Flush with the news of the big sales for digital copies of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the ebook community is slapped around with the latest news that etailers like Fictionwise and WH Smith are being forced to remove access to books that people have already bought because of geographical restrictions. I know you can’t see it but I’m shaking my fist right now. (okay, not right now because I am typing but I was before.) I don’t think a simple refund is going to make people happy. This sort of thing results in two actions: 1) piracy and 2) decline in adoption of ebook reading. Way to go!

Speaking of things encouraging piracy, songwriters, musicians, and composers are lobbying to get a law passed that would allow them to get a performance fee for any downloaded digital media. In essence, the law would require a payment for access of digital media, including 30 second previews that we all avail ourselves of on iTunes and Amazon:

“In the US, while we do get paid a mechanical [licensing fee] from ITunes, we are not getting any performance income from Apple yet,” David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, said in a recent interview. “[On iTunes] you can stream radio, and you can preview [tracks], things that we should be getting paid performance income for. Also, if you download a film or TV show, there’s no performance [payment] and typically there’s no mechanical [payment] either.”

Library Thing is being forced to remove all other bookseller links from the first page of each book to link to Amazon alone. The reason for this is Library Thing’s database is powered by Amazon data. I’m fairly sure that Amazon provides this data access for free and this is the “payment” that it is now requiring. LibraryThing is not moving away from taking the Amazon data because it is the most complete and error free. Case in point is a competitor’s database MUZE which supplies Borders and eBay. Up until today, MUZE had not updated the covers for several July, August, and September books. Library Thing acknowledges that the covers are very important to its website.

One thing that independent booksellers have been asking publishers to do is to provide a better digital catalog for booksellers. Library Thing wouldn’t have to feed all its primary page traffic to Amazon if it had a good alternative. Who better to provide that than the publishers who control those books?

Speaking of Amazon, it is producing its own line of private label goods. You probably see these in your grocery store. Costco’s brand is Kirkland and Target’s is Archer Farms. Amazon’s private label brand is, well, Amazon. Is there anyone who really doubts that Amazon will be getting into publishing?

Author Andrew Keen is resistant to the ebook shift because he finds ebooks soulless and predicts that ebooks will make authors soulless too. I hadn’t realized that paper and glue imbued the books that authors wrote with soul. I certainly understand that there is some affirmation that authors get with the physical book that perhaps they don’t get with a digital book but if Keen is convinced the only the physical incarnation of the words he wrote is what gives his stories soul, it’s not a very positive comment on his writing. I particularly liked this passage:

Yes, you can call me a reactionary, but, as a book author, I want my work to be fingered by my readers. I want young women like Lillian to wait in line for me to sign copies of my work. Like a character in a Stephanie Meyer fantasy, the e-book drains the blood from the physical text. No, this cultural revolution can’t be recommended.

Nalini Singh, Meljean Brook, Ilona Andrews, Jill Myles and Patrice Michelle have a new blog called the Oddshots wherein they basically make fun of themselves and each other. Meljean redid Jill Myles’ cover to include a cover quote from her mom.

Oh, Jill, honey…it’s very, um, funny and I laughed a lot. But did you have to make it so sexy? I mean, for God’s sake, Jill, what will the family say? *sob* – Jill’s Mom

Paul Graham has a provocative piece about publishing arguing that publishing has never been about the sale of content. He argues essentially what I did a few weeks ago (but only in nicer more cogent terms):

I can see the evolution of book publishing in the books on my shelves. Clearly at some point in the 1960s the big publishing houses started to ask: how cheaply can we make books before people refuse to buy them? The answer turned out to be one step short of phonebooks. As long as it isn’t floppy, consumers still perceive it as a book.

That worked as long as buying printed books was the only way to read them. If printed books are optional, publishers will have to work harder to entice people to buy them. There should be some market, but it’s hard to foresee how big, because its size will depend not on macro trends like the amount people read, but on the ingenuity of individual publishers.

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2. Weekend Links Round Up: Is Print Back?
3. Thursday Midday Links

You can buy Kiss of a Demon King currently in three different ebook formats: Sony, Kindle and Mobipocket.

Kresley Cole is also running a promotion that ends tomorrow which features the Red Sony Reader as the grand prize.
  

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Kiss of A Demon King by Kresley Cole
2. Thursday Haiku Moment: Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole
3. SB&J Saturday Night Liveblog: Mediterranean Boss, Convenient Mistress

Illusion Queen is
Misunderstood, not evil
(Well, a bit evil.)

Rydstrom shows his horns
Grows a personality
Bondage fetish, yum.

One part of story
Disappoints: we never see
Ryd’s piercings, alas.

I’m a dirty bird
Wanted nasty hot sexxors
This has all & more

Witty, fun romp? Check.
Sex as playful torture? Check.
Gena shout out? CHECK.

Did I mention that
The cover is hotness itself?
Grade A from this girl.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Kiss of A Demon King by Kresley Cole
2. Thursday’s Haiku Review Moment: A Witch’s Beauty by Joey Hill
3. Thursday Haiku Review Moment: The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase

One of my favorite things about the Immortals After Dark series is that all the books are different.   Sure, there are some unifying themes – justice v. retribution, finding one’s place in the world and in love, independence v. autonomy, just to name a few – but the stories and the couples are not carbon copies of each other, making each book a new reading experience.   Kiss of A Demon King may be the most ambitious book of the series to date, in that it features two alpha protagonists, neither of whom wants to be vulnerable to the other.   The power struggle between Rydstrom and Sabine, combined with the complex plotting and increasingly interwoven aspects of the Lore, made Kiss of A Demon King a very powerful, if not perfect, read for me.

Rydstrom Woede may still be King of the Rage Demons, but his kingdom has long been under the control of the usurper Omort, an evil sorcerer who is rumored to be immune from death.   His purported inability to die draws him to his half-sister Sabine, Queen of the Illusions, who has died more than a dozen times, brought back to life by the powers of her sister Melanthe (Lanthe).   Like many rulers, Omort has no problem with incest, and would love nothing more than to possess Sabine, except for the fact that her fate has been foretold as that of the Demon King’s mate.   More importantly, perhaps, Rydstrom and Sabine’s child is destined to unlock the secret power of the Well of Souls, a supernatural vat of untapped power that each faction of the Lore wants to control.

So Omort simply waits and lusts, holding Sabine and Lanthe close with his own form of control (a deadly poison the women must ingest to stay alive), growing less and less stable in the stir of information that Rydstrom and his brother Cadeon may have found a way to end his life, via a magic sword forged by Omort’s similarly evil brother, Groot the Metallurgist.   Unable to find a soothsayer who can unfailingly guarantee Omort’s ultimate triumph over his enemies or a union with Sabine, Omort’s desperation places even more urgency on Sabine’s plan to capture Rydstrom and seduce him into impregnating her so that she can claim the power of the Well and free herself and her sister from Omort’s sadistic control.

Unfortunately for Sabine, Rydstrom’s will is just as strong as hers, and his pride is just a little bit wounded at the fact that Sabine was able to weave her illusions effectively enough to make him prisoner in the dungeon of the very castle from which he used to rule the Kingdom of Rothkalina.   Sabine may possess the power to weave illusions that seem real, but she does not have the supernatural power to force Rydstrom into serving as husband, mate, or stud, despite her numerous earthy (and earthly) gifts.

Anyone who read Dark Desires After Dusk is aware of the illusion Sabine uses to entrap Rydstrom, and those who haven’t will get a replay in Kiss of A Demon King.   However, there is little overlap beyond that scene, as Kiss of A Demon King has enough to keep the reader occupied, what with the turmoil in Omort’s court, Sabine’s plan to mate with Rydstrom, Lanthe’s own troubles with a vengeful Vrekener (enemy of the sorceresses, one of whom may be Lanthe’s own mate in a future book?), Rydstrom and Sabine’s escape from Tornin and travels through the desert of Grave Realm, and Sabine’s inability to survive for long without her dose of Omort’s poison.   If all of this sounds a bit confusing, that’s probably because it was for me, so I cannot express it more elegantly.   In fact, I’m still not sure I picked up on everything in play, or understood why everything worked the way it did.

