Melissa Marr: Radiant Shadows

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; Reprint edition (February 22, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0061659249

Hunger for nourishment. Hunger for touch. Hunger to belong.
Half-human and half-faery, Ani is driven by her hungers. Those same cravings also attract powerful enemies and uncertain allies - including Devlin, the assassin who is brother to the faeries' High Queen. Ani and Devlin are drawn together, but as they grow closer, a larger threat imperils the whole of Faerie. Will saving the Faery realm mean losing each other?
 Alluring romance, heart-stopping danger, and sinister intrigue combine in the penultimate volume of Melissa Marr's New York Times bestselling Wicked Lovely series.

AH THIS TITLE MAKES SO MUCH SENSE NOW. It's really the only one, other than Ink Exchange, but yeah. Side note of excitement for sudden and blinding comprehension.
 With this installment, Melissa Marr draws one step closer to the final novel in her faery series. She keeps building on her world, which is nice, but on the other hand, I sometimes lose track of who's who. There are just so many characters running around, and shifting of allegiances, that I find myself having to go back every once in a while and refresh on what happened previously. That gets a little annoying, but I'll make the sacrifice for such a good series.
 So, in Radiant Shadows, Sorcha's losing her damn mind, the Summer Court and the Winter Court barely make appearances other than to say that hey, nothing's changed, and the Dark Court is still confusing as hell. Mostly, Irial and Niall confuse me. I have no idea why Niall angsting so hard, but he is, and Irial is still largely awesome, so there are, effectively two Dark Kings. Ish.
 The focus of this novel, one of the so-called "in between" novels, is the halfling Ani, who was introduced in the first novel, I believe. She's part Hound and is incredibly antsy to be accepted. Except that's difficult because she's...special. Enter Devlin, the High Queen's Bloody Hand, re: assassin, who was supposed to kill Ani once upon a time, but clearly didn't. Chaos ensues. Doesn't it always? This time, though, I mean literally: Bananach, War and Disorder embodied, is on the warpath and trying to stir up trouble.
 Marr is building on what she's already created, so there's not a lot of character development going on. It's kind of just getting to know already semi-familiar characters. Unless she throws in a new player, which she does (cough RAE cough DREAMWALKER WHO THE HELL ARE YOU WHAT IS GOING ON cough). Further, the plot is interesting and sufficiently twisty, although she could stand with a little less mystery and a little more exposition. For example, can we have a more clear statement regarding where Ani's wolves come from? What's up with Seth? And also are we just dropping the subject of her supposedly precious blood? (I'm sure that will be answered in the last novel, though.)
 Overall: B+
 It was not my favorite of her novels, and I'm getting a little tired of being denied knowledge gratification until the last few chapters of the novel. But it was still good and it definitely built up the suspense for the next, and last, installment.

So apparently Russia loves me.

Patricia Briggs: Silver Borne

• ISBN-13: 9780441019960
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
• Publication date: 1/25/2011
• Series: Mercy Thompson Series , #5
• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Pages: 304

