Dear Author » demons

REVIEW: The Darkest Seduction by Gena Showalter

DA_January — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:00:36 +0000

Dear Ms. Showalter,

I like some of your books more than others. I freely admit this. While The Darkest Surrender worked very well for me, and I really enjoyed the novella in The Heart of Darkness as well. The harpies as heroines just seem to work. I was going to pass on The Darkest Seduction as I really didn’t care much about Paris, but I was searching for something to read and this one had scores of gushing reviews. I’m sad to say that this book probably works best for fans that have followed the entire series, as I had no emotional investment in most of the plot and found the hero and heroine bland.

The Darkest Seduction is the story of Paris and Sienna, a pairing that has been teased for quite a few books. Paris is the keeper of promiscuity, aka sex. He must have sex with a different woman every night to appease his demon. He cannot sleep with the same woman twice. Sienna is a human woman who was previously a hunter. Now she is dead and has been bound with the demon of Wrath, and exists on the Realm of Blood and Shadows as a sort of ghost who can destroy when Wrath is upon her. Sienna has been held prisoner by Cronus, who is some bad guy that hates the Lords of the Underworld. For some reason, Paris is obsessed with finding Sienna and he must travel to the underworld to find her, because his demon wants her again.

My biggest problem with this book is that I had no idea what was going on for very large chunks of it. The books I’ve read in the series didn’t deal too much with this plot, or if they did, I’d forgotten a lot of it. I knew Paris was searching for Sienna but that was about it. Sadly, this book is for the fans that have followed the entire series. There wasn’t a lot of explaining. Why was Paris so in love with Sienna? Why was his demon interested in her after he’d already had sex with her before? Why was Cronus holding Sienna hostage? Who were the horsemen? What is the Realm of Blood and Shadows? Why can Sienna kill people when Wrath takes over but no one can see her? These things are not explained in the story. It’s assumed the reader has been following along and knows what is going on. That made getting through the first half of this book a huge chore. It picks up in the second half, but by that point, I had to just go with the flow and knew that things were not going to be spelled out.

Sienna and Paris have some good chemistry together, but I kept wishing more was explained. Why are they so in love? There’s no soulmate bond, but from the moment they reunite in this book, they’re crazy in love for each other.

He cupped her jaw, forcing her to peer up at him rather than scanning her surroundings for a hiding place. As if he would ever hide from an enemy and leave a female to fight for him. “What’s coming? Talk to me, baby.” He knew she wasn’t too ken on endearments from him – at least she hadn’t been before- but then, he’d never called another woman his baby. Only sweetheart and honey, meaningless words like that, and never with such a note of affection.

I don’t understand why ‘baby’ is more meaningful than sweetheart or honey. Any woman could be called baby. Any number of spouses call their husbands/wives ‘baby’. This moment fell flat for me, and it was one of several.

I kept waiting for the book to explain what made Sienna different from the thousands and thousands of women that Paris had bedded before, but it wasn’t truly explained to my satisfaction. Sienna’s personality is fairly weak compared to the harpies from the other books. She doesn’t know why Paris loves her, doesn’t have any special skills, and is described as plain. She’s not confident. She’s not strong or powerful. She’s not funny. She’s just sort of there. I kept hoping for some deeper emotional connection but it never truly struck me. I don’t know if it’s the fault of the book as much as me not being familiar with the entire series.

I did think the sex between them was sexy enough, and they had some sweet moments together. The methods that Paris takes to be able to see Sienna (who is a ghost) was very interesting to me, so I have to give kudos for a different spin on that.

While Paris was a moody hero and Sienna kind of bland, the supporting cast added a lot of amusing moments that made up for things. I found Viola, the keeper of Narcissism, rather entertaining. The storyline with Galen and Legion was interesting and I do wonder if they will have their own book. I found William irritating, but he did have some funny moments.

“Nice to know you’ve considered my sex life,” [Paris] grumbled.

“Hasn’t everyone?”

“Screw you.”

“Again, hasn’t everyone?”

The end of the book starts to pull all the plot pieces together and it felt decently big. Again, I feel like it would have been more epic if I had followed the other books, so I can’t fault the author for this. For fans of the other books, there’s a lot of visits from other Lords who have settled down with their women, and those characters play a part as well. The ending took me by surprise and I felt it was a big ending, and a big turn for the series, and I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

You have some great ideas in your books, but I always feel as if the execution is not enough. Like the ideas are bigger than life, but they don’t come across that way on paper, and I end up disappointed. I do think you do a great, funny ensemble and when your writing is lighthearted, it’s great. I’m not sure ‘dark’ is one of the strengths of your repetoire, however. Overall, I think this is a book that fans of the series will really enjoy, but casual readers will probably want to read the other books in the series first. If I’d read more books in the series, I’d give this a B. As it is, I’m going to have to be cruel and give it a C. Readable, but not a favorite.

All best,

January

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REVIEW: Skirmish by Michelle West

Jia — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:00:02 +0000

Dear Ms. West,

I love your books. Whether it’s under this pseudonym or Michelle Sagara, I make sure to read them all. It’s true that I find some more satisfying than others but I’ve never actually regretted picking any of them up. Given my growing disenchantment with the fantasy genre as a whole, this is a major point in your favor. So thank you for offering an early look at your latest fantasy novel. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get to it sooner and it in no way reflects upon the book or your writing. It’s all on me.

Skirmish is the fourth novel in the House War series, which follows the adventures of Jewel Markess ATerafin, a young woman who spent her early years living in the poorest slums of the capital before being adopted into the most powerful noble house of the empire. You see, Jewel is a seer and at the age of fifteen, she helped avert a demonic invasion. Her ability makes her very valuable.

The first three novels of this series cover Jewel’s life before she was adopted into House Terafin. This novel jumps forward in time to when Jewel is an adult and is a member of the House Council. She has just returned from the Southern kingdom of Annagar and the war that is reaching its climax there. (That story is covered in a previous 6-book series, The Sun Sword, which I highly recommend.) The Terafin’s leader has just been assassinated by demons, casting the house into chaos. In this world, house leadership is not hereditary. The leader earns it — by political savvy, by forming allies, and yes, by murder.

The Terafin was one of the most important people in Jewel’s life. But she also knows what her dead mentor wanted: for Jewel take up the title of Terafin and become the next leader of the House. The only reason why no one else knows this is because the last heir the Terafin chose was assassinated and Jewel is far too valuable to be put in danger like that.

But Jewel doesn’t want to think about games of power and the responsibility of leadership. She just wants three days to bury and mourn for the woman she respected most. Unfortunately, that luxury may not exist. If demons were responsible for the Terafin’s death, then that means others must be around. More importantly, Jewel’s power and abilities have begun to awaken, affecting the lands within Terafin property and beyond.

Given that not only is this the fourth book of a series, which in turn is connected to other series, this is absolutely not the best place to start for a new reader. I wish I could say otherwise, considering how weary of series people can be but I would hate for a reader to pick this up and think it’d work well without any context. It won’t. Along those lines, I’m also not completely sure someone who hasn’t read the Sun Sword series will pick up some of the nuances in this one. So this is a major caveat for new and unfamiliar readers.

All that said, however, I really enjoyed this book. I’ve been waiting a long time to see what happens after the events covered by The Sun Sword and finally, we have it. This is a very political book. While there are clashes with demons, longtime readers know that knock ‘em and drag ‘em out fights never figure prominently in your books. But even though I love fight scenes, I also love political intrigue. I can see readers who don’t care for that subgenre not being so thrilled with it, but it was very satisfying for me. I especially liked learning more about Haval and his past with Duvari. It makes me even more curious about Jarven. I found all those interactions extremely interesting.

A good chunk of the book is spent exploring the limits of Jewel’s abilities which, as we discover, extend far beyond precognition. It was very fantastical and as a reader who’s getting a little bored with the GRRM brand of gritty, “realistic” fantasy, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I do like a little — or a lot — of magic in my fantasy from time to time and I thought this filled a lack I hadn’t realized I’d been feeling. In addition, the talking cats (a staple of science fiction and fantasy) were hilarious.

I know the book covers a relatively short time period so there probably wasn’t room for it, but I would have liked to see Jewel interact more with the people who had officially declared for the seat. She interacts with Marrick at the end but not so much with the others. This goes back to what I was saying earlier: longtime readers will be familiar with the pre-existing relationships but new readers, or even readers who’ve only read this series and not Sun Sword, will not fully grasp the bad blood involving Rymark and Harraed.

A surprising thing I liked was the relationship between Jewel and Angel. I’d never really gotten a handle on Angel in previous novels and only began to understand him in this series. In Skirmish, we really see his devotion to Jewel and his utter disregard for anything not related to her.

In many ways, this is a book about grief. In the end, the dead don’t care about the actions of the living. They’re dead. How can they care? It’s a loss of innocence for Jewel in many ways but it’s also an important lesson for her to learn, especially if she’s to succeed in gaining control of the House.

I feel like this review is short for a book in which I thought a quite a bit happened, but on the other hand, there’s a lot of spoilers involved too and those events should be uncovered on their own. I admit that after the last book, I was growing impatient for us to move along already and I think many other readers felt the same way. I like to think they’ll be as pleased with this installment as I am. I’m glad we’re back in the present, no longer expanding on the past, and I hope we get to see serious struggles for House control in the next book. B+

My regards,
Jia

Previous books in this series: The Hidden City, City of Night, House Name (review)

REVIEW: The Fallen Queen by Jane Kindred

Jia — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:00:40 +0000

Dear Ms. Kindred,

A few months ago, I read your Carina Press novella, The Devil’s Garden, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It reminded me somewhat of a cross between Storm Constantine and Jacqueline Carey, which I thought was a good and interesting mix. I also liked that your characters fell outside the usual gender binary and heteronormative boundaries so when I heard you had a full-length novel coming out, I made sure to put it on my list. And even though I was less than enthused when I saw the cover (to say the least), I decided to follow the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” This is definitely one of those cases.

The Fallen Queen tells the story of Anazakia Helisonova, the bored daughter of the ruling imperial family of heaven. As should come as no surprise, Anazakia finds the trappings and social airs of royalty boring. She’d rather spend her time in heaven’s equivalent to slums where she gambles away her riches. It’s here that she meets a demon named Belphagor who takes her for all she’s worth.

But the loss of her valuables takes an immediate backseat when disaster strikes. On that very night, her family’s rule over heaven is usurped. Even worse, her family is massacred by someone they trusted. It’s only through a bit of magic, and trickery that Anazakia is alive. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like she’ll stay that way for long, especially once her family’s assassins realize she’s still alive.

If readers are having some deja vu, there’s a reason for that. Anazakia’s story mirrors the story of Russia’s Anastasia Nikolaevna. And this isn’t some veiled reference; they’re explicitly linked in the novel. The Fallen Queen is essentially epic fantasy set in modern day Russia. I found this interesting because you normally don’t see fantasy that does this. There’s epic fantasy set in secondary fantasy worlds. There’s urban fantasy set on modern-day earth. We do occasionally see portal fantasies where people from modern day Earth go into a fantasy land or urban fantasies where the city setting is a secondary, constructed one, but I don’t think I’ve seen this particular mix in a long time. I found it refreshing and I suspect readers with a stronger background in Russian culture would get more out of it than I did. I don’t think a lack of knowledge will hinder comprehension, but I think some would enrich the reading experience.

I liked that Anazakia matures throughout the book. It is in many ways a coming of age story. She starts off as a clueless noble who had no idea of the turmoil surrounding her father’s rule. Yes, it’s true that ignorance is a sign of immense privilege but at the same time I do sympathize because if you’re wrapped in a coccoon, how could you possibly know what’s going on outside your immediate sphere? But as the story unfolds, she learns about the world and how both her own and her family’s actions lead to her current circumstances.

I’m pretty ambivalent about Anazakia’s relationship with the two demons, Belphagor and Vasily. I liked that it didn’t simplify the complicated nuances and that the relationship between Belphagor and Vasily didn’t get shunted aside once Anazakia came into the picture. Given The Devil’s Garden, I expected a varied presentation of sexualities and we got that, which was good. On the other hand, I did find the one character announcing that he was asexual to be somewhat out of the blue. Maybe if there’d been more build-up or actual on-page hints that he thought Anazakia was interested in him, I wouldn’t have that impression. It just seemed like it was thrown in there for the sake of including an asexual character.

On the other hand, despite Anazakia’s maturation as a character, I found her to be reactive rather than proactive for a good portion of the book. I realize that’s to be expected given that she’s on the run from assassins but I did find that her choices and actions to be overshadowed by Belphagor somewhat.

I normally don’t care for stories involving angels but I did like this take on it. The introductory notes on the worldbuilding were overwhelming and I quickly forgot them once I started reading, but the presentation was easy to pick up within context for me and I liked how some of the angels — particularly the ones sent after Anazaki and the guys — were depicted. They captured the idea of angels that were awesome and terrible in their beauty and power.

I do wish I’d gotten a better handle on the antagonist. Even at the end, she strikes me as being evil for the sake of being evil. That’s okay for some stories but since so much else of the novel has nuance, the villain definitely stands out as being two-dimensional by comparison. She’s power-hungry, murderous, and brainwashes people. I’m not asking for her to redeemed or anything, especially after everything she did, but maybe a little quality to make her less 2D.

In the end, I found The Fallen Queen to be an enjoyable read. It’s a fresh take on the hidden heir trying to recover the stolen throne despite all the references and historical events it bases itself on. I’m looking forward to the next installment. I just hope it gets a better cover. B

My regards,
Jia

REVIEW: Devilishly Hot by Kathy Love

Jayne — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:00:29 +0000

Annie Lou Riddle had a plan: Move to New York City. Break into the fashion industry. Work her way to the top. Nowhere in that scenario did she expect to accidentally sell her soul in exchange for a job at Hot! Magazine. Oops. Demons, it seems, aren’t big on letting mortals off the hook. Now Annie is stuck working as assistant/personal slave to Finola White – diva extraordinaire, and glamorous she-devil. Whatever Finola wants, she gets, and she wants Annie to match her up with Nick Rossi, the gorgeous detective investigating shady doings at Hot! Frankly, Annie sees the appeal. Nick is effortlessly sexy, rugged, charming – and the one man Annie should definitely not be flirting with, or kissing, or…Oops. But some loves are too devilishly hot to resist…

Dear Ms. Love,

So I guess this book is supposed to literally be “The Devil Wears Prada” or perhaps the more accurate “The Demon Wears Prada” since Finola, though a powerful demon, isn’t actually the devil. I’ve never read that book but after watching the documentary “The September Issue” I have some idea where it comes from and what you based your book on. It might sound strange but I’m glad that all the demon characters are evil and not about to be saved. The thought of demonic heroes or heroines makes me slightly uncomfortable. Even Tristan’s actions to help save Nick from Finola are more to keep their mission on track than due to any kindness from him. And Finola conveys the “it’s all about me and what do I care about anyone else – oops there goes another soulless assistant” I’d expect from her.

Annie Lou Riddle? Could the name be any more of a stereotype of Southerners? Also the cover, though cute, reminds me too much of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” I found it strange that the newspaper articles which Annie reads about Nick would mention him so much by name and be so detailed that she’d get an idea of his almost breakdown following the murder investigation he headed. Maybe that’s an unjust niggle on my part but I wondered about that for far too much time.

So Annie signed the contract for the job. Sorry but the fact that she knew what was entailed makes Annie sound like a moron. If she’d been tricked into it or hadn’t read the fine print until after she signed it would be easier for me to swallow but honestly, signing your soul away for a job in the fashion industry? It’s not like she was doing what Nick tried to do and offer his soul to save hers. Okay, okay if she hadn’t then there would go the book plot but the set up didn’t wow me or make me as sympathetic to her as I probably should have been.

