Back in March, I read and reviewed your terrific debut, Midnight Riot (Rivers of London in the UK), an urban fantasy/police procedural narrated by an endearing London police constable named Peter Grant.
Peter is a new recruit in a secret (and very small) department of the London Metropolitan Police which investigates supernatural crimes. Moon Over Soho is the second book that follows Peter, and I’m pleased to say that like Midnight Riot, it was highly enjoyable.

The two books are closely related so it’s impossible to review the second without revealing spoilers for the first. Therefore, readers who have not yet read Midnight Riot and who don’t want to read spoilers for that novel should read no further.

Moon Over Soho begins a few months after Midnight Riot has ended. Due to the events that took place toward the end of Midnight Riot, Peter’s superior officer, wizard/Chief Inspector Nightingale, is very frail, and Leslie, a coworker on whom Peter had a crush, has been horribly scarred. Beverley Brook, another potential love interest of Peter’s, is still away from London, and the murder that took place at the end of the last book remains unsolved.

As Moon Over Soho opens, Peter is visiting Leslie, who conceals her disfigured face beneath a hood, a scarf, and sunglasses. Leslie wants to know whether magic can “fix” her face, but Peter doesn’t think it can. Soon after parting from Leslie, Peter gets a call from Dr. Walid, the department’s coroner, about a body which may belong to a victim of supernatural foul play.

At the morgue, Peter senses vestigia, the remnants of magic, emanating from the body in the form of the jazz tune Body and Soul. The dead man is a saxophonist named Cyrus Wilkinson. At Cyrus’s house and in the vicinity of his address, Peter meets Simone Fitzwilliam, Cyrus’s girlfriend, as well as Melinda Abbott, Cyrus’s fiancée. Later he locates the rest of Cyrus’s band, and in this way he learns that Cyrus died shortly after a big gig.

Further investigation reveals that Cyrus isn’t the only jazz player to die immediately after a brilliant performance. There appears to be some kind of supernatural being hunting down these talented men, and Peter is determined to find out why, how and who.

Meanwhile, two other murders with a very different MO take place. A dark haired, pale skinned woman seduces men only to bite off their sexual organs with her own. The vagina dentata case (featuring a killer with teeth in her vagina) from the previous book remains unsolved, but when a journalist/amateur practitioner of magic is killed in this same way, Peter is pulled in on the case.

Then there is Peter’s private life. While the investigation unfolds, an attraction blooms between Peter and Simone Fitzwilliam, the deceased Cyrus’s girlfriend, and their mutual infatuation grows consuming. Concurrently, Peter’s father, a former saxophonist somewhat famous in jazz circles, takes up the keyboard and hooks up with Cyrus’s band members.

Is Peter’s father in danger? Is Peter himself in danger? Who are the killers in each case, and can Peter track them down before they do further harm?

Moon Over Soho answers these questions and the joy of reading the book is at as much in Peter’s narration as it is the process of solving a paranormal mystery. The book crackles with wit and humor even as it tackles some dark subject matter. For example, here is a brief description of Camden Market, one of many funny bits in the book:

The important thing about Camden Market is that nobody planned it. Before London swallowed it whole, Camden Town was the fork in the road best known for a coaching inn called the Mother Red Cap. It served as a last-chance stop for beer, highway robbery and gonorrhea before heading north into the wilds of Middlesex.

The dialogue is equally wonderful. Take for example this bit, which deftly handles the race and diversity issues. Here’s Peter, who happens to be biracial, discussing the case his white supervisor, Inspector Nightingale, while they walk Toby, their dog. Since they are searching for the magician who trained the dead journalist, and Nightingale says there weren’t many people who could have done so in England, Peter asks about magicians from other parts of the world.

I asked about other countries—China, Russia, India, the Middle East, Africa. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t at least some kind of magic. Nightingale admitted that he didn’t really know, but had the good grace to sound embarrassed.

“The world was different before the war,” he said. “We didn’t have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place—we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.”

When all the map was red, I thought. When every boy expected his own adventure and girls had not yet been invented.

Toby barked as we overtook a juggernaut full of God knows what going God knows where.

“After the war it was as if I was waking up from a dream,” said Nightingale. There were space rockets and computers and jumbo jets and it seemed like a ‘natural’ thing that the magic would go away.”

“You mean you didn’t bother looking,” I said.

“It was just me,” he said. “And I was responsible for the whole of London and the southeast. It never occurred to me that the old days might come back. Besides, we have Dunlop’s books so we know his teacher wasn’t from some foreign tradition—this is a home-grown black magician.”

“You can’t call them black magicians,” I said.

“You realize that we’re using black in its metaphorical sense here,” said Nightingale.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Words change what they mean, don’t they? Some people would call me a black magician.”

“You’re not a magician,” he said. “You’re barely even an apprentice.”

“You’re changing the subject,” I said.

“What should we call them?” he asked patiently.

“Ethically challenged magical practitioners,” I said.

“Just to satisfy my curiosity, you understand,” said Nightingale, “given that the only people ever likely to hear us say the words black magician are you, me and Dr. Walid, why is changing them so important?”

“Because I don’t think the old world’s coming back anytime soon,” I said. “In fact, I think the new world might be arriving.”

As I stated in my review of Midnight Riot, Peter is a loveable character. He genuinely cares about every life he attempts to save and wants to believe that a good outcome is possible. At the same time, he isn’t blind to flaws, especially flaws in systems, and can snark with the best of them.

Still, I liked him a little less in this book than I did in Midnight Riot, perhaps because he struggled less in this one. It seemed like he had grown not only better at his work, but also significantly more physically coordinated, to a degree that seemed less than completely believable given the span of three months that had passed between the two books. It also bugged me that he was occasionally distracted from his casework by his involvement with Simone.

Additionally, I found the vagina dentata idea sexist and if the female character this subplot centered around hadn’t been treated so respectfully I might have been offended. That I was able to go along with it is a testament to the sensitivity and humor with which every subject in this book was approached.

In other ways, though, Moon Over Soho was a stronger book than its predecessor. The mysteries at its center were even more compelling, the investigative legwork was still there, and this time, the villains’ paranormal abilities were explained more clearly than in Midnight Riot.

Most importantly, though, I felt that this book dug deeper into the characters and I got to know them better. Though I am starting to get the sense that Peter will never be the kind of touchy-feely guy who talks about his emotions, those emotions nonetheless came through more in this book.

Readers who are looking for a great urban fantasy series with a fresh setting, endearing and vulnerable characters, a threatening villain, humor as well as substance, and smart writing can’t do much better than this one. B+/A-.

Sincerely,

Janine

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
2. Nicholas Sparks to Write Novel to be Turned into Movie for Miley Cyrus
3. REVIEW: Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews

From Nicci:

I am recommending this book because From the very first chapter, I was hooked. The storyline is compelling and kept me enthralled, but it’s the characters that commanded my attention. Silhara is one of the most interesting heroes I’ve ever read, and Martise’s quiet strength and determination is the perfect complement to such a powerful character. This is a world where treachery and magic go hand-in-hand and where temptation and hard choices are the coin of the realm. Draven’s primary characters are brilliant, but her secondary characters are just as finely drawn. This has become one of my favorite books, and I’ve re-read it more than once.

The following is an excerpt from Master of Crows posted with the approval of Grace Draven.  You can find more about http://www.gracedraven.com/

They passed a trio of those travelers near the stairs.  Like their unfortunate counterpart outside, the three sprawled on the floor in a tangle of bones and decayed clothing.  Broken toys discarded by a vicious child.  Protected from the elements, their bodies still bore hints of mummified flesh that stretched parchment-thin over skulls surrounded by matted hair.  The shadow of a dying scream was stamped on each withered face.

From outside, the keep was modestly sized, but like the gardens and dale itself, all was an illusion.  Inside, it expanded into an endless maze.  She lost count of the number of corridors they walked or the stairs they climbed.  They passed through spaces either drowning in shadow or bathed in the red light of a setting sun.  Silhara never paused, never stopped to check his bearings.  He seemed as familiar with Iwehvenn’s labyrinth as he was with Neith’s.  Martise was on the verge of asking him how much farther they had to go when he stopped at a partially open door.

She almost barreled into his back.  At some point in their wanderings, she had grasped the back of his shirt so as not to lose him.  He tugged until she released the death grip she had on his clothing.

“The library,” he whispered.  “If our luck holds, the papers are there, and we can leave before nightfall.”

She almost shoved him aside then.  Wandering through this cursed crypt during daylight was bad enough.  She had no intention of being anywhere near the keep once the sun went down.

Silhara arched an eyebrow.  “My apologies, apprentice.  I’m in your way.”  He bowed in mock apology and gestured that she precede him into the library.

Eager though she was to find the papers and escape Iwehvenn, Martise stepped cautiously over the threshold.  The witchfire torch hovering beside her cast an emerald haze on a chamber of dust-covered opulence.  She drew in a breath, awed by the sight of towering bookcases crammed with what was surely thousands of years of knowledge.

“Don’t just stand there and gawk, woman.  Unless you’ve a mind to spend the night here?”

Silhara’s soft admonishment ended her bewitchment, and she began searching the room.  The library was a shambles, with furniture overturned and scrolls spilled onto the floor.  Parchment lay scattered in haphazard patterns, tucked into corners, caught between chairs and tables.  Surely someone other than Silhara had been here.  She didn’t think he’d be so careless with such works.  Martise glanced at him, puzzled.  He shrugged.

“I’m unlike many of the thieves who’ve ransacked this place.  First, I’ve lived through the experience, and second, I know wealth isn’t always measured by coin.  Those who usually brave Iwehvenn are only interested in books as a source for their campfire fuel.  This was not my doing.”

He set the crossbow against a table, within easy reach, and crouched beside her to shift through the papers.  “Just gather them all.  I’m certain I left them in here, and from the way this room looks, whoever came after me wasn’t interested in a good book.”

Martise stacked parchments together, her bare hands burning with the taint of the lich’s magic.  As soon as they made it back to the stream by the plum trees, she was going to bathe and burn the garments she currently wore.  Silhara’s instructions that she bring extra clothing made sense now.

Her satchel was almost full and growing heavy on her shoulder.  Silhara stood and helped her rise.  “The light fails outside.  We need to leave.”

She was on the verge of telling him he’d get no argument from her when an icy fear suddenly poured over her skin, rendering her immobile.  The library swam before her eyes, its walls warping and splitting with fissures.  Something waited outside.  Something malevolent.  Ravenous.  Martise grasped Silhara’s arm.  His austere features, bathed in the green witchlight, were strained.  “Something comes,” she whispered.

His nostrils flared, sensual mouth flattening back against his bared teeth.  “We’re being hunted.”  He hefted the crossbow, grabbed her wrist and raced for the door.

Terror gave her feet wings, and she easily matched his long stride.  They stumbled to a halt on the landing.  At the far end of the black cloister a phantom mist raced toward them, roiling white and blood-flecked as it climbed the stairs.

Silhara cursed and reversed direction, wrenching Martise’s arm as he ran across the landing to the other stairway.  He skidded to a halt as the risers suddenly crumbled, sending a cascade of rotting boards falling to the first floor.  Martise, in full charge behind him, twisted sideways at the last moment in a failed bid to keep from hitting him.  She lost her balance.  A burst of pain radiated along her hip when she struck the floor.

“No!” Silhara bellowed, crashing to the floor with her.  Her momentum catapulted her over the balcony’s jagged edge, and her scream echoed in the cavernous dark below.  Her knife and Silhara’s crossbow fell, the bow glancing off her shoulder before striking the ground with a clatter.

The ache in her hip was a twinge compared to the agony bursting across her shoulder and back.  She dangled midair, tethered only by Silhara’s iron grip on her arm.  He sat on the floor, one foot braced against a broken pilaster to keep her from dragging him off the landing with her.

“You don’t look like you weigh this much,” he grunted through clenched teeth.

Martise barely heard him.  The darkness below gaped like an open mouth, waiting to swallow her.  The ghostly cloud paused on the landing, rolling and turning back on itself.  It picked up speed as if sensing its prey’s helplessness.  She could feel its hunger, a craving for the very essence of life.  Her life and Silhara’s.

Her wrist and forearm burned, chafed by Silhara’s rough palm as she slipped slowly from his grasp.  “Let go,” she whispered.  “You promised me a clean death.”  Shattered bones on the stones below were preferable to what the soul eater planned.

