Books: Stoker and Baker? I Just Met 'Er!

Bram Stoker's Dracula Omnibus

-Despite the title, this is not a companion volume to The Frankenstein Omnibus. It includes Dracula, The Lair of the White Worm, and Dracula's Guest, a collection of short stories. I've read Dracula three or four times before, so I skipped it this time. Worm was the basis for a fairly bad movie with Hugh Grant in it; the novel is actually worse. The plot makes very little sense, people seem to forget their motivations from scene to scene, and the ending is telegraphed miles away. Very not recommended. The short stories in Guest are better, and remind me of Lovecraft's more traditional stuff. Still, I don't think I'm keeping a 550-page book because it has 125 pages of good material at the end. (I own another, nicer copy of Dracula.) Into the give-away pile with it.

The Life of the World to Come by Kage Baker

ricevermicelli recommended Kage Baker to me, so I grabbed this off the shelves at Pandemonium. RV then told me I should have started with one of her other, better books, but I enjoyed this one perfectly well. Time travel, virtual pirates, spoiled rich kids, and conspiracies that cross millennia and interplanetary space. It has a bit too much indulgent fanservice (in the form of gratuitous mentions of Dungeons & Dragons, for example), but I'm definitely going to read more in the series.