The re-release of one of your only time travel novel provided a perfect excuse for a re-read. Son of the Morning was first published in 1997. It’s an unusual romance in that for much of the story, Grace and Niall, the two main protagonists are separated by the dimension of time. While I remembering enjoying Son of the Morning when it first came out, I think I appreciated the richness of the development more this time around, likely because I knew what awaited me. This book is time travel + mysticism + suspense all in one volume.

Grace St. John lives an ordinary and fulfilling life with her husband Ford. She met Ford through her brother Bryant and everyone has remained close (Bryant lives on the other side of the duplex that she and Bryant inherited). Grace is a translator of ancient texts. One night she traipses next door to receive computer assistance from her nineteen year old genius neighbor, Kristian. She returns home only to see her husband and her brother killed by her boss, Parrish. Devastated and terrified, Grace flees. After some time, Grace becomes convinced that the reason Parrish is determined to kill her is because in the course of her work she comes across a document pertaining to the Knights Templar. (I think it is important to remember the date in which this book was published because it predates all the Dan Brown stuff).

Grace is actually translating the 700 year old writings of Black Niall. At the time of her husband’s death, Grace has only managed to translate 10% of this document but she is determined that the text holds the answer to Ford and Bryant’s killings.

Niall of Scotland becomes a Templar, a warrior monk, because, well, the text of the book explains it best:

Niall had been forced into the Brotherhood, for of course a monk could never be king; a king must have at least the possibility of children, for kingdoms were built on continuity. His illegitimacy should have been an unsurmountable barrier, but even at a young age Niall had been tall and proud, intelligent, cunning, ruthless, a born leader; in short, he had all the characteristics of a great king. The choices had been simple: kill him, or make it impossible for him to be king. Niall was loved by his father and half-brother, so there had really been no choice. The young man would be a servant of God.

His half brother is, of course, Robert the Bruce. Over time, Niall’s believe in God erodes as he watches his Templar brothers hunted, burned, killed all under God’s name. Throughout time, his family became his brothers of the Knights Templar and as they died one by one, Niall’s devotion became embittered. When he is called upon to be the Guardian, Niall refuses to swear to God, but instead promises on the blood of his brothers to protect the treasures imbued to his defense.

The story really revolves around Grace. With the help of her genius neighbor, Grace gets enough money to leave town. She’s only got one goal in mind: survive to find the answer of her husband’s death. Grace is inept at it at first. She gets mugged at an ATM. She spends too much replenishing basics at the big box store. She makes a believable transformation from timid scholar to capable fugitive. She uses every skill at her disposal: her intelligence; her quick wittedness; her determination. She’s not physically strong and described as petite and small. But she’s observant and thinks on her feet. Through her research and translation, she becomes closer to Niall. She begins to view him as her talisman. She thinks about what he would have done in her shoes. The thought of him provides her courage and encouragement.  What she begins to feel for Niall is at odds with her grief. I felt the discovery of a new love was well done, not diminishing her feelings for Ford, but allowing a place for Niall.

Niall shares equal page time. There are plenty of scenes from his point of view. Niall’s character arc mirrors Grace’s a bit. He grieves the loss of his brothers and while he might not admit it, his faith. He spends his time alone, his task one only he can carry out.  But Niall doesn’t undergo a transformation.  He’s accepted his role, albeit reluctantly.

While Grace and Niall don’t meet face to face, they share mutual dreams of each other. Hot, lusting dreams and their mental bonds draw each other closer until its brings them physically together. I think this is a clever use of the time travel concept because it skirts the issues of time travel books bring up as it relates to parallel dimensions. Niall’s duty as Guardian is to protect the artifacts of Jerusalem at all costs. It is this power that sends him throughout time to dispatch this duty. Thus Niall isn’t immortal, exactly, it’s just that time affects him differently. The mysticism is bound up on the intent of the action. “Only for the sake of God may the secret be used.”

This is not a perfect story. A little too much emphasis is placed on Grace’s ordinary looks and her loss of weight over the course of her adventure (although it should be noted that Grace’s husband adored her). Grace and Niall are separate for most of the book. In some ways, this is a fated mate story. Destiny draws Grace and Niall together and their feelings for each other develop in ways that require some leap of faith.  There are some convenient occurrences that allow Grace to prevail on more than one occasion and probably some historical inaccuracies (although I didn’t notice any).

Yet, it’s a compelling story and imbued with the fun of adventure, conspiracy and mysticism. There is a great blend between nerdy translation of texts and action and danger as Grace tries again and again to avoid capture.  Grace is a fantastic heroine and Niall is a classic Howard hero. It’s hard to grade this book but I’d probably give it a B+.

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo | All Romance eBooks

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2. REVIEW: Up Close and Dangerous by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard

In a recent podcast, Sarah Wendell and I talked about how there are titles we would like to have rebound into collector’s items so that they can sit on our shelves and be read and admired.  Some of your titles would be on that list. After the Night.  Now You See Her.  The Diamond Bay/Kell Sabin series.  Yes, even Dream Man.   But ever since your move to hardcover, I have felt that you’ve taken your work in a direction that I wasn’t prepared.  For that reason, I have a hard time grading “Prey.”  Maybe if I was a mainstream fiction reader or a mainstream thriller reader, I would read this book differently.  My assessment and my disappointment stems from the fact that I wanted more interaction between the male and female protagonists.

Instead, the book treats me to several scenes from the primary antagonist, an accountant who is fleecing his mobster boss, a long scene from a random hiker, and yes, even a black bear.  I don’t read a lot of mainstream so maybe this is normal? Having scenes from an animal’s point of view.  The bear is an antagonist.  It’s not presented as a particularly loveable, lumbering bear, but one that is intent on eating, well, hikers and whomever else it can get it’s jaws on.

He studied the sheep. He was downwind of the heard, the cold mountain air bringing the scent sharp and clear to his nostrils…He went into a frenzy of destruction, bellowing his rage and frustration
as he took out his killing fury on the vegetation…

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take from seeing the bear’s point of view.  Was it to show him as sympathetic? Was it to create increased atmosphere?  Was it some unique literary technique they are experimenting with in the litfic world?

As for the accountant, he was supposed to be very clever, so clever that he as leading his mob boss off to this wilderness trip to go bear hunting and plans to kill the boss and the hunting guide and then will escape to Mexico with his money.  He is afraid of the mob boss’s associates.  Yet, why does he think that shooting the mob boss makes sense? Why not just escape to Mexico?  I was never quite sure why the mob boss went with the accountant. After all, the accountant believed that the mob boss was starting to get suspicious of the accountant’s activities.  Why would the mob boss be by himself?  But when the bear shows up, the accountant thinks to himself that he never planned for a bear despite the fact that they were going BEAR HUNTING.  If you are going out to hunt bears, wouldn’t you plan for bears?

The small glimpses of interaction I saw between the hero and heroine were fun and interesting but so so few.  According to my notes, I was up to 244 of 300+ pages and I think we had about 10 pages of dialogue and interaction between the two.

Angie Powell runs a wilderness hiking business she inherited from her dad and not very well.  She doesn’t recognize her own strengths (catering to families and other women) and instead runs the business focused on hunters and fisherman, like her dad did.  She’s been losing a tremendous amount of business to Dare Callahan, a war veteran, who has set himself as a guide in Montana.  People, particularly the big game hunters, prefer to hire Dare. Plus his website is up to date and his facilities are more modern.  Angie decides to throw in the towel and sell her spread, the land and her home, and move on with her life.  Before her father died, she had been happy as an admin in a Billings hospital.  But before she sells her land, she has a client to guide into the wilderness and that client is the aforementioned accountant and his mobster boss.

