Book #43 was Darksong Rising, the third book in L.E. Modesitt’s Spellsong Cycle series. The back of the book reads:

In The Soprano Sorceress, Anna Marshall wished she could be anywhere but Iowa, wished she could be anything but a singer and music teacher–and found herself pulled from Iowa to the world of Erde, a world where song is magic. And Anna’s musical ability gave her the potential to be an enormously powerful sorceress. For the first time, Anna was in complete control of her own life–and she made the most of it. With her musical talent and training, her common sense, and her integrity, Anna became a magician and saved the kingdom of Defalk from invasion, and within six months she became its regent.

In The Spellsong War, Anna faced the harsh reality of rebuilding Defalk, ravaged by years of drought and war. But she wasn’t given the time: knowing Defalk’s weakened state, its southern neighbors invaded. In the realpolitik atmosphere on Erde, Anna needed to demonstrate that she would not allow Defalk’s greedy neighbors to seize the kingdom. And since the male rulers of most of Erde were still convinced that women were weak, her demonstration was doubly strong.

Now in Darksong Rising, Anna faces enemies both foreign and domestic: men who would destroy her and claim Defalk for their own. To the East, Bertmynn, Lord of Dolov, seeks to gain control of all of Ebra by crushing the revolt of the FreeWomen of Elahwa, in order to bring the full might of all of Ebra against Defalk. To the West, Rabyn, theProphet of Music and ruler of Neserea, waits for the first opportunity to invade Defalk with a force of lancers that outnumbers Anna’s ten to one. And at home, Anna must decide whether to support the ascension of a conniving lord–rightful heir to the throne by birth, but potentially devastating for his subjects–or face civil war. The solutions to all these problems are magical, but not easy, not even for the mighty Anna, who has learned that magic has a high cost, and ruling means winning over and over, day by day.

This was pretty good. I was surprised how easily I was able to fall back into the series, because it’s been several years since I read the first two. I haven’t been reading much fantasy, so this was a nice change of pace.

Book count: 43
Pages in book: 512
Page count: 16,987
Words in book: 165,677
Word count: 4,844,348

Book #44 was Turning Angel, by Greg Iles. The back of the book reads:

Turning Angel marks the long-awaited return of Penn Cage, the lawyer hero of The Quiet Game, and introduces Drew Elliott, the highly respected doctor who saved Penn’s life in a hiking accident when they were boys. As two of the most prominent citizens of Natchez, Drew and Penn sit on the school board of their alma mater, St. Stephen’s Prep. When the nude body of a young female student is found near the Mississippi River, the entire community is shocked — but no one more than Penn, who discovers that his best friend was entangled in a passionate relationship with the girl and may be accused of her murder.

On the surface, Kate Townsend seems the most unlikely murder victim imaginable. A star student and athlete, she’d been accepted to Harvard and carried the hope and pride of the town on her shoulders. But like her school and her town, Kate also had a secret life — one about which her adult lover knew little. When Drew begs Penn to defend him, Penn allows his sense of obligation to override his instinct and agrees. Yet before he can begin, both men are drawn into a dangerous web of blackmail and violence. Drew reacts like anything but an innocent man, and Penn finds himself doubting his friend’s motives and searching for a path out of harm’s way.

More dangerous yet is Shad Johnson, the black district attorney whose dream is to send a rich white man to death row in Mississippi. At Shad’s order, Drew is jailed, the police cease hunting Kate’s killer, and Penn realizes that only by finding Kate’s murderer himself can he save his friend’s life.

With his daughter’s babysitter as his guide, Penn penetrates the secret world of St. Stephen’s,a place that parents never see, where reality veers so radically from appearance that Penn risks losing his own moral compass. St. Stephen’s is a dark mirror of the adult world, one populated by steroid-crazed jocks, girls desperate for attention, jaded teens flirting with nihilism, and hidden among them all — one true psychopath. It is Penn’s journey into the heart of his alma mater that gives Turning Angel its hypnotic power, for on that journey he finds that the intersection of the adult and nearly adult worlds is a dangerous place indeed. By the time Penn arrives at the shattering truth behind Kate Townsend’s death, his quiet Southern town will never be the same.

This book is kind of a sequel to The Quiet Game, which I’m not sure I’ve read. If I have, I need to read it again, because I didn’t remember any of it. Anyway, this was great, and it wasn’t necessary to have read the first book to enjoy it.

Book count: 44
Pages in book: 512
Page count: 17,499
Words in book: 175,091
Word count: 5,019,439

Book #45 was Eveless Eden, by Marianne Wiggins. The back of the book reads:

Eveless Eden tells the story of a passionate love affair between a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper and the tough, sexy, talented photographer he meets at the site of an ecological disaster in Africa. Noah swings between disillusion and romanticism, cynicism and faith, despair and hope, as he and Lilith pursue their adventure in Paris, London, at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and through the scandal of AIDS tainted blood in the orphanages of Nicolai Ceausescu’s Romania. Lilith’s fateful attraction to danger makes her vulnerable to the seductive appeal of a mysterious Romanian, Adam Pentru, a man of evil genius, Minister of Trade in the Ceausescu government and a spy for the British. When Adam enters the picture, the story darkens and narrative suspense mounts, as Noah struggles to piece together a story more horrifying than any he has ever covered. Eveless Eden offers a sweeping vision of individual, political, and global evil in the modern world.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like this book. I received it as a gift, and it’s not something I normally would have purchases. However, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. It had its own distinct writing style, and though the book ends very abruptly, it fits.

Book count: 45
Pages in book: 352
Page count: 17,851
Words in book: 116,192
Word count: 5,136,631

1,000,000 words surpassed — 2/2/06
2,000,000 words surpassed — 2/14/06
10,000 pages surpassed — 3/10/06
3,000,000 words surpassed — 3/16/06
4,000,000 words surpassed — 4/3/06

5,000,000 words surpassed — 5/30/06