He tightened his grip, hard enough to numb her fingers.  “Don’t be tiresome,” he snarled.  “You’re holding the papers and the knowledge to translate them.”

Were she not hanging midair and facing imminent death by either a long fall or a lich’s avaricious appetite, she might have laughed.  Her rescuer was quick to assert his own motivations for saving her, and they had little to do with nobility.

The lich drew closer, carrying with it the fetid scent of evil.  Behind its vaporous form, the walls and landing warped and melted.  Silhara cursed and recited a familiar spell, one Martise hoped he’d never use on her again.  The incantation flung her upward, hard enough that her stomach dropped to her feet.  She flailed in the air.  He immediately invoked a descent spell, and she fell toward him in a flutter of tunic, satchel and hair.  He caught her neatly, and just as quickly tipped her out of his arms.

His hands skimmed her sides.  “The satchel.  You have the satchel.”  Relief hoarsened his already raspy voice.

Who cares about this bag of papers?  She wanted to scream at him.  They weren’t going to make it out of Iwehvenn.  The soul eater was almost upon them, shrouding them in a mist of cold, putrid air.  She yelped when Silhara pulled her close, his arm a tight band around her waist.

“Hang on, and don’t fight me.”

He gave her no time to question him.  Agony ripped through her body, and her vision blackened.  She arched against him, her fingers clawing his arms as he almost broke her ribs in a crushing vise.  Her surroundings faded, going gray and nebulous.  An enraged shriek buffeted her ears.  When she regained her bearings, it was to find herself still clasped in Silhara’s suffocating embrace, but in another chamber.

“What…” she asked before he cut her off.

“Not safe yet.  The lich is right behind us.”

Alerted by a peculiar tone in his voice, Martise looked up.  He was ashen beneath the bronze skin, lips leached almost white.  Blood trickled in a thin line from his left nostril to bisect his upper lip.

“Again,” he said.

This time she was more prepared, though the pain and crushing weight of the spell was just as torturous.  They emerged in an ante-chamber, surrounded by the husks of dead men.  More blood streamed from Silhara’s nose, dripping off his chin.  He stumbled, holding onto Martise as much for balance as to bring her with him through the spell’s bonding.

“Stop this.”  She wiped her sleeve under his nose in an attempt to staunch the crimson flow.  Her efforts left a smear across his cheek and a red stain on her shirt.  “You’re killing yourself.”  She’d read of the spell he used.  Half-Death they called it, part of the black arcana and outlawed by Conclave.  Complex and very handy in tight spots like these, it was known to kill the mages who used it.

His eyes were sunken in his pale face.  “Better dead than enslaved.”

The remark struck her harder than if he’d balled his fist and punched her.  Martise knew he referred to the lich, but his short statement encapsulated every motivation, every reason and every justification for why she was here with him in the first place.

He took a long breath that gurgled with blood.  “Once more.  I can do this once more.”

Martise doubted it, but even weakened by his own incantations, he was far stronger than she.  The most she could do was hang on and hold him up when he fell after the third time.  For fall he would.  Few mages had ever withstood Half-Death multiple times, and none had done so still standing.

The third time made her scream.  She might as well have fallen from the keep’s second story, the pain was so sharp.  They emerged in the outer courtyard, under a twilight sky.  Silhara collapsed against her.  Reeling from the shock of the spell, Martise staggered beneath his weight but managed to lower them both to their knees.  The mage slid lifeless in her arms, awash in blood and colder than a day-old corpse.

Her own pain forgotten, she laid him gently on the dusty ground.  Her fingers traced a palsied pattern over his stained mouth and came away wet when she pressed them to his chest and the scarlet ruin of his shirt.  “Don’t you dare die yet, you bastard.”

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Related posts:

1. Recommended Reads Saturday: Memory of Morning by Susan Sizemore
2. Recommended Reads Saturday: Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk
3. Recommended Reads Saturday: Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

From Darlynne:

I am recommending this book because The fantasy genre of magic users in urban settings is turned on its head and re-imagined in this Portland, Oregon-based series about Allie Beckstrom, magic Hound and reluctant daughter of the city’s most powerful businessman. Magic is available to all, but the use of it exacts a steep price; for some, it’s illness or migraines, for Allie, it’s that plus holes in her memory. She can Hound spells to see who cast them, who off-loaded the pain of doing so on innocent and unsuspecting victims.

There are a number of things I love about this series. Allie is so vulnerable herself and yet she is fiercely loyal, the first to come to the aid of others. She has no money, having refused her father’s fortune and influence; she carries a notebook and pen to record her activities in case of memory loss. She is funny, smart and determined and, in later books, has The Best Sidekick Ever: Stone, the accidentally re-animated gargoyle.

Portland makes a great setting, too, perhaps because I’ve spent time there, but also because it’s not the usual urban location. Rainy and cloudy days–except for two weeks in July–lend themselves very well to my idea of magic.

There is a romantic interest for Allie, a powerful magic user of Native-African-American-Asian descent. Not the usual hero, and his intentions are not immediately clear. Their relationship is sweet, sad and hopeful, one of the most satisfying I’ve read.

The world of magic here is harsh and cutthroat; alliances change or are revealed to be other than first thought. The idea of magic as a commodity, like electricity, makes for an interesting and complicated environment. Allie’s uneasy relationship with her father takes some unexpected turns and I have no idea how that will play out.

I should mention that Ms. Monk’s website has been rated by some WOT (web of trust) users as unsafe. I’ve never had a problem from visiting there and am dismayed that an internet tool would be wielded like that for who-knows-what reason. I hope DA readers won’t avoid the books or the site because of that.

The following is an excerpt from Magic to the Bone posted with the approval of the editor of Devon Monk.

It was the morning of my twenty fifth birthday, and all I wanted was a decent cup of coffee, a hot breakfast, and a couple hours away from the stink of used magic that seeped through the walls of my apartment building every time it rained.

My current fortune of ten bucks wasn’t going to get me that hot breakfast, but it was going to buy a good dark Kenya roast and maybe a muffin down at Get Mugged.  What more could a girl ask for?

I took a quick shower, pulled on jeans, a black tank top and boots.  I brushed my dark hair back and tucked it behind my ears, hoping for the short, wet, sexy look.  I didn’t bother with make-up.  Being six foot tall and the daughter of one of the most notorious businessmen in town got me enough attention.  So did my pale green eyes, athletic build, and the family knack for coercion.

I  pulled on my jacket, careful not to jostle my left shoulder too much.  The scars across my deltoid still hurt, even though the creep with the knife had jumped me three months ago.  I had known the scars might be permanent, but I didn’t know they would hurt so much every time it rained.  Blood magic, when improperly wielded by an uneducated street hustler, was a pain that just kept on giving.  Lucky me.

One of these days, when my student loans were paid off, and I’d dug my credit rating out of the toilet, I’d be able to turn down cheap Hounding jobs that involved back-alley drug deals and black market revenge spells.  Hell, maybe I’d even have enough money to afford a cell phone again.

I patted my pocket to make sure the small, leather bound book and pen were there.  I didn’t go anywhere without those two things with me.  I couldn’t.  Not if I wanted to remember who I was when things went bad.  And things seemed to be going bad a lot lately.

I made it as far as the door.  The phone rang.  I paused, trying to decide if I should  answer it.  The phone had come with the apartment, and like the apartment it was as low-tech as legally allowed, which meant there was no caller ID.

It could be my dad–or more likely his secretary of the month– delivering the obligatory annual birthday lecture.  It could be my friend Nola, if she had left her farm and gone into town to use a pay phone.  It could be my landlord asking for the rent I hadn’t paid.  Or it could be a Hounding job.

I let go of the doorknob and walked over to the phone.  Let the happy news begin.

“Hello?”

“Allie, girl?”  It was Mama Rossitto, from the worst part of North Portland.  Her voice sounded flat and fuzzy, broken by the cheap land line.  Ever since I did a couple Hounding jobs for Mama a few months ago, she treated me like I was the only person in the city who could trace lines of magic back its user and abuser.

“Yes, Mama, it’s me.”

“You fix.  You fix for us.”

“Can it wait?  I was headed to breakfast.”

“You come now.  Right now,” Mama’s voice had a pitch in it that had nothing to do with the bad connection.  She sounded panicked.  Angry.  “Boy is hurt.  Come now.”

The phone clacked down, but must not have hit the cradle.  I heard the clash of dishes pushed into the sink, the sputter of a burner snapping to life, then Mama’s voice, farther off, shouting to one of her many sons–half of whom were runaways she’d taken in–and all of whom answered to the name Boy.

I heard something else too, a high, light whistle like a string buzzing in the wind, softer than a wheezy newborn.  I’d heard that sound before.  I tried to place it, and found holes where my memory should be.

Great.

Using magic meant it used you back.  Forget the fairytale hocus-pocus, wave a wand and bling-o, sparkles and pixie dust crap.  Magic, like booze, sex, and drugs, gave as good as it got.  But unlike booze and the rest, magic could do incredible good.  In the right hands, used the right way, it could save lives, ease pain, and streamline the complexities of the modern world.  Magic was revolutionary, like electricity, penicillin, plastic, and in the thirty years since it had been discovered and made accessible to the general public, magic had done a lot of good.

At first, everyone wanted a piece of it–magically enhanced food, fashion, entertainment, sex.  And then the reality of such use set in.  Magic always takes its due from the user, and the price is always pain.  It didn’t take people long to figure out how to transfer that pain to someone else, though.

Laws were put in place to regulate who could access the magic and how and why.  But there weren’t enough police to keep up with stolen cars and murders in the city, much less the misuse of a force no one can see.

Things went downhill fast, and as far as I can tell, they had stayed there.

But while magic made the average Joe pay one painful price each time he used it, sometimes magic double dipped on me.  I’d get the expected migraine, flu, roaring fever, or whatever, and then, just for fun, magic would kick a few holes in my memories.  It doesn’t happen every time, and doesn’t happen in any pattern I can fathom.  Just sometimes when I use magic, it makes me pay the price in pain, then takes a few of my memories for good measure.

That’s why I carried a little blank book–to record important bits of my life.  And it’s also why four years at Harvard, pounding tomes for my masters in business magic hadn’t worked out quite the way I’d wanted it to.  Still, I was a Hound, and I was good at that.  Good enough I could keep food on the table, live in the crappiest part of Old Town, and make the minimum payment on my student loans.  And hey, who didn’t have a few memories they wouldn’t mind getting rid of, right?

The phone clattered and the line went dead.

Happy birthday to me.

If Boy had been hurt by magic, Mama should have called 911 for a doctor who knew how to handle those sorts of things, not a Hound like me.  Suspicious, superstitious, Mama always thought her family was under magical attack.  Not one of the times I’d Hounded for her, had her problem been a magical hit.  Just bad luck, spoiled meat, and once, (shudder) cockroaches the size of small dogs.

But I had done some other jobs since I’d set up shop here in Portland.  Every one of those sent me sniffing the illegal magical Offloads back to corporations.  And nine times out of nine, even that kind of proof, my testimony on the stand, and a high-profile trial, wouldn’t get the corporation much more than a cash penalty.

I rolled my good shoulder to try to get the kink out of my neck, but only managed to make my arm hurt more.  I didn’t want to go.  But I couldn’t just ignore her call, and there was no other way to get in touch with her.  Mama wouldn’t answer the phone.  She was convinced it was tapped, though I couldn’t think of anyone who would be interested in the life of a woman who lived in North Portland, in the broken-down neighborhood of St. John’s, a neglected and mostly forgotten place cut off from the magic that flowed through rest of the city.

I tipped my head back, stared at the ceiling and exhaled.  Okay.  I’d go and make sure Boy was all right.  I’d try to talk Mama into calling a doctor.  I’d check for any magical wrong-doing.  I’d look for rats.  I’d bill her half price.  Then I would go out for a late birthday breakfast.

A girl could hope, anyway.

I walked out the door and locked it.  I didn’t bother with alarm spells.  Most single women in the city thought alarm spells would keep them safe, but I knew first hand that if someone wanted badly enough to break into your apartment, there wasn’t a spell worth paying the price for that could keep them out.

