_Cast in Shadow_, Michelle Sagara, kindle (part of bundle)

A series that is well under way, these days, often not only puts out new entries in kindle-form -- many also put out "bundles" of earlier entries. In this case, the first 3 books of the Chronicles of Elantra by Michele Sagara are now available for a little under $17. After slogging through 1.something policy papers, I felt discouraged enough to be really wanting some trashy fiction. After slogging through my recommendations over at Amazon, I finally gave in and gave Sagara a try. And no, the Smart Bitches do not appear to have weighed in on Sagara.

The publisher, Luna, has a real thing going in terms of angsty heroines with huge, untapped, semi-divine, possibly prophesied powers that someone else is killing people in job lots in order to get control of. So that's kind of irritating. Had I really thought this through (viz. had I realized that Luna was the publisher), I might not have bought the bundle. And while I don't much care for the job lots, the angsty, etc., I am glad I bought the bundle. Because it's decently written, the secondary characters are pretty cool and I _like_ the basic structure: a police procedural set on a world very like Steven Brust's Dragaeran Empire (nice match for Brust's series, which started out reading like private dick, er, eye novels in a fantasy, er, science fiction, er, wtf setting, thus recalling, inevitably, oh, do I have to write it down, all right, Anne McCaffery).

Of course, if you don't know what a police procedural is, and you've never read Brust, this could be unhelpful. Our young (20ish) heroine, Kaylin Neya (formerly known as Elianne), must return to the other side of the tracks, er, river, from which she narrowly escaped several years ago. This young Ground Hawk (cop who does not fly, unlike the beastkin in the book, the Aerian, who do). When she left, she'd recently acquired mystical tattoo-like markings on her skin, and a whole bunch of other kids had, too, and they'd all died. Luna does over-the-top ambiguous good-or-evil? like You Would Not Believe, so her protector/friend from her youthful days returns with her while they work out who _really_ is responsible for the deaths in general, and the last two in particular.

Once in the fiefs (that would be, the other side of the river place where criminals hang out and "ferals" roam at night), we cannot be surprised that a elf-like outcast/criminal warlord almost immediately "marks" our heroine, and we spend the rest of the book watching various characters get really Bent about this because it is Forbidden, and there's some question about what it means and blah, blah, bleeping blah. Did I mention it was a blue, spidery, Nightshade flower? On her cheek? No, the cheek you _see_.

Obviously, they have to solve the kid-killing. Along the way, we see more of Kaylin Neya's power, and her obstreperousness, and her probably ADHDness. And, because why the hell not, the book ends with Kaylin needing, and getting, a Big Hug from her Boss the Hawklord. Apparently _someone_ out there spent their adolescence with a flown-around-by-hawks fantasy, instead of the usual horse obsession.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed this. I enjoyed this book -- and more specifically, the world -- enough to immediately start on the sequel (conveniently just a button push away in the bundle on the kindle, which sounds naughty, when I read it after typing it). The writing is passable. The mood is kinda gloomy/angsty, but there really is some humor in it. Usually, I expect -- and get -- a large chunk of detailed sex when I read urban fantasy, but not always, and this would be in the latter category. I guess in a lot of ways, I'm waiting for Kaylin to meet and attempt to arrest Vlad Taltos. Because That would be Cool. I know it isn't going to happen.

One last remark: I have a hard-and-fast rule about avoiding books with scary birth scenes, and this series is shaping up to violate it. Kaylin Neya uses her magical gift to heal/save women in childbirth and foundlings what-got-sick-or-hurt. So far (partway through book 2), the details have been slim. I may bail on the series if she gets more specific.

wonking

My attempts to read _How Much and at What Cost_ have ground (er) to a halt (oh, man, the transportation puns. They are foolishness.), primarily over my Issues with the failure to model demand changes in response to price signals. After some discussion with my husband R., who said this made the conclusions unreliable, I went looking for someone who _had_ modeled demand changes in response to price signals for fuel -- I mean, it's happened, so it can be quantified. A google search found me a frighteningly wonky book aimed at transportation planners, _Transportation Decision Making: Principles of Project Evaluation and Programming_, which I have ordered (used), which was probably stupid because whenever I order textbooks, I find them largely unreadable. But it definitely has tables with short- and long-term demand response to price signals on fuel. Also, it has some hilarious paragraphs about accounting for pedestrian and cyclist operating costs. No, not the bike lanes: the shoes and the bike and accessories for the bike. Even funnier, they _do not_ account for the extra cost in food for the human-power part of the walking and biking -- they explicitly say that counts as a _benefit_, not a cost, particularly if it replaces other exercise. !!!

I agree, actually, but will note that when economists are coming up with numbers like GDP, it is _not_ to the GDP's good for someone to quit spending money on fuel, a car, and a gym membership, and replace it with spending (much less) money on shoes and/or a bicycle, better outerwear, etc.

Because food and fuels can both be quantified in kCal, it is actually possible to figure out human mpg to compare to a car (but somewhat time consuming).

sausage! Ew!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/health/policy/06insure.html

In related news, a Tampa town hall involved fisticuffs and required police intervention. There have been death threats against Democratic reps (also hanged in effigy). At least some of the people showing up to Town Halls are telling local Fox affiliates that they are not people represented by the Reps doing the Town Halls. Some other conservatives at the Town Halls who wanted to ask questions about health care reform never got a chance to because of the brownshirt tactics -- and are openly wondering about how they now feel about this whole thing.

But best of all, Fox News has found senior citizen Vets who are canceling their AARP memberships because AARP supports health care reform. They're worried about having to wait in line for their next (extremely expensive but they won't have to pay for it because it's done by the VA) surgery (altho I'm not clear on why they think health care reform for everyone else is going to impact the VA). And at one Town Hall, after an organizer had his crew raise hands in opposition to socialized medicine, the Rep asked how many people had VA or Medicare -- and about half that crew raised hands.

So either these are the "bleed the beast" crowd, or they are hypocrites, or they are "they got mine" or they just don't know what any of these words means. Yup, I _get_ they are mad because they are being lied to. But I think they have incorrectly identified who is doing the lying.

Life at the sausage factory. Or death, as the case may be.