Titles, part one

Fringe, seasons 1 through 4, with Anna Torv.  I really enjoyed the first two seasons; I stopped after season 4 and won't finish the run because it has gotten a little out of control-- the original storyline, a storyline in a parallel universe, a storyline in an alternate reality caused by time-travel-y future beings who may turn out to be monsters, and a 25-years-ago storyline?  It worked fine when there were two-- the original and the parallel universe-- and it was still ok when they started bringing in the past-set episodes: few and far between, they function like long bits of back story.  But this is just too much to keep track of.  I can't see a way all storylines will merge, and if they don't, that's not a show, that's four shows.

Me and My Shadow by Katie MacAlister. More of the same in this spin-off series; enjoyable, not memorable.

Love in the Time of Dragons and The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons by Katie MacAlister.  Separated from the above-mentioned title because they are numbers one and two in a different sub-series, really a spin-off of the spin-off.  Each of the three three-book dragon series can be read alone, but they make more sense together.  With this series, I'm having a bit of trouble coming around to the main character's love interest; he has been the villain in all six previous books and I don't find the justifications and history to be as believable as I would prefer.

Soulless: The Manga by Gail Carriger and REM.  This is not the right format.  This completely changes the flavor and character of the story.  First, like many manga stories I've seen, the characters are all volatile, explosive, bi-polar-bordering types, and I think a huge part of the human characters in the original story is that they aren't, especially Alexia because of her personality, but everyone else, too, because of Victorian culture.  The other major issue is that what made the books so awesome were the costumes, the settings, and the steam-punk details on all the technology.  This rendition glosses right over all that, being black and white tiny pictures.  The focus in the manga is on the action.  The action is maybe the fourth or fifth most important thing about the original stories.  Boo.

The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King by Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent.  This sounded like an interesting piece of history, and not one I'm terribly familiar with.  The first couple of chapters were very interesting and did a good job of establishing an interesting setting, but then the author went into a chapter that felt almost exclusively genealogy-focused.  I couldn't follow and wasn't sure why the reader should care to do so. 

Ain't Myth-Behaving by Katie MacAlister. Two short-ish stories, not linked to each other or, as far as I can tell, any of her other series or books.  I very much enjoyed these.  Let's be clear: these stories are beach reads, but they're beach reads without major plot or grammatical flaws.  Hurrah!