I took the stairs instead of the elevator, because I hate small spaces, and made it to the street in no time.  The mid-September morning was gray as a grave and cold enough, my breath came out in plumes of steam.  The wind gusted off the Willamette River and rain sliced at my bare face.

Portland lived up to its name.  Even though it was a hundred miles from the ocean, it had that crumbling brick warehouse and industrial feel of the working port it still was, especially where it had built along the banks of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.  The Willamette River was practically in my backyard, behind the warehouses, train and bus station.  Without squinting I could see four of the mis-matched bridges that crossed the water, connecting downtown with the east side of the city.  Over that river and north, close to where the Willamette and Columbia met, was Mama’s neighborhood.

I zipped my coat, pulled up my hood, and wished I’d thought about putting on a sweater before I’d left.

A bus wouldn’t get me to Mama’s fast enough.  However, the good thing about being a woman and six foot tall, was that cabs, few and far between though they may be, stopped when you whistled.  It didn’t hurt that I had my dad’s good looks, either.  When I was in the mood to smile, I could get almost anyone to see things my way, even without using magic.  True to the Beckstrom blood, I also had a gift for magic-based Influence.  But after watching my dad Influence my mother, his lovers, business partners, and even me, to get his way, I’d sworn off using it.

It wasn’t like I had wanted to go to Harvard.  I had Juilliard in mind: art, not business; music, not magic. But my dad had severe ideas about what constituted a useful education.

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk
2. Recommended Reads Saturday: Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews
3. Recommended Reads Saturday: Memory of Morning by Susan Sizemore

I must confess, I am a fan. You are one of those authors I count on to consistently deliver good stories. The presence of your name on the cover of a book will motivate me to buy what I would otherwise pass. I’m hooked on your Kate Daniels series of Urban Fantasy novels. I enjoy the way you twist tired genre tropes in your Kinsmen series of Sci-fi Romance ebook novellas. I adore the excitement, intricacy and interconnectedness of your Edge series of Fantasy Romance novels, the third and most recent installment of which, Fate’s Edge, is reviewed here today.

Unfortunately, intricacy and interconnectedness have their price in that they tend to make later books in a series less accessible to new readers. Though I enjoyed Fate’s Edge and look forward to the next book in the series, I was left wondering whether the plot threads and characters carried in from earlier books would intrigue new readers or alienate them.

Like other heroines in this series, Audrey Callahan lives in the Edge, a hardscrabble, half-magical borderland between the Broken—the modern North America we know and love—and the Weird, an alternate North America which, with all of its monsters, mayhem and magical devices, more than lives up to its name. Audrey comes from a family of grifters, but where most Edge families stick up for each other, Audrey’s family used and neglected her in favor of her drug addicted brother. She reluctantly agrees to one last heist for an unknown buyer in order to sever her ties with her family.

Kaldar Mar is exactly the sort of handsome, smooth-talking con man Audrey knows she should avoid, but he’s also the secret agent tasked with recovering the item she stole. And he’s not the only one after her. With evil agents of the Hand close on their trail, Kaldar and Audrey must combine their talents for conning and thievery in order to find and regain the dangerous device. Along for the adventure are stowaway brothers Jack and George whom fans of the series will recognize as Rose’s brothers from the first Edge book, On the Edge, and Kaldar’s ward, Gaston, whom we met in book two, Bayou Moon.

I enjoyed the way this book started with the events that bring this group of adventurers together. It filled me in on what life was like for Jack, George, and, to a lesser extent, Gaston, since I last saw them in earlier books. It also served to establish Kaldar’s and Audrey’s excellence in the arts of deception. Though it takes a while for them to meet, when they do, the scene is a very fun contest of cons with each trying to manipulate the other.

In addition to scenes shown from the hero’s and heroine’s points of view, Fate’s Edge gives the reader several scenes from Jack’s point of view and some scenes written from the villains’ points of view, too. I enjoyed your POV choices, and especially appreciated that though the villains were cruel and scary and evil, their motives made sense. Additionally, the increasingly complex plans Kaldar and Audrey devise in their quest for the MacGuffin require independent action from all of the main characters. We would have missed a lot of excitement without Jack’s point of view. And, we would have missed Jack. To be honest, I like Jack and George so much that I would have read and enjoyed this book even if it were only about them.

And therein lies the difficulty. While I adored the relationship between George and Jack—the dramatic posturing of adolescents, the alternating feelings of responsibility and resentment each boy feels for his brother—Audrey and Kaldar’s romance just was not as vivid a relationship. I think part of the problem is that much of Kaldar’s character development comes in the form of other characters telling Audrey—and by extension, the reader—about Kaldar rather than Kaldar showing who he really is:

Gaston bit his lower lip. “He’s not right… He still pretends that everything is cool. You can’t tell by looking at him because he acts normal, but the rudder on his boat stuck…He wants revenge on the Hand, and he doesn’t care what happens to him or how he gets it.”

Given that Kaldar is a con man, it makes sense that he would not readily reveal his deepest secrets, and I would have thought it odd if he had. But because he spends so much of his time with Audrey trying to be the type of man she would sleep with, I don’t feel like his character ever really solidified for me, even during the endearing scenes where he realized he loved her.

The difficult thing about confidence men as heroes is that the con is often bigger than the character. I found Audrey a fascinating heroine at the start of the book, but she faded in comparison to the scams she and Kaldar ran in order to retrieve the MacGuffin. By the end, I was happy when Audrey and Kaldar got their HEA, but content to let them ride off into the sunset. I am sure they will be useful in future installments of the Edge series, but Audrey and Kaldar didn’t hook me the way William and Cerise did in Bayou Moon or, to a lesser extent, Rose and Declan did in On the Edge.

Overall, I enjoyed Fate’s Edge and would recommend it to any fan of the series. I would not recommend it to new readers for fear that the tangle of preexisting characters, plots, and histories might prove daunting rather than intriguing, and I would really hate for any reader to miss out on a series as good as this one.

B

~Josephine

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: On the Edge by Ilona Andrews
2. REVIEW x2: Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews
3. REVIEW: Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews

This is the fourth book in a connected series with the three other stories written by three other authors. I haven’t read the other three and I don’t feel like my reading experience was impaired in any way.  The prologue lays the table.  A long lived people leaved peacefully and prosperously in the land of Elden until they were attacked by a Blood Sorcerer.  In a last ditch effort to save her children, the Queen of Elden cast a spell to fling her children far away from Elden so that they would survive and come to reclaim their birthrights.

Micah, the youngest, became the Guardian of the Abyss, Lord of the Black Castle, and within his castle sits the gateway to the Abyss, “where the servants of evil were banished after death to suffer eternal torment at the hands of the basilisks and the serpents, and he was the guardian of that terrible place.”  He was encased in a full armor of impenetrable black and there were razors over his knuckles and bladed claws at the ends of his fingers.

Liliana is the daughter of the Blood Sorcerer. She has been practicing her own magic, secretly, as she is viewed as a disgusting failure by her father.  She is working to defeat her father and the prophecy requires the return of all four of the heirs of the Elden kingdom.  Micah, however, has not been found until now. Her magic brings her to the feet of the Lord of the Black Castle whereupon she is whisked off to the dungeons.

Micah has no memory of Elden but Liliana intrigues him. There has never been an intruder in the Black Castle and while her appearance is not “prepossessing”, she looks him in the eye which no one ever has the courage to do.  What’s even more remarkable is that Liliana is truly a different looking heroine:

She was…mismatched, he thought. Though her skin was a smooth golden brown that reminded him of honey from the redblossom tree, her eyes were tiny dots a peculiar sort of nowhere color and her mouth much too big, her hooked nose overwhelming every other feature. Her hair stuck out in a stiff mass akin to the straw in the stables, and she limped when she walked, as if one leg was shorter than the other.

A hook nosed, tiny eyed, big mouthed, limping heroine? Later it is further revealed that her breasts are tiny and her butt is huge not to mention one leg being smaller than the other.  Matched with a hero that looks like a god?  I’m all in.  And the story doesn’t disappoint.

The Black Castle is full of misfits from the Brownie, Jissa, to the factotum, Bard, and it’s master, Micah.

“You will fit in very well here, yes, you will,” Jissa said with a sudden smile that gave her a quixotic charm.

“For he is the only creature of beauty, and even he turns into a monster.”

Micah has no memory of his past.  He is only Guardian of the Abyss.  Cleverly, Liliana gets a position as cook and uses delicacies from Elden to jog Micah’s memory, hoping that in doing so he will break the curse and return to Elden in time to fulfill the prophecy and defeat the Blood Sorcerer. Her cooking leads to stories of Elden.

Liliana may be ugly and Micah may be beautiful but they are both lonely and unhappy. Micah lives the next day just as he did the last, surrounded by a few loyal servants and spending the night hunting the worst kind of souls and hurtling them into the Abyss. As the Guardian of the Abyss, Micah feels dirty and ugly as well. Liliana has spent her days avoiding her father whenever she could, learning to avoid shows of affection for anything from animals to people as her father always used those as weapons against her.

They grow to love each other. It matters not what Liliana looks like or how Micah has no experience with women. Together, these two fit each other in a carefully constructed romance in a shorter space (category length). For those readers who have found a Singh hero a bit too alpha for their taste, I think this would be a better fit. Micah’s sexual awakening is sweet infused with the trademark Singh heat.

The ending, however, was a huge disappointment. I believe someone told me that Lord of the Abyss is suppposed to be a fairy tale (or fairy tale like). Viewed through this lense, I suppose the ending made sense but I was ultimately disappointed because I felt it was unnecessary and would have been unconventional and fresh not to have chosen the ending that was included.  It diminished my pleasure in the story and I felt that after having so much of the book moving outside the boundaries, this just dragged me squarely back into romance central.  B

Best regards,

Jane

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1. REVIEW: Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh
2. REVIEW: Hostage to Pleasure by Nalini Singh
3. Thursday Midday Links Roundup: Education is moving toward digital

I loved the first and second book in this series but as the worldbuilding evolved and became bigger, I felt like I lost an understanding of the world. The book started out as a Pack book for me (Pack = werewolf) and has been transmogrified into world where every kind of magic exists from dragons to sorcerers to shapeshifters. There is earth magic, fire magic, water magic, precogs, and with each new book, a new element is introduced. The first book in the series, Tempting Danger, introduces Lily Yu and Rule Turner. (I’ve not reviewed that book here, but I did review the second, Mortal Danger). Lily Yu is a former homicide detective and a touch sensitive who was recruited to be part of the Magical Crimes Division of the FBI. Her supervisor is Ruben Brooks.

Aside: I do not recommend that any one start with this book. I think they would be lost. I was kind of lost and I’ve read all the books.  I do recommend Tempting Danger and Mortal Danger and the seventh in this series, Blood Challenge.  I think a reader could read those three and not be lost.   “Tempting Danger” and “Blood Challenge” are my favorite in this series.  Both focus strongly on the Pack and the romance between the main characters.

Rule Turner is a Lupi or werewolf and the designated heir of one of the strongest, wealthiest Packs in North America. He also wears the mantle of another pack, something that is not supposed to happen. Lupi have fated mates and Lily is Rule’s. Over the course of the series, Lily and Rule struggle with their matebond, a mystical connection that is so strong that it is affected by even distance. In “Death Magic”, Lily and Rule move ever more slowly toward an actual marriage ceremony. I’m not certain how much time has passed since book 1 of this series, but I think it is a bit more than a year.

An enemy of the Pack, an old and powerful god that the Lupi refer to as the “Great Bitch”, is rising up bringing to life old magics and dangers that have not been experienced in centuries. “Death Magic” is a continuation of this overarching plot about the “Great Bitch” and her nebulous plans. Ruben’s precog gift is foretelling something dire and it is up to Lily, Rule, and the other members of their respective clans to discover what they can do to prevent the negative outcome foreseen by Ruben. Ruben sets up a Shadow Unit, to work outside of the Bureau and by the book Lily finds herself conflicted when Ruben asks her to join. Rule is more sanguine. He’s an “end justifies the means” kind of guy and doesn’t see a problem with Lily joining Ruben in order to stop a greater evil.

Lily’s hand is forced when Ruben is accused of killing a Senator.  Tensions are further raised when the Humans First, an anti magical group, gains in power and violence.  Finally, Lily’s life is in jeopardy as she begins to experience strange illnesses that may or may not be connected to a Lupi related power she acquired in a previous book.