Harlen, her friend and Realtor, gets worried about Angie going by herself into the wilderness with two guys and takes his concerns to Dare.   Dare decides to trail Angie, just to make sure she’s okay.  In another life, Angie and Dare would be lovers, not these barely speaking acquaintances.  Dare had asked her out, twice, when he first got to town and had gotten shot down twice.  She still does it for him but he’s too dim, I guess, to figure out that she resents his success.  Or he recognizes it, but is still irked at her refusal to date him? I don’t know. Not much time is spent contemplating this.  Dare isn’t a deep guy and that’s not an insult.  He knows what he wants. He tries to get it and in Angie’s case, he fails.

Angie’s very competent at what she does and maybe in a better economy and without the mortgage her father took out to encumber the land, she could have made it.  She’s a no nonsense kind of girl and while it pains her to give up the land, she knows it is the best thing for her.

I liked Angie and Dare. It was obvious how they were going to end up together. Hinted early on is Dare’s hatred of paperwork.  Good thing that Angie loves doing the admin stuff.  The bear stuff, the not so clever accountant, the danger, none of that turned the pages for me, primarily because the minutae of planning and detail was dry.  I kept reading for more glimpses of Angie and Dare but I felt like I was a desert traveler having to suck the juice out of a cactus.    When I got to the third POV scene from the bear, I was utterly defeated.  There was no hope for me.  Even the cactus juice can’t keep me going at this point.

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

Related posts:

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2. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
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I have to preface this review with a little backstory about my love for your books. I’ve loved most everything you have written from your early category days (McKenzie’s Mountain, the Kell Sabin Series) to your hardcovers like Open Season. I’ve defended Marc Chastain and his Guiness Book of World Records erection in Kill and Tell against Sarah who says that any man that can hold it up that long must suffer from priapism. I’ve defended Dain in Dream Man against Robin who says that he is more deranged than the serial killer. Dain was just trying to struggle against being in love and catching the bad guy. Poor Dain (and cripes that book scared the bejeesus out of me. Sometimes I still root around in my closet to make sure no one is hiding there).

I trot out my past reading credentials not just to show off my Howard pride but to provide some context for this review. Suffice to say that my disappointment comes from a well of deep love. When I started Veil of Night, I sent an email to a friend of mine “I’m reading the latest Howard book and it is pretty good.” I get farther into the first two chapters and I email her again “It’s classic Howard. Cop hero. Wedding planner heroine.” My next email was the following day and it was “I ended up hating the Howard book. Asshole hero. Mean heroine. The ending was laughably bad.” It was a trifecta of horrible.

Jaclyn Wilde is a wedding planner in business with her mother. They are steel covered in silk and linen and no wedding is too difficult for them to pull off. Working out of a swishy Atlanta suburb, Jaclyn is currently working on the high society wedding of Carrie Edwards and the son of a Georgia politician. The father of the groom is rumored to be the next U.S. Senator from Georgia. Carrie, however, is a Bridezilla and everyone from the caterer to the cake decorator would like for Carrie to go away. And one day, someone acts on that impulse and shoves a bunch of skewers into Carrie, killing her.

Unfortunately for Jaclyn, she was seen having a huge argument culminating with a physical altercation with Carrie right before Carrie was kebobbed to death. The investigating detective turns out to be Eric Wilder. The complication is that Jaclyn and Eric up for the first time just the night before. Instead of bowing out of the investigation, Eric takes charge and pursues Jaclyn as a suspect hard, in order to not be accused of any bias. In his head, Eric justifies this because he doesn’t believe Jaclyn is guilty and him heading a hard charging investigation will just clear her faster. Of course, Eric does not share this information with Jaclyn. Jaclyn believes herself to be a suspect in a murder investigation and despite being a super savvy business woman doesn’t think to engage herself a defense attorney. She’s also quite hurt that Eric is not only heading the investigation but believes her to be a murderer.

Eric eventually gets information that clears Jaclyn but decides to keep it to himself for a few more days despite seeing how emotionally traumatized Jaclyn is being a murder suspect because he realizes he needs a little more time with her to back into her bed. Eric, he’s all heart. Eric was a real ass. He acknowledges Jaclyn’s business is very important to her but he constantly shows up at her wedding events, sometimes interrogating her in the parking lot and sometimes pretending to be her boyfriend. Either way it screamed unprofessional because who wants their wedding planner either a) as a suspected murderer or b) as someone who brings her date to her job?

I liked Jaclyn only a tiny bit better than Eric. Both Jaclyn and her mother pretty much hated all their brides and derided their brides’ taste. In one long scene, Jaclyn attends a hillbilly wedding and everything is derided by Jaclyn from the ill behaving children to the slutty guests to the ridiculous decorations.

Thoughts about the groom: Not like he was about to run, but still. .. nervous. If he had any brains at all, she thought, he’d rabbit. Evidently he was brainless.

Thoughts about mother of the bride: Next, the bride’s mother was seated, to a Garth Brooks tune of her own choosing. Her dress was at least one size too small, and way too short. Spaghetti straps weren’t what Jaclyn would have chosen for the occasion.

Thoughts about the kids: The baby wasn’t happy. One of her cousins, a sullen six-year-old boy, pulled the wagon, jerking it along.

Thoughts about the wedding group: The bride and all of her bridesmaids had disappeared about half an hour later to also join in the dancing, with all of them having changed into short, flirty dresses. A couple of them-okay, several of them-went past "flirty" "straight into "slutty" territory, but at this point it wasn't Jaclyn's business if the
bridesmaids drummed up some extra money on the side.

Thoughts about the guests: Fun didn't have to be color-coordinated. Fun didn't have to have a background of classical music. But what kept her from relaxing was the strong impression that this group's idea of fun didn't fit within the definition of "legal." She frequently handled guests, and wedding party participants, who drank too much or breathed through a joint, but she was afraid this group leaned more toward crack, meth, and a variety of crimes that made the words "warrant for arrest” of importance to them.

The only wedding that Jaclyn thought was wonderful was her last event and that was a wedding in which “money was no object”. The families were all wealthy and “the bride’s mother was from one of the prominent families in Georgia, which upped the social awareness of the event a hundred times over.” and “Even the flower girl and ring-bearer were both adorable, and both were well behaved.”

The juxtaposition between this wedding and the hillbilly wedding made Jaclyn’s thoughts all the more discordant. Obviously the better class of people and the more money, the more “perfect” the wedding. The problem was that I thought you meant to write the scene to show that all types of weddings could be fun by Jaclyn never made the connection in her own mind thus it was impossible to see any character growth.

There is a lot of internal exposition. Like we are treated to a three paragraph dissertation on why Jaclyn drives a Jaguar. Allow me to say it for you. She drives one because it is important to keep up appearances that the business is doing well. This particular entry is emblematic of the entire book. We get paragraph upon paragraph of ridiculous exposition but almost none on the attraction between Jaclyn and Eric. We are treated to four or five pages of villain exposition of the villianous scheme to get rid of Jaclyn but sadly, while this “how to get rid of annoying loose ends in one’s evil scheme handbook” is detailed it’s also about the dumbest plan ever.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Finally, while there were some weak attempts at obfuscating the villain, the whodunit was obvious from the minute the dead girl showed up. The best part of the book was the police procedure. Maybe I am not into weddings but the details of the weddings I found to be excruciatingly boring. Boring details, unlikeable characters with no obvious chemistry, endless exposition, and really dumb ending force me to give this book a D. Thank the Lord I didn’t have to pay for this book.

Best regards,

Jane

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony| BooksonBoard

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3. REVIEW: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard

I confess that I was at first taken aback by the length of this hardcover. I remember thinking unkind thoughts about this format when Janet Evanovich put out her first Christmas hardcover. Those have sold like crazy so I guess that readers are unfazed by the length of the story and the cost. After all, a story is a story, right?