Consequently, it was the plotting aspects of Kiss of A Demon King that snagged me up, sometimes disorienting me and sometimes seeming unnecessarily overcomplicated.   For example, I had to read the Prologue twice, once at the beginning of the book and once again after I finished it, not really feeling grounded until that second read.   And then it felt like the only reason it was included was to provide some backstory for Sabine and fill in relevant details from previous books.   Unfortunately, this resulted in something I don’t ever remember encountering in an IAD book:   infodump.   A downside to the complicated plotting and intersected stories framing Kiss of A Demon King was the periodic insertion of chucks of backstory:

So much was at stake in the fight to reclaim his crown-from Omort the Deathless, a foe who could never be killed.

Rydstrom had once faced him and knew from bit ¬ter experience that the sorcerer was undestroyable. Though he’d beheaded Omort, it was Rydstrom who’d barely escaped their confrontation nine hundred years before.

Now Rydstrom searched for a way to truly kill Omort forever. Backed by his brother Cadeon and Cadeon’s gang of mercenaries, Rydstrom doggedly tracked down one lead after another.

It is a tough call, I think, to know how much a reader might need to understand all that is going on, especially if she has not gotten through all the previous books in a series.   An author may not want to alienate new readers while at the same time not wanting to bore veteran readers.   Up until this book, I think Kresley Cole handled this difficult dance perfectly, but here it felt a bit clumsy to me.

Another byproduct of the complexity was that certain things didn’t make total sense to me.   For example, there are these covenant tablets in Castle Tornin that signal a promise made.   Sabine has one in which she promises that she will remain sexually pure if she can remain free from being sexually forced.   It is clear the promise has been broken when the tablet falls and breaks. Omort has respected these covenants, essentially relying on others to remain loyal within a court that is hardly harmonious (and placing him in a reactive position should the alliances break).   I know that in holding to the Sanctuary covenant Omort supposedly keeps Sabine’s loyalty and cooperation, but he clearly has other ways of ensuring that.   Is it simply that there are many interwoven promises in those covenants, networks of loyalty that Omort needs to keep his rule?   That may be the case, but since he can steal some the supernatural powers of other beings, why must he depend on such mundane promises of loyalty?   I am still not completely clear about why Omort couldn’t just steal enough powers to disempower others like he did to Cade and Rydstrom, who could no longer trace.   In fact, I’m not completely certain about how these powers are stolen or transferred from one being to another in general.

For me, the problem was that in virtually all the scenes taking place in Tornin I was not fully oriented to everything that was occurring, especially in the latter portions of the book where the scene was being set for the ultimate standoff between Omort and his final destiny.   I am one of those readers who has a difficult time visualizing busy actions scenes to begin with, and in this book there was just so much that needed to be played out and wrapped up that I didn’t feel like I was keeping up very well.   For example, characters travel between planes through the use of portals, and I kept wondering why these portals limited travel to the extent that they did.   Why, for example, was Rydstrom able to facilitate the transportation of many demons through a portal from a desolate plane called Grave Realm to various places in the United States (and why did people remain in less than ideal place to begin with?), but his brother couldn’t follow him through from New Orleans to Tornin?

Lest it seem like I did not like Kiss of A Demon King, though, let me turn to what I loved about the book:   the relationship between Rydstrom and Sabine.   You know how there are movies where an actor will emit such power on screen that you simply can’t look away from them when they are in a scene?   Well, that’s how I felt about Rydstrom and Sabine.   These two are so powerful as characters, so vividly portrayed and potently alive on the page, that I found them riveting.   And fortunately, almost the entire middle section of the novel is taken up with their growing relationship.

I am not sure I have ever met a character like Sabine.   A virgin, she has both incredible sexual awareness and seemingly unflappable self-confidence; Sabine is definitely not Romance’s stock virgin heroine.   Capable of steadfast loyalty, she is unsentimental, ruthless when she needs to be, and unapologetic about her love of gold.   In Rydstrom, she’s not looking for love or even a good time; she’s seeking the means to her preservation and a way for she and Lanthe to rule Rothkalina themselves.

And although we have been acquainted with Rydstrom for several books now, we have not really seen the depth of his pain over losing the crown or his loneliness in not finding his mate yet and not knowing what his future holds.   On the one hand Rydstrom wants to regain the power stolen from him, but his overweening sense of responsibility has also bred some resentment toward the beings he once ruled.   In short, Rydstrom faces the dilemma of the hyper-responsible in that he is driven to do the right thing but frustrated that so much rests on his shoulders.

There is no lack of irony and conflict between Rydstrom and Sabine.   She knows that the Demon King is her mate but seeks no lasting relationship.   Rydstrom wants his mate but refuses to give in to Sabine’s advances, even when his instincts tell him she is his.   She is a nuevo-nihilist who “cares “about nothing very much” as opposed to not caring about anything, while Rydstrom constantly feels the burden of authority.     But all of that just makes for a stronger – and more difficult – attraction:

“Are you falling for him?”

“Could there be a more doomed relationship? It is ridiculous even to contemplate.” His husky voice . . . the way his smooth skin tasted, “He’s just so… so good.”

“I think that intrigues you,” Lanthe said. “He’s a male as strong as you, and one you can’t defeat.”

The truth is, that neither can defeat the other, which both fuels and frustrates their mutual appeal.   Especially because Sabine represents everything Rydstrom disdains – well, at least appears to disdain:

She sat at the foot of the bed. “That’s the difference between me and you. I won’t try to convert you. Do I like that you never lie and esteem things like valor? Of course not. But I don’t try to rid you of those traits. Why does your kind forever seek to change ours?” That was what she hated most about them-not their odd, counterintuitive beliefs per se, but that they would force them on others.

“Because we live more contented lives. We have loy ¬alty, fidelity, honor-”

“All three are overrated. The only chance you have to demonstrate any of them is to deny yourself some ¬thing or someone that you desire.”

What Sabine soon discovers, though, is that Rydstrom is more attracted to her badness than he lets on, which gives her a certain amount of power over him, which is in turn matched by Rydstrom’s unwillingness to cooperate with Sabine’s need to be queen and to carry Rydstrom’s legitimate heir.

How one goes about bringing two characters together who do not have obvious chinks in their emotional armor is no small feat.   There is a fine balance between keeping the sexual tension alive and not surrendering either character’s emotional guard too soon or too cheaply.   Kiss of A Demon King keeps this balance beautifully, by slowly, slowly wearing down Rydstrom and Sabine, allowing them to torment each other, allowing each of them to take the upper hand in turn, forcing them to remain together long enough to be revealed to each other in new, unexpected ways.

Her lids slid closed. Peaceful. Perfect. . . . When she opened her eyes, she found him studying her face. The possessiveness in his gaze made her breath hitch. “My naked body is spread out before you, and you’re looking at my face?”

“I’m trying to figure out how your mind works. If I can do that, then this”-he trailed his fingers between her breasts and lower-”will always be mine to enjoy.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I have to, Sabine.”

This process is facilitated by a road trip, so to speak, with Rydstrom and Sabine getting the chance to escape Tornin for Grave Realm, a barren outpost of Rothkalina that contains portals allowing for transport off plane.   But the portals are remote, requiring days of arduous hiking through desert-like conditions, and it is it through this section of the novel that Rydstrom and Sabine grow closer.   True to their characters, however, neither simply lies down for the other, and both carry numerous secrets.   Rydstrom, for example, has lied to Sabine about the oath he delivered to her in captivity, an oath she believes is a wedding vow (it’s actually a vow for revenge), and Sabine allows Rydstrom to falsely believe that she might be carrying his child.