While Ruben, a figure that has appeared briefly in all previous books, gets more face time and an interesting storyline, I wasn’t fully engaged. I think it comes down to my own expectations for this series. It’s called World of the Lupi, but I feel that the Lupi often aren’t the focus, but the world surrounding the Lupi is. For readers looking for a broad, full and diverse urban fantasy series with some romance, I think this is very satisfying. For someone who is looking for a strong romance arc in each book, I think some of the books including “Death Magic” will be a disappointment.

The great thing about this series is the diversity. There is diversity in race and religion both on the “good” and the “bad” sides. An effort seems to be made to show each character as an individual instead of a representative token for a particular subset of society. I guess my major problem is that I expected this book to be paranormal romance and instead it is more urban fantasy. I feel emotionally distanced from these characters and would like to see more movement in the romance/relationship. It doesn’t have the visceral emotional power of my favorites but it does move the plot forward.  B-

Best regards,

Jane

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Mortal Sins by Eileen Wilks
2. REVIEW: Blood Lines by Eileen Wilks
3. REVIEW: On the Prowl by Patrica Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance and Sunny

I confess that I read this book because I just loved the cover.  The positioning of the characters, the color of the dress, the frills at the cuff of the man’s outfit. It was very evocative.  The soft against the hard.  It’s a clinch but an evocative, sophisticated clinch.   This is the second book in the Brethren Guardian series and I have not read the first one.

Lucy Ashton seeks passion.  She thought she had found it in the arms of an impoverished artist, Thomas.    The night that she offered herself to this artist she had given him a lace handkerchief with her initials embroidered on it.  Lucy believed that this handkerchief was lost to her when a fire consumed her beloved’s rented rooms.  She seeks his presence  through seances and soothsayers, exploring the occult for answers.

Lucy’s father, however, wants her to marry the “passionless and priggish Duke of Sussex.”  What is worse is that the Duke of Sussex has returned Lucy’s handkerchief but while the Duke of Sussex wants answers about where Lucy’s handkerchief was found, Lucy begins to weave fantasies of reuniting with her artist beloved.

Sussex is part of a group known as the Brethren and they guard some artifact, as far as Lucy  knows.  ”Their business was mysterious and secretive, and dangerous.  From what she knew of their secrets, there existed  an onyx pendant, which was the very essence of evil,  and some sort of chalice they protected.”  Lucy took the necklace and swallowed one of the seeds inside the pendant in hopes that it would connect her with her dead lover.  Now Lucy is being told that Thomas is an enemy of the Brethren, a rogue Freemason, and thus an enemy of good.

Lucy’s portrayal is one of a hapless but privileged young woman who had no control over her life.  Her taking the lover, her seeking out the occult is her way of taking control.  Accepting her father’s choice would be an acquiescence that she is powerless.  I think that is an interesting concept but I couldn’t really understand Lucy’s thought process here.  Could a passionless and priggish man be part of a secret and mysterious and dangerous society?

Lucy’s constant reference to Adrian York, the Duke of Sussex, as passionless isn’t effectively carried off because the reader sees Adrian’s point of view and thus we know he is full of passion.  Repeated protestations by Lucy ring hollow.  This is likely a more effective technique if the story is told primarily from Lucy’s point of view, either in limited third or first person.

Instead the alternating point of view made it hard to drum up sympathy for Lucy’s position.  The reader knows her artist is the bad guy.  The reader knows that Adrian totally loves her.  The reader knows that he burns to get her into bed.  I objectively understood what was supposed to be portrayed here but it wasn’t convincing.

Adrian is not passionless and priggish.  He’s in love with Lucy and torn up that she appears to be in love with a man who killed a friend of his in cold blood, a man who is an enemy of the Brethren Guardians.  Fortunately, Adrian’s quest to win Lucy’s hand is aided in part by his sister and Lucy’s own cousin.  Adrian has enjoyed what Lucy seeks and that is rigid control over his life and his emotions (because of a secret!) but he seeks to lose himself in Lucy.

The secret society, the grail artifacts, and the rogue freemasons were probably there to provide suspense but the it seemed more like a game amongst men than a true and riveting danger.  I also felt that it took away from the romance even though part of the conflict arose from the secrets and artifacts.

I did enjoy the close friendship that Lucy enjoyed with her cousin and Adrian’s sister and once the romance got rolling, I enjoyed Adrian and Lucy together.  The secondary romance between Adrian’s sister who is blind and the supposedly philandering Marquis of Alynwick is heartwrenching and ends in a cliffhanger.

There were a couple moments of in the book that had my eyebrows raised including one love scene which took place when both were supposed to be in imminent danger and may have been brought about by slightly drugging both of them.  And there was a huge coincidence that brings the story full circle.   Suffice to say I liked the cover much more than I enjoyed the book. Finally, I wasn’t sure whether this was supposed to be a play on Pride and Prejudice with the Duke of Sussex playing the part of Darcy. C

Best regards,

Jane

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Ah, the peril of the long-running series. I knew in the back of my mind that your ongoing Elantra series consisted of many books but checking Amazon, I see that Cast in Ruin is book 7. This both surprises me and makes me wince. Surprise because I can’t believe it’s been that many books already (I remember when Cast in Shadow first came out!), but wince because at some point, the barrier of entry for new readers becomes too high.

Cast in Ruin continues the fallout from the previous novel, Cast in Chaos, in which a magical storm introduced a new race of people to Elantra. Because this new race is one of small giants, the people of Elantra are understandably wary. Efforts are underway to smooth over relations between the races but unsurprisingly, it’s a slow process.

Kaylin Neya, human Hawk (sort of the equivalent of a police officer) and gifted with magical abilities no one else has or entirely understands, continues her ongoing etiquette lessons with the Dragon Court. Given the nature of her talents, she has to meet the Dragon Emperor sometime but first, she has to become presentable enough so as to avoid being eaten. Further complicating her life are the race of giants whose presence requires attention and a work force already taxed by an involved and long-running investigation into other matters of the city.

But things take a turn for the bizarre when dead women start showing up around the fief the immigrants have made their home. Under other circumstances, people would look towards the newcomers as the source of the problem. That assumption is dismissed, however, by one minor detail. The dead bodies are all of the same exact woman.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to read this novel. It read long and only my love for your works kept me going because had this been any other author, I would have tossed this book aside. Now I realize your books are generally long. I feel like this is a defining trait of your works. Normally, I’m fine with that. Traditional fantasy is my love, after all. But this was the first book of yours where I struggled to finish and in fact having finished it, I still don’t know if the effort to keep going was worth it.

Without going into spoilers, my main issue is that while things happened, I didn’t feel like there was much forward progress in the book. Yes, I realize there was a game-changer, of sorts, introduced in the latter parts of the novel. The problem with this is that I felt like the sole purpose of the book was to introduce this game-changer. Who came into the book. And then the book ended. It’s a bit of a letdown, you know?

It’s true that because of the lead up to the new character’s introduction, we learn more about the dragons. Unfortunately, the information wasn’t imparted in any way I found compelling. How long have we been waiting for Kaylin’s much-anticipated introduction to the Dragon Emperor? Now I realize she isn’t at all ready for that meeting, but how many books has it been? Has she made any forward progress at all? At the rate we’re going, I have doubts as to whether we will even see that meeting within the next 2 books given the assumed location of the next installment.

That said, we do finally get a much-needed conversation between Kaylin and Severn. Does it lead anywhere or change anything? No, not especially. While I liked seeing what Kaylin actually thought of Nightshade, that subplot is moving about as fast as the built-up meeting to the Dragon Emperor. Perhaps even slower. I’m not particularly frustrated by the lack of progress but 1) by this point, I don’t expect any on that front anymore and 2) I was more irritated by other things.

Long-running series are difficult to keep interesting. I say this as a reader who’s followed many (Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire). What keeps me invested is change. While some readers would say that the new character in this book did introduce change to the series, I would argue that while it did introduce change to the world, it didn’t introduce an immediately obvious change to Kaylin. Sure, she gets a new roommate but how does this affect her character arc? After all, for all intents and purposes, the new character is essentially an immortal version of Kaylin and to be blunt, one of that character type per novel is enough. I feel like the proportion of scale was lost.

While it’s true Kaylin is not the same character we first met in Cast in Shadow, I’m not entirely convinced she’s made as much character progression as you’d expect for someone who’s gone through 7 books. She’s striking me as static at the moment. Does that mean massive character evolution couldn’t happen in the next novel? No, of course not but I’m not seeing it and it’s making my interest in this series flag. I honestly don’t know how much more of this non-progress I can take. And new readers beware: this is a not a good entry point into the series. We’ve long since passed that point, unfortunately. C

My regards,
Jia

Previous books in this series: Cast in Shadow, Cast in Courtlight, Cast in Secret, Cast in Fury (review), Cast in Silence (review), Cast in Chaos (review)

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1. REVIEW: Cast in Silence by Michelle Sagara
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3. REVIEW: Cast in Fury by Michelle Sagara

I was really intrigued by the description of your book, No Proper Lady, which touts itself as a being a cross between Terminator and My Fair Lady. And indeed, this is a very apt description for the plot of this book. More importantly, based upon the excerpt I read before deciding to review the book, the heroine seemed to fit my current desire for a female protagonist who is neither attractive nor particularly good. So I gave it a shot and I was happy I did.

The book opens in the middle of battle. Joan, daughter of Arthur and Leia, stands in a circle of blue as priests chant. Beyond this circle, she can hear the sounds of death and destruction. The sounds of people she loves dying. This ritual—a ritual designed to detach Joan from time and space and send her into the past, never to return to this moment—is the last chance the human race has against the demons and monsters that have invaded the world.  But the novel is not spent in Joan’s time, circa 2188. It occurs in Victorian era England. That is the time—as the priests have learned—where the dark magician, who will open gates to other worlds and let the demonic into ours, lives. This is the pivotal point. The point when humanity’s hope for a future without the death, the destruction, and the demons that shape daily life in 2188 is still a possibility. This is the time to which Joan has been sent in order to kill Alex Reynell and his horrible book before he can open the gates to other, hellish worlds, and never close them.

Simon Grenville is riding the forest, riding off his frustration and sorrow.  He and his sister Eleanor have retreated to the country. In London, there are still whispers of scandal attached to his sister’s name. Nobody knows the truth. What rumors and innuendoes are exchanged—that Eleanor was ruined, that Simon tried to kill Alex Reynell—all suppose a more human, a more mundane cause.  The truth is much more unbelievable and far darker than anything Society might conceive of. Though they were once the best of friends, Simon had begun to suspect that Alex was no longer just dabbling in dark magic. He had begun to keep his distance, detach himself from his old friend. But he never would have believed that Alex would do what he did. So when Simon stumbles upon the strange woman in the blue circle of light on his property, he is not surprised. Another attack by Alex convinces him to trust the woman, Joan, because she saves his life. It isn’t before long that they realize that they have a mutual enemy in Alex Reynell.

So much could have gone wrong in this story that didn’t. As a long time fantasy reader, one of my chief pet peeves concerns the problem of world-building. I would argue that any book, regardless of whether or not it slides into the Sci-fi/Fantasy genre, requires a certain deftness with constructing a world. Too often I see books in which the magic seems to have no rules, the plot and the conceit gets bogged down in minutiae, and the complexity of our actual histories (with their attendant religions, politics, various cultures, foods, music, perspectives, attitudes etc.—and that’s just this week!) get reduced down to a singular and rather unimaginative How-It-Works-In-This-World-Is-Like-This. For simplicity is always less imaginative than complexity. This is particularly so when one has to balance the world-building and adventure that is a part of the fantasy genre with the focus on the central love relationship that is the hallmark of romance.

So I was leery, author. Very leery, indeed, when I opened this book.  But my fears of a sloppy magical world or alternate England were almost immediately put to rest. The world-building in this novel is, perhaps, one of the most seamless and effortless examples I have seen in a long time. Fantasy has the unfortunate tendency to proselytize a certain ideology (-coughs- Philip Pullman –cough-), which is all well and good if you don’t notice. Because once you, the reader, start asking questions about how the world operates, you know you’ve stopped caring about the characters. If you are more concerned with how the mail works, then it’s over.  No Proper Lady, I’m happy to report, does not make you question train schedules in Victorian England, or magic rituals. Instead, it weaves an apocalyptic future in which mankind is enslaved to demonic forces with Victorian era England in such a way that you don’t notice the threads.