When I started ICE, I began to get excited. A good category length Howard is worth hardcover pricing. I know that I would have paid quite a bit to read the Diamond Bay trilogy because it was so good. The first and second chapters read like a vintage category Howard romance and if it had kept in that vein, I would have been able to recommend this unreservedly. However, in keeping with your current writing voice, this book is far more focused on the action/suspense than it is on the characters and their relationship with each other.

The story takes place, mostly, over the space of one afternoon. There is an impending icestorm and military policeman, Gabriel, is home on leave. His father, the local sheriff, sends him to retrieve Lolly Helton from her mountain home because she won’t be able to survive up there if there is an icestorm. Gabriel is not thrilled about his father’s assignment. He wants to spend the afternoon with his son and he doesn’t really like Lolly. When they were in high school, Lolly always looked down her nose at him. Him! The highschool jock, son of the sheriff, friend to everyone; yet Lolly was always using her sharp tongue to cut him down. Still, Gabriel isn’t going to refuse to do what his father asks and heads up the mountain.

Lolly is preparing the family home for sale. Her parents have moved south and Lolly doesn’t live in the area. The local grocery store owner invites Lolly to stay with them over the icestrom and Lolly acquiesces. She knows the danger. She heads back up the mountain to get the supplies she needs. Her return to town is cut short when two meth addicts break into her home and prepare to rape, rob, and kill her.

It’s about the time when the meth addicts appear on the scene that the book kind of falls apart for me, maybe because I was hoping and anticipating Lolly and Gabriel interaction. no matter how hard you had Lolly explain everything to me, I was beset with questions regarding the plausibility of the suspense. For example, meth addict 1 is male and tries to rape Lolly only his girlfriend, Meth 2, comes in and starts to beat Meth 1 about the head. Why would Meth 1 think that he could get away with raping Lolly when his girlfriend was standing right there? Did he have a history of this? Was it simply to place Lolly in further sympathy with the reader? When they put Lolly in a room upstairs, it easily allows her to escape. Why not just tie her to a chair in the same room as the Meth heads? Or why wouldn’t they try to secure her in some fashion?

Now the answer may be that the Meth addicts are high and who can explain their actions, but they seemed capable of executing a plan (targeting Lolly in the grocery store and following her up the mountain, getting her to give them money, etc). It was no quick grab sort of thing.

Gabriel comes along and they try to escape together but they are found out by the bad guys so Lolly, Gabriel and the bad guys are running in the woods in the mountain during the icestorm. Only Gabriel and Lolly are affected by the cold. The Meth addicts seem impervious. Where Lolly is nearly hypothermic, Meth addict is able to plot, plan and carry out an effective threat to both Gabriel and Lolly’s lives.

The interaction between Gabriel and Lolly is quite brief and there is no real character development. The focus is squarely on the icestorm and the meth addicts and the danger the two pose for both Gabriel and Lolly. While the story ends with Gabriel and Lolly pursuing each other, I wasn’t convinced of much of anything at the end, least of all their ability to form a lasting connection. C

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in hardcover at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

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1. REVIEW: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard
2. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Burn by Linda Howard

****

DREAMFEVER by Karen Marie Moning (on sale 8/18). This is the fourth book in the Fever series following FAEFEVER, which just went on sale. That book ended with a big cliffhanger, so I think (and when I say I think, I mean I know) Karen’s fans will be clamoring for this next installment. And boy does it deliver! It’s been such a satisfying experience working with Karen on this series, especially since the books are so great and are performing so well. It’s been fascinating and inspiring to watch her go to a whole new level as a writer and as a storyteller. Also, I have complete confidence in Karen as far as where she’s going with the story. But I’m not saying anything else about the book–you just have to read it. And while it’s better to have read the previous three books, we’ve had fresh readers start here and they’ve loved it too…

We will give away 3 copies of DREAMFEVER.

ICE by Linda Howard (on sale 11/10). What could be better than a Christmas novella from Linda Howard? ICE will be a smaller trim hardcover, on sale just in time for the holidays. And it’s Linda doing what she does best–a man and a woman trapped in a cabin amidst an ice storm with plenty of bad guys running around.

We will give away 3 copies of BURN.

A PRECIOUS JEWEL by Mary Balogh (on sale 11/24). We’ve had a great year with Mary Balogh and her Huxtable family series. And our re-issues of her out of print Regencies always do very nicely. But this book is extra special. I think it’s one of Mary’s most beloved and sought-after backlist titles and also one of her most unique and, dare I say, cutting edge stories. The heroine is a prostitute and the hero is one of her clients. Mary says this book poured out of her and she then put it on the shelf, convinced that her publisher (Signet at the time) would never go for it. When she finally sent it in, they published it with no questions or even revision. I hear other writers talk about this book, and it shows up on lists of favorite romances regularly, so it will be great to have it widely available again. Trust me, you will never forget it.

We will give away 3 copies of The Ideal Wife.

HOT AS SIN by Bella Andre (on sale 10/27). This is our second book with Bella Andre, following WILD HEAT which we published earlier this year. I’m really excited about Bella and this series. It’s romantic suspense about wildlife firefighters, which means great alpha heroes and very sexy romance with a lot of emotion. While this book definitely still has suspense and a very fast pace, it also plays to Bella’s strengths of character development and relationships, which she will focus on even more in the third book in the series, NEVER TOO HOT, which comes out in Summer 2010.

We will give away three copies of HOT AS SIN.

SURRENDER OF A SIREN (on sale 8/25) and A LADY OF PERSUASION (on sale 9/29) by Tessa Dare. We are really excited about Tessa Dare and think she is going to be a huge star. Her first book, GODDESS OF THE HUNT, is on sale now and we are publishing the next two books quick on its heels in consecutive months. She’s received starred reviews in PW and Library Journal, and there already seems to be a lot of buzz about her. She writes great alpha heroes and just delicious historical romance, the kind that is my go-to reading when I want something I know will deliver for me. We have more books coming from this author in 2010, so this is only the beginning…

We will giveaway three copies of GODDESS OF THE HUNT.

HARD TO HOLD by Stephanie Tyler (on sale 11/24). This is the first book in a debut trilogy that we will be publishing back to back into early 2010. What I love best about Stephanie’s books is the characters and the emotion and intensity she creates within the relationships. These are juicy, fast-paced, high-action reads about three adopted brothers, all of them Navy SEALs. The natural comparison is Suzanne Brockmann or Cherry Adair, but they also make me think of Nora Roberts’ Chesapeake Bay series. Obviously the romance is the focus of the book, but the relationship among these brothers is really the heart of the series. I dare you not to fall in love with these guys. One more thing, Stephanie is half of the team behind Sydney Croft (Larissa Ione is the other half), writing paranormal erotic romance. If you haven’t checked those books out, I highly recommend…

STRANGER’S KISS by Mary Blayney (on sale 8/25). We published Mary’s first two books of this series featuring the Pennistan family in one volume last fall with TRAITOR’S KISS/LOVER’S KISS. Some readers might also be familiar with Mary’s novellas in the J.D. Robb anthologies. I really love this series. Mary writes a more gentle romance while still delivering all of the emotion, character development, and compelling storytelling that readers always want and expect from great romance. So if you’re needing a break from all the ultra sexy, super hot romances out there, Mary is the author for you! We have another book called COURTESAN’S KISS coming from this wonderful author in Summer 2010.

We are giving away 3 copies of TRAITOR’S KISS/LOVER’S KISS (which is like 6 books because these are two full length books in one).

