Relentless Inquiry

It's been mostly non-fiction, re-reading old sf classics, or 'no time to read' lately, but notwithstanding:

The Good, the Bad, and the Undead; Kim Harrison
Kind of like very early Laurell K Hamilton, which will perk up some of you and scare some of you off right away. Some forms of character interaction could be lifted right out of LKH, but to be fair they may exist in 'most every novel that features a young woman PI: the hard-boiled older cop who is her liason into the PD, the female friends who are iffy on her career choice, etc.

Some interesting pseudo-science underlayment, with vamps, weres, witches, and the like being separately DNA'd races who were basically living in concealment until a bio-warfare plague escaped from the lab and took out a huge chunk of the human race. When nonhumans started to be the subject of inquiries into 'hey, why are you not sick/dying?!' they realized that for the first time in their remembered history they actually weren't outnumbered, so they went public and made humanity deal with them.

I stayed up way too late reading this, partly because it was good and partly as a juvenile act of rebellion against all the stuff I should be doing instead. I'll probably look for the prequel, “Dead Witch Walking” and whatever sequels come out.

A Woman of the Iron People; Eleanor Arnason
Found on my library's New Books shelf, but while digging for the author's name, which I'd forgotten, turns out it is a reprint of two novellas originally published separately. I liked it. Interesting and rich culture on the planet, and entertainingly developed (and plausible!) rich culture of the humans who encounter it. The starfarers seem to come from a future earth where the USA collapsed as a world power, and the civilized culture is a mix of Chinese and Eastern European, with collectivist/socialist overtones (not in a fascistic way, more in a 'the community is more important than the individual' way). I got a real LOL out of one character who was a 'California aborigine', a tanned, blond individual from a 'deeply spiritual' tribe, the San Bernadinos. Also good stuff with the planet inhabitants on biological determinism and society. I recommend this book!