Rainforest by Thomas Marent. In one word: gorgeous. Rainforest is one of those huge coffee table books that you need a crane to lift, but it's worth it for the closeups of tropical beasties alone. Even before the title page, there are frogs, insects, and pit vipers. The panoramas aren't just generic waterfalls and jungle vines--Marent has managed to capture the ethereal quality of sunlight breaking through the canopy. And among the fungi, plants, flowers, insects, reptiles, and mammals, I particularly remember cute pictures of a camouflaged orchid mantis, as glaring pink as its home, and fluffy white Honduran bats snuggled against a tent of leaves like puff balls. Of course, taking pictures in a tropical rainforest isn't all roses--Marent particularly documents his patience and exquisite obsession as he endured getting lost, getting heat stroke, or teetering on the brink of starvation. A certain amount of insanity and bravado surely went into making the photo of a black caiman--so close that you can see the mosquitoes ringing its eye--or of the hornbill which required squatting on a scaffolding of poles near the canopy for ten days straight.
Fortune's Fool by Mercedes Lackey. The only reason why I'm still reading this woman's work (or rather, the Five Hundred Kingdoms series) is that she developed an interesting premise in The Fairy Godmother--that is, fairy tales happen because of a semi-conscious force called Tradition and some people actively strive to thwart it--and I'm waiting for her to run with it, preferably to someplace interesting. But meanwhile, my wait is in vain. In this installment, Ekaterina, the seventh daughter of the Sea King, is sent overland to spy on the goings on of the land lubbers. On one of her excursions, she meets up with Sasha, the seventh son of the King of Belrus who acts the part of Fool to cover up his other activities which involve protecting his country via magic music. But before the two lovebirds can live happily ever after, Ekaterina gets kidnapped by an evil jinn. Yes, yes, major eye-rolling ensues as the hero and heroine go through pointless adventures to triumph over the jinn who is mostly evil laugh and no bite anyway. On the whole, Fortune's Fool reads like a fairy tale despite the feisty main characters. Where's the subversion?
Resenting the Hero by Moira J. Moore. I admit, the first thing that attracted me to this book on the shelves was the bad, silly cover. The style reminds me a bit of Phil and Kaja Foglio--if they weren't so cartoonish. My impression was--Comic fantasy! I need a laugh, so why not? On a world populated by the descendants of colonists from a vague sci-fi-ish past with European (Irish?) and Japanese names, there are people with magical abilities who protect the rest of the populace from natural disasters. Those with these abilities come in bonded Pairs--the Source who actually works the magic and the Shield who protects the Source from killing himself or herself while wielding dangerous magic. Dunleavy Mallorough is a Shield, and the protagonist whose cranky first person narration makes it clear who's "resenting the hero." All Dunleavy wanted was to be Paired with a nice, stable Source so she could live a quiet, uneventful life, out of too much danger. Instead, she's stuck with Lord Shintaro Karish who has a reputation for wooing the ladies and getting into high risk situations. At times, Dunleavy's animosity towards Karish is over the top, but the two do eventually learn to see beneath the surface and come to respect and understand the other partner. An amusing, light read. I'm definitely looking into the sequel.
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