Her relationship with long time boyfriend Bobby also makes her look like a pushover marshmallow. Yeah, he does have some easy lies that could be true but wake up and smell the java, Annie. Though it does make their ultimate breakup quicker and take less page space. But did Bobby never once in three years question Annie’s job or how long her hours were or the stress she was under? Even he’s not that much of an idiot. And would it have taken the NYPD 3 years to start investigating the disappearance of all those workers from HOT! magazine? This strains belief. Ditto that Nick appears to the only officer working on this case.

The conclusion of Annie’s contract and her freedom from Finola is too easy. Most of the book is spent worrying about how Annie can possibly escape her fate since she read the fine print then BAM! it’s over. I won’t go into more but I just don’t see the humans’ threats as working against Finola. Her Master’s threats yes but not Nick’s.

This is a quick read. Easy, with enjoyable moments but I think ultimately also fairly easy to forget about. Perhaps I just didn’t get into the whole paranormal spirit of the thing. I get the idea that this is the start of a series but I’m not interested enough to keep going with it. C-

~Jayne

REVIEW: Demon Lover by Juliet Dark

lazaraspaste — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:00:03 +0000

Dear Ms. Dark,

This was an especially difficult book to grade. After much reflection, I have decided to recommend it because of the strength of the prose and what, I believe, are the very engaging middle sections of the book. However, despite the fact that Ballantine is billing this book as a paranormal romance, I think that this marketing is somewhat misleading. Although, the book plays with the tropes of both the gothic romance and the PNR, the structure of the novel is probably more akin to both literary fiction and fantasy than either of those latter genres.

Cailleach McFay, newly minted PhD, is on the job market. Her one cherished dream is to get a position at her undergraduate alma mater, NYU so that she can continue to live in New York City. Like many New Yorkers, Callie is convinced that there are still only 13 states in the Union and that New York City is at the center of both the nation and the universe. However, she decides to interview with Fairwick College in upstate New York anyway. After all, there are no guarantees when it comes to academic jobs. Fairwick is a small college town whose golden age passed with the shipping barons of the late 19^th century. Now, the town is a little seedy and quite economically depressed with its past glories only visible in the grand old houses that line the streets. It is one of these houses, resting at the edges of a national forest, that convinces Callie to take the job. A grand Victorian, the home was once owned by Dahlia LaMotte, the gothic novelist but now stands empty having failed to sale several times since the death of LaMotte’s niece. From the moment Callie walks by it, the house seems to call to her, seducing her.

Such a pretty house to be deserted, I thought. The breeze sighed through the woods as if agreeing. As I got close I saw the vergeboard trim along the pointed eaves was beautifully carved with vines and trumpet-shaped flowers. Above the doorway in the pediment was a wood carving of a man’s face, a pagan god of the forest, I thought, from the pinecone wreath resting on his abundant flowing hair. I’d seen a face like it somewhere before . . . perhaps in a book on forest deities . . . The same face appeared in the stained-glass fanlight above the front door.

Startled, I realized I’d come all the way up the steps and was standing at the front door, my hand resting on the bronze door knocker, which was carved in the shape of an antlered buck. What was I thinking? Even if no one lived here it was still private property.

When Callie discovers that whoever buys the house will have exclusive access to all of Dahlia LaMotte’s papers, her decision is made. A beautiful Victorian mansion with a library and the papers of a dead novelist is a wet dream of mine, so I understood the selling point of this.

It isn’t before long that Callie discovers that Fairwick isn’t what it seems. The college is populated with stranger than usual professors, odd exchange students, and many secrets. Her house, too, is strange—as strange as the manors that populate LaMotte’s novels. It is supposedly haunted by an incubus—the very demon lover that she wrote about in her dissertation, and it is rumored that this demon was who inspired Dahlia LaMotte’s more lurid writing. It isn’t long before Callie begins to believe that the tales are true and when she begins to experience intense and very sexual dreams, the reality of both her teaching and her long distance boyfriend seem to diminish. But these aren’t the only dreams Callie experiences. She also begins to dream about a line of people fleeing their country and a man on horseback, a man she knows that her dream self is in love with. The more Callie allows the dreams of the shadow man to take over her life, the more real he seems to become. And the more real he seems to become, the more her feelings begin to morph into love. But is it possible to fall in love with a demon? A love talker, who does nothing but seduce you with sex? At one point Callie says to him, “You’ve got a lot to learn about women, pal. There’s more to love than being good in the sack.” This love plot is complicated by the other threads of the narrative which include: the mystery of the town and the college, a mystery involving a cursed student, and a mystery involving Callie’s own family history. The way in which these plots are intertwined and resolved is part of the pleasure of reading this book. I don’t want to go into too much detail about them because I don’t want to give too much away.

What I’d like to discuss in this review, instead, is what I believe might be the frustrating or difficult aspects of the book for romance readers. And also talk about my own reading experience of this book. I will try to do this without revealing any spoilers. This review, then, is going to be a little different. I’m going to give as many textual examples as I can so you can see what I mean.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like this book when I started reading it. Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure I liked this book when I finished it. But I kept thinking about it. And it certainly had a very strong emotional effect on me. The love story in it was disturbing and dark—which I liked. Perhaps I identified with it more than I ought to admit publically. Part of the reason I think this book was difficult was because it doesn’t adhere to the expected genre progression. The way the plot plays out is very different than what I’ve become used to as a romance reader. I had to constantly re-adjust my expectations, recognize that the book was not going to be like other romances.

I think, too, that the heroine, Callie can be a sometimes difficult character to sympathize with and this affected my enjoyment. As a romance reader, I’m used to identifying with and liking the heroine right away. When I don’t, I feel that there is something wrong with the book. I had to actively keep reading after the first chapter, reminding myself that despite the marketing, this book was doing something different than the standard paranormal. Like most Gothics, it is written in the first person. Callie as a narrator swings between being an intelligent, observant and likeable woman to being a total douche. Allow me to demonstrate what I mean by looking at the first few chapters. I think that these portions really indicate the problems with Callie’s character and also show the ways in which this book can be frustrating. I also believe that it illustrates the strengths of the book and, ultimately, why I decided to recommend it.

“So, Dr. McFay, can you tell me how you first became interested in the sex lives of demon lovers?”

The question was a bit jarring, coming as it did from a silver-chignoned matron in pearls and a pink tweed Chanel suite. But I’d gotten used to questions like these. Since I’d written the bestselling book Sex Lives of the Demon Lovers (the title adapted from my thesis, The Demon Lover in Gothic Literature: Vampires, Beasts, and Incubi), I’d been on a round of readings, lectures, and, now job interviews that focused on the sex in the title.

Okay. No. The problem with this is that not only is it inaccurate (graduate students do not have time to query their dissertations out to commercial publishing houses and/or agents, defend their dissertations, AND look for a job. The academic job application process is very intensive, competitive and exhausting), but more importantly, it doesn’t make me very sympathetic to Callie nor is the book being a bestseller in any way important to the plot that follows. It is important that Callie studies demon lovers and Gothic fiction, but totally unnecessary to any of the plot that her monograph be a bestseller. The popularity of her research is totally de trop. Granted, this may grate on me more than the average reader because I am a graduate student who studies a very similar topic. Ditto the fact that Callie not only has a bestselling book already, but:

And it wasn’t that I hadn’t had plenty of other interviews. While most new Ph.Ds had to fight for job offers, because of the publicity surrounding Sex Lives I had already had two offers (from tiny colleges in the Midwest that I’d turned down) . . .

I fucking hate you, bitch. That was my first irrational response, colored by my own professional interests. But I moved on from that. I kept soldiering on. After all, this may just reflect the fantasy of the author and while it is totally annoying and unnecessary, is it any more annoying than heroines who are introduced in the first page as most the beauteous and desirable woman in the world? With flowing red tresses, violet eyes, and slender necks? No. No, it isn’t.

Then I was rewarded for my patience with the book by this lovely description of Dahlia LaMotte, the fictional gothic author whose books create a meta-fictional frame to the story.

They had been reprinted in the sixties when authors like Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt made Gothic romance popular again. You could still find copies of those reprints—tattered paperbacks featuring nightgown-clad heroines fleeing a looming castle on their covers—on the Internet, but I hadn’t had to buy them there. I’d found them hidden behind the “good books” on my grandmother’s bookshelves, a dozen books all with the name Emmeline Stoddard written on their flyleaves, and devoured them the summer I was twelve—

Back on board with you, Callie! I know those types of books. And how many of us have had similar experiences of discovery with romance novels? I love that description. And I love the excitement that Callie feels at the idea that the house belonged to Dahlia LaMotte and the chance to read the un-edited drafts of those beloved childhood books.

But then she goes and says something douchie again.

After consuming Diana’s ample tea, I decided that although I was too full for a run, I’d better take a long walk to burn off the scones and clotted cream.

Bite me, you skinny ho with your “job offers” and your “bestselling book.” So I was annoyed again. But then I get this:

It wasn’t raining hard when I reached the inn, so I stopped on the other side of the road and peered through the hedge at Honeysuckle House. The face on the pediment seemed to look back at me. The raindrops streaming down its cheeks looked unnervingly like tears. Suddenly the rain began to fall harder. I crossed the street and sprinted up the steps to the porch, stopping to shake the rain out of my hair and off my jacket so I wouldn’t shed water all over Diana’s hooked rugs and chintz-upholstered furniture. A thump on the wooden steps behind me made me turn around, sure that someone had followed me up the steps, but no one was there. Nothing was there but the rain, falling so hard now that it looked like a gray moiré curtain that billowed and swelled in the wind. For a moment I saw a shape in the falling water—a face, as if just behind the watery veil, a face I knew, but from where? Before I could place it, the face was gone, blown away in a gust of wind. Only then did I recall where I’d seen that face. It was carved into the pediment of Honeysuckle House.

And I’m back with you, baby.

Once Callie settles into life at Fairwick College, she becomes a much more tolerable person. Her unrealistic success as an academic fades into the background as her teaching, research, and the relationship with the incubus come to the forefront of the story. In fact, Callie is much more palatable as a teacher and the bits talking about grading are funny and true. What I had to ask myself was whether I was annoyed by Callie because of the unrealistic depiction of academia or because she was a more flawed character than I am comfortable with? I realized that it was the latter, a realization which forced me to ask myself whether I would have been annoyed with similar flaws in a hero? The answer is, disturbingly, no. Callie is a snob, but that’s part of her character arc. And if her academic success—albeit unrealistic success—was given to a male character of a similar age would I have had the same knee-jerk, antagonistic reaction? No. I don’t think I would have. I am not comfortable with that reaction and it has made me think about the way I relate to female characters in books generally. I will not got into my thoughts on the matter here, but suffice it to say I had to re-evaluate my reaction to Callie and realize that my reaction to her was not necessarily a result of failed writing, but my own expectations of both my profession and what a heroine should be.

There was much that I liked about this book. The pacing is slow and the plotting surprised me. I enjoyed both of those aspects. The slow pacing coupled with the long descriptions of the town, the college, secondary characters, and the house, allowed me as a reader to inhabit the world of the book in a way I have not done in quite a long time. Moreover, the slow pacing built the tension that I expect to feel in a Gothic novel.

As an academic, I enjoyed the self-conscious awareness the book had of its place within the Gothic genre. The way that Dark uses LaMotte’s books and excerpts from those books to comment on and add to Callie’s experiences was very well done. I enjoyed the self-referential nature of those books and I could tell that Dark loves the genre as well. They were not parodies of Gothics, but loving imitations by someone who enjoyed every creak and shadow, every murderous uncle and brooding hero of a Holt novel.

The secondary characters that populate this book are not there just for show. From the freshman student, Nicky Ballard, who is suffering under a century old family curse to the vampiric Russian professors who no one ever sees, I was equally interested in the stories of these characters as I was in the main conflict between Callie and her house.

So let me recap. The strength of this book is in its pacing, which is slow, the development of the characters both primary and secondary, and the tightly woven plot. I enjoyed the meta-fictional aspects of the book, the incorporation of folklore and scholarship into the fantasy plot. I ended up coming to like the heroine who, though at times difficult to sympathize with, was complex and engaged with the world around her. She was strong intellectually not physically and that was something I appreciated because I think that paranormal romance often favors physically adept heroines but not intellectually adept heroines. That’s not to say that Callie doesn’t make some really fuckwitted mistakes in this book or that her perspective isn’t flawed (and lets not forget the wildly exaggerated and often inaccurate depiction of academia), because it is. But the more I think about Callie’s flawed perspective, the more I think this is not an accident of characterization but a part of Callie’s personality. Her snobbery is something she has to overcome in order to accept the situation she is in and make things right in the world that she has entered. I think we see the best of Callie in the way that she relates to her students, and in her desire to make things right in both the town and the community of fantastic creatures she has stumbled upon. In many ways, Callie is a very compassionate and accepting person and this is reflected in her relationships to other women and her students. Her love for the incubus is both complex and difficult. I think this is reflected in the weird way she thinks on these issues and sometimes dismisses them. It is only in the last few pages that she begins to realize the complexity of her own emotions.

WARNING: This book has a very ambiguous ending. It does not resolve. There is no HEA because, in effect, there is no real ending. The ARC I got from Netgalley gave no indication that this book would have a sequel so when I finished the book for the first time, I was left feeling betrayed. I immediately went to the Internet. The author, Juliet Dark, has no webpage although she does have a Facebook page. It was there that I learned that there is an intended sequel entitled Water Witch. I look forward to that book and I really hope that it has an ending. I would very much dislike it if the romantic relationship between Callie and her demon lover was not resolved. And I sure as hell hope it is resolved happily. However, I trust that it will be because of the way in which different elements of this book act as sign posts to that resolution occurring.

I would like to add that I would not have felt the level of betrayal I did at the unresolved ending if I had not been as emotionally invested in the characters and plot of this novel as I was.

Thus, after much reflection, thought and head-scratching, I have decided to give this book a B+ for the strength of the prose, plot and characterization as well as the emotionally rich love story. However, I want to emphasize that this book as a stand-alone is NOT a romance. Moreover, Callie as a heroine as well as the way the novel progresses might be frustrating in the extreme to readers. Neither she nor it are everyone’s cup of tea. But for those who may be interested in a slightly more literary take on the paranormal romance, this book might be for you.

Lazaraspaste

REVIEW: Immortal Rider by Larissa Ione

Jane — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:00:01 +0000

Dear Ms. Ione:

I haven’t been a faithful follower of the Demonica series, but I’ve read several. Having some knowledge of the world helped ground Immortal Rider but I did wonder whether readers who entered at this book or its predecessor would be a little lost. Immortal Rider is the second in the “Lords of Deliverance” series. The premise is that there are four horsemen, three brothers and their sister, and so long as their Seals remained unbroken, the end of the world can be prevented. However, the first seal of Reseph has broken and his evil soul has overtaken the good soul and he is now known as Pestilence. He is actively working to break the seals of his siblings and bring the scourge of evil down to earth.

Limos is a powerful and sexy horseman who has been claimed to be Satan’s bride. Her curse is Famine. As long as she doesn’t make The Dark Lord jealous, she avoids being captured in Sheoul, or her Seal is intact, she can avoid her wedding in hell and her part in bringing on the end times. In a playful tussle at a backyard barbecue with Arik, a human, they kiss and Limos’ sexual response begins the unraveling of the Seal and the curse. (I am by no means immune to snickering to myself that the horsemen’s “seals” have to be broken like a hymen, added to this that two of the horsemen are virgins, this likely intentional joke is meant to induce snickering). Arik is sent to hell whereupon he is tortured on a regular basis. Once he screams Limos name in pain, she will be whisked down the aisle.

Limos’ only other problem is that she is addicted to lying. Seriously addicted and if she can’t break the addiction, she will break her Seal. “With every lie you tell, your addiction to it will strengthen, and with every lie, evil will grow within you, until you want to go to your husband.”