A WICKED LORD AT THE WEDDING (on sale 9/29) and THE WICKED DUKE TAKES A WIFE (on sale 10/27). by Jillian Hunter And speaking of great historical romance… Jillian Hunter is known for her very sexy and emotional stories with wonderfully dark, brooding heroes. These books feature the much beloved Boscastle family who have appeared in all of Jillian’s titles for us, and we’re publishing them back to back.

We are giving away 3 copies of WICKED AS SIN

SOUL MAGIC (on sale 10/27) by Jennifer Lyon. This is our second book with newcomer Jennifer Lyon following BLOOD MAGIC which we published earlier this year. Jennifer delivers great paranormal romance that will satisfy fans of J.R. Ward, Gena Showalter, Kresley Cole, and Lara Adrian. The heroes are the very definition of alpha and there’s great world building and star-crossed conflict. Here’s a little set up for you: In the days when powerful witches used their magic to shield humanity from demons, their allies and guardians were a group of men gifted with preternatural abilities of their own–the witch guardians. But when a band of witches traded their humanity for demonic power, the ancient bond was broken, and the guardians became the hunters…

We are giving away three copies of BLOOD MAGIC.

SET THE DARK ON FIRE (on sale 8/25) by Jill Sorenson. Here’s what I love about Jill’s books–they’re the kind of old school romantic suspense that I don’t see a lot of these days, sort of like early Tami Hoag. Her writing and characters are a little gritty and edgy but there’s a lot of emotion and intensity, making for a very satisfying romance. The characters are very real-life rather than larger-than-life, and she has great secondary characters, particularly teenagers, which take the books to another level for me. Also, this is a stand-alone story, which we don’t see a lot of these days, and while I love series, it’s kind of nice to read a book that is completely its own thing. So if you’re wanting something a little different than the usual high-action, black ops romantic suspense, give Jill a try.

We are giving away three copies of SET THE DARK ON FIRE.

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Linda Howard will be at the Borders True Romance blog tomorrow. She blogs, among other things, why she hasn’t written about Nick, the daughter of Zane and Barrie McKenzie. I spent the last two weeks re-reading many of my favorite Linda Howard books. I wish that Harlequin would re-release her Kell Sabin series because that remains one of my all time favorite series. I didn’t love White Lies like Midnight Rainbow, Diamond Bay and Heartbreaker. Of the three, I think Midnight Rainbow is my favorite and not because the heroine’s name is Jane.

Filed under “Why I Would Be Glad if Newspapers Died” is this hugely distasteful review of JC Penney store by Cintra Wilson in NYTimes.

It took me a long time to find a size 2 among the racks. There are, however, abundant size 10’s, 12’s and 16’s. The dressing rooms are big, clean and well tended. I tried two fairly cute items: a modified domino-print swing dress with padded shoulders by American Living (aRalph Lauren line created for Penney’s) and a long psychedelic muumuu of a style generally worn by Rachel Zoe. Each was around $80; each fit nicely and looked good. I didn’t buy either because I can do better for $80, but if I were a size 18, I’d have rejoiced.

AND herein lies the genius of J. C. Penney: It has made a point of providing clothing for people of all sizes (a strategy, company officials have said, to snatch business from nearbyMacy’s). To this end, it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of "Roseanne."

And then this article in the Washington Post about a family struggling to make ends meet with a household income of $300,000.00.

Laura Steins doesn’t mind saying that she is barely squeaking by on $300,000 a year. She lives in a place where the boom years of Wall Street pushed the standard of living to astonishing heights. Where fifth-graders shop at a store called Lester’s that sells $114 tween-size True Religion jeans. Where a cup of fresh spinach and carrot juice called the Iron Maiden costs $7.95.

As a vice president at MasterCard’s corporate office in Purchase, N.Y., she earns a base pay of $150,000 plus a bonus. This year she’ll take home 10 percent less because of a smaller bonus. She receives $75,000 a year in child support from her ex-husband. She figures she will pull an additional $50,000 from a personal investment account to “pick up the slack.”

The nanny and property taxes take $75,000 right off the top, but Steins considers both non-negotiable facts of her life and not discretionary. When she bought out her husband’s share of the house after their 2006 divorce, she assumed the costs of keeping it afloat — $8,000 to $10,000 a month. There’s a pool man, a gardener and someone to plow the snow from the quarter-mile-long driveway.

Oy.

Apparently the Amish trope is the fastest selling in Christian romance.

A hero’s greatest desire is often to teach an English, or non-Amish, heroine about Jesus. Plots may stir an irresistable urge to bake rhubarb pie.

Most Amish-themed romance novels are written by non-Amish authors and are aimed primarily at an evangelical Christian readership. While Amish women do read them, leaders of Amish communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have actively discouraged or banned them.

The exceptions are books by an Amish woman from Franklin County, whose self-published novels are about to be picked up by a major publisher.

Read more:Post Gazette

Heather at the Galaxy Express takes a look at whether there are just too many female pilots in Science Fiction Romance.

But are heroines with the innate ability to pilot starships really such a cliché? Already?

….

But I do wonder: Are these heroines any different from all the heroes with the same ability? After all, in the stories of the authors noted above, both male and female characters possess such talents (even if only in passing reference). Why does it become a plot device when heroines across several books share a similar ability?

A poster at Huffington Post wonders whether publishing has abandoned men because he can’t sell his male oriented anthology of manhood. Via GalleyCat.

Related posts:

1. Interview with an Editor Series: Angela James, Samhain Publishing
2. Dear Bitches, Smart Authors Podcast with Guest Angela James
3. Big Samhain News: Acquiring Linden Bay Romance

I liked this book but I think it is important for a reader to view it more as an adventure book than a romance on although there is a strong romance. It lacks the emotional intensity of prior Howard works, but it was engaging. There was a certain instruction manual feel to it as you guide us through each mental connection of the heroine as she susses out the who and the why and this, I think, lends to some emotional detachment for me.

Jenner Redwine wins the lottery and it changes her life, although not totally for the better. We are definitely treated to some poor little rich girl scenes in the beginning but I sympathized with Jenner. (and secretly hope to be her some day, well, not her exactly but independently wealthy). We are taken through each and every step of the lottery winning process but then skip over the attempts to integrate into Palm Beach society. (I.e., after all the thoughtful exposition as to how Jenner picked her financial adviser and lost her friends, I am surprised we see nothing about her decision to move Palm Beach. It’s just one of those Howard mysteries as to why we get blow by blow descriptions of one facet of Jenner’s life and not others. I’d like to assume it was related to plot or character development choices but I wasn’t able to discern how.)

At eight thirty, she was watching the clock as she flipped through the phone book’s advertising pages. There was nothing under "money handlers," which was frustrating, because how the hell else would it be listed? Maybe there was something under "banks." What she learned was that there were a lot of banks in the Chicago area, and most of them advertised themselves as "full service" banks. What was that? Maybe they pumped gas for your car and checked the oil. Banks cashed checks, right? What else was there? Unfortunately, the ads didn’t say what those services were, so she was still in the dark.  

She slammed the phone book shut and angrily paced the kitchen. She hated feeling ignorant, hated that she couldn’t look up what she wanted in the yellow pages, because she didn’t know how things were listed. But she’d never had a bank account, mostly because she never had much money and a bank account seemed stupid. She paid her bills either in cash, or by money order. That wasn’t the wrong way to do things, was it? Lots of people handled their bills that way-’most of the people she knew, in fact.

Frank Larkin is a very bad man who is doing very bad things. This prompts a secret government surveillance team to set up shop on a luxury cruise ship. Cael Traylor is the point man for this operation and he is aided by two familiar figures, Ryan and Faith, as well as others. Jenner’s suite on the yacht is conveniently located next to Larkin’s (the bad guy). The secret gov’t surveillance team sweeps in, threatens Jenner into compliance by holding her best friend, Sydney Haslett, hostage, and sets up the sexual tension between Jenner and Cael. The sexual tension is there from the first. It seems almost impossible for there not to be sexual tension once Jenner susses out that she’s fairly safe and that Cael must be one of the good guys. After all, other than handcuffing her to the bed, to him, to chairs, he hasn’t done anything to harm her.