One of the other strengths of this book is the heroine, Joan. Joan is another thing that could have gone horribly wrong but didn’t. Aren’t you tired, readers, of kick-ass heroines? I am. All that ass-kicking in leather pants and a halter top really is rather chaffing. What’s particularly awesome about Joan is that she’s a person. It seems so silly to say that, to have to point that out as the thing that, at least, I am looking for in a heroine, but there it is. She’s a person. And as a person, even though she’s tough, and even though she’s a warrior, she’s also vulnerable and scared and overwhelmed with the duty she has been sent to the past to perform. Like anyone would be. So Joan, like anyone, finding themselves in a strange world with no friends or family ties, is a little lost. Nor is she afraid to admit to Simon that she is:

“No, please,” Simon insisted. “I must know. Is something wrong here? Has anyone been uncivil to you—were the girls—” Improbable—impossible—for Joan to be crying over what a bunch of village chits thought or said or did. He knew that even before Joan shook her head. “No. It’s nothing you did. Nothing anyone here did. I just—”

She stopped and looked at Simon, then swiftly away again, at the desk and the opened book on it. A flush crept up her neck and over her face. “What the hell,” she said, in a tight voice he’d never heard from her before. “If I’m going to act like a six-year-old anyhow—I want my mother. And my dad, and my friends, and the world I knew. It was a shitty world, but it was mine, and everyone I love is there. Was there.” At the last her voice cracked.

Joan spun around to face the bookshelves, but Simon saw her face before she did: stripped of control at last, a study in weariness and far and stark bleeding grief. The pain there made his own look like a stubbed toe. “Oh,” he said, sounding awkward and insufficient to his own ears. “But—won’t you see them again?”

“No.”

What I like about this exchange is that Joan wants her mother. I think that is a very telling desire. Joan, for all that she is a highly trained, extremely efficient soldier, is still a daughter in a family—not a dysfunctional family—but a family that was proud of her, that she wants to see again, that she’s not going to see again. This emotional and human aspect to Joan’s character is directly a result of the world-building because, as Joan explains a little further on:

“There were rituals,” Joan said. “I’m cut loose from time. That’s how I could come back, and I guess it lets me survive any changes I make by being here. But that’s just me. If I succeed . . . then there’ll be a different world two hundred years from now. Mine won’t be there anymore.”

Character arc, world-building, and the progress of the relationship are all interwoven in this one small exchange. And what’s even more extraordinary is that this aspect of magic, the limitations of the world, and previously unknown aspects of Joan herself, is not information forced upon us through some roughly inserted exposition or awkward dialogue, but comes to us readers through what I think is one of the central components of romance: conversation. They are talking, talking because Simon caught Joan crying. How normal! And in world where demons exist, to boot!

In fact, the greatest strength of this book is that our understanding of each time period comes through the encounter of that period by one of the characters. What I mean is, that instead of being told what such and such a place is like for Joan or Simon, we experience their wonder or terror or joy, etc. along with them. Moreover, we understand what kind of a magical world we are operating in through those encounters—not just with places, or things, or manners, but with each other. Joan starts out as a foreign object in Simon’s eyes. He can’t even decide what she looks like beyond being utterly strange. A concept like beauty or plain or ugly can’t be applied to her because she is a person, a being totally outside his experience. He cannot place or categorize her. Joan, conversely, can take nothing for granted. The world she came from was diseased and bleak. Where every moment was shadowed. Where every moment was a beat in an ongoing war. She has trouble adjusting to world with sunshine and grass. Her first experience of a living, breathing city is overwhelming. We understand what Joan’s world is like not because she tells us, but because in her reactions to Victorian England we are able to deduce what the place and time she came from were like.

Neither does this book try to answer all the metaphysical questions fantasy novels inevitably evoke. Things like what is time? What is evil? Why are there other worlds? Is there a God? What kind? Maybe Gods? A conscious universe? Where does consciousness come from? Is there life after death? It does, in some ways, address these questions, but it does not answer them definitively: for they can’t be answered in fictional world anymore definitely than they can be in our world. They are answered, in a limited and ambiguous way, in the experiences of the characters. And as a person who has read far too many SF/F novels who attempt to explain everything, I appreciate that underlying ambiguity that still maintains a resolution of the pertinent plot points.

If there was any weakness to this book, then it was that I wasn’t totally emotionally invested in the outcome. I read the first half quite quickly and then put it down. I had to because I had to go to work. But then, instead of rushing home to finish reading it, I just didn’t. I just didn’t pick it up again. Even I find this strange, what with all my previous praise. But there you go. I’ve had trouble writing this review because even though I truly believe from an objective perspective that this is a solid and very good piece of writing, I somehow didn’t emotionally connect to it. When I was reading it, I enjoyed it, but I was not enthralled by it. There wasn’t a visceral connection for me, and that really signals the difference between an A book and B book in my mind.

Perhaps this lack of an emotional connection was because I wasn’t as invested in the romance as I was in the adventure. I remember the action much better than I remember the love scenes. I found the romance between Joan and Simon almost entirely forgettable. Nothing about it stood out for me. Joan, as a character, does somewhat but mostly because of her unusualness. Simon has dark hair, I think, and that’s all I can remember except for the fact that he is a very honorable man. The magic and the fantastic elements of the novel are quite well done. The prose was smooth and easy to fall into. The villain, Alex Reynell, is probably the most memorable of the characters. Partly, I think, because unlike so many other villains in romance, Reynell is both complex and evil.  He is frightening, and not just because of the things he does but the way he does them. He is frightening because, as Simon’s friend and in Simon’s memories, especially, we see that he was not always this way.  Yet . . . like two people on a first date who ought to be soul mates, who have all sorts of things in common, this novel and I found ourselves unable to relate to one another on a fundamental level.

So, yes. This is a strongly written, well-constructed magical world with complex characters. More importantly, Ms. Cooper doesn’t tell or show when she can imply. But for me, even though this book and I ought to be compatible by all 142 eHarmony points of compatibility or whatever, we simply didn’t quite click. There was a certain spark missing from the whole experience for me. And so I give this book a very well-deserved B+ with the full acknowledgement that for some other girl, this one’s a keeper.

Lazaraspaste

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I was a big fan of your previous reworking of the story of Cinderella, Ember, so when I heard you had another novella out based on a fairy tale, I was intrigued. I was slightly dismayed to discover that Cat’s Tale was based on Puss in Boots, which is a fairy tale I’m actually not familiar with (I only know of the character played by Antonio Banderas in the Shrek movies, who is, admittedly, adorable). One of the pleasures of Ember was recognizing the echoes of the original story in the adaptation, and so I was a little disappointed not to have that opportunity with Cat’s Tale. But I pluckily soldiered on anyway.

Catriona is born to a minor count and his wife, who are somewhat in disgrace in their unnamed kingdom after some unpleasant business involving an unsuccessful coup. Catriona grows up to be clever, beautiful and somewhat immoral; she manages to kick the dust of her hamlet off her heels (a good thing, since she has something of a shoe fetish) and get the king to marry her.

The king is old and unappealing, but Catriona does her duty, and cheats up a storm on the side. She loves court: the worshipful courtiers, the gorgeous dresses, the fabulous jewels, and of course, the shoes (at one point she denies the ridiculous assertion that she has 100 pairs, failing to mention that it’s actually 200). Eventually, the king dies, leaving Catriona a merry widow, albeit one determined to hold onto her wealth and status. When she comes down on the wrong side of a power struggle between the king’s wizard and the king’s daughter (the wizard wants to marry the daughter and rule in her place; the daughter would prefer to rule herself, thank you very much, with her female lover at her side), Catriona finds herself transformed into a cat. A cat that the evil wizard then attempts to drown in a pond. Luckily, she’s able to escape from the sack he’s placed her in, and as she ponders what to do and how to get herself back into her gorgeous human form (she thinks killing the wizard would be a good start), she encounters a poor miller’s son, Julian, a handsome young man whom she’d locked eyes with years before (and never forgotten) as she was being driven in a carriage to the city to wed the king.

I probably shouldn’t give away too much more of the plot, since it’s only novella-length. Suffice to say, I have now looked up Puss in Boots on Wikipedia, and the plot of Cat’s Tale follows the former in some respects and diverges in others. Julian and Catriona (rechristened just Cat) become friends, after he gets over his surprise at a cat that can speak, and she determines to help Julian and herself each get what they want. At first Cat’s motives are not noble (and her methods are definitely questionable to the Dudley-Do-Rightish Julian), but as they come to know and care about each other, Cat experiences the first stirrings of conscience of her life.

There’s a lot to like about Cat’s Tale - the writing is smart and snappy, and I rather liked the narcisstic and selfish Catriona. Sure, I wanted to see her grow and reform, but I also appreciated that she didn’t angst over her previous callousness, nor become a total goody-two-shoes. Julian is not a hero with a lot of depth – he’s mostly good and good-looking – but it’s actually kind of touching how attached he becomes to Catriona in her cat form. In fact, the whole relationship between man and cat is a clever way of developing a bond between the hero and heroine that is both platonic and yet true and heartfelt.

I have few quibbles with Cat’s Tale – it’s not a particularly deep or emotional story, but even for a reader who likes angst as much as I do, that’s okay. I was a bit confused about the issue of Cat talking – most of the characters respond with shock at hearing a cat talk, but in one or two instances there’s no reaction noted (for instance, when Cat goes to court in her quest to fool the princess and courtiers into believing Julian is a wealthy aristocrat), which seemed strange. But even those who do react get over it quickly, so I figured in a kingdom where magic is known to exist (e.g. the evil wizard) this isn’t huge issue.

All in all, Cat’s Tale: A Fairly Tale Retold is a charming novella that made me hope for more stories in the same vein. Beauty and the Beast, anyone? My grade for this one is a high B+.

Regards,

Jennie

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And another word from our reviewers.

Dear Ms. Sharpe,

I first came across your free short story, Ember, several years back and I was impressed. The short story is a minefield of a genre, especially for the romance which somehow seems to be constitutionally unable to be contained by so brief a word count. The fact that you were able to contain that romance, and in the process create vivid and complex characters, was enough to put you on my writers-to-watch list. When I saw your novella, Cat’s Tale: A Fairy Tale Retold, was available on NetGalley, I grabbed it hoping it would deliver the same visceral and dense storytelling I so enjoyed in Ember.

Cat’s Tale, as its name would suggest, is a retelling of Ye Olde Puss n’ Boots story. It is told in the first person by one Catriona, detailing her rise from the clever, but illiterate daughter of a two disgraced nobles to courtier, and then to cat and back. Ambition characterizes both Catriona and her parents, and the trait that was the downfall of their hopes points towards a similar fate for their daughter. Lady Catriona, though, is not ambitious for political power but for wealth and praise. Her entire goal is to be esteemed by those around her, to be acknowledged for her considerable beauty and to own as many pairs of shoes as possible (the latter of which I can sympathize with). Through a series of very clever contrivances, Lady Catriona manages to get herself married to the king. She doesn’t become Queen, though. She is merely his consort. But this does not bother Lady Catriona, who is satisfied by this state of affairs since it gives her as much glory, lovers and shoes as she desires.

When the king dies, Lady Catriona’s power and prestige suddenly becomes nebulous; nebulous to the point that it might dissolve altogether.  Lest she be retired to some remote country estate where there will be neither lovers nor shoes, nor lovers of shoes to provide Catriona with amusement, Catriona, out of boredom and a deep-seated sense of self-preservation, decides to throw her cap into the political ring. Relying on the clever, ruthless brain that got her to the palace in the first place, Cat decides to align herself with the Crown Princess, Etheldred. Here’s the problem: the council—being men and led by the nefarious wizard, Galfridus—want to marry the princess off before they allow her to ascend to the throne. The princess, being disinclined to marry much in the manner of Queen Elizabeth I, isn’t going for that idea. Especially since Galfridus is proposing himself as the groom. The two women end up allying themselves with each other for mutual benefit. Unfortunately, after Cat seduces Galfridus and reveals his plans to Etheldred, he decides to turn her into a cat and drown her for interfering in his power ploy. She’s a threat, and we know what happens to those.