This high adrenaline story with over the top emotions, over the top circumstances, and improbable sakes which can really only happen in a paranormal. The sexual tension plays an important part but it’s a plot driven story as each party is involved in making bad bargains and double crossing each other in hopes of achieving their end goal. The humor is primarily juvenile banter and insults such as when Arik calls Limos “My Little Pony”. (probably my very favorite insult of the book). The union of Limos and Arik seems impossible, first because of Limos’ need to lie and self destructive nature and then because Limos’ hell imposed chastity belt prevents any physical consummation.

Limos is a complicated character. She struggles against her evil nature of lying, deceiving, self destruction. She hates herself and is convinced that doom is just around the corner. Yet she acknowledges that mortals and their devotion to each other, their ability and willingness to love her and accept her despite her flaws is so compelling that eventually it overcomes the evil. It’s truly a good triumphs over evil storyline. I also appreciated the evenness in which the characters were presented and how Arik had to confront his own propensity for lies of omission he told purportedly to shield those he cared about.

The worldbuilding rests primarily on prophecies and people and while references mankind has little to do with mankind. The lack of grounded worldbuilding makes the boundaries too malleable for my taste. While the overriding theme to these books are that the impossible prevents the couple from coming together, the impossible is always overtaken and thus whatever urgency exists is false.

While there are scenes between Limos and Arik, the underlying focus is propelling the series arc. For instance, there is a great deal of setup for the next book featuring Regan and Thanatos. A prophecy is discovered that implies even of all four Seals are broken, a “child conceived by the joining of an Aegis warrir and a Horseman. That child will be the savior of mankind.” Regan must go and get pregnant by one of the Horsemen and the Aegis, the purported good guys, pick Thanatos as the victim.

There are many scenes from Pestilence’s point of view, providing glimpses that the good man inside him is not entirely snuffed out and laying the basis for his redemption story. Sometimes I felt that the story went too far over such as Pestilence orgasming at his twin brother’s pain. Thanatos describes their closeness thusly “We shared a womb. We shared battle, pain, loss, and drink. He is my brother.” And then in regards to the rape at the end of the book involving Thanatos.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

The part of the story involving Arik and Limos was sexy, interesting, although a bit drawn out. The parts involving Regan and Thanatos had a lot of promise but the ending left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. The entire storyline of Regan going in to steal Thanatos’ sperm was offputting enough. I struggled with the grade for this book. Until the last third, I would have given this book a B-, but the last third was troublesome. Ultimately I am going to go with B- but with a strong advisory about the last third. Beware, triggers galore.

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Jia — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:00:03 +0000

Dear Ms. Taylor,

Your novels have been on my peripheral awareness for a couple years now. I keep meaning to give them a try, but you know how it is. So many books, so little time. Then I heard the buzz surrounding Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I thought it was a great title so ever curious, I looked it up on Amazon. I read the book description but it seemed kind of vague to me. I can’t say that without the interesting title to spur me on I would have picked up this book. The cover copy was so uninformative. While not inaccurate, I don’t think it does the book justice.

Karou is an art student in Prague known for her magnificent, fantastical sketchbooks. But what people don’t realize is that the monsters populating her drawings actually exist. The reason why Karou doesn’t appear to have a family except for a never-seen grandmother is because she doesn’t actually have one. At least not a human family. Karou was raised by chimaerae, what most people would call demons.

But now something has come that threatens her world: seraphs (aka angels). First, they leave scorched handprints on the doorway portals that link our world with that of the other realm inhabited by Karou’s chimaerae family. Then Karou comes face to face with a seraph intent on killing her. Except the seraph, Akiva, doesn’t and even though they are enemies, Karou finds herself inexplicably drawn to him. And as they get to know each other, she finally learns the answer to the mystery of her heritage.

Put like that, Daughter of Smoke and Bone sounds like every other YA paranormal out there on the market right now. But it’s the execution and details that set this novel apart. Having finished the book, I now understand why the book description was so vague and bland. It’s hard to encapsulate this novel without dropping spoiler bombs left and right. So much of the tension depends on the mystery and how Karou reacts to the bits and pieces of information she discovers.

The biggest strength of this novel, for me, was the worldbuilding. It was presented with verve and very little time was spent explaining each and every rule. It wasn’t necessary and in fact, would have been unbelievable. Karou grew up in this fantastical world. Running distasteful errands for a demonic tooth fairy and walking through doors to another world was everyday and mundane to her. It would make no sense for her to talk about how the chimaerae were monsters. They were her family and she loved them just as much as they loved her.

But as I mentioned before, it is a very fantastical world. It features demons and angels waging a neverending war. There’s a magic system that extracts a horrible price. For readers who believe that magic should always have a cost, this system is for you. It’s simultaneously gruesome and elegant. There’s an otherworldly dimension populated by these demons and angels which can only be accessed from ours by a system of doorways. It’s an interesting approach more akin to Neil Gaiman and Charles de Lint than the more popular paranormals that fill the current YA genre.

I also enjoyed the approach to the romance. In so many YA paranormals, we have the girl and guy meet and they’re instantly attracted even though they come from two different worlds. We get a different take on that here. Sure, it proceeds as we’ve seen so often before: they fight because they’re enemies and they can’t kill each other due to some inexplicable attraction. But where Daughter of Smoke and Bone diverges is that it deals with what happens after the girl discovers her world has been altered. I can’t go into too much detail without spoiling but this novel definitely shows that sometimes love is not enough and that some things cannot be easily forgiven.

Tangentially related to the romantic subplot, I thought the novel excelled at showing how love can change your entire world — for good and for bad. We saw how love could have changed the path of the chimaerae and seraph war but it failed. Then later, the survivor of that great love, Akiva, went on to do a horrible, terrible thing that essentially destroyed Karou’s life.

I thought Daughter of Smoke and Bone straddled the line between the familiar tropes and conventions of current YA paranormals and the more otherworldly approaches of the traditionally executed contemporary fantasy genre. What made it stand out for me was the execution of the coming of age story. It is the start of a series (trilogy?) so readers should be aware it ends on a heartwrenching note. I wouldn’t call it cliffhanger myself, but I can see how it’d be viewed that way. B+

My regards,
Jia

REVIEW: Touch of Crimson by Sylvia Day

Jane — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:00:15 +0000

Dear Ms. Day:

I felt like that there was a kernel of a really great story here but the story I wanted to read and the story I read were at such odds with each other. The story that I felt was trying to be told was of a man who had an enduring love which he pursued despite all of the rules of his world and despite the fact that it might bring about his ruin. Unfortunately, the story I read was about a man who had strong feelings for someone for which he broke all the rules while he ruined the lives of others around him for breaking those same rules he refused to live by. The story I wanted to read was about a man who was struggling with the edicts that had formed the basis of all his actions in the past, the rules which demanded he hunt down his fellow angels, rip off their wings, and strip them of their souls. The story I read was about a man who shrugged off the hypocrisy of his actions and enforced a cruel rule upon his fellow angels without any real thought to why. My take away was that this story was about a raging hypocrite who was more villain than hero. But, unfortunately, that was only the beginning of my challenges with this book.

“Touch of Crimson” has confusing world building. There is a huge cast of paranormal beings. This is epitome of the “No Paranormal Left Behind.” The book opens with a glossary and contains these two definitions (among others):

FALLEN—the Watchers after the fall from grace. They have been stripped of their wings and their souls, leaving them as immortal blood drinkers who cannot procreate.

WATCHERS—two hundred seraphim angels sent to earth at the beginning of time to observe mortals. They violated the laws by taking mortals as mates and were punished with an eternity on earth as vampires with no possibility of forgiveness.

The Fallen and Watchers are the same group of people but it took me 8 chapters to figure this out because in this book you have good angels, bad angels, vampires (which are angels), human vampires, lycans, reincarnated humans, demons, and dragons, werewolves that are demons but different than lycans although both were made from demon blood, and zombies.

The “hero” is Adrian, the head of the Sentinels who are angels sent to Earth to watch the Fallen/Watcher group and ensure that they …. don’t do anything? And to make sure that the other Sentinels who are sent to watch also don’t fall in love with humans and mate with them. The punishment, meted out by Adrian, is to hunt down the fallen Sentinels (who are a different bunch of angels than the Watchers but who then become the Fallen) and rip off their wings and strip them of their souls. These angels then become the Fallen, vampires who cannot procreate and have no souls. What the “no soul” means is not articulated in the text. It sounds ominous but the Fallen seemed like a group no different than the Sentinels other than the fact that they drank blood and liked to have sex with mortals. They could still feel and they didn’t act amoral. If there was any villain in the story, it was Adrian.

Adrian falls in love with the daughter of the head dude of the Fallen, soulless vampires. Adrian has sex with her which should mean Adrian is hunted down and stripped of his wings. The head “bad” tries to turn his daughter, Shadoe, into a vampire so she will be immortal but Adrian prevents it by killing her. Unfortunately, he killed her too late and her soul became immortal. She reincarnates at intermittent periods. Adrian lives for those moments that he has with her, sometimes it is 20 minutes, sometimes it is 20 years. She never remembers, but he always finds her. Destiny brings them together. I’m not sure if he kills her every time, but she dies every time although it’s not explained why. Or it was and I totally missed it.

I want to emphasize this. ADRIAN LIVES FOR THE MOMENTS SHE IS REINCARNATED. Everything he does between the periods of dormancy is await her return.

Two hundred damned years. She’d been gone long enough to make him dangerous. A seraph whose heart was encased in ice was a hazard to everyone and everything around him. He was a danger to her, because his hunger for her was so voracious he questioned his ability to restrain it. When she was gone, the world was dead to him. The silence within was deafening. Then she returned, and the rush of sensation exploded around him—the pounding of his heart, the heat of her touch, the force of his need. Life. Which was lost to him when she was.

Unfortunately, her soul is gaining dominance and this time, she is exhibiting very real supernatural abilities. In her latest incarnation, Shadoe is sharing a soul with a red haired, fair skinned woman named Lauren. She senses “otherness” about people. She has been killing vamps and demons for 10 years. She senses that this guy named Adrien she meets at an airport is an “other” and Adrien recognizes immediately it is “Shadoe”. She agrees to go with this ”other” to his highly reclusive compound and eat dinner with him. She doesn’t drive herself. She leaves the airport to go with someone she recognizes as “other” (and thus ordinarily will kill) to their private compound in his car. This is not classic TSTL behavior?

When she gets to his compound she is amazed by its beauty and wealth:

She kept her bag close to her side and faced him. “What’s not to like?”

“Good.” He gave a regal nod. “You’ll be staying here indefinitely.”

His imperiousness was stunning. “Excuse me?”

“I need to keep you where I know you’ll be safe.”

I need to keep you . . . As if he had the right. “Maybe I don’t want to be kept.”

Where’s her fear, outrage? Why this meh acceptance of being held captive in some strange “other” compound?

Adrien can’t wait to have sex with Lindsey/Shadoe despite the fact that he was CREATED to administer punishment to those angels who decide to mate with humans. When questioned about this he responds:

“They are responsible for what they are. They made the choices that led to their fall.” He studied her with those fathomless eyes. “Yes, I administered the punishment. I stripped the Watchers of their wings. Wings and souls are connected, and the loss of their souls led to their blood drinking. But I’m not accountable for their mistakes, any more than a police officer is responsible for the crimes committed by offenders.”

At one point in the book, one of the sentinels came to him, confesses she loves her lycan guard and asks for mercy. Adrian gives her one hour lead before he hunts her down and kills her lycan and if she has had smex with him, he will rip off her wings and she will become a watcher. This is, of course, minutes after he has had smex with the heroine. He regrets his hypocrisy but this is his charge. Agghhh!

If an author sets up two factions and has one faction standing on the neck of the other “for the good of the world”, the author is asking the reader to make a qualitative judgment about who is standing on the right side of the line. When the head guy standing on the right side of the line is doing everything he can to violate the line but still maintains the need for the suppression of an entire set of beings, how can you make that qualitative judgment?

I’m not saying that a book needs to be all black and white, but if the author is exploring gray areas, then that exposition should be in the book. Why is Adrian not grappling with this? Why is it okay for him to fuck the brains out of the heroine but he’ll ruin any one else who takes the same liberties? Why doesn’t he question the rightness of his position? Instead, this is what he says:

“You and Helena can’t be the only ones to form attachments,” Jason said.

“No.” Everything seemed to be coming to a head at once. Or maybe it felt that way because he was still reeling from Lindsay’s decision to leave him. She was being selfless for him. He had to try to be the same for her, which might mean letting her go.

“You can’t be surprised,” Jason went on. “We’ve been on this mission forever.”

“I’m only surprised it took this long.” Adrian looked at Damien, who lifted both shoulders in an offhand shrug that neither confirmed nor denied whether his opinion aligned. “But what are the alternatives? Dereliction of duty? The forfeiture of our wings? Preying on the mortals we were created to protect? Who the fuck wants to live that life?”

But but but. He is living that life. He is engaged in doing exactly what he despises in others and has so little remorse for it. Why does he have anyone who obeys him? Who follows him?

What possibly makes this book even more wall banging is the resolution of the reincarnated soul issue. I’ll say obliquely that if an author chooses to end the story in this fashion, then why the hell is there a reincarnated storyline in the first place. Why make such a huge friggin’ deal about how Adrien cannot live during the periods Shadoe is not reincarnated?

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Toward the end of the book, there appears to be a fracturing of the world that has been in existence for thousands and thousands of years. The lycan, who are under control of the Sentinels are rebelling. There are groups who do not want to be under the thumb of the Sentinels (and frankly who can blame them?). There is a discovery about the Sentinel blood that will turn them into hunted instead of the hunters. That this discovery has just now occurred makes me think that these are the dumbest paranormal beings ever.

Finally, I’m going to talk about the racial depictions in this book. I want to state at the outset that I don’t think that what was shown in this book was in any way intentional but the way in which race was portrayed made me uncomfortable. I also want to note that I believe that you are half Japanese and I only state that because I suspect someone in the comments will say “Day can’t be racist, she’s half Japanese”. And I am not making a claim that you are racist, only that the depictions of race in this book seemed to elevate blue eyed, classically featured characters over “exotic” or people of color.

Let’s start with the heroine. She was once the spitting image of her Asian mommy. Now she has red hair blue eyes and fair skin. This is an authorial choice. The reincarnated soul has no rules in this world. She did not need to start out Asian and then, through reincarnation, become more and more Western in coloring. This is a paranormal story. These characters could be anything, any color, any race. But for some reason the heroine started out as Asian and when she became the true and forever love of Adrien, she was red haired and fair skinned.

Now his daughter was stripped of her genes along with her memories. Once the spitting image of her mother, her incarnations bore the trademarks of someone else’s lineage.

All the Sentinels and I believe the original Watchers are blue eyed although the hero has “olive toned” skin. When the Seraph “fall”, they change from blue eyed gods to “amber” (I’m not sure whether this is a result of blood drinking or not as it is never expressed).

Sentinel descriptions:

Jason: ”Despite the roar of the aircraft’s engines, Jason didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. He also didn’t cover his seraph blue eyes, despite the pair of designer shades perched atop his golden head.”

Adrian: ”His eyes were the most unusual shade of blue. Like the vivid cerulean at the heart of a flame. Set within olive skin and framed by thick dark lashes, they were mesmerizing.”

Damien: ”Damien’s seraph blue eyes returned to her. He was gorgeous: long and sculpted, with his dark brown hair cut short, and sleek, framing eyes nearly as blue as Adrian’s.”

Helena: “He knew what the hostess saw—a stunning, statuesque, radiantly beautiful woman with waist-length blond hair and seraph blue eyes.

