_Hot Pursuit_, Suzanne Brockmann (kindle)

Entry 15 in the Troubleshooters series. Judging by the [front] cover picture available online, the cover does not indicate that this is part of a series and I sort of think that's not very fair. Brockmann has more than one series going, and it would suck to buy #15 in a series you weren't reading, thinking you were getting a stand-alone, or #something or other in a different series. Bad marketing!

Okay. I highly recommend _not_ reading this as a standalone. It does not stand alone. There are a dozen or more characters from previous novels, and with that many people running around, it's hard to keep them straight if you have been reading; good luck figuring anything out if you haven't been reading all along. The main romance in the story violates several romance genre conventions, including the mandatory HEA (happily ever after), altho perhaps not the trade associations requirement which is an emotionally satisfying ending.

Having picked on the cover/marketing and the (related) impossibility of reading this as a standalone novel, on to reviewing the actual story. Well, in a minute. Several years and even more entries in the series ago, a short story depicting Alyssa and Sam shortly after their marriage, but before their son Ashton is born, introduces the character of The Dentist, who apparently fascinated Brockmann's readers who inundated her with requests for the book that "excerpt" was from. Which it was not. She finally wrote the book. The Dentist was just as obsessed with Alyssa after the events of that short story as Brockmann's fans (apparently) were with The Dentist. And Brockmann decided to have some fun with her readers.

Savannah's husband Ken is shot and Van goes out to be with him, running her friend Maria's campaign long-distance with the assistance of Jennilyn (new character) who is a size 14/16 and fairly tall and whose romantic life is deeply distorted by hanging out with uber-gorgeous Van and Maria. This random event thwarts The Dentist's plans to kill Van to get Alyssa to come out in search of him. Instead, The Dentist starts leaving nasty grams and other things and plants a suggestion to bring in the Troubleshooters to up Maria's security (who is now a NY assemblywoman). The fun begin as Brockmann litters the novel and plot with red herring after red herring. Each little factoid we pick up about The Dentist matches one or more of several possibilities for the serial killer. One of the romance novel violations is that Jennilyn (the one who gets laid in detail in the course of the novel) meets Mick Callahan and has a detailed and possibly romantic partner-worthy interaction with him long before she meets Dan Gillman (who actually gets it on with her). Another of the violations, of course, is that after setting up a 2-week deadline on the relationship (not a violation), Jennilyn turfs Dan out early and says no more of the oh yeah baby until after he returns from his next visit to A-stan.

Brockmann has a great sense of humor and, drastically unlike many other romantic suspense authors (like, say, Catherine Coulter), a centrist to left-of-center political perspective. Most notably, this shows up in the presence of gay couples (one of the novels in the series was a man-man romance, and that relationship was developed over the course of the arc and is ongoing) portrayed very positively, and various characters making really pointed remarks on therapists who claim to help get over gayness (bad, duh), don't-ask-don't-tell (pointless, duh), etc.

Brockmann periodically includes a real clunker (uh, don't think you'd get a bladder infection right away from a lot of sex, but you might get a UTI, which I think is what she meant; I'm _fairly_ certain that the VA doesn't deny treatment of PTSD based on a "pre-existing condition", but hey, I could be wrong. I think the VA denies treatment because of resource problems and the primary manifestation is in the form of crazy-long wait times -- which she accurately indicates elsewhere), but not so often as to render her novels unreadable (for me, anyway). The hot-potato baby (Ashton) is fairly entertainingly depicted, particularly having Robin (the movie star) change a bunch of diapers. Breastfeeding is depicted somewhat positively and extremely realistically. I particularly liked that Alyssa had letdown woes when doing the rocking chair/calm thing, but had catastrophic letdown after taking down a whackjob on bodyguard duty for Tobin. *snicker*

I'll keep reading.

_Cast in Secret_, Michelle Sagara (kindle bundle)

The basic structure of a Chronicles of Elantra novel is preserved: world about to end, Kaylin doesn't get enough sleep, Kaylin is broke and not eating regularly, a big chunk of the book is spent pursuing seemingly unrelated threads that Kaylin persists in pursuing simultaneously even when other people are trying to get her to "focus", there are periodic interruptions for Kaylin to be lectured by the Hawklord, Sanabalis (her Dragon magic instructor) and/or others. Partway through, Kaylin does some Major Working, and while it helps, it also accelerates the timeline and Kaylin et al frenetically march towards some Really Big Thing that could be the end of Elantra, except we know it won't. The major driving force in the book, however, is how Kaylin _hates hates hates_ something, winds up becoming deeply involved with it, and learns how to (sort of) live with that thing.

In the first book, she gets to learn how to live with murdering children. Hmmm. In the second book, she gets to learn how to live with the Barrani. In the third book, she gets to learn how to live with the Thaa-alani (spelling probably wrong, because there's also the Thaa-alan, and the Thaa-alanari, and probably something else I've forgotten). In book one, she learned that her oldest friend and protector, Severn, murdered their younger compatriots in the fiefs, Steffi and Jade, preemptively to prevent them being murdered by the undead Barrani and the outcaste Dragon in an effort to convert the nascent Kaylin Neya (then known as Elianne, and now with a true name that the author or possibly copy editor is having some trouble keeping straight) to Teh Darkness of Total Destruction. In book two, she becomes a Lord of the Barrani through a series of ridiculousness that I really cannot bring myself to describe, but which introduces us to Kaylin on a height she is attempting to climb down deciding abruptly to Just Let Go and then being rewarded with titles, power, a cool dress, whatever. In book three, the Thaa-alani (look like humans, but with tentacles growing out of their foreheads, telepathic with a group mind, able to use tentacles to grope around in non-Thaa-alani heads) need her help finding a missing girl and she winds up doing water-elemental magic in a dress she acquires after deciding to let go while climbing down a ladder in a well out back of Lord Nightshade (remember the blue flower on her cheek)'s castle in the fiefs.

