Outlander

My girlfriends have been talking about this for years and I finally decided to take the plunge.  I first got to know Gabaldon when I worked in a bookstore as a teenager and they never knew where to put her books, so they usually ended up in the romance section, even though I wouldn't put them in that category either.  So I think I had judged the storyline before even reading it.  But I swept through the book, and it's not a short book, and she has like 5 or 6 more books that I will likely pick up over time.  But it's a smart and compelling story, and the time travel aspects are totally awesome.  Some of the attraction definitely is the love story between the main characters, but that is done just as well and with a lot of depth, but full of tension and sexuality.  That said however, if scenes with sex in them bother you, don't pick this up.  It surpassed my expectations though and I gave it 4 stars.

The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara Trilogy

I hadn't picked up any of Brooks' Shannara series for a while, deeming it better to get a break in between rather than get wrapped up in how similar they can be sometimes.  But this was yet another great trilogy, and the unique things he does throw in are always fantastic.  This really tied quite a bit more into the previous time (i.e. our future) that was destroyed before magic came back into the world, and it was fun to have that mix of science and magic.  Not to mention the dangers of AI.  Fun reads and I gave the books (Isle Witch, Antrax, and Morgawr) 3 stars, 4 stars, and 3 stars respectively.