Salem: “He’s young,” Salem said beside her, momentarily distracting her with his latest blinding hair color of primary blue. It was fortunate for him that he possessed classical bone structure; there was a regal quality to his handsome face that transcended whatever crayon hue adorned his head.”

All the Sentinels had the same flame blue eyes, although only Adrian’s ever gave off heat. The Sentinels were works of art, really. It was rather intimidating being surrounded by dozens of perfect, gorgeous beings.

Fallen (who were all Angels at one point):

Vashti: “Hello, Adrian,” she muttered, her lips curved in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Sunlight fell over her pale bare arms and chocolate-colored hair. Her amber eyes glittered like tiger’s-eye, but he remembered when they’d been blue like his own.

Shadoe, the daughter of a fallen angel and a human: An exotic and breathtaking woman.

Shadoe’s brother, Torque: ”His brutally short hair stuck straight up in opposing directions, the thick Asian locks bleached nearly white at the tips. It was a style that suited both the exotic features he’d inherited from his mother and his sharp-edged lifestyle.”

Another guy but with questionable alliances, not a Sentinel:

Raguel: “The archangel hesitated a moment, then dipped his head with the expected deference. His smile was dazzlingly white within the framework of skin as smooth and rich as the finest milk chocolate. There was a smattering of tight gray curls at Raguel’s temples, but that telltale sign of aging was an affectation to disguise his immortality.”

Lycan (set up to be a bad guy although may be a good guy in future books):

“It was a quiet surety inside her. She knew the fallen angel who stood across the room from her, looking far too young to be her father. He was gorgeous. Tall and elegant, like a Sentinel, but much darker. Definitely dangerous. Not just in his looks, although those were dark and dangerous, too. His black hair and caramel-hued skin were paired with eyes the color of toffee, making him stunning in a wholly exotic way.”

So why is it that all the “good” angels have blue eyes, classical features and most have golden hair? Why not a huge variation of racial features on the “good” angels. Why are the “good” angels and the “bad” guys in the stories differentiated by phenotype? It’s noteable that the only time skin color is mentioned is when it references a non white person. The default then is that the characters are white if not “olive skinned, caramel hued, milk chocolate” colored. Maybe individually, these things wouldn’t have rung my bell, but with the heroine’s ethnicity “stripped away” through reincarnation (not to mention what happens in the spoiler) along with how all the Sentinels are blue eyed, classically featured, then yes, it all becomes very uncomfortable for me. If they are of different skin color, different races, why wasn’t that described? Why was the heroine’s ethnicity erased so that by the time she gets her HEA she is no longer an “exotic” beauty (as she was described in the book). Overall, this book disappointed me on many levels but having the heroine’s ethnicity erased was the topper. D

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Blood of the Demon by Rosalie Lario

Jane — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:00:15 +0000

Dear Ms. Lario:

I requested this book from NetGalley based on the blurb over at BookPushers by MinnChica. This is an Entangled Pub book and the first that I’ve read from this Press. It looked like a very professional product. The epub was nicely formatted (with chapters and everything!) and didn’t have any glaring editing errors.

My biggest complaint is that the story felt light in both the worldbuilding and the romance. It could be because this is the first of four books and thus suffers from being the setup book. The series is about four half brother demons who work on behalf of an interdimensional consul to track down an evil scientist who is looking for the Book of the Dead. The evil scientist Mammon happens to be their father who has tried to sire the perfect army of heirs by capturing different gifted females – which gives rise to the “No Paranormal Left Behind” tag. It appears that this series will include virtually ever kind of other being from dragon shifters to faeries to blood suckers not to mention demons. This allows each of the brothers to have their own gifts. Luckily for him, he’s had four sons. Unluckily, he’s a sadistict SOB and his sons hate him.

The Book of the Dead is rumored to give the holder of the book the power to control the undead. The book can only be read by a direct descendant of the creator of the book. The four brothers are searching for both the book and the heir, but their attention is focused on the heir.

Brynn Meyers is the heir. She does not know this, of course, and when Keegan, the eldest shows up, she has a hard time swallowing his tall tale. Shapeshifters? Interdimensions? Demons? She gets over her disbelief fairly quickly because Brynn has always had special powers of her own. She has known she was different and now she sees she is not the only one.

Keegan’s brothers are urging him to kill Brynn. She is the last of her line and Mammon cannot use the Book of the Dead if there are no living descendants. Kill Brynn and save the interdimensions from apocalypse. Of course, Keegan can’t kill Brynn. He isn’t the only brother balking at this. Dagan, one of the younger brothers, has taken himself to a bar so he isn’t in the apartment complex if there is killing to be done. Keegan, unlike Dagan, is attracted to Brynn and he begins to search for an alternate conclusion.

Brynn and Keegan initially fight their mutual attraction and this provides some tension over the first half of the book. Unconsummated attraction can be hotter than sex scenes and it works well here. I liked the brother dynamic in the story. Keegan and Taeg were often fighting and while Taeg thought Brynn was hot, he was all for killing her for the good of mankind. (Not that Taeg is heartless, but more pragmatic).

There is a good amount of focus on the relationship of Brynn and Keegan. Part of their relationship is built on instantaneous attraction and part of it is forged in intense circumstances but it still worked for me for the most part. There isn’t a lot of relationship building nor is there a lot of character development. This book was largely driven by the search for the Book of the Dead, a solution to not killing Brynn, and the collapse of the barriers between Brynn and Keegan being together.

This book is about 74,000 words and I mention that because as I stated in the beginning, it felt light or short. I think part of this is due to the many different points of view in the story. We get POV scenes from Brynn, Keegan, Taeg, Ronin, and Mammon. There may have been a couple of other characters who had short POVs as well. Because of the POV shifting, I didn’t feel like I had enough time to really fall into one character or another. The worldbuilding consisted of Keegan explaining to Brynn the interdimensional structure and a few fist fights culminating to a big boss fight at the end. The wind up of the suspense also seemed brief. Having said that, I enjoyed this book and anxiously waited to be approved for book two, Mark of the Sylph. C+

Best regards,

Jane

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REVIEW: Demon Marked by Meljean Brook

Jane — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:00:11 +0000

Dear Ms. Brook:

This is the second to last book in the Guardian series. The hero is a human named Nicholas St. Croix who first appeared in Demon Blood as a demon hunter. Nicholas searches for the demon who impersonated his mother and drove his father to suicide. He believes that Ash, a halfling demon, can lead him to this villain. Ash has taken on the appearance of someone that Nicholas once knew and who he believed had been killed by his demon target. Ash, however, can’t remember anything of her time before the Nightingale House, a psychiatric hospital.

She doesn’t know if she was once this Rachel person that Nicholas claims to have cared about. She doesn’t know exactly what she is. She only knows that she scared the beejeesus out of the staff at the Nightingale House because she could clothe herself from thin air, scent the feelings of others, jump from high altitudes and sometimes she even turned red. The what question is part of the mystery that drives the plot and for a Guardian book, I found this plot to be fairly straightforward. Can Nicholas overcome his hatred of everything demonic to accept his growing feelings for Ash? Will Ash regain her memory? Is she Rachel reborn?

For the overarching series plot, Caelum is literally falling apart. The buildings are crumbling and the place is abandoned. Most of the guardians have ascended. Michael is gone and Taylor is supposed to be gathering new guardians as replacements but no human has offered up the requisite sacrifice in the last year.

The reveal of Ash’s identity is actually told early on in the story but in such a subtle way that I totally missed it on the first reading. Upon review, I felt foolish for having overlooked it but no part of the text is included just for fun. Instead, the clues about Ash and how she relates to the overall series arc are there to be found. It is part of what makes the series engaging and worth re-reading. But the inclusion of a big series plot with a complicated story arc can also lend itself to confusing a reader, particularly a reader who jumps in at the middle of the series. I don’t know that a reader can jump into this series although you have provided a great number of guides on your site for new readers.

I thought this was a good addition to the series because I was completely engaged when going in I thought I might skip to the Taylor/Michael bits. Nicholas was the billionaire asshole bent on revenge but for a good reason but his anger couldn’t stand up to Ash’s refusal to be upset or hurt by his attacks. Ash’s inability to be a good demon provides for several moments of comic relief:

“I’d rather be a clever demon. Perhaps that’s why it is taking me so long to come up with a plot against you. My standards are too high.”

Nicholas bit back his laugh. Damn it. How did she turn his anger and suspicion around so easily? In all probability, she was plotting to destroy him. He ought to be preparing for it, not finding humor in it.
“Have you been trying to think up many plots?”

“Not really.” She gave him a sideways glance. “It ought to be simpler now, knowing that I should think of something cliché. And you never answered me: Are demons all so obvious?”

At first glance, it seems that Nicholas has the bigger story arc. He goes from demon hunting man to caring so deeply about Ash that his decision is placing him at odds with the Guardians. Yet Ash is the one who had no memory, who is recreating her life as the book unfolds.

It was pointed out early in the story that Nicholas’ feelings for Rachel were that of guilt rather than lost love and there were efforts to show why Ash was connecting to Nicholas where Rachel could not. With Rachel, Nicholas would have always felt guilty. She wouldn’t have understood his quest against demons or his role in the larger world. Ash was part of that larger world. Nicholas didn’t have to care for Ash as he would have had to care and watch out for Rachel’s safety. Ash was self sufficient, both emotionally and physically, than Rachel.

In Demon Forged,

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

While I am anxious for Michael’s book, I didn’t find Demon Marked to be a half hearted effort to keep me entertained while I waited for the climax to the series. Instead, Nicholas St. Croix’s quest for vengeance is paired with a tender and engaging love story with Ash. I read this about the same time as Nalini Singh’s Archangel Blade and I found this one to be actually lighter in tone because of the humor. B

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Misfit by Jon Skovron

Jia — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:00:36 +0000

Dear Mr. Skovron,

I first stumbled across your novel on NetGalley. It didn’t sound like my thing at first. It’s young adult urban fantasy and I’m reaching my limit on those. It features a teenage outcast and that didn’t strike me as anything new. I do like demons, but they’re becoming a worn out staple in YA urban fantasy. But then I realized your protagonist knew she was part-demon who didn’t take it seriously and that her father was an ex-priest. That piqued my interest because you don’t see that angle explored a lot.

Jael Thompson has spent most of her short life bouncing from place to place. The daughter of an ex-priest, her father makes it a point to move every couple years. That sort of lifestyle doesn’t allow much time to make friends or put down roots. As for why Jael and her father move around a lot, it turns out she’s half-demon and many people (and things) are out to kill her.

Jael’s father has successfully kept their small family one step ahead of their pursuers for her entire life. That all changes on Jael’s sixteenth birthday when he gives her a present left behind by her deceased, and demonic, mother. Suddenly hiding becomes a lot more difficult as Jael comes into her powers granted by the other half of her heritage.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. You know how it is. You read enough YA urban fantasies and you start noticing patterns. Plots start becoming predictable. Things just don’t seem interesting anymore. But Misfit veered slightly off the well-beaten path. It wasn’t completely new but it was fresh enough to keep me engaged.

The aspect I liked best was the worldbuilding. (Are my fantasy reader roots showing or what?) The concept of old gods becoming demons was interesting. After all, that’s essentially what happened in reality. The rise of Catholicism led to all manner of beliefs being vilified and subsumed into the religion. So when your novel took this idea and ran with it, I was charmed. From the goddess Astarte also being known as Lilith or the Babylonian god Dagon eventually becoming the fish monster out of H.P. Lovecraft’s works, I had a fun time trying to find the connections.

The idea of gods changing with the times and being influenced by the belief of humans isn’t a new one. Many novels, such as Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, have already done this. But seeing them tied together and being acknowledged as the same thing like this was something I found interesting.

The way the book kept the cosmology multicultural was something I appreciated. Even though Astarte would later become Aphrodite via the Greeks, your novel didn’t make her the blue-eyed blonde we’ve seen in so many depictions. She’s explicitly described as having Middle Eastern features, looks that she passed on to her daughter, Jael. The fact that gods of other cultures were present and acknowledged helped build a global feel to your story. I like that. Too often I feel like books box themselves in, depending on one narrow portrayal to describe a particular mythology. This avoids that, and I liked it.

I found Jael to be a great heroine. Her relationship with her father is contentious but believable. Paul’s treatment of Jael isn’t always (or ever) fair but it’s understandable. He’s a former priest who tested and lost his faith and fell in love with a woman he shouldn’t have. Now he has a half-demon daughter he’s trying to keep alive even though the demon that killed her mother is hounding them all over the world. That would make me paranoid and suspicious of anyone and everyone. It doesn’t make him the greatest father but it does make him relateable as a man trying to do his best to raise his daughter. It’s just that to him raising his daughter means keeping her alive, not necessarily keeping her happy.

But I also think that relationship helped keep Jael real and grounded in the face of her otherworldly powers. When she comes into her demonic powers, she inadvertently becomes the It Girl. Remember, her mother was Astarte/Aphrodite/Lilith and other such mythological femme fatales:

”Hey, Jael.”

Jael looks up. A big jock stands at their table.

“Yeah?” she says, biting into her second apple.

“Uh…” He looks like he’s trying very hard to be cool. “You, uh, doing anything tonight?”

She stares at him for a moment, totally incredulous. Then she says, “Get lost,” and goes back to her apple.

“Uh…” he says, like he doesn’t quite believe what he’s just heard.

“No, really,” says Jael. “Bye.”

He wanders off, looking bewildered.

“Are you crazy?” asks Britt. “That’s Andy Link!”

“If you say so,” says Jael.

“Who cares,” says Britt. “He’s hot, he’s rich, he’s popular! What more do you need?”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure those are the three things I don’t need.”

As you can see by those excerpts, the book is told in third person present tense. I admit. for all that I don’t mind first person present tense, I’m usually not fond of third person present. It’s turned me off many a book. But it worked for me here, so kudos for that.

On the other hand, I was lukewarm on the portrayal of Jael’s best friend, Brittany. Not only is she the boy crazy, slutty best friend stereotype, she’s the slutty Catholic girl hypocrite stereotype! And of course, with her filling that particular role, I easily guessed how the climax of the novel would play out. I wasn’t thrilled by it at all. I think the narrative attempted to add some depth and nuance to her character via the bits and pieces Jael saw in Britt’s soul, but it didn’t work for me especially since Britt’s implied backstory was also something of a cliche.

I also thought that the identity of the antagonist was obvious. I realize Jael probably would have no reason to figure it out herself, based on the information she had, but I’ve always been the type of reader who prefers to figure out plot twists near the same time as the narrator. It pains me when I figure it out well ahead of the protagonist.

All in all, this turned out to be a fun read. Fast-paced with less emphasis on introspection and mooning over the love interest. There were some sections that were a little confusing, such as Jael’s tour of Hell, but overall I thought the ideas introduced by the worldbuilding made up for it. Jael’s victory at the end seemed a little easy but the cost balanced that out, in my opinion. I’m afraid to check to see if there’s a sequel, but I think this book works as a standalone. The best part? Even though Jael has a love interest, the narrative remains solely about her and his role in the book is to support her. How refreshing is that? B-

My regards,

Jia

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REVIEW: Feast by Merrie Destefano

Jia — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:00:43 +0000

Dear Ms. Destefano,

I haven’t been an avid reader of urban fantasy for some time. Like many people, I burned out on the subgenre when it seemed like 10 books were coming out every month. That said, I do occasionally check out new releases from new(ish) authors in the hopes of finding something that sounds different. The premise of Feast fit the bill.

Madeline MacFadden is a bestselling writer. Or was, until her bigshot Hollywood husband left her for her best friend. Suffice it to say, her personal life is in shambles, leaving her with a massive case of writer’s block. In order to inject some much needed inspiration into her life, as well as a very welcome change of scenery from the watchful eye of the media, she takes a trip to the small town of Ticonderoga Falls where she spent vacations as a child.