There were several scenes that showed Sydney’s hostage situation. Given that we, the reader, already knew that Sydney wouldn’t be harmed and that her incarceration was nothing more than an inconvenience, I didn’t understand the point of her scenes. There is no secondary romance for Sydney and the scenes didn’t add to Jenner’s situation because the reader knew all. It’s possible that this was all sequel bait although that’s not generally a Howard trait.

We track the internal monologue of Jenner so closely that the failure to address what would happen once the "surveillance" was over seemed strident. In other words, how did they expect for these two women whom they presumed to be airheads to keep their mouth shut about the surveillance?

The ending, though, was poignant. Not everyone was protected under the umbrella of romance safety. In the end, while this was a quick and entertaining read, it doesn’t live up to my high Howard standards. It’s hard to become really attached to these characters.   That said, the book is very readable.   C+

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard
2. REVIEW: Dream Man by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard

I recently finished reading Linda Howard’s Death Angel. This will not be a review, as I have no idea how to go about reviewing this book. If I were to judge on the usual criteria – plot, characterization, prose – it’d be maybe a B or a B-. But the story made an impression on me that surpassed what any mere letter grade could convey. I spent most of the book on a rollercoaster between kind of pissed off and really pissed off. After reading it, I fell into one of my periodic "why is the romance world so hostile to women’s sexuality?" funks.

Warning: I can’t say more without revealing big spoilers for Death Angel. Please do not continue reading this if you plan to read the book and don’t want to be spoiled.

Drea Rosseau is a gangster’s girlfriend and Simon is an assassin. They meet cute when Simon asks the gangster, Salinas, if he can have sex with Drea in lieu of payment for services rendered. Drea, after initially being horrified at the idea, fallz in the luv with Simon from the orgasms and all, which Salinas, being a boor (as well as a gangster, drug dealer and killer) has thus far failed to provide. She begs Simon to take her away, and he refuses, telling her, "once was enough." (Did I mention that this is the hero? And that he kills people for a living?)

So, Drea gets mad and runs away from Salinas, but not before stealing a bunch of money from him. Salinas sends Simon after her; not to retrieve the money, but to kill Drea. Simon tracks Drea with laughable ease (he’s your typical romance novel assassin/spy/Navy SEAL/what have you in that his abilities seem just a hair short of supernatural; he always knows just what the heroine is going to do and how to deal with it. Must be nice).

Drea gets into what turns out to be a fatal car accident while Simon is chasing her on a deserted road. She is understandably afraid that Simon intends to kill her, while Simon still isn’t sure what he plans to do, even as he tracks her to another state. But anyway, Drea crashes her car and dies. And goes to-some sort of heavenly waiting room? I’m not real clear on that part. Anyway, she is told (not unkindly) by the angels there that she doesn’t belong. Then one angel comes forward and says that he brought her there to give her a second chance – it turns out that he’s the son she gave birth to at 15 who died shortly after birth. He thinks Drea deserves a second chance, because as she lay bleeding and in labor, she prayed that her son would live instead of her. Drea had demonstrated the "purest" form of love, which apparently is mother-love (that would not have been my guess, but whatever). So the heavenly waiting room welcoming committee takes a vote, and Drea gets sent back to Earth, admonished to go and sin no more, lest she end up in The Other Place.

Okay, this is where this book seriously went off the rails for me. Drea has not shown herself to be a particularly admirable character, but Hell? She was really going to go to Hell? For being kind of lost and misguided and skanky?

Drea is a potentially interesting character. That she has had a hard life is implied but never really explained in detail. We know that she got pregnant at 15 and lost the baby at five months, having to get herself to the hospital because there was no one to take her. The implication certainly seems to be that she was at best neglected, and as a result, she has developed a tough exterior and has learned to do what she needs to get what she wants. While this is not admirable, I found it understandable, given what little we know of her background.

Drea thinks of herself thusly (after her accident and return from death):

But they had held her cheaply because she’d held herself cheaply. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d ever held herself to a higher standard. Not once as an adult had she ever made a decision based on what was right, what she should do; instead, she had gone for whatever paid her the most, benefited her the most. That had been her only criterion. Maybe most people also used that as the basis of their decisions most of the time, but they also went out of their way to help friends, they sacrificed their own material needs to provide for their children, or their aged parents, or they gave to charity or something. She’d done none of that. She had looked out for Drea – first, last and always.

I can tell I’m not simpatico with an author when I feel more sympathetic to the character she’s created than the author herself seems to feel. Maybe it’s that Drea doesn’t seem that hard-bitten, and we’re not given enough information to really understand why she does what she does. I came to wonder if that was a deliberate choice on Howard’s part; it was like she didn’t want to make Drea too sympathetic. But my mind filled in the blanks from what little we are given about her upbringing, and I couldn’t help but feel that circumstances had made Drea the person she was. Which doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t have reformed; but it does mean, for me at least, that if she had died unreformed, she wouldn’t deserve an eternity of torment being poked with pitchforks, etc.

Another hole in the portrait that Howard has created of Drea: she doesn’t seem to have been hugely ambitious, pre-embezzlement and death, which made me wonder what she was doing with such a dangerous character as Salinas, a man whom she has to play dumb around (she feels it’s safest that he not know she has a brain; that way he won’t ever feel threatened by her or worry about what she might overhear). Couldn’t she have just married a doctor, or something?

I will say that unlike Simon, Drea didn’t appear to be a complete sociopath, incapable of empathy, which puts her one up, in my books.

So, Simon. He kills people for a living; but it’s okay because as both Simon and Drea think several times, the people he killed deserved it. Glad they cleared that up. Simon is a sociopath, at least by the self-description afforded by his own thoughts. We are given even less motivation for why he lives life as he does, but we are told that he has never really cared about people:

He was what he was because no life, his own or anyone else’s, had ever meant anything special to him.

Alrighty, then. That’s not creepy at all.

I understand that the focus of this book was on Drea and her growth, but the respective characterizations of Drea and Simon, and the fact that Simon kills again at the end of the book (in cold blood, though to protect Drea) after both of them have supposedly repented, left me with the uncomfortable feeling that in Howard’s world, being a cold-blooded assassin wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as being the kept woman of a drug dealer. I was just really uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of these two characters, and how I felt we were supposed to view them.

Again, both Drea and Simon indulge in justification and rationalizations over Simon’s career choice. These justifications boil down to: the people Simon killed deserved killing. By whose criteria, I wonder? Anyway, in my opinion, the assassin who only kills people who deserve to be killed is sort of like the defense lawyer who only represents innocent clients: a myth found in books and movies, never in real life.

Which I suppose is what some will argue about this book: it’s not realistic, nor is it meant to be. Which, fine, but when you place these two characters on somewhat parallel journeys, it tends to highlight their similarities and differences. To summarize, for me as a reader:

• Simon was by far the worse person before they each reformed, and even though Simon “reforms” he still kills when he decides it’s necessary (making me wonder what his future body-count might look like).
• Simon is given less of a background that might mitigate his behavior.
• Simon manifests serious signs of sociopathy. Drea manifested simple garden-variety selfishness, which I found a lot more palatable (and believably reformable);
• Yet it’s Drea who gets told she’s ending up in Hell if she doesn’t change her ways. Simon’s reformation seems to be far less of an issue, and his decision to stop being an assassin (after he kills just one more person!) feels like it has less of a sense of moral urgency than Drea’s reformation.
• Both characters excuse Simon’s behavior but not Drea’s.
• Drea feels compelled to give the money she steals from Salinas to charity. There is no mention of what Simon plans to do with his blood money, but I have the feeling the United Way shouldn’t be expecting a big check any time soon. Simon earned that money! Killing people. It was totally hard work. What?

