrington's crew. Finally, when the grav lance experiment is seen to be a failure, Harrington and the Fearless are punished by being sent to Basilisk Station, which is actually strategically important (a wormhole junction), but politically contentious and has somehow turned into a dumping ground for incompetent officers. Naturally, it turns out to be very fortunate indeed that Honor is actually incredibly competent.

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Brigitte is complacent and comfortable in her life - until she loses her job (where she has loyally served) and her boyfriend of 6 years (whom she'd always assumed she'd marry) dumps her to leave for his dream job, running an archaeological dig in Egypt. Brigitte tries to continue working on her own book, a definitive anthropological look at women's suffrage that she has been working on for years. She can't make any progress, so she goes to visit her mother and decides to help with some research on their family genealogy - first going to Salt Lake City. Then, when she discovers an Indian woman's name, Wachiwi, amongst their French aristocratic ancestors, Brigitte gets interested and follows the story, first to Indian archives and then eventually to France. Eventually she uncovers the story of a Dakota Sioux chief's daughter who was captured by the Crow, then seen with a Frenchman, and eventually made her way to France, where she was presented at court, married a Marquis, had children, and helped defend their Brittany chateau during the French revolution. Of course, along the way Brigitte comes into her own and is befriended by a kind Frenchman, an author who helps with her research.

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