These lies are enough to bind the two but not enough to seal their relationship.   After all Sabine is still supposedly an “evil sorceress” (“It’s not my fault the truth and 1 are strangers-we were never properly introduced.”) and Rydstrom is still supposedly a straight-laced King.   Watching their personalities fill out within the context of the novel was a true pleasure.   For these two, it’s not enough that they are attracted to each other, and it’s not even enough that they ultimately love each other; for them it’s about trust and the incredible risk they take in trusting the other when all signs show that to be dangerous.

Had the whole of the novel read with the same taughtness, emotional impact, and even pacing as the middle sections of the book, this would have been a straight A for me, as the relationship between Sabine and Rydstrom is among my favorites in the series.   Assigning a grade that adequately expresses my reading experience of Kiss of A Demon King is difficult, but a B seems fair on balance.

~   Janet

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store.

Related posts:

1. Dark Desires After Dusk by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: Dark Needs at Night’s Edge by Kresley Cole
3. REVIEW: If You Desire by Kresley Cole

eBooks:

• ROUGH, RAW, AND READY by Lorelei James (Samhain)
• UNEVEN by Anah Crow (Torquere)
• COLLISION COURSE by K.A. Mitchell (Samhain)
• LOVE AHEAD by Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux (Dreamspinner)
• IN THIS LAND: The Purple Book by Matthew Haldeman-Time (Volume 1 of 5 that combine the ongoing weekly subscription service on author’s website, $4.99/month)

Print books:

• DARK NEEDS AT NIGHT’S EDGE by Kresley Cole
• DARK DESIRES AFTER DUSK by Kresley Cole
• INTO THE FIRE by Suzanne Brockmann

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2. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jayne
3. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jennie F

We have open ended series like Kresley Cole’s Desires After Dark and nearly every cross over or paranormal fantasy. We have trilogies such as the Nora Roberts Pagan Stone series, the last of which was just recently released. Elizabeth Hoyt, one of Jayne’s favorite historical authors, is in the midst of The Legend of the Four Horsemen books. There are the seeming never ending books about the Cynsters by Stephanie Laurens. Some series I’ve given up on and some I don’t feel compelled to start but lord, wouldn’t it be lovely to have some stand alone books again? Or not?

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As soon as I finished Dark Desires After Dusk, I went back to track rage demon Cadeon Woede’s character in Wicked Deeds on a Winter Night and Dark Needs at Night’s Edge (am I the only one who’s starting to feel these titles are blending into one long tongue twister?), curious to see if I would regard him differently now that I’ve read his whole story. Happily, the answer is no: Cade is still the swaggering, demon brew-swilling rage demon who loves his big old truck and his pay per view porn almost as much as he regrets the youthful decision that lost his brother crown and kingdom. Cade is no suave intellectual, no ethically upstanding Lore citizen. He is a blunt instrument, and one sexy demon, with, as Nix likes to point out, seriously “lickable horns.”

Holly Ashwin is one great heroine, too, a mathematics genius with serious (medicated) OCD, who remains in complete emotional and physical control through punishing rituals of cleaning, counting, swimming, and designing computer code. She possesses one of the most original excuses for remaining a virgin I think I’ve ever seen in Romance: unaware of her true nature (Valkyrie and Fury), Holly is afraid of physically hurting any sexual partner, with two somewhat tragic incidents feeding the fear. She has a long-term boyfriend — the unbelievably enabling Tim — an impending Ph.D. degree, and a limited but apparently satisfying life within very constrained physical and emotional boundaries.

Until, that is, she is taken captive by rogue demons who are convinced that she is the Vessel, a woman fated to bear the Lore’s “ultimate warrior” of either good or evil, depending on the father’s nature. Terror and anger at being restrained as a virtual offering for these demons overrides Holly’s usual cool control, initiating the transformation into her true form of Valkyrie and Fury, giving Holly both incredible strength and an incredible thirst to massacre her attackers. When Cade rescues her, he makes her believe that the sorcerer Groot might be able to reverse this frightening transition, convincing her that he will take her there. Holly is eager to return to her limited but familiar existence, even as she feels drawn to Cade’s outgoing energy.

Unbeknownst to Holly, Cade has been entrusted with the task of delivering the Vessel to the evil Groot, who has fashioned a sword with which Cade and Rydstrom can kill Omort, the virtually un-killable sorcerer who stole Rydstrom’s crown. Omort was able to steal the crown because Cade had refused to come to the castle when Rydstrom rode out into battle, preferring to stay with his foster family, hurt by his banishment to begin with and unconvinced that his presence at the royal residence would be necessary. His mistake of judgment cost him his brother’s respect, his family’s kingdom, and the lives of his foster family, who were ultimately killed by Omort’s evil minions (the virtually un-killable reanimated corpses called Revenants), and now he has one chance to make it all up.   The only thing it will cost him is the female he has waited 900 years to meet and mate.

Although Cade tells himself that he can never have Holly, that the 900 years he has spent being an epic disappointment to his brother and to the rage demons will soon be over, he is so enamored of Holly, so impressed by her intellect, so fascinated by her OCD, so enraptured by the view of her behind in her favorite pencil skirts, that he cannot resist the urge to break down her defenses. Together, Cade and Holly are fabulously volatile and intense, a perfect linking of apparent opposites. Cade is incredibly focused and courageous but will never win a Nobel Prize, and Holly may very well win the Nobel but will probably never enjoy the reckless genius that makes Cade such a successful mercenary.

The incredible fun of this novel is found in the growing intimacy between Cade and Holly, and in the way their emotional meshing catalyzes their individual growth. The kind of loyalty that made Cade want to protect his foster siblings all those years ago drives his protective instincts toward Holly, as well, his need to teach her how to fight like a Valkyrie (to protect herself in his absence) and even his desire to see her let loose sexually (okay, there might be some selfishness there, too). Holly’s OCD is in full force as she finds herself without medication, immersed in a whole new universe of supernatural beings, and in the company of a male who is as disorganized as Holly is ordered. And then, of course, there is his naturally rough, earthy, chauvinistic demeanor, which serves as a persistent taunt to Holly, making her painfully aware of Cade and yet horrified at the possibility that she might lose complete control:

He hiked his broad shoulders. “My kind prefer tarts with a little more meat on their bones so they can take a demon’s lusts.”
“Tarts?” Her jaw slackened. “My God, you’re the most misogynistic man I’ve ever met. I bet you also like your tarts barefoot and pregnant.”
“Nah, I like them barefoot, on birth control, and always available in my bed.”

Dark Desires After Dusk is a road novel of staggering geographical breadth, beginning in New Orleans and ending in the Northwest Territory, as Cade and Holly venture through a series of mysterious checkpoints and partial directions, with Cade becoming more desperate about the choice he will have to make between Holly and his brother’s crown, and Holly becoming more fully Valkyrie (and thanks to a welcome meeting from “auntie Nix,” which included a brief family history and some books on the Lore and the Valkyrie, she can read about her real mother and adjust to the change) and more and more attracted to Cade.

What is refreshing about their relationship, though, is that neither is the cardboard cutout Romance ideal. Cade is incredibly strong and resourceful, but he is not a brilliant strategist. As Jane said to me during one of the conversations we had about the book, Cade doesn’t ever think about a backup plan, because he puts all his energy into the current strategy, whether or not it will be successful. So Cade doesn’t have all the answers going in to Groot’s lair, the one plan he was hatching having met with a fatal snag (and Rydstrom has been imprisoned by Groot and Omort’s sister, Sabine, so he is conveniently out of the picture). There is a great description of the difference between Rydstrom and Cade in Wicked Deeds on a Winter Night: if Rydstrom would take a scalpel to a problem to systematically cut through it, Cade would take a hammer and swing wildly. So Cade’s dilemma is real, even if we can see a way out that he has not envisioned. It is a fine line to make that myopia a property of the character and not the narrative, and for me it really works here, because Cade is so consistently brute in his orientation.

