Wow, that was a ride! In the beginning I only wanted to try reading a Kindle book, and then I got stuck... But one after the other:

Kristian Köhntopp mentioned having read three books per Kindle and since the descriptions sounded interesting and the price was not worth debating I finally downloaded a Kindle software reader for OS X and ordered the three books he mentioned. Twelve days and three more books later I swore to myself to take a break from reading. So be warned: Depending on your preferences this might be dangerous stuff...

I started with Richard Phillips' "Rho Agenda", which is a trilogy. You have heard of the so-called Roswell incident, the UFO that allegedly crashed there and was taken to Area 51? Well, that was a hoax of course, but it helped covering up the real UFO crash a few years later. What none of the scientists working on that Rho ship knows: A second ship had crashed, in both cases the result of a battle both ships had. This second ship is found by three teenagers, who start exploring it.

Both ships are damaged, but at least partially functional. Both ships each have their own agenda and start influencing the people studying them. You get a vague glimpse of that agenda in "Immune", the second book, but still nothing clear. So now I am waiting for part three, "Wormhole", which is currently in the publisher's hands...

Since I went through these two like a hot knife through butter, taking on the third book right away was a logical step. "Out of the Black " by Lee Doty is different from everything I have read before. It is indeed the strange mix of science fiction, crime and magic that Isotopp mentioned. Right at the beginning you will encounter a vampire (at least so it seems) crashing onto a road and transferring his spirit to an innocent overweight orderly woman.

Soon after that I got a first taste of science fiction when the first "gadgets" are mentioned. Lo and behold: They are all very plausible, logical even! There is no technology that would be centuries away, no emergency measure like beaming in Star Trek etc. The novel is divided into three large sections called "books", and it is only in book three that things finally fall into place. Don't worry, you will not get bored on the way there...

While I was still heading towards the end of "Out of the Black", a friend mentioned reading "The Hunger Games " by Suzanne Collins and got me hooked. Before she had finished even the first book of that trilogy, I was done with all three of them. The scenario is not exactly improbable: After devastating wars, all that is left of the US is something called "Panem" - thirteen (or then rather twelve) so-called "districts", ruled by the "Capitol".

Each district is specialized in providing certain products for the Capitol. District 11 is agricultural, district 12 provides coal... People living in the districts are mostly very poor, even those considered "wealthy" by district standards. Capitol is the absolute opposite, which lead to an uprising of the districts about 75 years ago. Capitol could extinguish that rebellion and as a reminder of its power the Capitol forces the districts to draw two "tributes" each year, a girl and a boy between 12 and 18, in a lottery on "Reaper Day".

The children are sent to an "arena" and have to fight one another until only one is still alive - with all of it being televised. This is an exciting show for the people in Capitol, where children do of course not need to participate in the lottery. Katniss Everdeen, a girl of 16 from district 12 is about to unwillingly set changes into motion when she steps in to take the place of her younger sister, who had been drawn.

After the exciting first book, the second came in pretty dark, and the third brought a few surprises again. As I said: Six books in twelve days. Dangerous stuff. You have been warned.