Journalscape has been good to me. I came here because of Keith Snyder's blog, and also found Laura Lippman's blog hereabouts. Then S.J. Rozan was recommended to me, and I loved her Smith/Chen novels (those I've read to date, which leaves a lot out yet), and she too has a blog here.

But the real beauty of the community here is that I have found some really good new (to me) authors. I read THE WANNOSHAY CYCLE by Michael Jasper (which I discussed here), and I would never have known about him as an author if I hadn't been on here. I'm currently waiting for the first couple of Eric Mayer's and Mary Reed's John the Eunuch (or is it now Lord Chamberlain?) mysteries.

And I would have never even picked up BLOOD ENGINES or POISON SLEEP by T. A. "Tim" Pratt if it hadn't been for reading his blog hereabouts. And I would have been missing something.

The covers of both books are well executed, but they aren't the sorts of things that grab me usually. Sorcery and magic aren't usually my first choice for reading. But in the end my enjoyment of a book has less to do with the genre, I suppose, and more to do with the characters, the settings, and the stories told. POISON SLEEP gets high marks on all of the above, plus a few extra points for originality. (Maybe this series is derivative of some other stuff that's out there, but I haven't experienced that stuff.)

Just a quick summary of the story: Someone is trying to kill Felport's chief sorcerer, Marla Mason, and she doesn't know why. Meanwhile, there's been a breakout at the Blackwing Institute for crazy sorcerers, though the intended escapee is not the missing prisoner. It's a psychic/sorcerer named Genevieve, and she is having nightmares. But since she's a powerful psychic, she can make her nightmares real. And it's threatening to tear Felport apart.

Marla, with her sidekick Rondeau, her consigliere Hamil, and two new employees, Ted and Joshua, go to battle with the nightmares that Genevieve is producing. At the same time Marla deals with the "slow assassin" who is hunting her. Intrigue lurks in the background of every plot twist.

And that's the fun of this book. The journey to resolve Marla's (and Felport's) problems is captivating. There is no let down, the story just keeps coming at the reader and keeps drawing them into it. The urban setting was really well drawn and vivid. And the characters are, well, they're just FUN. They have tons of quirks and their actions are totally believable in this "unbelievable" world.

I am looking forward to the rest of the books in this series, and I'm hoping that there are a lot of them.