Finished A Serpent In Venice. it was...alright. Fool was much better. Read The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, by Theodora Goss. It was fine but suffered from a serious case of Spunky Heroine (x5). I'm all for more female protagonists, but these were cliche and pretty one-dimensional. Also read Shadow Captain, the sequel to Revenger, by Alastair Reynolds. I'm a big fan of Mr. Reynolds, but this didn't thrill me - which was also true of Revenger. (Also, these characters all felt undeveloped too. Maybe it's me? Probably not...I just gotta find a better book. Time to get serious, I guess....) This feels like a stab at YA, to be honest. On the upper end of YA, but still.... On the other hand, the worldbuilding is A+ top notch. 5+ million years in the future; all the planets dismantled and made into millions of smaller habitats, most with miniature black holes inside to create gravity; a great cycle of civilizations rising and falling.....
Naturally I've been in NY for a week+ now, and have exhausted all the books I brought, and the books I bought to supplement them, and now I'm bookless. Argh. I've got Mists of Avalon looking at me, but wasn't it enough to hate it once? Do I have to do it again? Frack. Used bookstore tomorrow. I've got credit.