By contrast, Holly is used to being completely cerebral, sublimating and subverting her physicality through exercise and organization (she requires everything organized in groups of three), and so despite her newfound strength, she has not yet found her internal courage or coordinated that with the need she has to protect herself from the kind of harm that others wish to visit on her (as Valkyrie and as the Vessel). It is only once she makes some key discoveries about her boyfriend and about herself that she begins to embrace the part of her so long suppressed, and she is delighted to discover that she does not have to worry about her sexual instincts hurting Cade or about her OCD tendencies overtaking her sexual pleasure. At the same time, though, her neurotic need to count and control does not magically disappear, giving her just enough imperfection to be the perfect match for a similarly imperfect male like Cade. And her sexual awakening is not simply about “loosening” Holly up; it is part of a whole process in which she integrates the incredible passion she has for her intellectual work with other aspects of a healthy, high functioning life (and a rather bloodthirsty streak that comes from both the Valkyrie and Fury sides). The fact that she is a Valkyrie may give her inhuman physical strength, but it does not provide a substitute for real character growth.

Jane compared Cade to Rupert from Loretta Chase’s Mr. Impossible, and I think that’s a very good call, because like Rupert, Cade has incredible respect for the heroine’s braininess. He may not know what she’s talking about all the time, but he is open to learning, often looking up the things he does not know. Holly, in turn, learns from Cade to recognize and trust her instincts, to live more fully in the physical present, and she gains much more independence as soon as she recognizes that a fully integrated life is not threatening. In many ways, this is a story about balance, about two characters who have embraced a certain extreme way of thinking during their life (Holly as isolated geek, Cade as ne’er do well mercenary) finding a middle ground, both with themselves and each other, without losing the core of who they are. In fact, there is a great exchange between Cade and Holly that expresses the sexual politics of the book and offers a key to the ultimate success of a relationship between these two characters. Cade has won a bet, and now Holly must watch one scene of porn, which she has never done before:

“You put it down, but you’ve never viewed it? The bra-burner’s a tad hypocritical, no?”
“Though I’ve not yet tried drinking acid, I still put it down. And don’t call me a bra-burner! There’s no need to make fun of my feminism.”
“First of all, I’m not making fun-I’m poking fun. And second of all, I’m doing it to your face.”
“What does that mean?”
“If we bandy the subject, at least you know where I stand and you get a chance to persuade me to your way of thinking. Can you say the same about the other men in your life? The yes men?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Meaning Tim.”
“He’s not as perfect as you like to think.” Naturally, Cade despised him with a deep and virulent hatred. But Cade had also gotten the feeling that Tim wasn’t the lap-dog he appeared to be.
“No, maybe he’s not perfect,” she said. “But I bet he doesn’t consider women to be tarts, who should be in a man’s bed twenty-four hours a day.”
“I was jesting about that. Mainly. Almost totally.”
She glared.
“For the record, male Lorekind have higher opinions of females than human males do. The playing field’s more equal in our world.”
“Ha! I find it hard to believe that men who’ve lived for centuries-and might even be medieval-believe in equality more than a human male raised in the Madonna era.”
“The Lore is home of the Valkyrie, Furiae, Witches, and Sirenae. You underestimate females, and you find your balls nailed to the wall.”

There are many wonderful and witty exchanges in the book, including the typical clever witticisms of Nix and company, as well as Cade’s own bawdy humor in the face of Holly’s insistent innocence. The conflicts between Holly and Cade also feel authentic, as do the trust issues she has with him (after all, he is a liar by career choice). The betrayal that Cade must serve Holly in order to get Groot’s sword is real, and it is not magically undone, making the resolution one achieved through personal work and not deus ex machina.

Unlike the last two novels in the series, I flew through Dark Desires After Dusk. I would have liked to see the ending less rushed, and I wondered several times why, if Holly had access to a primer on the Lore, she did certain things and failed to question other things, especially when it came to her own fertility and to anticipating Cade’s eventual betrayal. And what should have been the climactic scene in Groot’s lair was very difficult for me to visualize at times, especially when it came to where Holly and Cade were physically at key points. Consequently, the last few chapters of the book were not as strong for me as I wanted them to be, especially since I enjoyed everything leading up to them so much. Overall, though, I think this might be my favorite book in the series to date, in large part because I found equal strength and appeal in both Cade and Holly. Because of that, I end up somewhere between a B+ and an A- for this one.

~Janet

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format (although I couldn’t find a link for this.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole
3. REVIEW: No Rest for the Wicked by Kresley Cole

Somewhere in the middle of Dark Needs at Night’s Edge I felt that this book occupies a very important moment in the Immortals After Dark series. As Jane said previously, this is a series one can pick up at any point and not be completely confused. But for those of us who have been reading it since the beginning, the world-building is complex and multi-layered, not only with different species of immortals but with different families and other kin relationships to keep track of, and various mythologies, alliances, aversions, grudges, and other intersections among the immortals. It is a challenge to keep the reader engaged with the central story as well as giving ample attention to the world building for both novice and initiated readers. Dark Needs at Night’s Edge reminded me of how difficult that challenge can be, because the book’s main strengths and weaknesses relate to this balancing.

Conrad Wroth is a Fallen vampire, turned by his desperate brother against his will into the creature he had made a sacred vow in life to destroy. And now, in his Fallen state, eyes blood red and the memories of thousands of victims in his mind, he has succumbed to a kind of madness induced by bloodlust. With a demon’s curse hanging over him – that when he gets his most cherished dream he will also get his most horrid nightmare – and various other immortals seeking his death, Conrad is brought against his will – once again by his brothers – to an old estate where they seek to rehabilitate him with the help of a magical elixir. Chained and crazed beyond reason, Conrad soon becomes aware of another presence in the house, a beautiful young woman ghost only he can see.

Néomi Laress, burlesque dancer turned prima ballerina, has not been able to leave her estate since her violent murder 80-some years earlier. Every month her ghostly self relives her violent stabbing, and the rest of the time she tries to entertain herself by observing the intermittent tenants at Elancourt, the latest of which is the mad vampire chained to a bed and watched over carefully by his two vampire brothers, Sebastian and Nikolai, who know that if they cannot bring their brother back from his bloodlust they will have to destroy him for good. Néomi is used to being invisible to her home’s residents, to entertaining herself by stealing things with her telekinetic abilities and haunting any tenant she deems unfit for residence. But it has been a while since anyone moved in, and Néomi is starved for something to break the monotony of her lonely netherworld existence.

So when Conrad moves in, Néomi isn’t fazed by the violence he does to her home in his frenzied attempts at escape because she is too caught up in this frightening, imposing, but clearly tortured male. At first she simply watches Conrad, who, amazingly, can see Néomi but believes her to be a figment of his shattered imagination. Over the days, though, she begins to reach out to him, curious and feeling no small amount of pity for his suffering. And even though Conrad does not trust in Néomi’s existence, he cannot help but respond to her, to count on her steady presence in the house and her interest in who and what he is.

When Conrad’s brothers go missing, he is left to fend for himself, restrained by chains that are magically treated to keep him within the boundaries of the estate, and in the company of the ghostly Néomi, upon whom more and more of his rational mind focuses. Because he has not yet been blooded by his Bride (the process in which his heart pumps once against and he breathes), he cannot physically respond to Neomi’s unashamed sensuality, and Néomi cannot deliver on the promise of her blatant teasing, either, but they develop a strange camaraderie nonetheless (or perhaps because of those physical limitations):

And as he improved, they talked more and more – two people who desperately needed to. Often they hit a rhythm, a bandying back and forth, as if their thoughts were interlocking pieces. She’d told him, "When we talk, I like how our words ebb and flow. There doesn’t seem to be a need to remark on every comment, no need to clarify – it’s like we both understand that we understand each other. It’s like dancing."

