What I'm Reading Today...

After another conversation with the friend of mine who continues to hassle me time and again to make use of my blog, I have officially been talked into writing another entry. Subject matter? Books.


I read a lot. By a lot, I mean I read more now than I did while I was in college -- I always felt that I spent so much time reading for class, I never had time to read for myself, so I read as much as I could when I was on vacation, on the train (assuming I was not reading for class then as well), waiting for the train, the bus, the doctor's office, etc.

My friend thinks I read about a book every two weeks or so. I think it takes a little longer, but I digress.

When a creator I respect recommends a book, I'm likely to take a look at it or, sometimes just buy it on pure recommendation alone. That's what I did with this book: Christy Lijewski, a favorite comic creator of mine, mentioned it at one point on her website (lost to me now, will edit when I find the URL) and I figured, as I have done in the past, why not?

Today, I'm reading ARCHANGEL by Sharon Shinn.

ARCHANGEL (also the name of an amazing cut by dubstep genius BURIAL) is about angels. I like my angels much less futz-ed with, more classic; no genitalia because they are not bound by form; more Miltonic than anything else, and maybe even a tad biblical.

But these are not your garden variety angels: they exist after a world, i.e., not in the pre-human sense, they are the product of an explicitly post-human universe, and this intrigues me to no end. In this universe, the angels come from the union of an angel and a mortal, therefore the number of so-called full blood angels is negligible, since they are all long dead at the time this book starts.

Angels in a post-human world... how about that? And humans in a post-human world too! What's up with that? Really, though. What's up?

Angels and humans, the ultimate extremities of the divine spectrum (supposing that the divine itself does not enter into the spectrum) mixing together NOT to form a middle ground, but to propagate either extremity. Ah, the strangeness of bloodlines.

By the by, the angels in this book do not really stick all too close to the judeo-christian standard mythos, so don't let that be a prohibition.

I'm off to read some more, and I have to be up for work in six hours. I'm not tired. Bah humbug.