But Cat, being Cat, survives—nine lives and all that jazz. And here begins the part that I’m sure you all are familiar with. You’ve probably guessed by now that our hero is the miller’s son. And he is. In this story his name is Julian and he was first introduced to us as some particularly tasty eye-candy when Catriona first journeyed to the palace. But he’s not just a pretty face. He’s also good and kind and true. Not to mention smart. He’s just got this terrible habit of believing the best in people, which is what gets him into trouble when Cat first meets him as a cat. Cat, being Cat, recognizes a sucker for a sad story when she sees one and convinces Julian that what he really wants out of life is to be the consort to a Queen. Oh, and she also promises him Lady Catriona. It turns out Julian was just as smitten with her beauty as she was with his, all those years ago.

What ensues is the story of how Cat and Julian fall in love as Cat pursues her vendetta against Galfridus. They get into all the adventures you expect that they would—the scene with the ogre turning into a mouse, the Marquis de Carabas, etc. But this isn’t really just a retelling of the old tale. More than that, it is a story about how a woman transforms, both literally and figuratively. Now, I’ve been putting off writing this review for a while. Mostly because I’ve been trying to articulate what didn’t work for me, and that’s proved difficult. But before I go into all that I want to address what did work.

It occurs to me that many readers probably aren’t going to like Catriona much. She’s selfish, shallow, spoilt, ruthless, and, occasionally, downright mean. But I liked her. In fact, I think Catriona is the cornerstone and foundation of this book. She’s the one driving it, both as a character and as a narrator. I was rather charmed and delighted by her bad behavior. I appreciated it. I’m tired of these heroines who can’t wait to crawl up on the cross and crucify themselves for the most asinine of reasons. It is rather relieving to read about a heroine is does the exact opposite.  Catriona makes this book. Like Scarlett O’Hara and her own namesake, she always lands on her feet. She’s the one who drives the story.

But, like I said, this is a story about transformations, it isn’t just about Cat. It is about how she learns to love, to be selfless –not totally selfless, but selfless when it counts. It is about how she transforms from a woman who doesn’t believe in anything but shoes, to a woman who believes in love. And I’m afraid that I had two main problems with the way this transformation occurred.

First, Julian’s a bit of a cypher. He’s not sticking in my brain real well. I mean, Catriona’s voice is so strong and Julian’s is just . . . meh. Or to paraphrase one of those Jersey Shore kids, he was just there . . . like furniture. It wasn’t that Julian was terrible or totally uninteresting¸ but that he paled next to the blaze of Catriona’s characterization. Which demands the question:  what about him was it that changed Catriona? What was it about him that made Catriona want to change?

The second problem is related because I think that the reason that it wasn’t apparent why Julian would be the one to change Catriona, was that it was not always apparent how Catriona had changed. The story is told in first person perspective, and this creates two Catrionas at any given moment in the story. There’s Catriona, the character, and then there is Catriona, the narrator. Catriona, the character is the one who is changing, transforming and adventuring. Catriona, the narrator is static. She’s already been changed, already been transformed and is done having adventures. Where one begins and the other ends isn’t always made distinct in the prose. And that’s my problem. If I, as the reader, can’t distinguish between the Cats, then how can I see the change Catriona has under gone? How can I believe in the love between her and Julian as a power of transformation, if I do not witness that transformation?

It is clear from the text that this is a story being told from a future position as the following quote illustrates:

“Goodbye, my darling Lyell,” I said, my voice a sultry purr.

Hand on the sill, he turned to me with somber eyes. “Goodbye, Catriona. I hope you never regret your choice.”

Regret? What was there to regret? Two days hence I would be as close to queen as any woman in the land could hope to be. I would be consort to the king, with dresses and jewels and ladies-in-waiting. I would have courtiers to flirt with, and a cobbler on call to craft me lovely shoes in every color.

“Regret?” I closed the casement after Lyell. “I do not know it and never will.”

I would not know it, not for years yet to come. But when at last I felt its bitter burn, I would remember the look in Lyell’s eyes as he turned away. I would remember and weep to think that I had treated love so lightly. That I had scorned a heart so true.

Okay. But later, when Julian and Cat are plotting:

“Good. I want you to write a letter informing the wizard that there has been a fire on his estate. The grain stores burnt, or some other dire emergency.”

“Why? What exactly is your plan?” Julian asked.

His question brought me up short. I was not used to answering for my plans. Lyell had been putty in my hands since we were mere children. The king had doted on me, and the courtiers with whom I’d cuckolded him had always been smitten to the point of stupidity.

But I was not a beautiful woman anymore. I was a cat. A sleek, dashing cat, to be sure—but nevertheless, still a cat. I had my wits alone to rely on. No. I had one thing more than my wits—I had my friend, Julian.

Okay. But which Cat is speaking? The Cat in the dialogue is the character, but the narrator is there in the exposition. Did Cat think of Julian as her friend in this moment? Or is she seeing him as her friend in hindsight, sure in the knowledge that he is her friend and that she does love him? You see my problem. By not being able to tell where narrator ends and character begins, I cannot totally be certain of the moments where Catriona’s perspective about love and life starts to shift. I cannot tell whether her attitude is that of the narrator or the character at that particular moment in time. And because I cannot tell the difference, because I cannot make the distinction, I can’t totally believe that it is love and friendship that alters Cat.

As a fantasy, this novella was quite enjoyable. But the way in which Cat, the narrator and Cat, the character kept bleeding into one another took the teeth out of the romance. If this is a book that is exploring love as a kind of magical transformation, then I need to see that transformation clearly enacted in the same way I clearly see Catriona become a cat.

But despite these two, not inconsequential problems, the novella worked because of the power of Cat’s narration, and the power of Cat’s character. Her force of personality comes out more than anything else in the story, casting everyone else into shadow. As an adventure story about a strong, clever, slightly amoral woman it works. As a story about the transforming power of love? Not so much. But overall, this is solid book, an enjoyable and engaging read. B-

Lazaraspaste

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Book review, romance book review, romance novel review, reviews about romance books, Jane Litte, Dear Author

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I’m a huge fan of yours. The original Kushiel trilogy about Phedre and Joscelin rank high among my favorite books. Even when one of your novels fails to capture my heart, I still find myself appreciating what you attempted with your writing. I’ve said in the past that I wish you’d move on from the Kushiel world and create a completely new traditional fantasy series, but I’m still fond of this setting and eagerly pick up books in the continuity. My love of Phedre carried me through three novels of Imriel’s emo posturing, after all.

Naamah’s Blessing concludes this latest trilogy set in the world of the original Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy. The books have followed the adventures and travels of Moirin, the daughter of an Alban bear-witch and D’Angeline priest of Naamah. Moirin’s dual heritage has given her a unique outlook on life. She readily recognizes the somewhat xenophobic superiority complex of the D’Angeline people as a whole due to her upbringing in the Alban wilderness while also finding herself the recipient of the attentions and suspicions granted them.

If the first book covered Moirin’s coming of age and learning about her heritage, and the second book chronicled her chasing and winning back her true love, Bao, this third book brings everything full circle. Moirin has returned to Terre d’Ange after her adventures to find a pall over the country. The crown prince has yet to return from an exploratory voyage to Terra Nova and the relationship between the king and his young daughter, Desiree, is strained at best. Even more troubling, the king has withdrawn from the daily running of state affairs, leaving it all in the hands of a man who may not be completely trustworthy. The glory days of the royal house we saw in the Kushiel books, that’s for sure!

Moirin’s presence, however, injects some much needed life into politics. Due to her heritage as a bear-witch (who were antagonists in one of the Imriel books) and her contentious departure from Terre d’Ange some years before, she has a certain reputation in court. However, she loved the king’s late wife with all her heart and it is for that reason the king makes her the oath-sworn protector of Desiree despite any protests against the appointment. And while the child does flourish under Moirin’s care, it is not to last because tragedy strikes the royal house once more and she must once again find herself on the move, this time to find the lost crown prince and bring him home before the country falls into the hands of an overambitious opportunist.

Like the previous books in this trilogy, Naamah’s Blessing has a fantasy travelogue structure. This has always been an element in all of the books from this continuity, but I feel like the element is more obvious in Moirin’s books due to the glaring lack of political intrigue. It didn’t bother me so much in the previous two Naamah books, considering Moirin’s background, but it did bother me here.

In the first sections of the book when Moirin is back in Terre d’Ange, I felt like we’d returned to the intensity of the Kushiel world. While I understand that Moirin can never be a mover and shaker in the same ways that Phedre and Imriel were, I really enjoyed that taste of intrigue where she was trying to act in Desiree’s best interests, turn public opinion in her favor, and outmaneuver the king’s stand-in, who also happened to be her beloved father’s best friend. As I told a friend in an email, it felt like for the first time in the Naamah’s books, there was a legitimate threat, that there was actual doubt as to whether or not Moirin would succeed in her goals.

But then the tragedy happens and Moirin must travel again. I’ve always been of two minds about this aspect of the Naamah books. On one hand, I like seeing different locations in traditional fantasy and I do see that the supporting and minor characters from these other locales have their own stories and tales outside of Moirin’s goals, so it’s not a case of characters of color existing for the sole purpose of helping the white main character. On the other hand, the analogues of China, India, and the New World (Aztec, Maya, and Inca) really do serve nothing more than as exotic backdrops for (analogue) European people’s adventures at times. This is mitigated at certain points in the narrative, particular when D’Angeline self-centeredness rears its ugly head:

It really does feel like a whole new world,” Denis said in a contemplative tone, gazing across the sea of waving grass. “And to imagine that for thousands of years, no one knew it was here.”

“Except for the millions of people who lived here,” Bao pointed out.

“Mayhap,” I said. “Or mayhap it is that like many D’Angelines, you think so very highly of yourself, you have a hard time reckoning others your equals.”

But I would be lying if I said I was happy about the usage and execution of that element in these books.

It comes as no surprise that the plot thread left hanging from the first book, Naamah’s Kiss, is picked up here. There wasn’t much subtlety in how Raphael’s story played out there so it came as no surprise to see his character return in this one. Sadly, I found Raphael to be two-dimensional. One of the things I’ve always liked about your antagonists is that they’ve been nuanced and had multiple sides. Even when they did terrible things, they were intriguing and fascinating and we as readers could see why they chose to do the things they did. While I realize not every antagonist cannot be like Melisande and that not every protagonist can have such a complicated relationship with their antagonist like Phedre, I did ultimately think that Moirin and Raphael were a pale echo of, what I thought to be, the intense Melisande and Phedre. It also didn’t help that Raphael was literally portrayed as a crazy coke addict.

I can’t decide if it’s the sharp contrast between the initial setting in court and the accompanying political intrigue and the traveling through the jungles and its inherent adventure fantasy trappings, but I thought that the book lost some momentum towards the end of the book. I love political intrigue and I love adventure fantasy but something about the combination in this book failed to work for me. It might have been because the sections were so clearly delineated and less unified.

I know I sound like I didn’t like this book at all but that’s not true. A Jacqueline Carey novel is always an enjoyable novel for me. And even though it read like a travelogue, I still liked the setting because using the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilizations as a basis for a traditional fantasy setting is still pretty rare in the genre. I realize these books are essentially “an Earth that never was” but I found it refreshing nevertheless. It’s a nice change of pace from the unrelenting pseudo-European settings of traditional fantasy. (And I say that as a Song of Ice and Fire fan!)

I will always like the sex-positivity of these books. The idea of all expressions of love being worthy and valid is one that resonates strongly with me. The themes of love and acceptance are as strong as ever in these books. Lately, I’ve been on a mad hunt for traditional fantasy novels about families — the ones we’re born into and the ones we make. So the combination of Moirin’s past relationship with Jehanne affecting her relationship with Desiree, and how Moirin and Bao fell in love with the girl herself. Part of the reason why I preferred the scenes in court was that they showed human relationships in all their complexity. The king loved Jehanne despite all her foibles and so loving Desiree pains him because she’s a miniature version of her mother. Moirin’s father is best friends with a power-hungry opportunist who does not like Moirin because he views her as a threat to everything he’s striving towards.