"Or sex?"

She’d smiled. "Only if it’s great."

He’d given her a confident nod. "Then we would have great sex."

Lord, we would. . .

They seemed to fit in every way. Yes, he was half-mad, but as a Prohibition-era ghost with a penchant for stealing condoms, moon pies, and bras, she wasn’t exactly in touch with reality herself.

Initially it is great loneliness that brings these two together, the mutual understanding that neither really has a place in the world, at least no place they feel they have affirmatively chosen. And the fact that they cannot physically touch ironically creates more sexual tension between them, because they are forced to express so much verbally and through their emotional reactions to one another. In terms of their characters it makes their growing attraction that much sweeter, and narratively, it is a very smart way to build tension into each level of their relationship and the seeming impossibility of their ever being together on an equal plane.

Part of the tension in Conrad’s characters comes from his increasing sanity. During the times Conrad is not crazed with the nightmares that come from the memories he has ingested from his victims (along with their blood), he is becoming more and more reflective, more conscious of all he gave up for his vow to the vampire killing Kapsliga. Néomi becomes his comfort, calming him when no one else would be able to:

"You’re getting so much better," she murmured. "Soon you won’t have these nightmares."

He narrowed his gaze at her, as if just noticing she was there. "You were murdered – you remind me of the things I’ve done, of consequences," he choked out the words. "And you show me what I could have had . . . if I’d been . . . different." He grasped his head again and muttered, "You’re what’s wrong with my past. What must be missing from my future."

"Conrad, your future’s not settled. You can still have good things in your life again."

"You’re the perfect punishment for me."

"Oh." Stunned, she rose to leave.

He reached out to stay her. When he closed his big fist around air, he turned and struck the headboard with frustration. Eyes vacant, burning red, he rasped, "Did any man ever want his penance so much?"

For anyone who has read other books in this series, they will recognize this dynamic immediately: two powerful characters who are struggling to protect their vulnerabilities from each other, all the while becoming increasingly vulnerable to their mutual feelings of attachment. Although Neomi is a ghost, we never underestimate her strength; we know that this woman’s spectral endurance is a reflection of an extremely strong spirit. And Conrad, poor Conrad, has unbelievable strength and equally potent fears. These two are a natural fit, indeed, except for the small problems of his bloodlust, the demon’s curse, another demon’s pledge to kill Conrad, and Néomi’s lack of physical embodiment. Many paranormals would centralize this last conflict, making it the primary obstacle in the relationship, but not here. Thanks to Mariketa and Nix, Néomi is able to return to the physical world, an event that sets off a long chain of consequences, from Conrad’s blooding and the consummation of their relationship to hastening the crisis point in Conrad’s hunt for Tarut, the demon who cursed him.

I must confess that one of the reasons I love this series is precisely the interaction of different characters and species of immortals, and their appearance never feels gratuitous. Mariketa, Bowen, and Nix have important roles to play, as do Sebastian and Nikolai Wroth. Cade and Rydstrom have key contributions to the narrative, as well, and so their presence allows for us to become more acquainted with the brothers before Cade’s story comes out imminently, and in a way that doesn’t seem plunked into the novel. In other words, the strength of the world building and the characterization is more and more apparent with each novel. Of course, it is also more difficult to maintain with clarity, a challenge I also see in Meljean Brook’s Guardian series.

The flip side, of course, is that there needs to be ample time for the main couple’s bond to develop, something I felt was sacrificed a bit in the last book, Wicked Deeds on A Wicked Night. Here, however, Néomi and Conrad spend so much time alone that they cannot help but grow close, and so we get a lot of uninterrupted time with them. However, the very isolation also creates challenges of its own, namely that these two characters have A LOT of inner angst, and they have no one in which to confide these anxieties. Thus there is A LOT of thinking that goes on during this part of the book, and we seem privy to it all. Which made my reading experience slow for a chunk of the middle, during which I waited impatiently for something to come along and break the narrative monotony. This was by far the weakest part of the novel for me, and had the pace not shifted well before the end, my overall grade for Dark Needs At Night’s Edge would have suffered considerably, because the balance I mentioned at the beginning of my review would have been significantly askew.

Instead, the shifting pace, back and forth between the isolated drama within Néomi and Conrad’s relationship and the rest of the Lore’s complicated dynamics kept me interested. I loved, for example, how even the details are given heightened attention. When, for example, Conrad is blooded, he does not, understandably, recognize the sensations. Instead he feels like he is running over land mines, the beat of his heart a virtual explosion in his body and mind. And Neomi, when she becomes embodied, experiences a physical "hypersensitivity" that would be expected, but not necessarily illustrated for the reader. I appreciate these details because they naturalize the world of the novel and aid that necessary suspension of disbelief.

Finally, there are the women of these books, especially the pugnacious and avaricious Valkyrie and the vain and opportunistic witches, and now Néomi, whose fate I will not reveal but will say it was a satisfying and believable outcome for me. I know this has become somewhat of a refrain, but I don’t care: I love these women, because those characteristics that would be seen as flaws, weaknesses, and even unacceptable taboos in other areas of the genre are represented in these books without judgment and with significant humor. They’re bawdy and raucous and strong, not just physically, but intellectually and emotionally, too. As intensely sexy and appealing as the heroes can be, with all their sometimes clueless, brooding angst (and their tendency to the "mantrum" as Nix calls it), it is the females that really hold these books together for me, and keep me reading them. Dark Needs At Night’s Edge is an entertaining and adeptly imagined addition to a great series, and it gets a B from me.

~ Janet

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. Kresley Cole and Her Innocent Men
2. REVIEW: If You Desire by Kresley Cole
3. REVIEW: No Rest for the Wicked by Kresley Cole

# 92 Little Lamb Lost
# 36 Miss Kitty
# 14 Ana
# 50 Emily
# 107 Josie
# 97 Dani
# 67 Shreela
# 64 limecello
# 79 Liviania
# 111 Ashley
# 15 DS
# 87 Wendy
# 114 Candice
# 116 Nikki
# 103 ChRiStY

We also celebrated Signet/NAL who stood up for the integrity of publishing and the readers. The winners of a $5 gift certificate from Fictionwise are below. Please email me (jane @ dearauthor. com) with the email address where the GC should be sent.

# 41 A. Hashi
# 33 ms aggie
# 10 Jane A
# 23 Meriam
# 31 willaful

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: If You Desire by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: If You Dare by Kresley Cole
3. REVIEW: If You Deceive by Kresley Cole

Cole takes very traditional tropes and reverses them completely. For example, Cole’s books are female-centric with the female myths playing larger roles. Instead of the brotherhood or the male cadre of warriors, you ave a group of sword wielding, smart mouthed, head chopping Valkryries that like sparkly things, nail polish and video games or devious witches that are so beautiful they have to spell themselves to protect others from their personal glory.

Cole takes it even farther by flipping the hero into the traditional heroine type. As Robin blogged over at Reader’s Gab, so often heroines are solitary creatures with few friends and and not much of a support system; most importantly, the heroine is generally inexperienced.

So while Cole’s heroines are the ones with the constant fellowship and support, Cole’s heroes are isolated for various reasons. Lachlain was captured for hundreds of years [A Hunger Like No Other]. Bowen was emotionally stunted because he had lost his mate [Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night]. Sebastian purposefully isolated himself by avoiding his brothers and seeking comfort in scholarly work. In Cole’s newest two books to be released back to back in May and June, the heroes are isolated again. Conrad, the hero of Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, is said to have been “alone and friendless for centuries.” In Dark Desires after Dusk, Cadeon Woede is blamed for the loss of his brother’s crown, putting him in disgust to others. “Yet as Rydstrom mounted his stallion, his soldiers gazed at Cadeon with an expression of hatred, tinged with disgust. They clearly thought Cadeon should die.I had best get used to that look, he thought. Even at his young age, he knew he’d be seeing it for the rest of his life.”

