I read a ton more than normal this month and ranged across a wide variety of genres, from classic SciFi to Southern Magical Realism to Horror. So, let's get to it.

I'm trying to work a little more classic Science Fiction and Fantasy into my reading, especially authors I haven't read a lot of, like Arthur C. Clarke. Rendezvous with Rama is one of his more well-known and recommended novels, so when I spotted it at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC, I picked it up and dove into it.

In the not so distant future, someone spots what at first appears to be an asteroid, but turns out to be an extra-solar, non-natural object, which is later dubbed the Rama. The cylinder turns out to house whole cities within its interior and somewhat familiar landscapes, like a sea, but it appears to be entirely empty.

The mystery of what this object is and who built it drives the narrative. The first mystery was solved, to a degree, but the latter never was, which shouldn't deter anyone from enjoying the story.

I have been a fan of Charlaine Harris's stories for a good, long while, so I was expecting to love An Easy Death, Harris's new Weird Western set in the alternate reality of a United States fractured by the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie, a mercenary hired to smuggle people and things across Texoma. She's a fairly complex character, in spite of her plain spoken, no nonsense ways, and ends up having a few secrets even she wasn't aware she held, and that makes her intriguing on a variety of levels.

While the setting, story world, and main character are intriguing, Harris failed to provide an equally intriguing story. The action bogs down in the repitition. It's as if Harris, a master story teller, suddenly forgot that there were more dangers in the Old West than being ambushed. Even her prose is no match for the story she's telling; there were times when I was ready to throw the book across the room, the writing was so simplistic. And I like straightforward writing, so that should tell you something.

Still, An Easy Death is a fun, easy, and somewhat light read, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to fans of Weird Westerns or Harris's other series, particularly the Sookie Stackhouse and Harper Connelly books.

Richard has been on a witch kick for a while. Meaning, he's reading books about witches, particularly historic witches. Knowing that, I tend to pick him up one or two witch books for special occasions, like his birthday, which was in March.

One of the books I picked out for him was Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, who lives in Asheville, NC. I was delighted to discover this little gem. Though it's set in a contemporary, fictional North Carolina town, it seemed to be a perfect fit for Richard's witchy reading kick and it was written by a local author. Win-win.

I was down there one night after his birthday and ran out of reading material, so with his permission, I picked up Garden Spells and began reading it.

The Waverly women have special little quirks. Claire's cooking inspires particular feelings and attitudes in the recipients. Sydney knows what a person is like from the way they style their hair. Bay can tell where things (and people) belong. Evanelle gets these notions to give people items they turn out to need at some point not long after.

And then there's the apple tree in the backyard, a tree whose fruit is said to give people a vision of the biggest moment of their lives.

Garden Spells has its flaws (A lawn mower haircut? Really???), but it's truly a charming and funny read. Many reviewers noted its similarities to Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, and that's quite true. Garden Spells comes much closer to reaching its full potential than Hoffman's signature piece. And Allen knows how to write children, which pleased me all the more. If you're at all a fan of witchy stories or Southern humor with a touch of magical realism, you'll enjoy Allen's first Waverly novel.

In fact, I enjoyed Garden Spells so much that on a trip to City Lights Bookstore (yes, I'm a frequent visitor there) made just after finishing it, I picked up the sequel First Frost and began reading it that very night.

First Frost picks up about a decade after Garden Spells ends in the autumn as the first frost approaches. The Waverly women have settled into their lives, Claire and Sydney as married women, Bay as a teenager, and Evanelle as a woman nearing the end of her life. The magic persists and grows within Claire's daughter and Evanelle's companion.

The first frost has always been a time of change within the Waverly family. The women grow restless with it, though their husbands have learned to weather the mercurial nature of that time of year, but this year brings a new danger: a man claiming that Claire isn't who she thinks she is. The resultant discord and strife throws the whole family out of whack, but the resulting story is easily just as satifsying as the original one.

A while back, I read Horns by Joe Hill and enjoyed it so much, I picked up another book of his and shelved it in my to-be-read pile for future reading.

Heart-Shaped Box was Hill's debut novel and it did not disappoint. Judas Coyne is a middle-aged rock star fading into his glory years. A collector of the macabre, he can't resist purchasing the supposed haunted suit of a dead man when his assistant discovers it on an eBay-like auction site. The suit arrives in a heart-shaped box reminiscent of the candy boxes Coyne's abusive father used to bring his doormat of a mother, but it isn't the box's shape that's terrifying; it's what it brings into Coyne's life that will scare the bejesus out of you.

I made the mistake of reading this one alone late at night in a one hundred year old house. Don't do that. Seriously. Heart-Shaped Box is that creepy. It's also a well-told tale and I highly recommend it to any fan of unusual stories.

Thunderbird by Jack McDevitt is another book that had been sitting on my TBR shelves for a while. I picked it up after reading The Engines of God, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and expected to enjoy Thunderbird equally as much.

Sadly, I did not.

Thunderbird is a sequel to Ancient Shores, in which a stargate is unearthed on the Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. I had not read Ancient Shores, but that mostly wasn't necessary in order to understand Thunderbird.

In the second book of the two, teams of scientists are sent out to further explore the worlds discovered through the stargate, at the behest of Sioux Chairman James Walker. This should've been an exciting read. Instead, it was a lot of handwringing by everyone from the president of the United States to corporate heads to the military to ordinary citizens. The whole point of the story (discovering exactly why the stargate existed and what its function was) was dragged out for so long and through so many pointless inanities, it was anticlimatic.

I think this was one of those times when an author felt pressured to deliver a sequel to a story world readers really loved, but without a fully-realized, independent story line. I've been in that situation before, so I can empathize, but as a reader, it was frustrating. I'm going to give Ancient Shores a try at some point as other reviewers have mentioned how much better it is, but that won't mitigate the disappointment of Thunderbird's failed potential.

I rounded out my month with Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Now, I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan and while I've never read anything by Terry Pratchett, I've watched a couple of the movies made from his books, Hogfather being the most memorable. So I expected an unusual tale with irreverant humor, and that's exactly what I got, only more so.

Good Omens is a good vs. evil, the world's going to end before we're ready for it to kind of story. Crowley, the demon who tempted Eve with fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and Aziraphale, an angel who really loves rare books of prophecy, team up to stop the impending Apocalypse from happening. Only, they've misplaced the Antichrist, a responsibility given unto Crowley by the Big Guy Down Below himself.

A sense of humor is absolutely a must when you're reading Good Omens. I laughed out loud a goodly number of times. But I am known for being a little wacky, so there's that. Still, it was a good, solidly built read with memorable characters. If the upcoming TV series is half as good, it'll be a blast.

I also read two business books this month, How to Write Copy that Sells: The Step-by-Step System for More Sales, to More Customers, More Often by Ray Edwards and Book Launch Blueprint: The Step-by-Step Guide to a Bestselling Launch by Tim Grahl. I can easily recommend the former to anyone who writes any kind of sales copy, and the latter as a good overview of some strategies for launching a book.

I'm currently reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It's such a huge book, it may take me all month to read it!