But Ticonderoga Falls has a secret. It is ruled by demons. While never named, I assumed they were some form of incubi and succubi by the way they fed on dreams. As the result a curse set upon the town many decades ago, the inhabitants have become the captive prey of these demons, unable to leave and subject to their whimsies. Even worse, the time of the Harvest has come when the demons prowl the streets and feed.

But there’s also a power struggle going on behind the scenes, where another set of demons want to usurp control of the town from its current master, Ash. And who should happen to walk straight into the crossfire but Maddie and her young son.

While reading this book, I was reminded quite a bit of Neil Gaiman. Not just because of Maddie’s character, who writes comic books, novels, and screenplays and has a cult following that track her all the way to Ticonderoga Falls, but because of the way real world and fantasy dream worlds blend and overlap in the setting. Much like in a Neil Gaiman work, Maddie accepts the fantastical without fuss. It’s a change of pace from other urban fantasy and paranormal romances I’ve read where there’s at least one loud and public denial about what they’re seeing.

I liked how the demons were truly demonic. They were not human and they didn’t act human. They viewed humans as prey and treated them as such, sometimes toying with them the same way a cat does with their food. Make no mistake, they had similar concerns as humans: taking care of children, protecting their property, relatives they dislike, but they were monsters and the book never lets you forget that.

I’ve of two minds about the narrative. It features an alternating first person POV between multiple characters. I’m used to seeing this done with two characters, but Feast does it with at least 5. In the end, I think it worked out but I felt that the constant switching at this length may have skimped out on some character development. For example, the main antagonists read as very two-dimensional to me. While I did think their motives were very believable, not enough meat was given to their storyline to elevate it beyond a power grab.

The romance subplot, if you can call it that, between Maddie and Ash didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I never really understood why Maddie found Ash attractive, especially after she realized what he was, nor did I ever come to believe that Ash saw Maddie more than as prey. Part of this, though, might be because if I found out I was in a town filled with demons, I’d have gotten the hell out as fast as possible. Or, at the very least, when I stumbled upon a dead body, only to have it disappear when I bring the cops. Maybe that’s just me. Of course, if Maddie had done that, there would have been no story.

While I thought this novel required me to suspend my disbelief more than it should have, I like the idea of it. I picked it up expecting yet another urban fantasy but discovered it gave me something. I think there are some sections that are more reminiscent of horror than of fantasy, and I enjoyed those creepy bits. At the very least, this has made me more curious about your work and I will be checking out Afterlife shortly. B-

My regards,
Jia

REVIEW: Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

Janet — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:32:23 +0000

Dear Ms. Harris:

I must admit to a bittersweet experience reading Dead Reckoning, in part because I know there are only two more books to come in a series that has given me such reading pleasure for almost ten years now (I came to the series a couple of books in). Sookie is one of my favorite fictional characters – her blend of ordinary and exceptional, vulnerable and tenacious, pragmatic and idealistic has made her more realistic and sympathetic to me than many other series heroines. Also? The last few books in the series have been, in my opinion, a tour de force of plotting, thematic development, and emotional complexity. Which may be why Dead Reckoning seemed almost anti-climactic to me, despite the immense crisis that occupies the book. In fact, I had to read the book twice and both times my almost sedate experience of the book belied its frantic aura of instability and danger.

WARNING: SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD

Dead Reckoning begins with Sookie deciding to clean out her attic, an act which sets a tone for the book and, it seems, the series at this point – a clearing of the decks, so to speak. The last time Sookie had been in the attic was right after her grandmother was murdered, and she now decides it is time to face the past and make something new of it. Again, a theme for the book.

As readers know by now, any attempt Sookie makes at constructing a life of normalcy does not last long, and Dead Reckoning presents no exception. A firebombing later that night at Merlotte’s almost destroys the bar and kills everyone inside, including Sookie and Sam. Who could be gunning for Sam? There is already a new bar off the highway that is siphoning business from Merlotte’s, although Sam hardly seems like the kind of guy to really piss anyone off. To make matters worse, Eric has been incredibly stressed and brooding, while he and Pam are in some kind of tense standoff, but Sookie does not know why. She suspects, though, that it has something to do with her, because Pam keeps making loaded statements about Eric and Sookie’s marriage and Eric makes over-reacting gestures to keep her quiet. Pam, in the meantime, is miserable because Victor, Louisiana’s new regent and uber-adversary of Eric, will not give Pam permission to turn her leukemia-struck lover before she dies. And speaking of Victor, guess who owns the bar taking business away from Merlotte’s – as well as a vampire bar not too far from Eric’s own Fangtasia? Victor, it seems, is all sorts of trouble. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, Sandra Pelt is out of jail and is, from all reports, crazier and angrier at Sookie than ever before.

Reading Dead Reckoning is like watching a chess match, a two-layered chess match. The first layer concerns Sookie, Pam, and Eric, all of whom have been made abjectly miserable by Victor, who is becoming more and more aggressive in his attempts to provoke Eric into an injudicious attack (giving Victor an excuse to kill him). Sookie is also feeling hunted – literally – by Sandra Pelt, who simply wants Sookie dead, as soon and as violently as possible. Sandra, however, is something of a nuisance when compared to the danger Victor presents, and it is clear very early on in the book that all the strategizing between Victor and Eric is ultimately going to leave only one of them alive. Should either strike out unprovoked, however, that vampire would answer to King Filipe, with no guarantee of justice or mercy.

There is a great deal I cannot say about the plot of Dead Reckoning, because to do so would spoil the series of revelations and surprising outcomes the book has to offer. And they are numerous. Because in the same way that various characters are plotting against each other in the novel, so can you sense the book’s authorial hand moving characters around, positioning everyone in a certain way, revising past history and revealing past “secrets” in a way that feels very much like the moment before a very decisively executed climax.

WARNING: SOME BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD

For example, a secret regarding a long association between Eric and Sookie’s fairy grandfather Niall is revealed by Terry Bellefleur after the firebombing, and while I have not gone back to previous books to check, it does not seem to jibe at all with the existing series timeline. However, the information makes it seem as if Sookie was involved in fae politics much earlier than she was even aware of her own fairy streak. This is important because one of the subplots in Dead Reckoning involves the fate of all the fae trapped on the human side of the portal Niall closed at the end of the Fairy War. The fight between Pam and Eric involves the political machinations of Eric’s maker, Appius Livius Ocella, who re-appeared in Dead in The Family. The demon lawyer, Mr. Cataliades, is revealed to have a special relationship with Sookie that was never revealed when they met during the settlement of Hadley’s estate, five or so books ago. This relationship is revealed through a secret letter from her grandmother Sookie uncovers during the attic clean-out, a letter that attempts to smooth out the rough edges around the revelation that Sookie’s God-fearing, straight-laced grandmother was the lover of Sookie’s fae grandfather, Fintan.

There is also a lot of movement in the ranks of current, past, and potential mates for Sookie. Eric has a secret that threatens his future with Sookie. Bill declares his undying love for Sookie again in this book, with the added bonus of actually being there to help her during at least one crucial incident. Sam is dating Jannalynn, Alcide Herveaux’s pack enforcer, and while he seems happy, neither Sookie nor Jannalynn have many good feelings for each other. One thing Sookie and Sam have in common is that they each believe the other deserves a better mate. And both are probably correct. Amelia and the now-human Bob also show up in the book, and among other things, Amelia has found a way to break the blood bond Eric effected on Sookie without her consent. Amelia is also involved in an incident that results in a decisive moment in any potential future Alcide and Sookie might share.

All this maneuvering is somewhat ironic, since one of the novel’s main themes is the question of how much Sookie is acting upon the world around her and how much she is being acted upon. Eric, Amelia, Niall, Bill, and even Claude and Dermot have all acted upon Sookie over the years in ways that have had drastic consequences on her life, from Bill’s orders to settle in Bon Temps and acquaint himself with the telepath to Eric’s arrangement of the vampire marriage that now both protects and vexes Sookie. On the one hand, Sookie knows that she cannot shirk responsibility for her actions, and that those actions mean, “My determination to survive, and to ensure the survival of those I loved, was stronger than the religion I’d always held so dear.” But there also seems to be a kind of fatalism closing in around Sookie, a sense that the very nature of her being has brought her to this place. And yet, free will is still a central theme in the series:

When I went in the kitchen with a tray full of dirty dishes, I thought, This is happiness. Last night wasn’t the real me.

But it had been. I knew—even as I thought this—that I wasn’t going to be able to fool myself. I’d changed in order to survive, and I was paying the price of survival. I had to be willing to change myself forever, or everything I’d made myself do was for nothing.

Change is another heavily handled theme in the novel. Sam and Sookie have a very pointed conversation about whether people can change who they really are, and both agree that one may be able to change habits, but character was character. Which raises the question of what kind of character Sookie is. One answer in the book comes from Mr. Cataliades, who insists that humans like Sookie “who are born with the essential spark are born to experience or perform something wonderful, something amazing.” And yet when Sookie reflects on her feelings for Jannalynn, she must confront the irony of her own judgment:

…It was my personal opinion that Jannalynn was not good enough for Sam.

Of course, I kept that to myself. Glass houses, stones; right? I was dating a vampire whose kill list would top Jannalynn’s for sure, since Eric was over a thousand years old. In one of those awful moments you have at random, I realized that everyone I’d ever dated—though granted, that was a short list—was a killer.

And so was I.

Sookie clearly does not share the alternative morality of the supes, despite her own fairy blood and her recent life experiences. In fact, all of the true villains in the series have been deliberate predators, suggesting a differentiation within both human and supe categories. Victor, for example, is a “corrupt vampire” not only in his ruthless and violent ambition for power, but in the way he treats humans as vessels for food and orgiastic sex. However, the relationship between good and evil is no longer so black and white as Sookie once imagined, and her desire to be a “good person” has become complicated, not only by the things the world has visited on her, but by the autonomous choices she has made. The sum of these actions weighs heavily on how Sookie defines herself and with whom she will ultimately choose to identify. Communities can be welcoming and supportive or divisive and exclusionary, often at the same time. And yet being alone never seems like a wise or happy option. This philosophical pondering of the series has always been one of its strengths, in my opinion, and has, over the course of eleven novels, become wonderfully nuanced.

Clearly, Sookie is at a crossroads, as her change comment above indicates. And clearly that change is going to coincide with the end of the series. Although I have never been particularly invested in Sookie being in a relationship with The One, there has always been a bittersweet quality to Sookie’s relationships that is distilled in one exchange she has with Bill:

“I love you,” Bill said helplessly, as if he wished those magic words would heal me. But he knew they wouldn’t.

“That’s what you all keep saying,” I answered. “But it doesn’t seem to get me any happier.”

It now seems unlikely that in the next two books Sookie will find lasting happiness, especially given Sookie’s own grappling with who she is, where she belongs, and with whom she belongs. One of my favorite things about this series, though, has been watching Sookie grow stronger and more confident in herself – to see her take that unfailing pragmatism and use it to find her own strengths. She is the mastermind of something in Dead Reckoning that should reveal to her the depth of her intelligence and will to live. Where that will take her I’m not certain, nor am I completely comfortable contemplating the end of the series in a mere two books. However, I think Dead Reckoning is really the first book in the series where I felt that the thematic concerns of the book – as strong and compelling as they are — overrode its plotting and characterization, and where I felt so keenly the manipulations of the authorial hand, especially when those manipulations seem to conflict with earlier books.

I read every installment in this series, including Dead Reckoning, with engaged appreciation for the ongoing saga of Sookie’s life, but I wish the behind the scenes machinations were less visible in the book. B-/C+

~ Janet

JOINT REVIEW: Falling Under by Gwen Hayes

Jia — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:00:47 +0000

Jia: Theia Alderson is a British expat living in the sleepy California town of Serendipity Falls. Because of the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death. Theia lives a sheltered and suffocating life courtesy of her overprotective father. That all changes when a mysterious new boy, Haden Black, comes to town. The strange part? Theia has met Haden before — not in-person but in her dreams.

John: Falling Under took a chapter for me to get into, but I found myself frantically enjoying it as the reading experience went on. The YA paranormal genre hasn’t burnt out for me yet — although I have gotten more picky — and I found the unique spin on the common cliches to be intriguing and dark. There was something from the beginning between Haden and Theia that drew me in and absorbed my interest. I didn’t know exactly why, but I knew there was something in their story that I wanted to read more into.

Jia: I’m dangerously nearing the burn out point for paranormal YA myself so I understand becoming picky. Granted, I’ve always been very picky when it comes to fantasy and fantasy-related genres, just because of my reading background. For me, Falling Under was something like a cross between Twilight, Labyrinth, and the Hades and Persephone myth. Because of that, it didn’t draw me in since so much of it felt familiar.

Unlike you, Haden and Theia were my least favorite parts of the book. I wanted to give Theia a good shake several times throughout the story and Haden’s character embodies a lot of what I currently dislike about YA paranormal romances. Those things, combined with the push-pull of their on-again, off-again relationship, made the first two-thirds of the book a slog.

John: haven’t seen Labyrinth, but the Twilight/Hades and Persephone feelings were very much there. That myth didn’t register for me while reading, but it is rather present. Alice in Wonderland was also suggested (at least, to my reading experience). Theia did have some dumb moments, but I considered those moments where any teenager would make a mistake. I liked her because she managed to overcome them in my eyes when she stood up for herself. The scene outside the club (which is one of my favorites) where she basically tells Haden he’s a douchenugget made me clap. Jane made a comment about this book sounding like a Harlequin Presents novel, and Theia is one of the similarities. She’s more often than not a beta heroine who loves to swoon in her man’s arms, but by the end of the book she gets stronger and does some kick-ass things that would be plot spoilers.

Jia: Alice in Wonderland is a great comparison! A lot of the dream sequences and scenes towards the latter part of the novel fit that. I’d say Haden contributes more to the Harlequin Presents mystique. After all, you can’t have a proper HP beta heroine without a hero who treats her like a doormat. He, and his treatment of Theia, are the biggest problems I have with the book. He’s a jerk. He flaunts the other girls in front of her. He does that thing where if he touches another girl, Theia can feel it and that is skeevy. I feel sorry for Theia, and I feel sorry for the poor girl who probably thinks Haden’s into her, not knowing that he’s simply using her as a conduit. He claims that this is for her own good, that he’s trying to scare her away but honestly, he does a piss poor job of it. He visits her in her dreams, with what I can only call courting behavior. Talk about mixed signals. I end up feeling bad for Theia because a guy who embarrasses you in front of other people is not good news. I understand Haden’s behavior was meant to confirm his otherworldly nature and that he was not someone you should trust in any way, but it came off as gross rather than dangerous to me.

I did like the reversal in the last third or so of the novel. I think I would liked the book more if some of that type of action had been scattered evenly throughout the story. I was a little disappointed that when Theia does get stronger as a character, we switched over to Haden’s point of view. I have no interest in woobified characters and the angst that makes them do the bad things they do, so I was bummed. I wish we could have seen Theia cope with her circumstances and the changes in her life. On the other hand, we did get to see more of the supporting characters and that’s a plus in my book. Them, I really liked without any reservations.

John: I really enjoyed the dream sequences. The macabre parts were just so gruesome, and made the book feel really unique to me. Most PNR YA authors tend to go for a watered down darkness in their books. Haden is definitely a Presents hero, and that’s why I love him. After talking to Jane I started on the Presents line and was hooked on the heroes — and I resent the doormat comment (even if, for some of the books, it is true). Haden did flaunt girls at Theia, but he was also dealing with mixed feelings of attraction and attempted avoidance. As soon as she bitched him out and he was man enough to apologize, I felt like his assholery was redeemed. I thought the conflict was understandable considering he had been attracted to her for a long time (if a bit on the creepy side), and was finally able to work on those feelings — but of course have to destroy her soul at the end of it. I’d probably be sending mixed signals if my hormones were that erratic. Of course, in this case it’s a matter of reader understanding. I just happen to think Haden deserves it based on his apology (and the fact that he’s still sexy and acts more gentlemanly to her afterwords.)