Cole’s heroes are often sexually inexperienced. They’ve had few or no partners. Lachlain abstained from consorting with women in his clan because he was sensitive to how that might make his future mate uncomfortable. He searched out jewelry and gifts, not for any current mistress or lover, but for his future mate.

The vampires cannot even get it up until they are “blooded” by their “Bride.” In a sense, these men are completely manless without the right female which is yet another reversal of the trope that posits a woman is only complete with a man on one arm and a baby in the other.

Sebastian was a bumbler with women before he was turned into a vampire and had pangs that he might not be competent enough for Kaderin. “Sebastian’s forgettable-’or disastrous-’experiences had not prepared him in any way for Kaderin’s passion.” He compared himself unfavorably with his brother: “He could never have compared with Murdoch’s experience, and he’d dreaded looking down as he took a woman and knowing that she was thinking the same.”

In Dark Needs, there is a hilarious scene early on in the book where Sebastian tries to give Conrad a reason to live. He tries to sell Conrad on the majestic experience it is to be blooded. Neomi, the heroine ghost, is sitting in the room at this time, intently listening to everything that is going on. Conrad is becoming increasingly embarrassed as Sebastian proceeds to state baldly, to Neomi’s great interest, how few women Conrad probably has had. “Is that all she sees him as? A madman to be ignored? Or worse – pitied? That is how she sees him. A filthy, sexually inexperienced lunatic.” Neomi is the one with sexual experience. At one point, Conrad questions “Does nothing abash you?” Cadeon, in Dark Desires, is more sexually experienced but he is so enraptured in his mate that when he first meets her, he stutters and stammers and she dismisses him which, of course, makes him want her all the more.

Cole plays on the innocence of her men, but never fully emasculates them. She relies, in part, on their great physical strength, their tremendous good looks, and their machismo. I find her heroes to be an exaggeration of the stereotypical male and while they appear alpha, the truth is that these men are pussycats that are willing to devote their lives to a woman and to making that woman happy. You get the sense that if Kaderin the Coldhearted wanted Sebastian to wear a skirt, he would don it with pleasure and enough swagger to make her swoon. The innocent, yet alpha male, is a tightrope that Cole expertly navigates.

Because despite the bumbling, the sexual innocence, the emotional impairment of these heroes, the men are not emasculated nor are they overpowering. I think that Cole gets away with this because her story is a paranormal one. Her Valkryies and Witches are smart, powerful, beautiful, and unafraid of their own attractiveness. They can see through the facade. They know their power over men and thus the excess manliness only serves to heighten the chemistry.

Cole’s writing is very smart and very female centric in a genre that all too often makes it all about the men. Kind of like this article. In celebration of Cole’s writing and her back to back releases, Dark Needs at Night’s Edge and Dark Desires After Dusk, I’m giving away 15 copies of Dark Needs at Night’s Edge. They are currently sitting on my counter and I am anxious to send them out. So go forth and comment. I’ll randomly select you to win a copy of Dark Needs so you too can enjoy Kresley Cole and one of her innocent, beleaguered men.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole
3. My First Sale by Kresley Cole: The Rule of 25 (Don’t Try This at Home)

My favorite part is the 4:19 mark. I laughed so hard that Ned came over to see what was going on. Kresley is giving us some books to give away next week or so. Stay tuned. Update: Here is the link for all the videos.

Updated to add: I’m currently being grilled as to why I find these videos funny.

Ned: What is it about these videos that you find funny?

Jane: They just are.

Ned: But what is it, specifically?

Jane: 0_0

Ned: What?

Jane: Why are you asking me?

Ned: Are they reviewing books? Making fun of something?

Jane: It’s just funny. I think it’s funny.

Ned: I don’t get it.

Final update: Have watched them all. Nearly peed my pants. Showalter and Monroe are hysterical.

Related posts:

1. EPPIE Judges Know Good Writing When They Read It Just Not that It Was Someone Else’s Good Writing
2. My First Sale by Dionne Galace, Blogger Makes Good
3. Interview with An Author: Heidi Betts, Categories Are a Training Ground for Good Writers

I had the opportunity to meet Ms. Cole and it is easy to see her as a modern day Valkyrie. Surely only a warrior woman would engage in a writing plan that she did. Her latest book, Wicked Deeds on a Winters’ Night is out in bookstores now.

* * *

As soon as I’d completed my first manuscript, I enlisted my husband to help me devise a plan to get it published. Since both of us have backgrounds in competitive sports, and that was what we knew best, we decided to attack the process of selling the book as if it were an aggressive training goal. We called our plan the “Rule of 25.”

At any given time, I would have in play 25 ventures toward publication, which I called juggling 25 “balls in the air” (it sounded so much more innocent back then). A ball could be one of five things: a contest entry, a confirmed conference registration often with an editor/ agent appointment, a formal critique in progress, a proposal sent to an agent, or a query to a publisher.

We put together an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything, and if I checked off a ball as completed-if I’d just returned from a conference, received a rejection, etc.-then the total would automatically deduct one. The Rule held that when one ball came back, another one went out within a day.

The number twenty-four still makes me twitch, Kiefer notwithstanding.

In the initial stages, the majority of the 25 consisted of contest entries and conferences, so I could learn more about craft and the industry. As I started getting feedback and polished my manuscript, I shifted the 25 toward agent queries as well. Only when I was confident my proposal was as strong as I could possibly make it did I begin querying publishers.

The upside of the plan: I sold within a year, after pitching the book to my editor in one of those conference editor/ agent appointments. The downside: all the hard knocks on the road to publication came at me fast. Receiving more than one rejection letter in a day wasn’t uncommon, and the daunting stream of them was steady and reliable.

As I’m reading back over this, recalling all that work and travel completed in such a short period of time, I’m forced to wonder what was I smoking?? if I would do it the same way now.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: If You Dare by Kresley Cole
3. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole

Like his brothers Court and Hugh, Ethan MacCarrick is unlucky in love, a fate he believes to be foretold by a family prophecy, the last and crucial lines of which are obscured by blood. Until each brother meets his mate, they believe they are to remain loveless, childless, and disastrous to anyone who cares for them. Ethan has doubled and even trebled his misfortune, first by the deep scar that mars his once beautiful face and then by his first fiancà©e's wedding-eve death. He is bitter and jaded, resentful of his responsibilities as Earl of Kavanagh and angry at the world in general, and more specifically at those who caused his disfiguring scar. Never a man who had tremendous respect for women, after being cut Ethan is certain that any woman worth having will be repulsed by his appearance, and he eventually shuts all women out of his heart and his sights. Until, that is, "wee lass–? Madeline Van Rowen, daughter of his greatest enemy, captivates him with her beauty and her natural sensuality. Although both are masked for the same party that started off Hugh and Jane's book, If You Desire,–? Ethan immediately sees beyond Maddie's disguise: Though she appeared lively and fresh, he sensed in her a world-weariness–"the same that affected him so markedly (16). The two are drawn to each other, and following a raid on the illicit party, Maddie and Ethan find themselves in a carriage and in a fully passionate exchange for which neither is prepared.