I think it’s a sign that the book wasn’t working for me that the one character who I felt had some depth of characterization, and who I could even kind of feel for a little, was Salinas. He is shown to be callous and cruel, but when Drea deceives him for a brief time into believing that she loves him (as part of her plot to run away) and is devastated by his turning her over to Simon, he actually reacts in a recognizable human way – he seems to feel remorse for how he’s treated Drea, and has a desire to examine their relationship. Of course, when he realizes she’s duped him, he wants to kill her, but – nobody’s perfect. A couple of times in the book Simon thinks about how much contempt he has for Salinas, and I just couldn’t help but wonder – why? Why were we supposed to root for Simon and disdain Salinas? I just didn’t get it, and it made me kind of resentful, actually.

Lessons learned: prostituting yourself, stealing, driving over the speed limit, not returning library books in a timely manner and killing people for a living are all bad things, but only one if them is worthy of getting sent to hell. Wanna guess which one? If you said not returning library books, you’re totally wrong. Silly, it’s being a whore, of course!

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Death Angel by Linda Howard
2. When a Snark Is Ruined by a Bad Rant
3. Holly Lisle Hates Chains (and after reading her rant, Chains may hate her)

Her latest romantic suspense, Death Angel, is in stores now.

***

It was December. I don’t remember the exact date, but I think it was Friday. We had stopped to eat dinner after work, even though I had a niggling premonition that an editor named Leslie Wainger would probably be calling very soon to tell me Silhouette was buying my manuscript. I can’t say why I had that little sense of expectation, but I did.

Premonition or no, we still had to eat dinner. My husband and I both worked the same hours for the same company, so I’d long since drawn a line in the domestic sand about cooking dinner, to wit: the only way I was willing to do it was if he had the responsibility for dinner every other day. That’s only fair, right? Anyway, that’s why we ate dinner out every night on the way home from work.

When we got home, the phone was ringing. I very calmly went to answer it, and this beautiful voice said, "Hi, is this Linda? This is Leslie Wainger, with Silhouette." She had been trying to get in touch with me all week, but she didn’t have my work number, just my home phone number. Because she’s smarter than the average bear, she decided to stay late one night and give me time to get home from work. Yes, this was (ohmigod!) before the age of answering machines! Well, before they were in common usage, anyway, not that she’d have left a message that important even if I’d had an answering machine.

I was still very calm. I said, "I knew you’d call today." And I had known. I don’t know why I hadn’t known it any other day of that week, when she’d been trying to call, but on that particular day, I knew. So we discussed the book, the contract, all of the things a first-time-selling author has to discuss, and I was calm and collected. Leslie even remarked that I was the calmest person she’d ever phoned with that news, that most people were screaming with delight. I was delighted, of course, but I was . . . controlled. In due course, we said goodbye. I hung up, went into the den where my husband was sitting — completely unaware that our lives had been changing while he watched the evening news — flung myself on top of him, and cried for about fifteen minutes. He kept asking, "What’s wrong? What’s wrong?" and of course he thought someone had died, but I was crying so hard it took me a while to settle down and tell him that absolutely nothing was wrong, that instead everything was right.

The heck of it is, we’d already had dinner, so we couldn’t even go out to dinner to celebrate.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Dream Man by Linda Howard
2. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Raintree: Inferno by Linda Howard

I was ruminating about this book as I polished up the review. At first I thought, this is a departure for you because it is such a dark book, featuring a very different type of heroine. But you’ve had darker books before (Cry No More) and you’ve featured different types of heroines (Duncan’s Bride) so it’s not really those attributes that set this book apart from the others in the Linda Howard library. I can’t pinpoint it, but this read like a different Linda Howard. Not bad different, just different.

Drea Rousseau is smart woman who made some poor decisions and ended up being the girlfriend of a drug lord. She’s used her body as currency most of her life and when her boyfriend, Rafael Salinas, hands her over as payment to an hired assassin, she’s broken.

It’s not that she loved Salinas nor that she thought of herself so highly. It’s that in the four hours in which the assassin beds her, she feels more and wants more than she has ever in her whole life. She begs him to take her with him when he leaves and he responds with ‘Why . . . once was enough”. And walks out.

After spending herself in a river of tears, Drea decides that she’s had enough. She gathers up her possessions, robs Salinas blind and disappears. When Salinas first discovers her gone, he thinks she has been kidnapped but then uncovers the truth and hires the self same assassin to find her and kill her.

Drea and the assassin play a short cat and mouse game in which Drea is at a great disadvantage despite her intelligence. It’s a game she’s destined to lose and she believes it which ultimately leads to her demise but she is given a second chance at life.

Drea is a great character and her sense of desperation, her utter loss of self, is really heartwrenching. As a reader I cheered for her to survive, to win another chance at the game. I loved that Drea was really a bad girl. She wasn’t with Salinas because of some coercion. She wanted to be there. She liked the lifestyle. She used her person ruthlessly to get what she wanted out of life but Drea was likeable despite, or maybe even because of, her lifestyle decisions.

This is one of the better Howard books I’ve read in a long time and I appreciate the dark characters, but the thing that really held me back from loving this book was the paranormal aspect. I thought it was kind of shortcut in bringing about the emotional change that created such a line of demarcation in both Drea and the assassin’s lives. The paranormal aspect allowed Drea to make the change into doing something worthwhile with her life but it seemed like the easy way out.

One commenter noted the other day that the book included very little about the hero. I think that was an intentional exclusion but it is worth noting that the hero is fairly occluded and mysterious throughout the whole story. It would have been nice to have had greater insight into his motivations and what brought him to Drea, particularly since what is considered to be a hallmark of a Linda Howard novel are her great male characterizations.

One other comment I’d like to make is that the official blurb of this book is a bit misleading because it suggests that Drea teams up with the FBI but that doesn’t really play a big part in the book at all (and I thought that the FBI scenes didn’t add much to the story). B-

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in hard cover from Amazon or Powells. Ebook formats to come.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Up Close and Dangerous by Linda Howard
2. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Raintree: Inferno by Linda Howard

I am a big fan girl and while I haven’t loved your last few books (okay since Open Season), I still look forward to your new ones. While Up Close and Dangerous isn’t going to sit on my keeper shelf with Dream Man or After the Night or the Kell Sabin series, it still was a good read and more romantic than your previous three.

Widow Bailey Wingate is going on vacation, a much needed one. She’s currently the trustee of her two spoiled stepchildren’s trust funds and these two adult children, Seth and Tamzin, make her life hell. She decides to go on a river rafting excursion with her family and takes a corporate jet from J&L Executive Air Limo to get there. Cam Justice (the J in the J&L) has to step in to fly her when his partner becomes violently ill. Cam dislikes Bailey for being cold and stuckup every time J&L has flown her and Bailey dislikes Cam for acting like a superior ass. While flying over the mountains in Idaho, the plane runs out of fuel and Cam must make a crash landing. Bailey and Cam must use every ounce of common sense and survival skill in order to make it off the mountain alive. In making this four day journey, Bailey and Cam not only learn to rely on each other but fall in love.

While I enjoyed the story, the fact is that this story requires an excessive amount of suspension of disbelief. I had a hard time buying into the idea that Cam and Bailey went from barely knowing each other (and being disdainful of each other) to in love in a short time given their condition. I also had a hard time believing that Cam and Bailey would have enough energy to make a trek off the mountain, injured, weak, and hungry but still have the energy to have bouts of sex.