Like previous books in this series, I found Naamah’s Blessing to be a comfortable and comforting read. Your writing has always been able to knock me out of a reading funk, which I’ve been experiencing lately. The writing always has had that quality for me. I don’t know what it is. While I don’t think this book quite lives up to the greatness of the original Phedre books for me, I definitely think this concluding volume was far better than its predecessor, Naamah’s Curse. In particular, I thought the final chapters were beautiful in their portrayal of showing that an ordinary life with ordinary pain is just as good, if not better, than a life filled with grand destiny and great adventure. B

My regards,
Jia

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I’ve been looking forward to ‘Con & Conjure’ the next installment of your Raine Benares series since shortly after finishing your last book, ‘Bewitched & Betrayed’ and I’m glad to say I wasn’t disappointed.

Our heroine Raine Benares, still linked to the soul eating Saghred which gives her access to almost unlimited power, starts her adventures in this story off by foiling an assassination attempt.   Turns out the attempt is made by Raine's ex-fiance Rache Kai, a new character to the series, who's one of the worlds top assassins.   Raine must use her seeker abilities to try and track Rache down and stop him from completing the task for which he's been hired.

General pandemonium and mayhem ensue, much like earlier books in the series.   In fact this one has a bit of a been there done that feel in places.   The cycle of events is quite familiar leaving things feeling a bit stale at times.   The series regular humor and non-stop action are present, but things take a bit of a darker twist as Raine struggles to balance her desire for saving people with using the Saghred and risking it taking her over or turning her mad.

In addition to Raine's ex we meet another new character her cousin Mago, Phaelan's older brother.   Mago's a banker with the soul of a con man.   He has arrived on the Isle of Mid to help Raine deal with some of the enemies she's acquired by separating them from the funds that let them operate.   I thought Mago was a fun character and wish we would have seen a bit more of his inner con man "in action'.

Many of the series regular characters are present although they aren't as prevalent as in the earlier books.   I'm glad we saw more of Imala as I find her to be a fun character and it's always good to see more of the ever loyal Vegard as he attempts to keep up with Raine while watching her back.

The last part of the book sets up things for what I’ve read will be the final book in the series, "All Spell Breaks Loose', which should be interesting as we'll be leaving our regular setting of Mid and Raine will be dealing with some limitations that have arisen.   I'm looking forward to the next one and at the same time it seems like a good time to bring the series to a close, it's just too bad that it will be a year before we see it as the end of this one left me ready to jump in and keep reading.

"Con & Conjure' is a great addition to a wonderful series and I'm looking forward to "All Spell Breaks Loose' and whatever else you write with high anticipation. B/B-

Best,

Brian

~P.S. Newcomers to this series will want to start with the first book "Magic Lost, Trouble Found'.

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Dear Ms. Black,

Last year, you introduced us to the Curse Workers. In the Curse Worker world, magic was outlawed along with alcohol during the Prohibition era. And while the ban on alcohol was eventually repealed, the ban on magic was not. This resulted in the use of magic falling under the control of organized crime. Because curse working is a magic system based on touch, it also affected society in an interesting way: everyone wears gloves — even non-curse workers — and walking around without gloves on is scandalous and akin to walking around naked. I love little details like that!

In White Cat, Cassel Sharpe thought he was the only ordinary member of a family of curse workers: his grandfather can kill with a touch, his mother manipulates emotions, his brother can alter memories. But when you grow up in a family of con artists, you can’t help but pick up some of the tricks of the trade yourself.

Unfortunately, Cassel discovered the truth: he wasn’t the only normal guy in a family of curse workers. He was a curse worker like the rest of them, and his ability is one of the rarest — he can transform things into other objects. The reason why he didn’t know is because his own brothers were tampering with his memories in order to use him to commit crimes for their own benefit. Did I mention that his family is also a little dysfunctional? I mean, on top of being a family of con artists with ties to the mob.

Red Glove opens with Cassel coping with the fallout of White Cat. Readers may recall that his mother, as a misguided favor to him, made the love of his life, Lila, fall in love with him. This is tragic on many levels because Cassel has loved Lila since forever and now at last she reciprocates, but it’s not real and he knows it. It’s led to awkwardness between him and Lila, and resentment between him and his mother.

(There is a very uncomfortable scene between Cassel and his mother in the first chapter that made me cringe. Not because it was terrible in a quality sense, but terrible in an abusive sense. Readers sensitive to such content may need to brace themselves. It’s another sign of how dysfunctional Cassel’s family is and that his mother’s ability makes her emotional unstable in awful ways, but such scenes can be very hard to read so I wanted to warn.)

The situation with Lila is further complicated when she enrolls at his school. She knows about his mother’s curse and knows that her feelings for him are manufactured and false, but she hopes to ride out the curse by his side because to do otherwise is painful for her. It’s such a sticky spot for Cassel to be in.

To make matters worse, his oldest brother is murdered and the FBI seeks out his help to find the killer. Any good scam artist with mob ties knows that even being suspected of having ties to the Feds is the kiss of death. Cassel doesn’t want this kind of attention, but what can he do? The government knows his secret. But it’s not just the government who wants him. Lila’s father, a big-time mob boss, wants him to join the business. After all, Cassel’s grandfather worked for him. Why not Cassel himself?

But Cassel doesn’t want to join the Feds and he doesn’t want to join the mob. For so long he wished he was a curseworker like the rest of of his family but now that he actually is, he realizes he wants a normal life more. And for him to even have a chance at realizing it, he’ll have to find his brother’s murderer, even if he has to run the biggest scam of his life to accomplish it.

I really love a plot full of twists and turns. While there’s no big secret along the lines of the revelation from White Cat, the identity of the murderer still took me by surprise because up until the point where we get the major identifying clue, I honestly did think it was someone else. Mostly because the true identity of the killer seemed so obvious I figured it was a red herring. On the other hand, I felt the true identity might also have been a little neat and pat, making it so that it was overshadowed by other things going on in the book.

I also think Cassel’s the best kind of protagonist for this sort of plot because he’s smart and knows how to run a good scam. The problem is that he’s almost too good at what he does while also being a fundamentally good person, so the people he wants most to trust him don’t and the people he wants nothing to do with do.

The subplot involving Lila is very heart-wrenching. It’s the good kind of drama. Lila has always been out of Cassel’s reach by virtue of the fact that she’s a mob boss’s daughter while the most he can ever aspire to is work for her family. But now he finally has his chance except it’s not real. He’s tempted to succumb to the illusion, as temporary as it is, but then what will he do when his mother’s curse wears off? I think Cassel’s reaction to Lila’s false feelings for him, and how he handles it, highlights the very best of him as well as pushes his biggest weaknesses.

I also enjoyed the continuing subplot involving the rights of curseworkers and their continued fight for freedom and recognition. I thought it tied in nicely with the storyline involving Cassel’s friends, Sam and Daneca, and confirms some suspicions that were raised in White Cat.

Books like this remind me how much I love smart characters who are up against opponents who are just as smart as them, albeit in different ways. It feels evenly balanced, and I think it helps make the plot more exciting because in a world like this, you can’t be 100% sure Cassel will end up on top. It’s not for everyone but I love that uncertainty and I think so will anyone who loves a good con artist character. B+

My regards,
Jia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Janine

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I never know what grades to give erotica, because, much like exotic foodstuffs, it is a genre that is peculiarly subjective to what Englishmen call taste, the French call bon gout, and everyone else chalks up to appetite. But let’s be fair, Ms. Day, most erotica is-’even without the idiosyncratic presence of taste mucking up objective perspective-’crap. Oh yes, it is. Even when it makes you horny, there is always moments-’indeed! often there are many moments, in which the reader is forced to roll her eyes heavenward, not in ecstasy, but in an emotion that can be more succinctly summarized as, "Oh For the Love of Jesus and All the Angels, you have GOT to be kidding me with this?!" a moment, which is, invariably, a buzz-kill.

In short, most erotica sucks ass in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

Going into this book, I had no idea it even was an erotica. In retrospect, this is quite funny because I should have cottoned on to something upon viewing the cover. But perhaps I am so inured to clinch covers that a scantily dressed female hardly registers in my brain as code for "Erotic Romance." So when I started reading, I was a bit annoyed to find hard cocks a-thrusting against trouser plackets before the word go. I said to myself, as I so often do, "What the hell is this?" It took me until page 5 to figure it out, when I experienced a petty and slightly squalid version of Damascus. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!!" I exclaimed. "It’s an erotica! No wonder! Okay, I’m with you now." This was not your fault, Ms. Day, but mine. Sometimes, I’m the slow kid in the class.

The plot follows along these lines. The erotica is set in an alternate and magical Regency era, in which the borders between the land of the fey and our own become thin every once and awhile. During these periods, humanity is in danger from the fey. The fey seem to be a species whose idea of a good time is tormenting humans and feeding off their magical energy. Kind of like aliens from outer space, who for some reason always want to probe people. Such are these fairies. They enjoy a good probe. The humans keeping the borders safe are sorcerers. Sorcerers are born with a certain amount of energy, which becomes depleted after heavy use and they have to wait for it to regenerate. However, certain other humans exist called catalysts. These are men and women who can tap into the earth and its magical power and feed that magic to the sorcerers in order to give them more magical energy when they are running low. Magic in this world works a lot like electricity. Let me have one of your characters explain it:

Corwin's brows shot up in genuine surprise this time. "Excellent. Then you are perhaps aware that the electricity may be both generated and stored."

"I have heard something of it, yes."

"It is rather the same with the power of magic. Like electricity, magic is a natural occurrence. A Sorcerer carries a store of it inside himself on which he may draw to work his art. But that store is small, and can be quickly depleted. Much larger supplies of magic exist in the natural world. Some places, indeed, are huge reservoirs of power."

"Then why does not the Sorcerer draw on those?" Miranda asked.

"They do," replied Corwin. "But tapping nature's reservoirs can be difficult, and time- consuming. It takes great skill and sometimes many years to create the tools necessary to reach it."

"You're talking of magic wands and so forth?"

"I am." Corwin nodded. "And such tools are not always reliable. They can channel too much magic into the wielder, or not enough, or the shape and nature of their making can warp the spell. So, most Sorcerers prefer to rely on their own inner stores of magic, or on a Catalyst."

"And what, pray, is that?"

"A Catalyst is a person who can naturally attract and channel the magic of the world around them, as one of Dr. Franklin's lightning rods channels the lightning.

"You, Miranda Prosper, are a Catalyst."

Actually, the magic part is the part that works best. As a long time fantasy reader, I can tell you that the limits and parameters of how magic works is often the thing that goes wonky the fastest. However, Ms. Day, you conceive a magic that operates in a clear manner and does not enable the sudden creation of a deus ex machinas, or even make for head-scratching actions that are nonsensical within the limits of the world you have created.

Back to the plot. Miranda Prosper is just such a catalyst, although she doesn’t know it. What she also doesn’t know is that catalysts all over London are being kidnapped and murdered. That being the case, two sorcerers have been sent to guard her. Corwin and Darius. In a switch from the predestination that is a character's hair color, Corwin, who is the dark one, is the happy go-lucky half of the duo, whereas Darius, the blonde, is the grim and suspicious one. Corwin magics Miranda out of the ballroom, where she is sitting as perpetual wallflower, out into the back garden where Darius is waiting-’naked. They then proceed to divest her of her virginity and are amazed by what a powerful catalyst she is. Sex, of course, is the best way for catalysts to get power to sorcerers. Heck, this is an erotica.

I rolled my eyes very few times while reading this. An unusual occurrence when I read erotica, I tell you. Given what little space there actually is for things like character development, you handled the burgeoning relationship and its requisite anxieties, among Miranda, Corwin, and Darius quite well. Corwin is a bit insensitive, like. He is under the impression that things will turn out well. He and Darius are already in a long term relationship, and while they have shared women before, they have neither developed feelings for them. Darius is quite anxious about Corwin’s feelings for Miranda and can barely process his own. Miranda, who isn't as dense as Corwin, picks up on this anxiety and is reluctant to hurt Darius or intrude upon the relationship between the two men. You played this out quite well, given, again, the limited space in which you had to do it. Even so, both the plot and the characters feel truncated, as if they were a quick sketch rather than a fully developed picture.