Like Ethan, Maddie has had more than her share of misfortune, enduring poverty, hunger, and abandonment since her parents' deaths, completely unaware that the drastic change in her circumstances from wealth to destitution were orchestrated by her mother's selfishness, her father's weakness, and Ethan's vengeance. Living in a Parisian slum, Maddie survives through thievery and odd jobs, and had made a final effort to trade on her beauty and her virginity to find a husband in England so she does not have to marry an aging and creepy French count, to whom she was promised years ago. So she borrows money to purchase a fine wardrobe and travels back to England and to her friends the Weylands, none of who know the depths to which Maddie's life has sunk. When she meets Ethan, she is as caught up as he in the unexpected attraction, and both of them indulge in an uncharacteristic recklessness that binds them together emotionally and physically, despite an equally strong mutual mistrust.

The pattern for Ethan and Maddie's relationship is established during their first heated exchanges as mutual strangers in a carriage. Ethan distrusts his own attraction to Maddie even as he is overwhelmed by her appeal. Maddie knows she is in desperate circumstances but is unwilling to count herself a defeated victim. Ethan has the means to rescue Maddie but cannot resolve his own tender feelings, preferring instead to imagine the final exacting of his rage against her parents. Maddie has the emotional strength and stability Ethan needs to heal his heart but cannot quite trust any fortune that gleams too brightly. The certainty of trust will guarantee their happiness as a couple, but the uncertainty each brings into the relationship practically guarantees tumult, misunderstanding, broken promises, and betrayal.

Ethan and Maddie's story is not new to Romance, based as it is on both great passion and great personal insecurity, and unfortunately, Cole does not provide the freshest spin on the epic emotional drama between Maddie and Ethan. Although I could appreciate both Ethan and Maddie as characters, I found the pacing of the story uneven and the plethora of well-used plot and character elements frustrating. It took me three days to read the first 150 pages of the novel and three hours to read the last 200 or so pages, and by the time I finished I felt vaguely unsatisfied. On the one hand, I really appreciated the fact that Cole does not flinch in portraying Ethan as a man who really has used women in the past, showing us in many ways that his callousness is a cover for the fact that "he felt [everything] too strongly–? (94). Combined with the cruel way in which Ethan was disfigured, that understanding allowed me to tolerate some very unpleasant moments, especially the scenes in which Ethan aggressively pushes Maddie sexually, uncertain at some level of whether he wanted to debase her or worship her. But even Ethan's self-awareness didn't save him from appearing two-dimensional, especially as he struggled so obviously and often with his dual impulses toward tenderness and callousness.

Maddie, on the other hand, while a very strong character, did not come across as vividly to me as Jane did in If You Desire, and consequently, the many pages of background that Cole provides on her degraded life in Paris dragged for me. Although I am the type of reader who really appreciates a broader scope for historical Romance –" a whole world view rather than microscopic focus on the two protagonists –" here the background and foreground felt unbalanced and not smoothly assimilated. One symptom of this is the fact that for every French phrase Cole used, she provided a translation, even when she could have expressed the meaning more smoothly through context and clues. By the time the novel finally took flight for me, I hit the epilogue and felt an almost tangible sense of curtailment, like having to break for more traffic after you think the freeway is finally clear.

As with most of Cole's books, I was entranced by the heroine and greatly enjoyed the sight of an overgrown, overaggressive man felled by his "wee lassie,–? even though I had had enough of her "wee–? everything long before Ethan did. I appreciated the fact that Cole created a woman who could tell the hero, and mean it, that he was not to "confuse my desire for you–"and for self-preservation–"with desperation–? (197), and who "boldly believed she was a lovable person,–? despite the losses she suffered (229). How refreshing it was to enjoy a heroine who wasn't a mass of fears and insecurities, even if her bravado seemed unbelievable at times. She was really the perfect foil for the angry, insecure Ethan. And Cole's prose continues to mature with every book she writes. If only the book had been more evenly paced and substantively vibrant, even in its derivative elements, If You Deceive would have risen above an average read for me. As is, however, it earns a C.

Best regards,

Janet

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: If You Desire by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: If You Dare by Kresley Cole
3. REVIEW: No Rest for the Wicked by Kresley Cole

As 27 and counting, Jane Weyland is tired of waiting for Hugh MacCarrick to come back and claim her as his, as his one and only as his wife. Not that she's been wasting away in the meantime. No, Jane has been indulging her freedom in the bawdy antics of the “Weyland Eight,–? a group of female cousins who enjoy scandalous novels, scandalous parties, and in one case, a scandalous affair with the family groom. But still, this independent and forthright woman has been unable to forget the solitary and sensitive Hugh MacCarrick, whose boldness extends to everything but taking Jane in body and in marriage. And she's tired of waiting, especially when the handsome, wealthy, and respectful Freddie Bidworth wants to marry her.

Hugh MacCarrick walked away from Jane ten long years ago, driven by a family prophecy that apparently promises death and disaster for any MacCarrick man who tries to marry. His father was already made victim to the curse, and despite the fact that the last lines of the prophecy are disguised by blood, all the MacCarrick brothers have studiously avoided any kind of emotional entanglement that could lead to permanent commitment. Those of us who have read the first book in the series, If You Dare, know what the punch line is, so to speak, but Hugh missed the revelation that clarifies the terms of the prophecy and frees him to run Jane to ground, drag her back to his castle, and slake more than ten years of mutual lust.

Instead we have Jane's father, who also employs Hugh as a sharpshooter for one of the Crown's numerous (at least in Romancelandia) covert organizations, summon Hugh to London to protect Jane from someone who worked for Weyland and befriended Hugh before he succumbed to opium, insanity, and a major grudge against Weyland and Hugh. Thus, as Jane prepares to accept Freddie's long-standing marriage proposal, Weyland has convinced Hugh to marry his daughter so that he can take her away until the villainous and psychotic Davis Grey can be neutralized. Armed with the promise of an annulment when things calm down, Jane grumpily consents, setting up the necessary conditions for these two strong-minded, hard-headed, passionate protagonists to do what nature –" and love –" intends.

Thus the fun begins, with introverted Hugh and extroverted Jane provoking each other to a virtual frenzy of passionate engagement. Jane is one of those women who has a “system–? for organizing that might, to the uninitiated, make her look like a slob.

Shoes, stockings, laces, and satiny corsets littered the room. Dresses were puddle where she'd dropped them. So much disorder. Hugh hated disorder, craved the opposite in every aspect of his life.–? (since I read this in ebook, I have no page numbers)

Hugh appreciates control and organization because he's needed both to become a successful assassin for the Crown, and he is afraid that if he should give in to Jane's passionate appeals, she would eventually be disgusted by his profession. He feared that even if she could get past all the killing he'd done, fierce Jane still might find his means . . . cowardly.

There's nothing terribly new here, but one of the things that made this love affair so enjoyable for me was the fact that Hugh and Jane have known each other for so many years, that they have always had a comfortable friendship that made their growing lust already grounded in a certain emotional closeness. Jane's ease with other people balances Hugh's solitary awkwardness, and Hugh's reflective constancy balances Jane's brash impulsiveness. These two genuinely like each other, so even as Jane hurts because Hugh abandoned her for ten years, she knows he's a good man. And even as Hugh warns Jane not to tease him sexually, he yearns for the comfort of her companionship. Hugh was the one who encouraged her to beat the men who didn't think a woman could be a master archer. Hugh was the one who swam with her at her family's estate and who carried all her crap around for her (dumbstruck from the memory of Jane in wet linen, no doubt) and who listened to her talk about the ring she eventually wanted from her intended husband (a broad hint, even then). And when Hugh regrets their first passionate coupling, Jane reminds him, “'it's just me, remember. It's just your Jane. We were always comfortable around each other.'–? Hugh, though, still has that family curse to worry about.

Of course Hugh has to be stubborn here, else a major element of the novel's conflict would disappear. But at least Jane knows he's being stubborn and myopic, which puts the reader firmly in alliance with her, because we know what Jane only suspects, namely that Hugh's loyalty to the family curse is misplaced. I thought that was a clever way for Cole to circumvent the frustration I often have with the character who clings to pride at the expense of True Love, and it also makes for a very heroine-centric book that still has the feeling of those old skool Romances featuring the brooding alpha hero a good deal of hot and heavy sex.

