Whatcha Readin' Feb 2010 Edition

Yes, thanks, you must be right.

Finished Stalking the Unicorn by Mike Resnick.

Private eye John Justin Mallory is approached by an elf to hunt down a stolen unicorn. Mallory is down on his luck and needs the cash - and goes on an adventure in an alternate Manhattan.

I was hoping for a fantasy detective novel in the lines of Glen Cook or Jim Butcher. While this does fit the genre, it was not as good as either of the mentioned gentleman. It was OK, but not great. The plot was contrived and the author tried too hard to be whimsical. There are at least two more in the series, but I think I’m done.

A linkto March’s thread.

I finished The Predictioneer’s Game by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Bueno de Mesquita claims that by knowing the actors positions, the salience of the issue at hand to them, their influence on other actors and later, their stubbornness on the issue, he can use game theory to predict the result. He uses a lot of past successes and future predictions to illustrate. Not a bad read.

I also finished Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff. Jane Charlotte is a Bad Monkey, that is she works for a secret group called Bad Monkeys that fights evil. When she is arrested for murder and tells them this, they send her to the psych ward and a doctor must find out the real story. It was a good ride, but I feel the ending farts a little bit on the rest of the story.

Psst. It’s March now.