As to the reversal, it really threw me for a loop. I never expected that to happen. My copy of the book probably gave me the eye as I sat gaping at it. The events that make it happen cause the reader to never see it coming. Gwen got major props from me for being able to surprise me that much with it. It showed a lot of character courage, because it was almost like she had to see it through Haden to get the full effect of Theia’s change. Staying in the same viewpoint for that particular section wouldn’t have been bad, but I think it would have jolted the reader even more. Out of the two of them, Theia’s personality was the one that changed most – and most readers wouldn’t have believed it no matter the circumstances. The way Gwen ends the book makes up for the lost Theia time in my opinion because the possibility it ends on is so devilish. In a way she does her readers (and story) a great service by actually corrupting her heroine. From all the PNR in YA I’ve read, the authors have a tendency to think that the characters have to be pure and corrupt attracted. The concept of two gray people is really rare, especially when the evil/darkness is a driving force of conflict in the story.

Jia: A bit creepy? Haden has been watching her without her knowledge for a long time! That’s stalking. Or, at the very least, obsessive voyeurism. That’s plenty creepy. I get that it’s part of his nature but there are plenty of ways to make a supernatural love interest seem genuinely dangerous without resorting to treating girls badly or using them. Theia shouldn’t have to call Haden out for using his abilities on her best friends in front of her. I believe that scene even happened later in the book, so he should already know that crosses the line with Theia.

The macabre scenes and dreams were absolutely my favorite parts of the book. They had a nice horror to them and I agree that while we see many paranormal YA novels labeled as “dark,” they’re a softer, toothless type of dark. That’s often a personal complaint of mine. They hint at a threat but never actually go there. The scenes in Falling Under remind me strongly of Nevermore, another paranormal YA that debuted last year. Readers who liked that aspect of Nevermore will probably like this aspect of Falling Under, because they’re very similar.

I think the main reason why I liked the reversal of Theia’s character is because it seems like it’s getting pretty rare to see such a strong character change over the course of a single novel. These days, where multi-book series are the norm, a character arc can take several books and sometimes I am just not willing to sit through 5 books to see if a protagonist evolves. That is just too much time. So I did like seeing Theia start at a certain point and end at a completely different one by the time the novel finished. But I think that’s also why I’m disappointed that we didn’t see it from her perspective. It doesn’t happen that often and when it does happen, we witness it from the guy’s point of view when I still think of this book as Theia’s story. Then again, I’m not particularly fond of late-introduced viewpoint narrators either.

What did you think of Theia’s relationship with her father?

John: That has also happened in Shiver, which is another book I enjoyed immensely (and, as I recall, so did you.) Where exactly does it go from sensual voyeurism to stalking? To me there is indeed a line, but in the world of PNR it’s not the cut and dry one. Romance and YA in general often show that kind of thing. Girls following the guys they like at school and learning random things about them because of their major crushes/lurve. We tend to not think that’s creepy, so what’s wrong with a hot macabre Darcy figure doing the same? Haden did watch her but it was out of interest, and he didn’t have a way to communicate with her until that point. He didn’t get pleasure from the act, so I felt like it skirted the creepy factor. It was implied in my reading mind that he wouldn’t have chosen that course if there had been a better (and admittedly less dark) way to see her and meet her. He tried to use them to get Theia away from him. It’s a lose/lose situation for Haden, because Theia is at least kind and bull-headed enough to insist she stay with him no matter the warnings. I didn’t recall any use of this tactic once she was actually into his conflict, but that could just mean nothing registered for me as important enough use of that behavior for me to remember it.

I have yet to read Nevermore, but judging on what I’ve heard and your opinion, I’d safely say that it would match this book quite nicely. The darker scenes were some of my favorites as well.

You bring up an interesting point, and I find it a real strength that the book wasn’t skimping us on a full character arc. I’m glad it happened because I wouldn’t have come out with as many positive feelings about Theia if she hadn’t been changed by her experiences. It would have been nice to see it from her view-point, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if there was a larger purpose for it. Her relationship with her father wasn’t my favorite. It was probably my least-favorite part of the book. Keeping her so secluded like that seemed extremely unrealistic to me – even if she reminded him of his dead wife. It was like something out of a gothic novel. It worked for the feel of the novel but in the next book I’d like to see it taken a step down or two so it feels more realistic and the conflict can be explored instead of heightened for dramatic effect.

Jia: Actually, my opinion of Shiver can be best described as “meh” and in fact, the longer I am away from having read it, the more my opinion goes down. The main reason why Haden’s behavior crosses the line for me is because it’s not consensual. He was watching her without her knowing. Not even in school or in a public place, but at home and in her dreams. It’s invasive. And I get the strong sense from the text that we, as readers, are supposed to give him pass because he’s hot. This is actually one of my least favorite tropes across all fiction genres.

I thought Falling Under had a lot of callbacks to gothic novels, to be honest. The whole opening scene where she’s running across the lawn of the big house in her virginal white nightgown felt very gothic to me. So I don’t think it was just the controlling father. I did like that it was a young adult novel where the parent is present and actually parenting (though admittedly not very well or in any way that could be called healthy) because I feel like there is a dearth of parents being around in YA novels. It’s improved in recent years but there’s such a long history of dead/absent/estranged parents in the entire body of literature for younger readers that it’s like a drop in the bucket. I do wish it could have been more positive. I have seen and known parents who are overprotective in the same way Theia’s father so his behavior wasn’t that unbelievable for me, especially when you take into account his personality which is very stuffy. I do think it faded out around the same point in the book where Theia starts rebelling, so I agree that the existing conflict there could have been explored more. It would be interesting to see how the father-daughter relationship changes in light of what happens to Theia.

Speaking of Theia’s other relationships, I did like her two friends and the guys around them. In a lot of books, the supporting cast seems to exist for the sole purpose of helping the main character and while they did help Theia when she needed help (because that’s what friends do), they had their own lives and interests outside of Theia’s concerns and conflict.

John: I thought your review of Linger implied a larger liking of Shiver, but that’s my mistake. This is a case where I freely gave my consent because I felt like his intentions weren’t malicious. ‘Supernatural stalking’ through powers and looking glasses – or anything like that, really – is problematic because more often than not if the heroine can read minds or see into dreams or what-have-you, it’s assumed the reader is okay with it because she either can’t help it or is from a culture/world where the use of the power isn’t as obtrusive. In Haden’s case, I think it’s much the same. Living in the human world his whole life would probably not have allowed him to find watching a strange girl okay. I’m not a huge fan of the trope but Theia didn’t dwell on it, so as a reader I didn’t necessarily read anything into it beyond ‘she’s okay with it’.

The gothic feel was very welcomed for me. I am a fan of PNR, but a story that has a touch of the spooky in it works wonders for me when I’m in a funk and need something more out of this world. To me my parents aren’t that overprotective, so it was just harder to relate to the situation. I haven’t met anyone whose parents have come close to that level, either. I didn’t completely disbelieve it, but it did make the scenes a little more strained for me. The changing relationship will definitely be something to see in subsequent books.

Her friends and their own romances were good highlights for me. It’s nice when the main character has strong people around them. I especially loved the straight guy in drag who played the role of fortune teller. That moment was so hilarious. So, what did you think of the book overall?

Jia: While I liked the gothic elements and nightmarish feel of certain sections of the book, my frustration with Theia, Haden, and their relationship kept me from full enjoying the novel. I also found the narrative to be uneven in terms of pacing. I mentioned earlier that the majority of the book dragged for me, and I would have preferred the action to pick up earlier rather than waiting for the final third to do so. So despite the fact that there were some parts I definitely liked about the novel, they were not enough to balance out the things I didn’t because the parts I disliked, I disliked a lot. So for me, this book was a C-.

John: The gothic elements were a side I totally agreed with you on. Gwen showed her best when she was writing those scenes. Distorted Alice in Wonderland should be a new subgenre of YA as far as I’m concerned. I found Theia and Haden to be more forgivable and human characters, and as a teenager their relationship didn’t bother me as much. I was sucked into the novel and read it very fastly, so the pacing worked for me. The book’s father/daughter relationship rubbed me the wrong way for most of the novel, and the only other thing I noticed that bugged me was that it still followed some of the YA PNR formula outside of the unique scenes. The elements were fresh enough for me to really enjoy it and anticipate the sequel, so I found the book to be more of a B+.

This book is published by an Agency publisher meaning that the publisher sets the digital book price and there are no discounts.

REVIEW: The Name of the Wind: The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day One by Patrick Rothfuss

Janine — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:00:39 +0000

Dear Mr. Rothfuss,

By February I had heard enough people mention how eagerly they were awaiting the sequel to your first novel, 2007's The Name of the Wind, that I was intrigued and decided to pick up the first book in the series.

The Name of the Wind begins this way: "It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts." The following paragraphs go on to describe all three parts of the silence. The first is "a hollow, echoing quiet," the second the silence of two customers at the bar who "drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news." But it's the third silence that is most unsettling, the silence of a red-haired man polishing the bar. It was, the third person omniscient narrator tells us, "the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die. "

The red-haired man is an innkeeper who goes by the name of Kote, but he is also more than an innkeeper, and more than Kote. When a terrifying, spider-like being nearly kills one of the inn's few customers, Kote is the only one who knows what to watch out for and what to do.

Later, a man referred to as Chronicler comes to the inn, and Kote admits to Chronicler that he is Kvothe (pronounced like the word "quothe"), a famous, heroic figure now in hiding. But Kvothe doesn't see himself as others see him, and only agrees to tell Chronicler his story if Chronicler will stay at the Waystone for three days and record Kvothe's tale word for word, without altering anything.

Kvothe's story, told to Chronicler in first person, begins when Kvothe is eleven. Kvothe is one of the Edema Ruh, a highly-regarded troupe of actors and other performers. From his father Kvothe begins to soak up acting and music. From his mother, a noblewoman who left her family to be with his father, Kvothe learns etiquette.

One day the troupe takes in Abenthy, an arcanist (magic user) who helps them with lighting and special effects. Abenthy, or Ben as Kvothe calls him, was educated at the University and teaches Kvothe much of what he knows, including Sympathy, a system of magic that helps Kvothe redirect energy from one object to another. But what Kvothe most wants to learn is how Ben did something Kvothe once saw him do — call the wind so that the wind came and did Ben's bidding.

Ben refuses to teach Kvothe the name of the wind, but he does tell Kvothe's parents that Kvothe is a child prodigy, able to absorb nearly any skill with almost no mistakes. He will be the best at whatever he chooses to be, Ben informs them, so they should think carefully about what opportunities to give their son. Kvothe overhears this conversation and dreams of attending the University, but at age eleven, he does not know what lies ahead of him.

The troupe parts from Ben around the time Kvothe turns twelve, and on that occasion, Kvothe's father performs the first verse of a song he is working on. It is a song about the Chandrian, a group of legendary demons. Kvothe's father is collecting legends about them because he wants to write the definitive song, the one that hearkens back to the root of these legends.

The Chandrian are believed to be nothing more than a superstition, but one night Kvothe returns from gathering firewood to find his entire troupe dead, and the surrounding fires burning blue, a sign of the mythical Chandrian's presence. And indeed, the Chandrian are in front of him for a few moments, before they disappear.

Kvothe is left grieving and utterly alone in the world at age twelve. He forages in the forest and teaches himself to play his father's lute even better. A fateful trip to the nearby city of Tarbean in order to replace a lute string turns Kvothe into an urchin. He lives on Tarbean's streets for three years, until something reopens the memories he has shut away. Memories of his parents and of the Chandrian, of his dreams of attending the University and acquiring knowledge.

Eventually fifteen year old Kvothe arrives at the University and it is here that he makes dear friends and dangerous enemies, here that he learns greater magic, and here that he falls in love. He also cannot let go of his need to get to the bottom of the truth about the beings who killed his parents, even though it places him at great risk.

I enjoyed The Name of the Wind a great deal. One of the things I really appreciated was the device of having Kvothe's tale told by his older self, and the occasional interludes which allow us to see Kvothe in a different place in his life, and to sense danger lurking around the Waystone Inn.

This story-within-a-story structure, known in literary terms as a frame device, gave the book extra richness due to the age gap between the teenage Kvothe and the more mature and weary Kvothe who was telling the story. We got both the younger Kvothe's viewpoint and the perspective of his older, wiser self, who knows things the teenage Kvothe does not.

Alternated with these viewpoints is the third person narration of the frame story, so even though the book is mostly written in first person, there is more variety of voice, perspective and texture than in many first person books.

Still, and although we meet his family, his friends and the woman he loved, there is no question that the focus of the novel is Kvothe himself, and one of the things that kept me reading was the desire to see how he had evolved from the boy he had been to the man telling the story of his youth. Another was Kvothe's voice – witty, opinionated, and as a boy, often unwise.

I think that Kvothe could fairly be described as a Marty Stu (male equivalent of a Mary Sue) character because he is not only a child prodigy, but by age fifteen he is endowed with so many gifts – near perfect recall, a quick and strategic mind, lively curiosity, a talent for verbal sparring, a gorgeous voice and a breathtaking musicianship with the lute, to say nothing of his command of magic.

Normally so many talents in one character would be a sure way to turn me off, so Kvothe's saving grace is his propensity to making big mistakes. He takes chances that most people would not, and while some of them pay off, others land him in trouble. It is this quality, along with his witty opinions, and his vulnerability, that make the younger Kvothe so engaging and make it possible to believe in his genius.

There when many times during the reading of this book that I found myself thinking, "No Kvothe, no! Don't do it!" And he went ahead and did whatever impulsive, courageous yet unwise thing it was I wished he wouldn't do. I see my desire to spare Kvothe from pain and punishments as a sign of my huge investment in this character and his fate. His failings made him real and endearing to me.

One of other endearing things about Kvothe is that he judges people based on their behavior rather than their social status, and doesn't see himself as particularly better than anyone else. He is willing to do some shady things on occasion, but there are other moral lines which he would never in a million years cross. There is a great exchange between Kvothe and Ambrose, the university student who later becomes his nemesis.

Kvothe walks into the University's Archives to see Ambrose and a female student, Fela, at the front desk. Ambrose is sexually harassing Fela, but his family is so powerful that she can't protest, and Kvothe cannot bear to stand by and do nothing. He sees Ambrose's attempt at a poem on the desk, and sets about rescuing Fela by eviscerating Ambrose's writing.

Ambrose looked over his shoulder, scowling. "You have damnable timing, E'lir. Come back later." He turned away again, dismissing me.

I snorted and leaned over the desk, craning my neck to look at the sheet of paper he'd left lying there. "I have damnable timing? Please, you have thirteen syllables in a line here." I tapped a finger onto the page. "It's not iambic either. I don't know if it's anything metrical at all."

He turned to look at me again, his expression irritated. "Mind your tongue, E'lir. The day I come to you for help with poetry is the day–"

"- is the day you have two hours to spare," I said. "Two long hours, and that's just for getting started. "So same can the humble thrush well know its north?' I mean, I don't even know how to begin to criticize that. It practically mocks itself."

"What do you know of poetry?" Ambrose said without bothering to turn around.

"I know a limping verse when I hear it," I said. "But this isn't even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom."

"It is a sprung rhythm," he said, his voice stiff and offended. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"Sprung?" I burst out with an incredulous laugh. "I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly "sprung,' I'd kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die."