By setting up Jane and Hugh's growing relationship against two conflicts, one based on Hugh's fear of the curse and one based on the external threat of Davis Grey, Cole was able to vacillate effectively between building intimacy between Hugh and Jane and keeping up the suspenseful momentum of the book as a whole. While there isn't a great deal of nuance in the characters or writing or the plotting, there is an exuberance that infuses the book and kept me engaged in all the right ways. Besides rooting happily for Hugh and Jane, I also loved a secondary character who gives Jane a good run for her money and appreciated the lighthearted diversion Jane's family offered at crucial points in the book. Cole doesn't forget about the wonderful Freddie, either, and rewards him nicely for his friendship and loyalty to Jane.

Near the end of the book I found Hugh's self-pitying martyrdom a little tiresome, but I was glad Jane didn't make herself a victim –" once again –" to a sacrifice that looks suspiciously like another abandonment. And by the last page, I was already feeling impatient for the next book in the series, which speaks to Cole's skill in making so much old feel new and fun again –" at least for a few hours. B for this one.

Kresley Cole’s If You Desire is available in ebook form now and in mass market form on April 24, 2007.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: No Rest for the Wicked by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: If You Dare by Kresley Cole
3. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole

A variety of supernatural beings walk the earth in the world you have created in this book. The heroine, Emmaline Troy, is half-vampire, half-Valkyrie. Her Valkyrie mother died in childbirth and Emma has been raised by the Valkyries, warrior maidens who don’t know anything about her vampire father.

Vampires are capable of great evil and are enemies of the Valkyries, and therefore it’s surprising that a Valkyrie and a vampire would ever create a child together. So Emma feels like neither fish nor fowl. Unlike her aunts, she is not much of a warrior. She is gentle and terrified of vampires, even though she is half vampire herself.

Lachlain MacRieve is a a Lykae (werewolf) and the leader of his clan. But everyone thinks he is dead because for a hundred and fifty years he has been chained by the vampires’ leader in an eternal fire beneath Paris. Each Lykae has a predestined mate and once each one finds his or her mate, they remain with them for life. Lykae have always mated with other Lykae, but now Lachlain has become an exception to this rule. His predestined mate is Emma, and when he picks up her scent from above, he wants to be with her so much that he tears off his own leg to escape the chain that holds him. (Luckily, the leg grows back).

It’s not until Lachlain finds Emma that he realizes she is a vampire (he does not know about the Valkyrie half). After the way the vampires have tortured him for decades, he loathes them all, but he can’t let go of Emma. Neither can he decide what to do with her. One moment he is all over her and the next he is threatening her. It takes him a while to get over what he suffered and to calm down and realize that part vampire or not, Emmaline really is his mate and he doesn’t want any harm to come to her.

Emma is both attracted to Lachlain and at first, afraid of him. She agrees to help him to get to his home in Scotland and later, when she learns that she may be in danger from some murderous vampires, she decides that it’s not such a bad idea to stick close to him. Unlike Lachlain, Emma isn’t so big on the lifemate concept, but the attraction she feels for Lachlain grows stronger and while dealing with adversity she begins to get over her fears and become strong.

For me A Hunger Like No Other was one of those potato chip books. It was hard to stop at one page or even a hundred, but ultimately, it wasn’t all that satisfying.

Lachlain was a guilty pleasure kind of hero, a bit of a Neanderthal but enjoyable for all that. Emmaline was a sympathetic heroine. I was prepared to dislike her wimpiness, but I didn’t. A Hunger Like No Other is at its strongest when Lachlain and Emma are alone, but as they are joined by other immortals, the book begins to suffer from the preponderance of too many different types of creatures. There are Valkyries and vampires and Lykae and Wraiths and witches and ghouls and demons and by the end, my ability to suspend disbelief only extended so far.

I’m also getting a little tired of paranormals in which the hero is the leader of a pack of creatures who mate for life and the heroine is &emdash; you guessed it &emdash; his mate. I know, that describes at least a third of the paranormal subgenre. But that’s exactly my point. This premise has only been around for a few years and already it’s getting to feel overused.

I’m sure that it’s possible to make that concept feel completely new to me, but it isn’t easy, and this book did not accomplish that feat. I will say this, though: when Lachlain and Emma finally get around to having werewolf-Valkyrie sex, it was pretty darn hot.

Ultimately, this book is a very guilty pleasure, and my opinion is that readers looking for something deep or meaningful or intellectually stimulating should probably skip it. Readers who want to entertain themselves for a few hours without thinking too hard, and who like paranormals, alpha heroes, and over-the-top sex might enjoy this one. As for me, A Hunger Like No Other left me hungry for something more substantial. C+.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

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1. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole
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3. REVIEW: If You Dare by Kresley Cole

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1. REVIEW: If You Dare by Kresley Cole
2. REVIEW: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole
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I am going to be worthless today and it is all your fault. You see, last night I picked up your book on a whim. It was 11:30 pm when I started to read. I had a big day today with an important meeting. I figured I would read for a half an hour and go to bed. But by midnight, I had made it about 4 chapters in and I couldn’t quit. I kept telling myself that I had to go to bed but the need to keep reading and find out what happened next overrode good sense and the need for sleep.

For the uninitiated, AHLNO represents your first full length paranormal. It is the second published story, however, about your Valkryie. The Valkryie in your books remind me of the males in JR Ward’s Brotherhood. Some are tormented. Some have special gifts. All are immortal. And they live together. This works much better for a group of women than men.

AHLNO has a gripping opening. A man stands in the catacombs in Paris. He has been chained to a rock in front an eternal pit of fire. Because he is immortal, he will be burned and regenerated only to be burned again. Over the centuries that he has been imprisoned, he notices the smells of Paris above him and one day, he scents HER, his mate. For each Lykae has a mate and he had searched ceasingly for her up until his capture. The triumph of finding HER imbues this creature with enough willpower to overcome his bonds but only in the most savage of ways – amputation of his leg.

The heroine, Emmaline Troy, is a young (72?) vampire/valkryie mix. She is the only one of her kind. Her mother begged the coven to take her in and raise her. In comparison to her Aunts, Em has always felt lesser because of her vampireness: her need for blood, her aversion to the sun (she has a medic alert card that describes her as having a “sun allergy and extreme photosensitivity”. I like your sense of humor which is peppered throughout the book She is in Paris searching for her beginnings: her parents and whether other mixes like her exist. It is the first time away from her Aunts. She describes her most triumphant action as going to Tulane and getting degree. She realizes, with some amount of self deprication and self pity, that this is essentially meaniningless. Through her journey with Lachlan to his enclave, she finds herself and strength in herself.

The plot is primarily focused on whether Lachlaen can convince Em that she and he are mates and the search for Em by differing factions of the Hoarde, or vampires. You have created a fascinating world called the Lore that is peopled with demons, vampires, shapeshifters, wraiths, valkryie. You have even brought something new to the werewolf mythology that I had not read before.

There are flaws in your story. Like how did Lachlan know of Louisiana if he had been in the catacombs for over 200 years. It is also possible that your readers will find Em a bit too changed but you had a decent explanation for her discovery of strength and I liked that it was within herself and not the taking of blood as I originally thought. Em’s background and training with the Valkryies seemed inconsistent at times. The sex scenes came on early and fast and didn’t seem consistent with Em’s timidity.

Overall, though, those minuses were inconsequential. I thought your book was scorching hot, extremely entertaining and left me anxious for me. I will definitely be re-reading this one and glomming your entire backlist.   B+ (It would have been an A but we readers are all tired of the whole soul mate thing)

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

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