 When Mercy Thompson, mechanic and shape-shifter, attempts to return a powerful fae book she previously borrowed in an act of desperation, she finds the bookstore locked up and closed down. 
 It seems the book contains secrets - and the fae will do just about anything to keep it out of the wrong hands. And if that doesn't take enough of Mercy's attention, her friend Samuel is struggling with his wolf side - leaving Mercy to cover for him lest his own father declare Samuel's life forfeit. 
 All in all, Mercy has had better days. And if she isn't careful, she may not have many more... 
 Mercy Thompson is, hands down, one of my favorite heroines of all time. OF ALL TIME. She's badass, she's brave, she's independent. But in this book she learns something else that we haven't really seen from her yet: she learns that it's okay to lean on someone else and be the weak one for a while. Having spent the last four months immersed in Supernatural, I find this message particularly meaningful after watching Dean Winchester struggle to take all the blame and responsibility of the world on his own shoulders and sacrifice himself for others time and again. OKAY that went where it wasn't meant to go, but the point is, I appreciated Mercy's development all the more because of my Supernatural feels.
 In this installment of her saga, Mercy's dealing with pack and fae bullshit. The pack, being a bunch of mostly old-fashioned dogs, essentially, are having a little trouble accepting a coyote shifter as their Alpha's mate. Since Adam and Mercy are still on precarious ground after her rape of two novels ago, they haven't really taken the time to figure out the dynamics of the magical pack bond that Mercy now has to deal with. Prime time for messing with Mercy's head. Throw in Samuel's mental breakdown (he's very old and very lonely) and you have a recipe for oh-man. And a major plot twist for our favorite white wolf toward the end.
 Also, the fae are after her, again. Although it's not the Gray Lords and it's not a group of fae so much as it's one fae in particular throwing a wretch of a wrench into her life, so that's a plus. Zee's son, Tad, asks Mercy to check in on a mutual friend, and hijinks naturally ensue.
 As I've already kind of intimated, the developing relationship between Mercy and Adam is my favorite part of this novel. Every time something happens to Mercy, Adam climbs the walls and has a freak out, and I, damsel at heart that I am, love to see a man lose his cool when his love is in danger. And since he's a wolf, that means a whole lot more. He has a few this novel, mostly because of the issues with the pack bond, but Mercy handles them supremely and actually talks it out with him, which is a major step in any relationship. So rah-rah on that front. AND BRAN AND CHARLES. They show up briefly and basically any chance to see Bran has me cheering from the rafters.
 Overall: A
 It wasn't as completely action packed as the other novels, but it definitely kept me on the edge of my seat with a ton of "will-he-or-won't-he" situations. Or she. There were a lot. The mystery also had an interesting twist.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison: The Federalist

• ISBN-13: 9781593082826
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 2/1/2006
• Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
• Pages: 560

A classic of American political thought, The Federalist is a series of eighty-five essays by three authors - Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay - written to curry support for the proposed new Constitution of the United States, a document that many considered too radical. Most of the "papers" were published in periodicals as the vote drew near. Without the support of these powerfully persuasive essays, the Constitution most likely would not have been ratified and the United States might not have survived as a nation.
 Beginning with an assault upon the country's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the authors of The Federalist present a masterly defense of the new system. They comment brilliantly on the proper size and scope of government, taxation, impeachment, and many other issues of the day.
 Written in haste and during a time of great crisis in the new American government, the articles were not expected to achieve immortality. Today, however, many historians consider The Federalist as the third most important political document in American history, just behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. It has become the benchmark of American political philosophy, and the best explanation of what the Founding Fathers were trying to achieve.

 For those of us unaware of United States history, let me sketch an incredibly rough portrait: following the Revolutionary War, it became increasingly clear that the Articles of Confederation, a proxy constitution thrown together to tie all the different states into an alliance and ensure some form of unity, would not suffice to maintain a stable government among the states. So a convention was called to write a constitution for the new-born country. There were many issues, naturally, but the biggest and most general was whether or not the federal (central) government would be strong or would be fairly weak. This resulted in a divide between the federalists, who wanted a strong central government capable of occasionally overriding states' laws, and the states-rights group, who wanted the power to rest in each individual state - which, if you haven't noticed, isn't really a united anything as much as a group of people who agree with each other, sometimes.
 Into the fray jump three of the times most influential authors/statesmen: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Coming solidly down on the side of the federalists, and defending the Constitution that was at that time being written, reviewed, and voted on, these three published a series of papers under the collective name of "Publius" addressing each of the contentions of their opponents.
  First, I would like to say that I love these three men. Alexander Hamilton, while a conniving, philandering ass at times, was brilliant. John Jay and James Madison, also, were brilliant. So this is a collection of gorgeous minds systematically arguing their point.
 Who would read this collection of papers in the modern day? Very few, I imagine. Still, I think everyone would benefit from reading them, especially in the times in which we live. We need a reminder of the men who fought for our rights in the first place, why they fought, and what they were fighting for. We need a reminder of what the Constitution was originally meant to be and how far we have strayed from the ideals of the men who founded this country. Do I think they had it all right? Absolutely not. They weren't perfect, or seers of the future. They were men of their times. But I think the lessons they have to teach ring true even today, if we could just be bothered to pay attention to them.
 Overall: A
 There wasn't a ton of legal-ese or specialized jargon despite the positions these men occupied. Of course. They wanted to reach as broad an audience as possible. The headings are easy to follow, their arguments make sense and every once in a while they, especially Alexander Hamilton, can be downright sassypants, and I love that.
 SIDE NOTE: Coincidentally, as I was reading this while in Japan, one of my Japanese friends had to read excerpts from The Federalist for her English class. Haha, what?

Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment

• ISBN-13: 9781593080815
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 2/1/2007
• Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
• Pages: 576

Few authors have been as personally familiar with desperation as Fyodor Dostoevsky, and none have been so adept at describing it. Crime and Punishment - the novel that heralded the author's period of masterworks - tells the story of the poor and talented student Raskolnikov, a character of unparalleled psychological depth and complexity. Raskolnikov reasons that men like himself, by virtue of their intellectual superiority, can and must transcend societal law. To test his theory, he devises the perfect crime - the murder of a spiteful pawnbroker living in St. Petersburg. 
 Raskolnikov soon realizes the folly of his abstractions. Haunted by vivid hallucinations and the torments of his conscience, he seeks relief from his terror and moral isolation - first in Sonia, the pious streetwalker who urges him to confess, then in a tense game of cat and mouse with Porfiry, the brilliant magistrate assigned to the murder investigation. One of the most gripping crime stories of all time, Crime and Punishment delineates the theories and motivations that underlie a bankrupt morality.
 
 I knew I was doomed from reading the first paragraph, simply about Raskolnikov sneaking past his landlady because he didn't want to talk to her, and I related way too much. Like, "Holy shit, this is actually me." Happily, it didn't turn out completely that way, but close enough to be uncomfortable.
 Crime and Punishment is the story of a young college student who has a theory about great men being able/allowed to do things that ordinary men aren't. This leads to him committing a murder pretty much simply to prove his theory and prove himself one of said great men.
 What follows is the slow mental breakdown of Raskolnikov (clearly not the great man he thought he was - aha). He encounters sundry side characters who either contribute to his burden or, in their attempt to understand him, give him hope. There's his mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, and his sister, Dunia. His friend Razumikhin, his (girl)friend, Sonia. Of course, he has his antagonists in the forms of Porfiry and Svidrigailov. Oh, the Russian names. Complicated things, my friends, but these are the easiest to remember, I suppose. They all have interweaving storylines - they all know each other in some capacity.
 What makes this novel so compelling is how utterly human they all are. Especially Raskolnikov. You relate to him, his wanderings, his tortures, his emotions. Even if you never would have come up with his theory, you see how he came to it, and all of his actions and his emotions following the murder are so supremely human, I can't even. I related to him even more than I thought. He lashes out at those who love him most when he's angry and hurt and ashamed because he feels he doesn't deserve it, or he knows they will take the abuse and still love him after. It's something I know I do in my own life. His struggles not to collapse entirely when he realizes that Porfiry expects him. Side note about Porfiry: I started off really being irritated by him and his method of police work, but he really pulled through in the end. In his last scene in the book, I even felt a little fondness for the old fellow.
 One of the best parts of the novel, is its overall happy ending. I won't spoil it for you, but I will say that 70% of the characters witness significant improvements to their lives and overall happiness. I'll leave you to guess which ones. Also, the villains of the piece are justly dealt with. I didn't feel that they escaped what they deserved, and I think it was just so refreshing to have a Russian author not crush all my hopes and dreams that I really fell in love with it.
 Overall: A+
 While it dragged in places, as the Russian authors do, I was just so in love with the depiction of raw humanity and the ending that I'll forgive it.

Hideyuki Kikuchi: Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse Books; 1st DH Press Ed edition (December 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-1595821065

The Cruel Desert between the Inner and Outer Frontiers has a mind, and a heart, of its own.
Granny Viper is a "people finder," a searcher for lost souls along the roads of the forbidding wasteland of 12,090 A.D. Her latest mission: the safe return to her family of an "abductee," a young woman named Tae, kidnapped eight years ago by vampire Nobility and held in Castle Gradinia on the far border of the Frontiers. Rescuing Tae was only half the battle - Viper knows she can't make the rest of the journey with the girl across the formidable expanse to the town of Barnabas alone. But the wizened crone makes a fatal mistake in hiring the mercenary Bullow Brothers to help her, and when she turns to the legendary Vampire Hunter D for salvation the two women and D find themselves in a race for their lives across the blinding desert sands.
 