Each survival technique was chronicled so carefully that I almost thought it read like a guide to wilderness survival. Despite the methodical detailing of the characters’ mountain endurance, I found the scenes to be interesting and Bailey and Cam to be entertaining and likeable individuals. There was a lot of vintage Howard in the book: the practical and capable heroine; the dry humor; the sexy alpha male. There was instantaneous lust, but it was played off in a funny manner which made it more palatable.

The noticeable element missing was the signature scene or lack of heat that was present in my favorite books. The sex scenes seemed methodical like the survival guides. If a reader is looking for a taut suspense or thriller, this probably isn’t for them. But if Linda Howard is their thing, then this will be a good read. B-

Best regards

Jane

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard: second opinion
2. REVIEW: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Dream Man by Linda Howard

When it was announced that you would be contributing to the new Silhouette Nocturne line, I could not wait for this book. Some of my favorite Howard romances were categories from MacKenzie’s Mountain to A Game of Chance and the great Kell Sabin series. Sadly, this book was a shadow of a Linda Howard novel. It had all the signature Howard elements: the alpha male, the smart mouthed heroine, and a dash of action; but none of the signature Howard heart.

Dante Raintree is the head of the Raintree clan. He is the leader by virtue of his power. All is well in Raintree world until Dante encounters Lorna Clay. Lorna is consistently winning 5,000 a week in Dante’s casino but no one can figure out how she is doing it. Dante confronts Lorna and immediately guesses that she has some kind of power that is unharnessed. This provides a good reason for Dante to treat Lorna like dirt and abuse her. Their meeting coincides with the Raintree’s bitter rivals, Ansara, launching the first of their ineffectual attempts to kill Dante.

The Raintrees and the Ansaras are the only families with power. The only thing that divides the Raintrees and the Ansaras is that the Raintrees are apparently all good and the Ansaras are all bad. So the really good guys, the Raintrees, drive all of the Ansaras to near extinction about 200 years ago. It was clear to me why the Ansaras lost that particular power struggle way back then because in the book the Ansara clan look like bumbling fools. Of course, if the Raintrees paid any attention at all, they would see that by leaving even a few Ansaras alive means that they will procreate and rise again. I guess both the Raintrees and the Ansaras are bumbling fools.

Once meeting Dante, Lorna begins to exhibit powers she never had. This makes perfect sense! Not. It marks the beginning of many a magical appearance for which there is no rhyme or reason. The specially appearing magic acts are explained by Dante himself when he says “Magic doesn’t need to be logical.” Magic was inserted here and there whenever it was convenient to artificially rachet up the tension or to enable your characters to act in a sort of way. Want Lorna to be able to cheat without getting caught – it’s magical. Want Lorna and Dante to be protected in case of fire – it’s magical. Want to communicate telephathically even though you never could before – it’s magical. Want more Raintrees, their gene is always dominant – it’s magical. Want Lorna to love Dante who clearly is a prick – it’s magical.

The magical romance takes place over two days. The first day, Dante “brain rapes” the heroine by stealing her magic and leaves her so physically debilitated that she cannot remember anything except her own name. He proceeds to magically compel her to stay with him or stay in his house like an unruly animal. He throws her down on the floor, rips off her clothes and leaves her sobbing and feeling dirty. The next day, however, all is forgiven and Lorna hops in the sack after Dante tells her that they have some connection.

I had a hard time actually finishing the book because not only was Dante a jackass, but I found the story dull. The reason I was bored, despite the action scenes, was because anytime the couple was in trouble some type of magic! would conveniently occur to protect them.

These characters were never alive; they simply moved when you told them to move; had magic when it was convenient; fell in love when you required it. The movement of the story was completely obvious as was the manipulative efforts of the author. The ending is a cliffhanger designed to get the reader to be anxious for book 2 written by Linda Winstead Jones.

I wish there was some magic that could have turned back time to before I read this book. I wish I had read one of the old, classic Howard categories instead. D.

Best regard

Jane

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
2. REVIEW: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard: second opinion

I wasn’t really much of a Blair fan the first time around and with any book in the first person, if you don’t love the narrator, you aren’t going to love the book. I didn’t find her as irritating as I did in To Die For, but I don’t think I’m up for a third Blair/Wyatt book.

Blair and Wyatt are engaged but no wedding date has been set because there are so many details to take care of to ensure that the perfect wedding takes place. Wyatt is inpatient to tie the knot and lays down the law and informs Blair that they are getting married in 30 days. If she doesn’t get everything planned by then, he’s marrying her his way (which could be a tacky Vegas wedding).

Blair is up for the challenge and begins to plan her perfect wedding which includes shopping for the perfect shoes. Leaving the shopping center, Blair is nearly run over by a woman in a car. It’s clear to Blair that this was intentional as are the subsequent threatening phone calls. Problem is that Wyatt doesn’t believe Blair and suggests that Blair is trying to manipulate his work time so that he pays more attention to her.

This conflict seemed very forced to me because Wyatt acknowledges from viewing the videotape of Blair being gunned down by the car that she was in danger and for him to dismiss her other complaints just doesn’t seem reasonable. I think you were trying to show that Blair’s attempts at manipulation were coming back to bite her in the ass, but I saw it more as Wyatt being unreasonable and myopic which didn’t really fit the character that you had built for him in the previous book and this one. Wyatt simply didn’t seem like the type to dismiss a complaint that could be serious and I never really bought into the idea that Blair would be so hysterical as to make up complaints. The conflict appeared fake.

My problem with Blair is that she is very manipulative and views her engagement and future marriage as a blood sport in which she pouts, cries, makes up arguments to get Wyatt to do want she wants. I have a hard time seeing this as fun, romantic or honorable. At one point Wyatt calls her on it, but it doesn’t bother him enough to call off the wedding. Wyatt is not a very proactive character, unlike past Howard heroes. He does more reacting than acting. It’s almost as if he serves as a foil for Blair, rather than an equal partner.

There are funny moments in the book and it is much sexier than the first book, but I just can’t warm up to Blair. I would rather re-read Dream Man, After the Night, Kill and Tell, Open Season, Now You See Her and a host of other books in your backlist. C.

Best regards,

Jane

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Jennifer Skully
2. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard: second opinion

I know that you won’t be reading this letter as you are not an onliner, but let me tell you about my love for Dream Man. To some, this is a terrible book filled with a terrible betrayal by the hero. To me, it shows the extent I will overlook things when I fall in love with a story.

Marlee Keen is a psychic. She can see the thoughts of people around her. The emotional unstable are unusually strong projectors and because of this Marlie could see crimes as they were being committed. After a terrible ordeal in which Marlee was kidnapped and she was forced to watch while a madman violated a young child, Marlee’s psychic ability left her. Marlee found this to be a blessing. She moved to Orlando and began to build for herself “something safe and solid.” She bought herself a nice little house. Got a job at the bank and lived without feeling anyone else’s emotions but her own.

As she is driving home from the movie theater, she begins to have visions of a grisly murder being committed. She is barely able to make it home before she blacks out.

Dane Hollister is a detective with the Orlando police. He has a gut instinct for crimes and is very successful at closing cases. One look at a new crime scene and he recognizes that this isn’t an ordinary crime. Upon arrival at the police station, he finds his superior officer talking with Marlie Keen. Marlie felt it important to report to the police her visions even though it tore her apart. Dane is immediately suspicious and sets out to discredit her only to find himself a believer.

Marlie has enormous strength of character to not only overcome her past trauma but to put herself up for ridicule and suspicion by reporting her vision. She also learns to overcome her ability and that she can live a somewhat normal life, even with her special abilities. Marlie’s strength in herself is never more evident that in the end when Dane betrays her trust.

