Blood Brothers, by Brian Lumley

I finally decided to buy a use copy of Brian Lumley's Blood Brothers, which seems to have gone out of print (as far as I can see, none of the other books in the series are). This is the first volume of the Vampire World Trilogy, which chronicles the story of Harry Keogh's twin suns, Nathan and Nestor, in the alternate universe where the vampire menace was spawned.

Both boys take after their father. Unfortunately, Nestor seems to have all of his father's worst qualities and ends up becoming Wamphyri. Nathan's a much better sort and goes around befriending people and learning. I like the characters. I like the plot (it has lots of action). I like the opening, despite its flaws.

The opening is a recap of past events, a mini-biography of Shaitan (the first vampire), and a history of how a vampire colony was founded across the desert from the inhabited parts of the vampire world. Normally, putting that kind of stuff at the beginning of a book would annoy me, but it was so well written that I didn't care.

This is probably the best book in the Necroscope series, except for the original. I give Blood Brothers a full five yo-yos.

The Coming of Bill, by P. G. Wodehouse

One of things I really like about LibraryThing is that it enabled me to discover that there was an Overlook Press edition of a P. G. Wodehouse novel I didn't already own: The Coming of Bill. It's not his best book, but it isn't his worst by any means.

It's very different from his usual style. The back cover describes it as "The nearest Wodehouse ever came to writing a serious story," which is essentially true. Two characters die in the story. A couple gets together, gets married, has a baby, nearly gets divorced, and the gets back together again. In many ways, it's a sort of social commentary.

That's not to say that it isn't funny, because it is funny. There were several places where I laughed out loud. There are several of Wodehouse's standard character types: a butler (in this case Keggs who appeared in several other Wodehouse books), a meddling aunt, a boxer, and a business tycoon. This book has much to recommend it.

It's not quite as funny as some of Wodehouse's better known works, but it still is funny. The story is more serious than is typical for Wodehouse, but not detrimentally so. Really, The Coming of Bill deserves four and a halfyo-yos.

Old Man Crow, by Charles de Lint

I've always been a fan of Charles de Lint's books. Unfortunately, a lot of his stuff has (so far) only been released by smaller presses (largely Subterranean Press), which charge way more than the larger publishers. This makes it difficult for poor people like me to get ahold of them. Still, I got a decent sized refund from the IRS and used some of it to get the relatively inexpensive ($18) Old Man Crow.

It's a great story. It's about one of the animal people, who was a crow dreaming that he's a man, but has become a man who dreams that he's a crow. It's a great story. Sadly, it's only 32 pages long.

Normally I'd give a story I liked this much a five, but I think $18 is way too much to pay for a 32 page book even if it is a limited edition by one of my favorite writers. So, I'm only giving it four yo-yos.