How can you not love a character like Kvothe? I couldn't help loving him. A lot of the charm of this book is Kvothe's charm, his indelible appeal, as well as the human scale of his personal story. If he isn't the hero others think he is, he is still more heroic than he gives himself credit for.

The Name of the Wind clocks in at 726 Kindle pages, or 13,459 locations. That is one long book, a huge investment of time, especially when you consider that it is only the first of the three parts of Kvothe's story. The early parts of the book, especially the beginning at the Waystone Inn and then the time Kvothe spends on the streets of Tarbean, dragged a little for me. But the vast majority of the book was greatly involving and entertaining, and there was an artistry to the narration and the dialogue that makes this book stand out among many others.

Even though I'm not usually one to embark on such long tomes, much less series that follow the same protagonists, I find myself anticipating book two. As for The Name of the Wind, it is a terrific novel and one I can easily see myself rereading. A-/A.

Sincerely,

Janine

REVIEW: House Name by Michelle West

Jia — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:00:28 +0000

Dear Ms. West,

I fear my epic reading muscles must be atrophied. I realize I’ve been reading many young adult novels and paranormal/urban fantasies in recent months, but I think it’s warped my expectations for how long it should take me to finish a book! I’ve reviewed the Elantra novels you write under the Michelle Sagara name here on Dear Author in the past, but I think this is the first time I’ve reviewed one of your Michelle West epic fantasies.

For readers who are only familiar with the Elantra novels, Michelle West also writes interconnected fantasy series for DAW. The best analogy I can come up is something like Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar universe. The various novels chronicle the struggles of different characters against the backdrop of the God of Hell returning to the mortal plane, thus promising impending doom and the apocalypse.

House Name is the third book of House War, the third series set in this universe. This series focuses on Jewel Markess ATerafin, a major character of this universe, and her rise to influence in the most powerful noble house of the Essalieyan Empire, House Terafin. House Name picks up after the events of City of Night, in which Jewel’s mentor sends her to his estranged sister, Amarais, the lord of House Terafin.

Coming from one of the poorest districts in the Capital, Jewel is the den leader of a motley gang of street urchins. She is also seerborn which, for obvious reasons, is a very coveted and very rare talent. Because of this, Amarais sees her potential and has given her the opportunity to earn the name of House Terafin. The noble houses of the Empire are unique in fantasylandia in that you aren’t born to the name. You earn it.

What does Jewel have to do to earn the name? Oh, nothing much. She just has to find the entrances to the ruined underground city that exists beneath the Capital. For years, Jewel and her den scavenged the city for valuable items they could pawn. But recently, the ruined city grew unstable. Worse still, something else was in the city, something that led to the disappearance of three of her den and the death of her right hand.

You see, once upon a time, that fallen city was home to the Lord of Hell and his followers when gods still walked the earth. The problem? The entrances are disappearing. This is obviously a problem when demons have returned to the mortal plane and are trying to resurrect their god. Even more, it makes Jewel look like a liar. The only reason she’s believed is because Amarais and the powerful mage, Meralonne, saw the existence of demons with their very own eyes.

If this plot sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It’s the events of Hunter’s Death, a previous Michelle West novel, told from the den’s perspective. As a longtime Michelle West fan who’s read every book, I must admit that what should have been the high points of the plot ended up not being the case at all. I knew what was going to happen, and that negated the suspense.

I can’t say this was a surprise. After all, the last third or so of the previous novel, City of Night also repeated some of the events portrayed in Hunter’s Death. But it didn’t bother me quite as much there because we had the first two-thirds and Rath’s and Duster’s respective storylines. House Name, however, expands the remaining events involving the den from Hunter’s Death. A lot. To the point that I question if this book was even necessary to advance or just pretty filler.

Don’t get me wrong. I did like some of the expansion. I enjoyed Finch’s and Teller’s storylines a great deal. I also liked seeing the conclusion of Angel’s plot thread that began in City of Night, even though I felt that it lacked a certain impact. There were also some background details offered up that I think longtime readers will appreciate.

That said, I know this story already. I know how it ended. This isn’t a matter of knowing genre conventions — like the lost heir returning to claim the throne or the evil king being overthrown. Readers know those by heart. Like many readers, I read for the journey. But I’ve already been on this journey. I know the setbacks, the advances, the success, the failures. I know them already. A few minor subplots and expanded scenes aren’t going to change that fact.

I guess what it comes down to is why readers read a book, and why epic fantasy readers read epic fantasy series. Speaking for myself, I look for new adventures, new struggles, new conflicts, new mysteries, forward movement along a character arc, and maybe new characters. Maybe not at all once but certainly some of them. And to be blunt, I don’t think House Name actually gave me any of those things.

This is a tough grade to assign. It’s a well-written book and I think someone who hasn’t read the Sacred Hunt duology (of which Hunter’s Death is the second book) might not view it as much of a retread as I did. On the other hand, because it portrays the events of that book from the den’s perspective, unfamiliar readers might also feel like half the story is missing. I do think this is a book diehard fans of the series will want to read but readers who are lukewarm towards Jewel and her story arc can probably skip it. At any rate, this novel is anything but a good entry point into this universe, although that is a problem plaguing many an epic fantasy series and certainly is not unique to this one. C

My regards,
Jia

Book Link | Amazon | nook | BN |

There appears to be no ebook format for this book. I know. WTF?

REVIEW: My Immortal Assassin by Carolyn Jewel

Janet — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:04:46 +0000

Dear Ms Jewel:

When you handed me a hot-off-the-presses ARC of your new paranormal release, My Immortal Assassin, I was both excited and nervous. Excited because I had wanted to try your paranormal books, and nervous because a) I know and like you and didn't want to hate this book, and b) I've found myself disillusioned by paranormals of late. I guess I should not have worried so much, because I did enjoy My Immortal Assassin, even if I'm not completely sure I understand some of the foundational worldbuilding.

Anna Grayson "Gray" Spencer desperately wants to kill the mage Christopher dit Menart. His crimes against her and her family are myriad, starting with his attempts at using her as a fertility farm for future magehelds (those magically bound to serve a mage) and ending with the murder of her sister. If it were not for the demon Durian (don't these guys ever have last names?!), she might have managed it, too, but Durian's own oath to the warlord Nikodemus prohibits him from allowing a mage's death if he is in a position to prevent it.

When Durian first comes upon Gray, he is not sure what she is, or whether she is even sane. She possesses the magic of one who has performed a sacred ritual, including a sacrificial murder, but she insists she has performed no such ritual. Human but in possession of demon magic, as well as something else, Gray confounds Durian, but she also intrigues him, in part because he shares her hatred of Christophe, but also because she has no idea how to control and channel her recently acquired magical abilities. Christophe, for his part, is determined to capture Gray, who has inadvertently taken something from Christophe that he is determined to have back – and to punish Gray most painfully in the process. Gray is a strong woman, but in her present state she is no match for either Christophe or Durian's superior magic. Durian, though, doesn't seem inclined to do her harm – at least not yet.

So in exchange for an oath of "fealty" to Durian, he promises to help her manage who and what she has become. And maybe, together, they can find a way to avenge Gray's sister without breaking the complex series of oaths and rules by which the mage and the demons maintain their tenuous balance of power.

My Immortal Assassin is the third book in the My Immortal series. In several ways it reminded me of Mejlean Brook's demon series: the San Francisco setting, the moral ambiguity between the mage and the demons, the complex political and social dynamics among and between these different beings, and the sometimes difficult-for-me-to-discern logic of the worldbuilding. But before I get to that last point, let me detail some of the things I enjoyed most about the book.

As a reader who is always hoping for less obvious moral polarities in Romance, I really appreciated the fact that the mage, who are supposed to be protecting humans from demons, are not necessarily all that noble, while the demons, who are cast in the traditional roles of villain ("fiends"), are not necessarily evil or dangerous to humans. The strict territorialities and downright medieval structures of power and authority theoretically keep a check on both the mage and the demons. Durian is technically the book's hero, but he is a dark figure, both in appearance and in personal history. He is personal assassin of a powerful demon warlord and a former mageheld who is now free following an incredibly risky and painful ritual. And the mage, who are supposedly stewards of humanity, also need humans to extend their lifespan and power:

"Christophe likes to go on about how dangerous the fiends are." She took a step closer. "If you ask me, the magekind are just as dangerous. More, because you seem to think you have some kind of holy call that makes it all right to do whatever you want." She gestured at his magehelds with a movement of such ineffable grace that even Durian was arrested. "Slaves, Leonidas? What's just or right about that?" Her quiet voice gave her words power. "How long have you bee alive? How many lives have you taken so you could live another year? How long since the kin were more of a threat to you than humans are to themselves?"

Gray is also a complex character. A former ballerina, she had been involved with a demon, a mageheld of Christophe's, and while it is unclear what, precisely, the nature of her feelings toward him were (ambivalent at the very least), she endures and participates in some truly unpleasant and objectionable things in an attempt to protect her sister (who was a witch involved with Christophe) and herself. Tough but not hard, somewhat unconventional in appearance (chopped black hair dyed bright red, skull belly bar, etc.), and willing to do whatever she needs to do to avenge her sister and kill Christophe — a woman who had "made peace with death some time ago." She and Durian share a connection that is deeper than what either had experienced in the past, partially bolstered by their shared magic, and partly by the mutual acceptance that comes from being a survivor.

Because Gray and Durian so quickly forge a bond, the reader can focus on the difficult investigation, training, and strategizing that must take place, and it is very easy to root for Gray and her justified hatred of Christophe. I liked her very much, and while Durian was a murkier character to me (in some ways he was the typical paranormal hero – tall, dark, handsome, brooding mega-rich, older than the hills but young in appearance, fastidious dresser), I came to appreciate Gray more through his own admiration for her courage and strength.

Where I got hung up was first on the romance itself, and even more generally on the ontology of the novel's paranormal world. In terms of the romance, as much as I appreciated the psychic connections Gray and Durian experienced, I still didn't quite understand Durian's rapid insistence that Gray was the first woman who really moved him:

He was feeling a little lost. He considered himself an experienced lover. He'd certainly taken his share of women to bed, but he didn't know what to do about Gray. No relationship he'd had in the past put him at risk of anything but the possibility of bad sex.

Not that I doubt the bonds of kinship they share, and the various powers of those connections, but there is also a genre trope here – the devastatingly handsome, dark, centuries-old guy who has never met a woman like the heroine in all his eons on earth – that nagged at me throughout the book. I don't know what the precise word count of the novel is, but there are so many layers here that the romance felt a little rushed for me, even though I liked that it wasn't simply the, "oh, she's so beautiful and strong: oh, he's so dark and handsome' dynamic.

Some of my frustration with this may be coming from my lingering confusion around some of the worldbuilding. Despite the short glossary at the front of the novel and the narrative explanations in the first few chapters, I still don't fully understand the foundational principles of the magic. Are we talking different species here with demons and mages and humans, and if so, how could Gray, a human, have developed magic she previously did not have? Can all humans become similarly gifted (apparently what happened to Gray has never happened before, but Gray is also unusual even for the Kin)? Is there a creation myth that explains where everyone came from and what (if any) their cosmic purpose is?

There are a lot of interesting phenomena in the book, like blood twins, which are demons bonded through some kind of shared magic. It's a fascinating state, because the bonding creates a sort of dual consciousness, but despite the ceremony being detailed at one point, I still don't completely understand all the rules around how these links are forged (and why, beyond doubling up the pair's power), how they can be severed, and what the existential differences between that state and the mageheld state are. More generally, I wasn't sure whether the kind of magic the demons have is of a similar character as the magic mages have, and if not, what the substantive differences are (and where they came from). It's not that the book lacked details – it's more that the details that were presented often raised more questions than were answered. And even as I appreciated the in medias res approach to the realms of magic, I also felt disconnected at certain points in the novel when the magical elements were the most present.

For example, one of the most powerful scenes for me in the book is also the most curious to me. It involves Durian and Gray and another old, powerful demon who interrupts Durian and Gray during a romantic moment. Instead of walking out of the room, the other demon initiates an intimate exchange of blood and connection among the three of them, which does not progress much sexually but which hints at fascinating facets to the bonds of kinship that I wish were further developed in the novel. It was a deeply intense but also somewhat unsatisfying scene, because it made me feel I was on the edge of an understanding that ultimately eluded me.

With the more traditional romance, suspense, and quest threads of the novel, there just doesn't seem to be enough room to have it all fleshed out. As I said earlier, this may very well be my fault for not being smart enough to comprehend the worldbuilding or informed enough with background from the first two books in the series, but either way the questions kept me from completely engaging in the book despite my clear enjoyment of the characters, themes, and plot. While certainly not an average read, My Immortal Assassin did not have my full, uncritical attention, either. I would, though like to go back and read the first books in the series before the next book comes out this summer. B-

~ Janet

REVIEW: My Fair Succubi by Jill Myles

Shuzluva — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:41:32 +0000

Dear Ms. Myles,

You are another author whose books have caught my eye, but I haven’t managed to pick up. I’ve realized I need a lot more free time for loafing on the couch and reading. Does anyone want to give me that as a belated Hannukah or surprise Christmas gift please? Anyways, I’ve seen the (HOT) covers of the previous books in your Succubus Diaries series and thought My Fair Succubi would appeal. If that isn’t the epitome of judging a book by it’s cover, I don’t know what is.

Being a n00b didn’t deter me from jumping into the third book in the series, and I am absolutely sure that I’m lacking understanding of the nuances of what’s going on in the world of Jackie Brighton. This is both good and bad. The good: I didn’t have to deal with page after page of info dump boredom. The bad: I’m still a bit confused as to some of the aspects of worldbuilding, but it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. My understanding is that Jackie Brighton is a super-hot succubus with two masters, Zane, a gorgeous 4,000 year old vampire (fallen angel) and Noah Gideon a gorgeous 4,000 year old Serim (also fallen angel). Jackie loves them both, but the devil (har-de-har) is in the details.

Jackie and Noah are in the jungles of Mexico on the verge of a big find at an archaeological dig. It’s clear that Noah is in love with Jackie, and she’s…not quite there. Jackie isn’t able to sort out her feelings for both Noah and Zane and can’t figure out where she stands on being attached to a four thousand year old angel after living for 20-something years. Before she’s able to ruminate on it for any amount of time the two of them are unceremoniously dragged off to face the Serim council (a group of Earth-bound angels) for crimes they have apparently committed. Luc, an Incubus that must’ve had a starring villainous role in a prior book, manages to convince the Serim that a buncha shit that went down is all Jackie’s fault and he’s been wronged by her. Jackie is held in solitary, her watchman a Nephilim council enforcer named Ethan (his description makes me think of Dwayne Johnson with long hair…I do love me some of The Rock). Ethan, along with the Archangel Gabriel, are to bear witness to her punishment, which I’m not going to describe here because it’s horrible and hilarious at the same time. Jackie manages to get the drop on a Serim and wrangles a deal with Gabriel to retrieve the halo of the former archangel Joachim. Conveniently, Joachim is busy possessing the body of Jackie’s SuccuBFF Remy. The halo of an archangel holds an unimaginable amount of power, and Jackie wants to free Remy from Joachim’s possession, free Noah from the Serim and have the charges against her dropped, so she’s willing to go up against the odds to make it happen.

Jackie goes from one seemingly impossible situation to another, and while her actions in the face of danger may seem Marysuetastic, it wasn’t hard to remember that she’s Immortal (yes, she CANNOT be killed…she’s actually immortal) unless she’s deprived of sex for more than a certain amount of time. She’s navigating the supernatural world without a map, no one has bothered to take the time to give her the stereo instructions on being a Succubus. While this could be seen as a trope used to spring things on her, I felt this easily put the reader squarely into Jackie’s perspective without feeling like something was missing. The book is written in first person from Jackies POV, and Ms. Myles has done something that I consider amazing: Jackie’s thoughts and feelings are clear as a bell, but the first person doesn’t dampen the heat during the sex scenes or fail to convey the feelings of the other characters. And trust me, the sex scenes? I was surprised that the book and my eyeballs didn’t spontaneously combust while reading them.