There's a great magic shop that isn't, and a lovely garden as well. Will I buy more Chronicles of Elantra novels separately from the bundle? Only time will tell. They are somewhat involving, but for something published by Harlequin, like the Study novels of Maria Snyder, they are disappointing short on sex. Altho the naked Thaa-alani doing it in the fountain was kinda cool.

comparisons which are starting to annoy

I recently remarked that since food and fuel are both measured in kCal, it is possible to figure out, for a particular human, what their equivalent miles per gallon is, altho I definitely left the details as an exercise for the reader.

In any event, the other day GM announced the mpg for the upcoming Volt, which somewhat mystified me. I mean, it's an electric car that you can plug into the wall and has a 40 mile range (really? hills or flat? going how fast? stop-and-start or highway? AC or not? and how many people in the car. I mean, is this one of those, it gets 30 mpg in our testing, but you'll never do better than 22 -- or you'll average 44?). Apparently, there are government rules about how you would calculate mpg for such a vehicle (where the gas part of the equation only kicks in after that 40 (odd) miles, and then only to recharge the battery). And those rules came up with over 200 [ETA: previously typo-d as 300] mpg, thus assuming that the juice coming out of the wall doesn't count towards running the car. In much the same way the transportation decision makers figure it's a benefit, not a cost, that bicycling and walking consume food energy.

I mean, if you're going to engage in some sort of calculation that comes up with 200 [ETA: previously typo-d as 300] mpg, how much harder would it be to engage in a calculation that produced an equivalency between kCal and kwh?

ETA: It's all the fault of crappy coverage. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. The EPA did, indeed, address this issue:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/08/230-20090811.html

ETAYA: Oh, and it's _up to_ 40 miles. Which is not as helpful as it could be. After all, both our gas-only cars travel up to 40 miles on a charge. That would be zero, of course, unless your trip is entirely downhill...

Palin ought to know about death panels

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannyn-moore/death-panels-for-dummies_b_255060.html

Wow.

Failure to fund Medicare/Medicaid while running budget surpluses.

because honesty would be too difficult

I used to read a blog called Seattle Housing Bubble (this would be pre-collapse). I quit for a variety of reasons, but mostly because the guy who did the blog was just being an idiot. I thought I'd check in, to see what was happening over there, and saw some commentary and a link to Crosscut about how Seattle wasn't going to grow as much as projected and even if it did, there was more than enough space under the current zoning rules.

As a side note, I think there _is_ plenty of space in Seattle for however much growth will occur, because unlike some planners, I assume that household size is going to grow. And _not_ because people are going to be having more children: roommates, extended families, blah, blah, bleeping blah. That's what densification is all about.

http://crosscut.com/2009/08/11/seattle/19155/

Here are the offending paragraphs:

"The argument that our population will double by 2040, or even increase by the 180,000 hypothetical share projected by PSRC, makes one wonder whether those numbers are reachable. If they are, that would drastically reverse a 50-year trend.

In 1960 we had population of 557,087. The last census in 2000 said we had 563,334 people. If the City of Seattle estimate of 602,000 population is accurate, we have in almost 50 years grown by only 44,913 people. Despite all the construction cranes, our population is moving upward very slowly."

I know, because this is a pet interest of mine, that population trends in cities (and we're talking city limits here, NOT metropolitan area) over the last 50 years have not been a straight line in any direction. They have, in fact, been a V. And I had recently looked at the Census figures for Seattle, so I knew it wasn't just a V (shit, I _lived_ just north of Seattle and/or in Seattle for 30+ of the last 50 years -- this is my lived experience) -- it was a very weirdly shaped V, even to 10 year intervals. And rougher still between, if I had to guess. So asserting a "50-year trend" that could be reversed is, well, dishonest. And in case one thought he (Kent is usually a man's name) was envisioning an inverse squiggly V, that 1960-200 with no intervening data points is pretty solid proof that's not an assumption with any real support for it.

There's always a chance that the guy who wrote this happened upon a pair of numbers and was too lazy to look at the intervening ones. So I dug down to where he got his numbers from.

http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/Research/Population_Demographics/Overview/default.asp

That chart is _crystal clear_. He had all the data points.

Apparently, honesty would be too difficult in making his argument. I _think_ (but I'm not sure), that this guy wants to see the same kind of low-density development that drew everyone out to the suburbs in the first place (well, that and rampant racism in conjunction with mandatory school busing). And Seattle city neighborhoods are rife with that kind of low-density housing, which makes public transit highly problematic. Nickels is pushing hard to convert the Ballards and so forth in Seattle into multi-family housing meccas (or at least convert them to the same tiny lot size as Ballard and, hopefully, the same completeness of development, i.e. minimal open space) because that's what it takes to support public transit at a meaningful level of service.

I'm hoping Nickels keeps winning, but clearly it continues to be a struggle.