Another adventure of D - and I really liked this one, mostly because it took D to an emotional place that we'd never seen him before.
 D walks into a Frontier town, like he do, and takes a job from a lawyer engaged in sweaty orgy. Yeah, it surprised me, too. Unfortunately, there are a couple of those happy gunslingers (who usually don't even possess actual guns) that abound on the Frontier who of course want to challenge him. Then there's the one who wants his help, and she's pretty sassy. And also bi-polar, apparently.
 Anyway, with this rag tag group of crazy kids they start across an extremely dangerous desert that they discover...oops, I can't tell you that. Because that would spoil the surprise. But I will tell you this - it's a bit of a "what?" moment. But on to the emotional stuff. The girl in the charge of Granny (sassy lady) is one of the hidden, italics not mine. In other words, she was kidnapped by the Nobility, has served them for who knows how long, and now Granny is returning her to her family, which is an iffy prospect to say the least. There's another surprise about this girl that D strangely connects to, and he, despite the author telling us how cold he is pretty much constantly, protects her from everyone and everything. Not because he has to, but because he's noble and good, and I love that nobody thinks he is, but he's the freaking best. Sorry, babble city right there, but I really love D.
 There's a lot of that strange sort of honor going around in this volume. Each character starts out seeming like a deceptive asshole, but by the end of the book you actually care about each of them. And you're even...somewhat proud of them. And I think that's a great and interesting quality in a novel that is essentially about an emotionless, badass swordsman. Delightfully unexpected.
 Overall: A
 I think this was one of the better ones, plot and pacing wise, although Kikuchi does have a serious problem with keeping pretty much everything obscure. If his plan is to leave us hanging as long as possible and draw the series out, it's working.

Plato: Essential Dialogues of Plato

• ISBN-13: 9781593082697
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 10/5/2005
• Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
• Pages: 624

Western philosophy starts with Socrates and his student Plato. By way of the dialectic that evolved between master and student, Plato invented the philosophical method of inquiry and analysis, and became the first to use a logical framework to ask - and try to answer - the eternal questions about ethics, politics, art, and life that still haunt humanity: What is virtue? What is justice? What is the ideal form of government? What is the individual's relationship to the state? Do artists have a responsibility to society, or only to their own creative impulse? Plato explores these issues through a series of dialogues, records of supposed conversations between Socrates and other Greek aristocrats.
 What is often ignored in commentaries on Plato's work is its unique literary form. The dialogues are neither dramas nor stories, yet they are skillfully fashioned by means of characters, narrative events, dramatic moments, and perhaps most surprising, a great deal of humor. Along with such exemplar of Plato's thought as Symposium, Apology, and Phaedrus, this volume includes the first three books of Plato's Laws.

 I'm not sure if people realize this...but Plato was one sassy dude. There were multiple times when reading these dialogues that I said, out loud to a room full of people, "Oh, snap!" The best part is, he was being a total asshole but couched his words in super complimentary language. Everybody knew he was being sarcastic, of course. I mean, when you're Socrates and you're renowned for your wisdom and you're expounding on how much smarter than you is your interlocutor, and you simply can't understand what he's saying because you are so much lower than he is (even though you just forced him to contradict himself) - you know you're being out-sassed.
 I should clarify what's going on in these dialogues: they are related as a series of conversations between Socrates and other people. Socrates was Plato's mentor/teacher and Plato is mentioned a grand total of twice in the dialogues presented in this volume, and he never speaks himself. However, since Socrates' philosophy was never written down, they're kind of Plato's tribute to and explanation of Socrates. So when I say that Socrates is speaking - kind of.
 Topics here range from what is righteousness and bravery to what are laws and their purpose and how they're useful.
 I do have some complaints, though. First of all - a lot of the reasoning is kind of...off. As in, one thing does not necessarily follow another. Or Socrates' conclusions are not absolute truths and so, when he takes them for absolute truth and bases the rest of his argument off that point, you can't exactly say that he's right. Often, the arguments also get convoluted as the debaters go on tangents and then circle back when Socrates has somehow disproved their first statements.
 For all that, the dialogues are interesting and sometimes, frankly, downright funny. They are also the basis for philosophical thinking in modern society, so even if you don't agree with the conclusions, it still might be pertinent and even interesting to read through these dialogues. You're not going to win any arguments with them, but...
 Overall: B
 Although again I find myself confronted with the dilemma of how to rate a classic...