The first review of Blood Engines has arrived! From Green Man Review. Go read it here. The reviewer liked the book, and provides a good description of the story without being too spoilerish. I'm pleased. There will be a review in the September issue of Locus, too.

The reviews for this book are, strangely, not having much of an effect on me. Perhaps because I'm already thinking about the fourth book in the series, and am about to heavily revise the third one? Blood Engines was, like, a really long time ago. (That doesn't mean I'll stop reading reviews, just that I find myself a lot less obsessive about them than I was with Rangergirl.)

Yesterday was loooong. We went into San Francisco to look at a used car. (Heather's doing all the work. I'm just along for the ride. Well, and paying for the car, lest you think I'm a total leech. I'm more than happy to kick in the cash if it means I don't have to call people or haggle or do research.) Nice car, but we were in the city for about five hours, what with test driving and finding a mechanic to check out the car and -- this is the time-consuming bit -- waiting for said mechanic to finish inspecting it. The car's fine for our purposes, and in pretty good shape, just some maintenance-level stuff that needs to be done, so we told the guy we'd take it. Unfortunately, he didn't have the pink slip with him -- he's selling the car for his sister or friend or something -- and the car hasn't been smogged, both obstacles to us actually taking it away. Sigh. He's supposed to call Heather this week sometime to make arrangements to sign papers and so forth. But while the car was in the shop being inspected another prospective buyer came along and offered him a couple hundred more bucks than the asking price for the car, which he nobly refused, since Heather and I have first dibs. But, while the guy we dealt with yesterday seems quite honorable, it's not his car, and we're a bit worried his sister/cousin/friend whatever will say "Screw 'em, sell it to the highest bidder!" We shall see, I suppose.

We did wind up having lunch at a little Hawai'ian place -- Kalua pig, one scoop macaroni salad, two scoops rice! -- so that was pretty awesome. Also I had beer. And we sat near some trees and read for a while. Still, not the ideal way to spend a Saturday. Today, I hope, will be more weekendish.