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Dead Spots - Melissa F. Olson. Scarlett Bernard is a null: paranormal things cease to work around her. Magic doesn't work, vampires become human, werewolves in wolf form snap back to human, etc. She scrapes out a living in LA using this power as a crime scene clean-up person, keeping humans ignorant of supernatural stuff, mostly for the head vamp in town. She has a perky vampire roommate who keeps Scarlett around in order to age & go out in the daytime with Scarlett in tow. When Scarlett goes to the werewolf bar, some of the regulars find her presence really peaceful (there's one guy in particular who hates being a werewolf), & others find her disturbing.

This concept, of being a null, is pretty much the only interesting thing about this book, & in itself, wasn't enough to save it for me or get me interested in reading the sequel. Things I didn't like: a v. laborious explanation of why paranormal things exist (evolutionary lines & choices & blah blah). It was tiresome, not the sort of thing I want to know particularly about in worldbuilding, & also -- it was delivered tediously infodump style because Scarlett ends up (of course) working with a cop, reluctantly, & ends up having to explain things to him.

The cop, by the way, is Latino & there are a few moments where his skin gets described as caramel, etc. & okay, something else typical in paranormals -- the love triangle: Scarlett & Jesse, the cop, & Eli, the werewolf who hates being a werewolf. I guess I don't always hate love triangles (Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville books have one early on, though it's resolved quickly -- why does no one ever write polyamory as the answer, btw?), & at least it wasn't the crappy "you have to choose between these two werewolves b/c you're tearing the pack apart, you heinous woman you" (Patricia Briggs, I am looking at you) thing. Anyway, Scarlett's fretting about her romantic problems wasn't persuasive; who she might end up choosing wasn't engaging to me in any way.

Olson does manage to infuse parts of the book w/genuine tension -- I did want to see how Scarlett would get out of some things, even if afterwards I didn't really care to see what happened next to her. The v. ending of the book has Scarlett running into someone who was once v. important to her, thought to be dead, returned as a vampire. Of course. I didn't know whether to throw the book or yawn.

Stylistically, the book is split between first-person Scarlett chapters & third-person Jesse chapters, & that didn't work for me at all; I'm generally fine w/multiple narrators, but I think when first- and third-person are mixed, it just throws me.

Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires: Planning in Central and Southeastern Europe - Edited by Emily Gunzburger Makaš and Tanja Damljanović Conley. I read this book over a period of about six months. The bulk of the chapters each cover a central or southeastern Europe capital post-Ottoman & post-Hapsburg Empires.

There were many commonalities -- how these cities struggled to elucidate a native architecture, a way to show that they were a distinct nation, civilized enough to be in charge of itself, shucking off the architectural & cultural influences of their imperial masters. For example, post-Hapsburg, architects from Austria or Germany, or even local architects that had trained in those places, were often rejected in a patriotic fervor for the local. In Budapest, after a competition to design a bridge, the winning entry (by a German firm) was discarded because the design required items that could not currently be manufactured in Hungary. Many of these cities were capitals of countries that were not ethnically homogenous, of course, & what cultures were allowed to be represented, & how, often echoed long-standing tensions (& foreshadowed future conflicts, e.g. the breakup of Yugoslavia).

I am familiar with how planning & architecture can shape the emotional tenor of a space, as well as its accessibility, safety, & sociability -- contrast the regulation of something like Le Corbusier's towers in the park / Radiant City, or the links between modernist architecture & totalitarian political parties, w/the smaller, more human-scale, less controlled atmosphere of a place that has Jane Jacobs' "eyes on the street". But I hadn't ever looked at how architecture & city planning -- at both the levels of individual buildings & whole streets & neighborhoods -- could be used to shape messages about nationality: strength, culture, who belongs & who doesn't: whose heroes get street names, get statues. It's fascinating & a little terrifying.

I said this book took me forever to read, & it did, but through no fault of its own: it's pretty readable, as the structure -- brief chapters about each city -- lends itself well to reading in bits & pieces.
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