Dane. What can I say about him other than he talks like a man, walks like a man, and acts like a man. He constantly has a woody around Marlie, even when he doesn’t like her. There is a great scene between his partner and Trammell right after Dane meets Marlie and accuses her of being in cahoots with the killer.

Trammell was right behind him as they walked back to their desks. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he muttered to Dane’s back.

“Whaddaya mean? You think I should have pretended to believe her?”

“No, I mean you had a hard-on the size of a goddamn nightstick, and you were standing so close, you were about to poke her in the belly with it,” Trammell snapped.

Dane turned and glared at his partner, but he couldn’t think of any excuse to give. He didn’t know what had happened, only that from the minute she had turned those dark blue eyes on him, he’d had a boner so hard a cat couldn’t scratch it. He was still twitching. “Hell, I don’t know,” he finally said.

What I really loved about this book even more than Dane and Marlie was the exquisite detail paid to detective work. Trammell and Dane spent time interviewing witnesses, going through garbage, and alot of other investigative work. It was fascinating to read. And it was scary.

The serial killer stalks his prey and then waits inside their house for them to come home. I remember reading this for the first time at night. I asked Ned if he was going to stay up and read because I thought the book sounded scary and didn’t want to be the only one awake to confront the serial killer in my closet when I was done reading. He promised he would stay awake and vanquish any serial killer in the closet but alas, he didn’t. He fell asleep about 10 minutes later but I couldn’t stop reading. At the end, I was still scared and had to get up and look in my closet. Thankfully no serial killer. But I admit that even today, I still think about those scenes.

And the betrayal? Well, Marlie forgave him and she was a strong woman who knew her own mind so I figured I couldn’t hold it against Dane either.

I am thankful for romances that provide thrills, the scary ones, along with the passionate ones.

Best regards,

Jane

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
2. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard: second opinion
3. REVIEW: The Dream-Maker’s Magic by Sharon Shinn

I've been reading your books since the days when you wrote for Silhouette and I don't plan on stopping. Few authors of romantic suspense deliver great chemistry between their main characters as well and as consistently as you do. There is something so satisfyingly thorough about this aspect of writing: not only do you understand women's enthusiasm for strong, large, and overwhelmingly male creatures, you also have an intuitive grasp of the resounding response men feel in return, or in any case, of what they feel for us in our dreams.

A Linda Howard hero is never going to ignore the woman he is with to watch a Redskins game, even if he is a former linebacker himself. He is simply too focused on her to ignore her for anything. Nor is the fact that his work probably involves killing people who want him dead likely to put him a bleak mood, make him sullen, or bring on a case of PTSD.

That's because a hero in one of your novels is the stuff of female fantasies, fantasies you understand and fulfill so well that I only grumble a little about my longing for just a tiny bit of human weakness in one of these guys. It's not going to happen, I tell myself, so get over it. A hero in a Linda Howard novel is always well-adjusted, always confident, always in command of himself.

Whoa! Wait a minute. Rewind. Did I really think that?

Maybe, but that was before I read Cover of Night.

Cate Nightingale runs a Bed and Breakfast in Trail Stop, Idaho. She is a widow with twin four year old boys, and although her husband died three years ago, she's been slow to get over his death. One day, a guest at Cate's B&B disappears, leaving by way of the window. Then two mobsters show up and attempt to take Cate and another Trail Stop resident named Neenah hostage.

Luckily for Cate, the town's handyman stops by to pick up her mail and she is able to signal him that she is in trouble. Cal has always been shy around Cate, prone to blushing and going quiet, so Cate is surprised when he takes command of the situation and gets the two men to leave with the missing guest’s possessions.

It doesn't take long for the villains to return with reinforcements and put the whole town of Trail Stop under siege. The mobsters believe Cate has something they need, but neither Cate nor the town’s other residents realize this when the bad guys open fire on them in the middle of the night.

Once the bullets start flying Cal surprises Cate yet again by leading others to safety and devising a put an end to the siege. He is aided by Joshua Creed, whom he served with in the military, and by Cate herself. Of course, during the mayhem Cate comes to realize that there is much more to Cal than she ever realized and yup, she begins to fall for the shy handyman.

The suspense storyline is even more prominent than the romance here, but I enjoyed it almost as much. In fact, I often find the suspense plots in your books very involving, first because they are usually not your typical serial killer plots, but something less run of the mill, and second because when your main characters are “onscreen,” so to speak, the life-and-death situations bring out their best qualities. I especially enjoy the way they often work together to accomplish their goal and survive, and in Cover of Night there's an entire town working together.

I liked both Cate and Cal. Though I agree with Jane that the development of their relationship did not get as much space as I would like, and though I feel that as a result their romance was not as complicated or emotional as some of the other romantic relationships you've written about, I was rooting for them and I thought they made an appealing couple.

I especially want to applaud you for taking a chance with Cal. Yeah, he was tough when it came to all that macho action stuff that you use to show your heroes’ protectiveness and their oh-so-sexy competence, but his initial shyness around Cate gave him the kind of vulnerability that I don't usually sense in your male protagonists; a vulnerability that can make a hero not just sexy, but also endearing.

Cover of Night wasn't a perfect reading experience for me. I felt that the introduction of so many characters upfront made the book slow to get off the ground, and the cute antics of Cate's twin sons made me impatient for the action to start. The book also contains a lot of scenes from the villains' POV. I didn't mind reading the mobsters' thoughts for the most part, but the local villain felt somewhat flat, which made me want to skim the sections in his viewpoint.

The premise of the siege depends on one villain's incompetence, and I wasn't entirely convinced that this character would bungle things that badly that quickly, without intervention from his boss. The romantic subplot about Joshua Creed and Neenah felt a little sketchy to me, and the scenes that involved one of bad guy’s love life felt out of place.

I agree with Jane’s opinion that it was less romance and more suspense with a romantic thread, but I’ll take a suspense book from you over a lot of other authors’ romances. I enjoyed reading Cover of Night, enough that most of the time the pages nearly turned themselves. It gets a B from me.

Sincerely,

Janine

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
2. The Second Opinion to the Second Epilogue to the Epilogue of the Book

It’s a good thing that you are going back to writing romances because Cover of Night is not a romance. It is a suspense book with a romantic theme. Frankly, it's a shitty not a very good suspense book. The setup, which pits the town of Trail Stop against a band of professional killers, is ridiculous beyond belief strains the edges of credulity.

The first half of the book is spent setting up the conflict. No real action takes place in the first 70 pages. There is little meaningful interaction between Cate and Cal, two of the protagonists (not to mention the most boring sex scene ever in a Linda Howard book). More than half the book is spent in the minds of the antagonists and watching the antagonists get their operation together (and watching it fall apart).

I found it hard to believe that these killers could stay in business or be the “best” when the whole operation turned into a giant mess. The killers were only the “best” because you told me they were. Not because they evinced any abilities to succeed on their own. You continued the telling v. showing throughout the entire book. Cate and Cal fell in love because you wanted it to be so, not because their attraction for each other grew from their characters. After all, Cate doesn't even begin to have feelings for Cal until the latter 1/3 of the story.

What little romance there was took a back seat to everything else: Cate's coming to grips with her grief over the loss of her husband, one killer's vendetta against the man who employs him, the group of killers' attempts to achieve the goal by the employer. There were a number of scenes that were complete throwaways in that they did not advance the plot or add dimension to the characters. Finally, the denouement is crap of great disappointment. It reminded me of the Andromeda Strain where the killer virus mutates into one that is non lethal.

I would characterize it as a suspense book with a strong romantic thread rather than a romance book with a suspense thread. The romance takes a definite back seat to the suspense. To a great degree, I felt that you were much more interested in the villians than you were with the main protagonists. In the end, because of the unbelievable plot and the boring characters, I could barely finish the book. C- for you.

Best regards,

Jane

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