Warcraft is so awesome.

The Jewish stereotype race’s innate skills will include “Best Deals Anywhere” and “Time Is Money.”

The fact that I play this game is giving me, like, complexes.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

An Exchange of Hostages, Susan R. Matthews; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

An Exchange of Hostages, Susan R. Matthews

Didn’t somebody want a Magical Sadist book, to go along with the Magical Masochist Kushiel books? Here you go!

Andrej Koscuisko, a brilliant young neurosurgeon fresh out of medical school, is ordered by his father to join the military and enter training to become a Ship’s Surgeon. But a Ship’s Surgeon’s primary occupation is not to heal the sick - it is to torture confessions out of prisoners. The idealistic Koscuisko is initially disgusted by this, as well as his discovery, upon entering training, that he has been assigned a slave, the stoic warrior Joslire, whose obedience to him is enforced via a cybernetic implant. However, as he gets deeper into his training, he discovers in himself a less-than-wholesome fascination for his work.

This book is an exercise in the clinical deconstruction of a fetish. ( Read more... )

This is an well-written book, but also a very, very unpleasant one, both because of the material and because of the way it decides to deal with it.

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

This is only the second Agatha Christie book I’ve ever read - I’d heard of it before I read it, forgotten the title, and realized which one it was very quickly. (Shouldn’t have read the back cover blurbs.)

This is another book that feels a lot like an exercise to me. It’s a very tight book, with no real space to develop an emotional attachment to any of the characters. I don’t think my opinion matters here, but for what it is, I think it’s great - there are only a couple of places that don’t feel “fair” to me, and I don’t usually care whether a mystery’s “fair.”

I, uh, can’t talk about this book any more specifically without spoiling it, sorry.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)