I mentioned in a recent review that I don’t look for stories with love triangles, but hot damn, I think I may have a thing for them. It’s weird, because I really thought I didn’t like them. The ‘good lover/bad lover why is this woman so damn confused when the choice should be obvious’ can make a wall look like a pretty appealing target at times. However, the relationship between Jackie, Noah and Zane is totally plausible and not book-toss inducing. Jackie’s confused feelings read as completely genuine, as do Noah and Zane’s actions and reactions. I guess when a love triangle is done well, it just may be my cuppa. I hate describing books as quick, fun reads because it makes them seem disposable. This book happened to be an extremely quick (a day and a half for me, and I have three kids, a job, general insanity and I’m not the world’s fastest reader), super fun (I laughed, I got turned on, I was dying to read what happened next) read. But definitely not disposable. I’m going to pick up the Succubus Diaries backlist and get myself totally up to speed in the sexy, supernatural, mixed-up world of Jackie Brighton. B+

~Shuzluva

REVIEW: Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane

Shuzluva — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:00:31 +0000

Dear Ms. Kane,

I am not a big horror fan. I don’t find movies like Paranormal Activity, Resident Evil or 28 Days Later enjoyable. And for clarifcation purposes, I love Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys and Serenity. I nearly got thrown out of business class once when I kept yelping aloud during Signs and I was specifically asked by the hubby to not watch Constantine on a flight. I read a book instead. Yes, dystopian urban fantasy appeals, but with a true horror, scare the living daylights out of you element, not so much. Admittedly, a book with a title like Unholy Ghosts might not be the first thing I’d pick up of my own volition.

The post-apocalyptic world of Unholy Ghosts takes place in Triumph City and is based around the Church of the Real Truth, not so much a church as replacement for the fallen government and a police force out to control the dead. In the world of Chess Putnam, there is no G-d, no demons, no faith, only Fact.

“Now the lack of gods is fact, which is Truth and need not be believed or doubted. The Church offers proctection, and so the Church makes law.”
-The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 1641

The living must defend themselves against ghosts and the dead, and the Church takes care of, and reimburses citizens (to the tune of $50,000) that are harassed by the deceased. Chess is a Churchwitch, she’s covered in special Church-sanctioned tattoos and has a strong ability and affinity for hunting and Banishing ghosts and exposing families that try to fake a haunting. This is where my love for Chess Putnam ends, because Chess is a drug addict. I have a serious problem with a protagonist that is a drug addict. I don’t give a shit how magically gifted she is, how awesome she is without being MarySuetastic. If Chess wasn’t such an addicted fuckup I think I could really enjoy the superior worldbuilding, as gritty and ugly as it is, and possibly even enjoy being slightly scared outta my pants at times. I love a good post-apocalyptic urban fantasy, but to have the heroine portrayed as a drug addict makes it a tough pill to swallow. Har-de-har.

Back to the plot: Chess is in deep to Bump, a drug lord who decides that he wants to start using an old abandoned airport to start importing his drugs faster. Problem: the airport seems to have a ghost issue. Solution: artificially inflate the amount of dough Chess owes, and strong arm her into Banishing the ghosts at the airport. While this could be perceived as a cautionary-type tale of a woman who gets into major trouble because of her habits, I don’t buy it. Chess is doing drugs, needing drugs and lamenting about not having the right drugs throughout the book. Oops, I was talking about the plot, right? Chess goes out to the airport with Terrible, Bump’s enforcer, and they discover that a lot of bad shit has been going on at the airport. Meaning human sacrifice and dark magic in an attempt to raise a particular dead creature, which is very illegal and extremely dangerous. Chess discovers an amulet on a body that is humming with black magic, indecipherable runes, and nearly burns her hand off. She takes the amulet with her to figure out later…which you know isn’t good. If I were in a movie theater I’d be yelling at the screen.

Chess’ troubles multiply as word gets around that Bump wants to open the airport. Bump’s main rival, Slobag, decides to make sure Chess doesn’t get the airport into working order by sending his enforcer, Lex, to meet with Chess. Chess seems to have the hots for both Lex and Terrible, which makes things slightly confusing for her with the drug-induced haze and her inability to separate her emotions from her highs and lows. On top of all of this, there is a group that is totally into dark magic, totally strong and totally against the Church, and they may be behind the insanity at the airport.

The pacing of the book is excellent, and definitely gave me some of those “put-the-book-down-before-my-heart-explodes” moments. The characters are vivid and even the secondary characters get fabulous treatment. I can’t say enough about the wonderful worldbuilding. Triumph City and The Church of the Real Truth are tangible and downright scary, gritty and dark. With all of that, I can’t get past Chess and the drugs. It makes her intimate interactions with Terrible and Lex feel phony, and this is exemplified in an encounter in the book. Chess meets with Terrible and she’s so high that she nearly falls into bed with him (or rather, into a back room at a bar), but instead manages to verbally destroy him. In the end, she’s unrepentant about any and all of this, and as much as I like all of the other aspects of the book, I think I might hate her. C

~Shuzluva

REVIEW: Pleasure of A Dark Prince by Kresley Cole

Janet — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:00:33 +0000

Dear Ms. Cole:

It is no secret that I am a big fan of your Immortals After Dark series, and I have certainly made no secret of the fact that the Lykae "fated mate" books are not among my favorites. In Pleasure of A Dark Prince, I really enjoyed the way Lucia and Garreth had to work hard to fulfill their destined love match. What surprised me about this book, though, was some frenetic-feeling plotting, especially in the second half of the book, that I felt substantially undermined the novel's (and relationship's) dramatic tension.

For those who have been reading the series in order of publication, Pleasure of A Dark Prince returns us to the events of the very first book, A Hunger Like No Other (not only an interesting resistance of linearity, but also a clever way of drawing attention back to the beginning of the series), wherein Garreth MacRieve was imprisoned by the Valkyrie to lure his brother, Lachlain, to his dying mate, Emma.

We knew from A Hunger Like No Other that Lucia was Garreth's mate, but at the time we did not know what had transpired between them already. Pleasure of A Dark Prince begins with Lucia, the Archer, on the hunt and stumbling across a demons v. Lykae rugby match, which brings her eye to one Lykae in particular, Garreth, the would-be Lykae king. Would-be, that is, if he would finally give up hope that his brother, Lachlain, was ever going to return after disappearing 150 years ago. On his way to a goal, Garreth has that unmistakable sensation of recognizing his mate, and he takes off after her, completely unaware that she is not only Valkyrie, but even more challenging, bound by oath to remain chaste.

I was smitten with this Relationship Obstacle from the start. Because this is no sissy "I'm gonna wait" decision Lucia has made; it's a blood sworn oath made to the goddess Skathi in exchange for Lucia's life. An impetuous adolescent, Lucia had been seduced by a male who showed her the face of an angel and an ardent heart. Once she left the protection of her parents for this being, though, his true nature was revealed, and it was more horrifying and tortuous than anything Lucia could have ever imagined. She had attempted to take her own life in escape from this monster, and it was only because her sister Regin brought her broken body and spirit to Skathi, insisting that her sister be saved, that she did not die. So Lucia became an Archer, bound to Skathi and promised to foreswear men, else she would lose her power. Every arrow that missed its goal caused her excruciating pain, but she needed her expert marksmanship to fight her monstrous "husband" at every Accession.

The first few chapters of Pleasure of A Dark Prince recount the events leading up to the climax of A Hunger Like No Other, but here they are told from Garreth and Lucia's point of view, so we see how desperate Garreth is to command Lucia's romantic attentions and how tempted and afraid Lucia is of her attraction to the sexy Lykae. Garreth knows nothing of Lucia's past, and out of fear and shame, she does not want to tell him. But in all the years she has been dedicated to being an Archer (and "nothing more," as Skathi told her), re-imprisoning the disgusting god Cruach every 500 years, Lucia has not responded to a male like she does to Garreth, and it is only the Accession's arrival that keeps her from going too far with the persistent Garreth.

And this Accession is particularly crucial:

"Have you heard of the god- Crom Cruach?" …

"He's evil to the bone. His primary power is to make people feel a mad need to sacrifice whoever they love. Only now, that need will be contagious-’the lust to slaughter in Cruach's name-’passing from person to “person. In the past, he's been jailed in a lair, but with each Accession, he grows powerful enough to break from his prison. Every five hundred years someone has to send him back there. NÃ¯x dispatched me to do this."

Fortunately, there may also be a way to kill Cruach permanently, a "dieumort" or god-killer, hidden somewhere in the Amazon. Unfortunately, Lucia must traverse the Rio Labyrinto,: "[a]lso known as the River of Doom and the River of Doors, it's a watery maze of channels and cutouts. . . . [a]nd it's rumored to be the gateway to El Dorado," the famed "Lost City of Gold." Lucia has never been in the Rio Labyrinto, but Garreth has, and despite Lucia's best efforts to shake him off her trail for the past year (!), he secures a place on the creepy boat Lucia has booked passage on for her upcoming face-off with her erstwhile husband/torturer.

To say that Garreth is loyal and dedicated to Lucia (he pronounces her name "Lousha") is a vast understatement. From serving as bait to trap Garreth in the whole basement capture incident, to burying him under logs and then pushing an eighteen wheeler truck on him, Lucia has done everything short of shooting him between the eyes with one of her arrows (he wouldn't move out of the way, she knew) to throw him off her trail. The nightmares of Cruach have begun, marking the countdown to her next face-off with the guy who gave rise to the "modern idea of Satan." But Garreth refused to be deterred, and while Lucia's antics have taken their emotional toll, he remains constitutionally incapable of leaving her in any danger and leaving both of them sexually unsatisfied. The dynamic of their relationship can be summed up with this exchange:

"I've been patient with you, Lousha, forgiven any slights against me and my family. No more patience. I'm a different man now than I was then."

A darker, even more attractive man. Or beast. "Slights? If you wouldn't have stalked me -"
"Luckily, I did, so I could repeatedly save your pert arse."

"And yet I survived the previous millennium without your assistance!"

"I could have taken you from Val Hall that night of the vampire attack, away from the threat. Instead I stayed to save your sisters' lives. I did this for you."

She knew this!

"So I was a shade pissed that I'd made a sacrifice for you and you threw me over at the earliest opportunity. And there are a dozen more incidents when I've had to save you."

"Listen to you, talking about your “good deeds!"

"I've got a few of them to speak of where you're concerned. And in the last few weeks, your foes have been increasing in number-’"

"I swear it's like you believe your deeds are credits, and if you do enough or remind me enough, then you can buy me."

"No' buy you. Earn you. That's the Lykae in me. Could no' turn that off if I tried. Deep down I believe that if I show you I'm a good protector and provider, you'll surrender to me. You'll want me in turn."

"But I don't want you. I couldn't have made it clearer over the last year. There's playing hard to get, and then there's take a freaking hint! When you followed me, you brought all this on yourself." They were toe-to-toe, breathing heavily, and she was uncaring of the consequences.”

"Doona want me?" His voice dropped to a low rumble. "Ah, lass, do you really want me to make a liar out of you?"

He was about to kiss her, and gods help her, she feared she wanted him to-’

For me, these types of exchanges are a central strength of the IAD series – the sparring, the sexual tension, the sarcasm and wit. As I said before, I thought this situation between Garreth and Lucia was a very clever way of making her resistance mean something, of creating a dilemma that should have no easy resolution. Lucia is charged with containing an ever-increasing evil, while Garreth feels compelled to protect Lucia. And the closer he gets to her, the more tempted she becomes to abandon her vow to Skathi for the warmth and satisfaction that Garreth promises. After all, it is quite a lonely existence being one of Skathi's Archers, especially for a Valkyrie who had been desperate enough for love to abandon the safety of home and family for a cruel illusion. Because I could sympathize with both Lucia and Garreth, I was not turned off by the "fated mate" construct.

What did undermine my untroubled enjoyment of Pleasure of A Dark Prince, however, was first the way Lucia's chastity took on a pretty token definition as the book progressed, and second the plotting around Cruach and the dieumort that takes up the latter sections of the novel.

While Garreth is unable to mark and fully claim Lucia, their sexual relationship is far richer than anything one would expect from a woman who had vowed to a goddess to be "virgin" and to "shun men" as long as she lived. And Skathi does not seem much like the forgiving, understanding type. So once Lucia and Garreth are contained together on the boat in the Amazon, Lucia's sexual chastity is defined extremely narrowly. The solution applied to the inevitable sexual consummation can probably be read back to cover much of what happened between them, but it is an explanation Lucia does not have access to at the time, making her judgment even more questionable. And because she will not tell Garreth the truth behind her vow – shamed and afraid, she doles out information in small bits, so he does not understand the depth of the problem for most of the novel – he continues to press her for greater and greater sexual surrender. I am not sure there is an easy resolution to this difficult set-up between Garreth and Lucia, but I did feel a little like the token chastity was a cop out, even as I wanted Lucia and Garreth to find complete sexual and emotional fulfillment together.

More problematic for me, though, was the way the grand evils and dangers of which we had been warned many times and with great drama throughout the course of the novel (a "contagious…lust to slaughter in Cruach's name – passing from person to person") seemed to collapse like the proverbial house of cards. I cannot explain in detail the scenes to which I am alluding here, but I can say that one involves an Indiana Jones-style booby trapped burial chamber into which the eeevil vampire Lothaire (who had been following them) runs and takes something with such ease I can only hope that untold consequences are being saved for a future book. Because if that plot line goes nowhere, a great deal of the dramatic tension from Pleasure of A Dark Prince was completely and inexplicably overblown.

Then there is a circumstance involving the dieumort, which is a hidden god-killing instrument that immortals everywhere seek because of their rarity and power. Something happens just at the right time with a dieumort in the book that was just too convenient for comfort. Not only did I not understand why someone had not found this particular dieumort before, but I certainly did not understand why someone hadn't found it and put it exactly to the use that Lucia did. These are immortals after all, and they have had thousands of years, in some cases, and myriad gifts with which to locate and exploit these god killers. Just way to deus ex machina for me.

Which brings me to the ending of the book and the final hurdle Lucia and Garreth must overcome. Again, I cannot say too much without spoiling a major plot point, but I can say that for me the ending was a somewhat heavy-handed imposition of the Great Lesson of Romance: Love heals and the Tears of True Love heal even better. And it isn't that I cannot or do not appreciate that lesson (I enjoy the genre, after all). But here I felt that the resolution to the – again – very dramatic problem, was easy in a way that did not simply reflect the power of common sense, but rather a somewhat too easy way out of a corner.

In many ways I think Lucia and Garreth's story is effective in demonstrating the popularity of the fated mate device – the big protective male is humbled by his love for the heroine, who in turn must learn to welcome the idea of depending on someone else for support. And Garreth is quite romantic, capturing a beautiful butterfly for Lucia, bringing her a magical gift that proves very useful, showing his pride in her skills and his respect for her intelligence and tenacity. He makes a very appealing romantic hero. And Lucia has good reasons for her fears and insecurities. She's not one of those heroines who rushes into danger unprepared or keeps crucial information from the hero for no good reason. Her reticence is understandable and her fears relatable. All of which made the plotting issues and artificial straining of the sexual tension (via Lucia's token chastity) especially disappointing to me. So in the end, while Pleasure of A Dark Prince much broke down my own reticence to the fated mate device, other aspects of the novel did not fare so well with me. B-/C+

~Janet / Robin

This is a Simon & Schuster book, one of the Agency 5. The base price is $7.99 and some stores are adding in tax. No Simon & Schuster books are at the Sony eBookstore.