Which brings me to my main problem with this book-’it often felt like the plot was there as mere scaffolding to hold up the many erections required by erotic romance. Everyone's emotions begin and end, as far as I could tell, at their genitalia. Maybe I'm being picky, but in my mind the difference between erotica and pornography is the plot. This is particularly true of erotic romance. I think, and I don't believe I'm wrong in this assessment, that I should be equally interested in the development of the relationship and the story rather than just waiting for the inevitable next sex scene. To paraphrase Dirk Diggler, you want an erotica where they come for the sex, but stay for the story. I stayed for the sex and often glossed the story.

This was because of the   ever present problem of erotica. Everything gets solved by shagging each other senseless. Worlds get saved, people realize their true feelings. Childhood traumas are healed. If anyone ever writes an inspirational erotica, I imagine the onset of the Second Coming will be directly preceded by the main characters knocking boots. In this book, there is a similar tendency. Darius and Miranda are left alone together by Corwin to work out their feelings for each other. Which they do. By shagging. The world is not saved by shagging, thank god. But characters are built through shagging.

This is just an aside but, what is it with every menage a trois having to lead to a relationship between all three participants? Like why can’t there be one where the main couple is like, "Hey, thanks for playing. That was awesome. Grab a mint on the way out and help yourself to anything in the fridge." Huh, huh? I mean, I don’t have anything against the trope, I’m just curious as to why that is the case to such an extent that I can’t even recall having SEEN the alternative.

So in conclusion, the sex was hot and the plot was more sparse than I prefer in my erotic romance. Still, you spared me from some of the more atrocious acts committed by erotic romance writers. The world building made sense.   There was a story there, just not a fully developed one. There was a relationship there, just not a fully developed one. And the villain was only ever so vaguely BDSM, still an annoying trope, but deployed at safe levels of radiation.

Once again, taste is the thing that is hardest to guess about other people. An erotic writer has to guess what is going to titillate others. Not an easy task. Have you met people? Trying to get them to agree on where to go for dinner is a Herculean endeavor. Trying to guess what turns an amorphous and varied collection of people like "readers" seems even more difficult to me. But perhaps, the law of averages suggests that you’ll hit on something that a good many will enjoy. Of course, then you have to write it.

The story, I find, is everything. And it was the story that was lacking here. C.

Lazaraspaste

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Janet

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I snatched up your debut novel, The Drowning City, when it was published last year. I’d been anticipating its release since the acquisition announcement. Traditional fantasy books about female necromancers? Sign me up! Unfortunately, the reality didn’t live up to my hopes and I found myself unable to get into it at all. It wasn’t until a couple months ago that I was finally able to finish it. Based on that novel alone, I probably would never have picked up another one of your novels. But then I saw that your sophomore effort, The Bone Palace, was getting good reviews on various venues. Enough that I grew curious enough to give your work another try. I’m very glad I made that decision.

A few years after the events of The Drowning City, Isyllt Iskaldur is still a necromancer serving as an agent of the Crown. When a young prostitute is found murdered, Isyllt is the one sent to investigate. Good thing because the dead woman had in her possession a ring that once belonged to the nation’s beloved, but very dead, queen. In fact, the pretty bauble should still be in her tomb.

That little fact doesn’t leave many suspects, so Isyllt looks into the current affairs of the vampires who live beneath the city. Time is of the essence because the king is somewhat sensitive about matters involving his dead wife and while he’s currently out of the country, waging a war, he’s expected to return shortly. It’s in everyone’s best interest that the matter be taken care of before he finds out his wife’s tomb was desecrated.

Thankfully, Isyllt is able to gather enough information to resolve the case to the Crown’s satisfaction with the king none the wiser. But Isyllt finds herself unable to let go — even more so when she learns other young immigrant women have been vanishing off the streets and turning up dead elsewhere. Some pieces just don’t add up, and her continued investigation leads to a web of intrigue filled with lies and secrets, spanning back several decades.

While Isyllt investigates murders outside the palace, Savedra Severos, royal concubine to the prince, deals with assassination attempts inside it. Many members of the other noble houses were angered when, instead of choosing a daughter from one of their number, the king married his son off to a foreign, barbarian princess. But Savedra’s attempts to discern the people responsible leads her to an even bigger puzzle: a woman bearing her family’s name that no one remembers. Even odder, no books hold any mention of who this woman might be, not even the family records. Or perhaps more accurately, no books within her reach because Savedra’s quest for knowledge soon reveals that nearly every book that may hold the key to the woman’s identity is missing.

Where Isyllt’s and Savedra’s storylines intersect rests a vast conspiracy involving things both human and not, the political and the magical, the living and the dead, and love and revenge. And to Isyllt’s everlasting regret, her mentor, teacher, and former lover, the royal spymaster Kiril Orfion stands at the heart of it.

How glad am I that I gave your work another try! If I hadn’t, I would have missed out on a very refreshing read. I simply loved how many women were found in the pages of this book. Not just in major roles but also in background roles as well! Any long-time fantasy reader will know that it’s been an uphill slog to get equal representation of the sexes in the genre, let alone representations that don’t reduce female characters to damsels in distress or targets of victimization. Even when we find strong female characters, there are often only a few of them against an army of male characters. The Bone Palace upends that convention and I am glad for it.

Even better, there are women of all kinds: immigrants like Isyllt and the missing girls, women of color like the police investigator, transgendered women like Savedra, an unorthodox princess who loves to fight but who isn’t reduced to the tomboy archetype. And not only that, but there were relationships between them, relationships that were not based on competition and jealousy — even between Savedra and the princess! In addition, there are sexualities of all kinds. It’s all really just wonderful to see and read, especially when none of these things are treated as out of the ordinary and no one is made out to be a freak. Because let’s be honest, other novels involving trans characters often reduce them to such roles.

Another thing I loved were the vampires. These are not the sexy men and women urban fantasy and paranormal romance have made popular as of late. These are monsters. Creepy monsters with alien ways of thinking. And I loved how terrifying the vampire queens were. (Oh yes, did I mention that there were vampire women as well?)

I also thought the setting was used to great effect. There are lots of creepy undertones, what with vampires living under the city, many haunted locations, and nasty, malicious magic. The last item also extends to the antagonist whose use of magical abilities were innovative and original.

I was very ambivalent about the relationship between Isyllt and Kiril. I think I was meant to be more invested in it based on what I read in the narrative, but I honestly didn’t care about the state of it. It had nothing to do with the age difference. It didn’t even have anything to do with the fact that he was her teacher and she was his student. Maybe if we’d actually seen that, I would have been repulsed but it was far enough in the past and we’d seen enough from Isyllt’s perspective to know that she was the instigator, that it didn’t bother. I wish I could have been more interested in the relationship because I think it would have made the novel’s climax more hard-hitting. As it was, I simply rolled my eyes at Isyllt and what she chose to do.

In the end, I’m glad I gave your work another try because I would have missed out on a great read. As far as I’m concerned, this is a step up from your previous endeavor. Best part of all? It’s a genuinely standalone novel, a rarity in fantasy these days, so no previous knowledge of The Drowning City is required to give this one a try. B

My regards,
Jia

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

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Dear Ms. Bishop,

I’m a long-time fan of your Black Jewels books. The series has occupied a place on my comfort reading shelf ever since I devoured Daughter of the Blood over a decade ago. The series has had its ups and downs since then, but I have a soft spot for them despite their flaws. Alas, all things must come to an end and unless I’m mistaken, this collection of four novellas is our farewell to the Black Jewels world. And what a farewell it is. As for whether that last sentence is a compliment, I’ll leave that up to the readers to decide.

“Winsol Gifts” takes place after Tangled Webs, in which Surreal escaped a haunted house with the help of Lucivar. I wish I could find something meaningful to say about this novella, but I can’t. It’s 75 pages of domestic antics as the characters we’ve come to know and love speed towards the Black Jewels’ version of Christmas.

There’s nothing especially new or original here. It features the character dynamics and interactions Black Jewels readers know well: Lucivar and Daemon being confused by their women and the things they do, Saetan laughing at his sons, and Daemonar destroying everything in his path.

It’s familiar and comforting, and I can see why people would like this sort of story. But speaking for myself, this isn’t why I read books. If I wanted to see my favorite characters in domestic scenarios, I would read fanfiction. In fact, I have read fanfiction of this sort. That said, “Winsol Gifts” sets the stage for the three novellas to follow and echoes the larger theme of the Black Jewels books: the ties that bind families, both blood and chosen, together. D

“Shades of Honor” immediately follows “Winsol Gifts” and covers both Surreal’s emotional healing from the events of Tangled Webs and Lucivar dealing with his second-in-command, Falonar, who’s grown dissatisfied with the Eyriens’ lot in Kaeleer. Readers may also remember that Falonar is Surreal’s former lover (as shown in the original Black Jewels trilogy) and that in the Lady Cassidy books (The Shadow Queen and Shalador’s Lady), we learned that something unfortunate happened to him. “Shades of Honor” details the events leading up to that fate.

To my surprise, this novella ended up being my favorite of the entire collection. It featured the intensity and drama I loved about the original trilogy. It also focused mostly on Surreal and Lucivar, which is always a plus in my book. One of my biggest disappointments with Tangled Webs was that Surreal lacked the bite I’d come to expect from my favorite courtesan-assassin, and I think we see her regain a bit of that edge here. I also enjoyed the closer look at Eyrien society and what it means for a race of warriors to live in a place of peace.

Like “Winsol Gifts,” “Shades of Honor” sets the stage for the two novellas to follow, especially with regards to Daemon and Surreal. B

Fast forward ten years, and we come to “Family.” The story opens with Lady Sylvia, the Dhemlan queen and Saetan’s former lover, taking her two sons for a visit at another Blood family’s estate. We soon discover that not all is right at the estate, a serial killer with a penchant for young boys is on the loose, and things take a rapid turn for the worse.

The first chapters of this novella are misleading. Maybe “Shades of Honor” set me up for false expectations but based on the novella’s opening, I thought we’d be getting a more mystery/thriller-based storyline. Serial killers, missing children, hostages, ransoms… The premise and what happens in those first pages certainly lent support to that assumption, as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, that tension peters out quickly and the drama is resolved easily, leaving the final chapters to reprise more of what we saw in “Winsol Gifts.” It was a little disappointing to see the tone shift but I think some readers might be interested in the resolution to the Saetan and Sylvia issue. C-

The interesting thing about Twilight’s Dawn is that the novellas all build upon one another, leading from one to the next. We did see a similar effect in Dreams Made Flesh, the previous Black Jewels novella collection, but I don’t recall the thematic arcs and foreshadowing being as strong there. I mention this because the first three novellas in Twilight’s Dawn serve as the foundation for the final one, “The High Lord’s Daughter.”

Before I continue with the review, I must give a very strong SPOILER WARNING. I cannot talk about this novella without spoilers, and they are going to be detailed spoilers, and I am not going to hide them behind a spoiler cut because I think these are spoilers that Black Jewels readers should know before going into this collection. Why? Because I think these spoilers are potentially series-destroying, in the sense of being able to destroy a fan’s love for a series. If readers absolutely do not want to be spoiled, then stop reading now. But don’t say I didn’t give advanced warning. I think what I am about to say will be of great interest to the readership of Dear Author, which in the end is a romance blog. I consider myself a fantasy reader first and foremost and even I am aghast at what happens in “The High Lord’s Daughter.”

We have always known that the great romance between Daemon and Jaenelle would not last forever. Like his father, Daemon comes from one of the long-lived races. His lifetime will span millennia. For all that Jaenelle is Witch, dreams made flesh, she does not come from the long-lived races. By comparison, her life is short and fleeting. We have always known this in the back of our minds.

But I never expected the Black Jewels books to go there. I never expected it to happen on-page. And to be honest, given the Mary Sue-nature of Jaenelle’s character, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her become something akin to a god, complete with extended lifespan. That doesn’t happen here. Jaenelle grows old. She grows old with Daemon, and fans may be pleased(?) to know they kept sexing it up well into her 80s, but you can’t fight the onslaught of time. She dies.

Yes. She dies. And that’s not all.

Now how does Surreal play into all this? After all, she’s enjoyed more page time in these novellas and there’s been heavy foreshadowing about things to come. There’s a reason why I kept bringing her up and it’s not just because she’s my favorite character. When I reviewed Tangled Webs, I wondered why Surreal couldn’t seem able to find her true love, her grand romance. Why, as with Falonar, they always tended to fail. “The High Lord’s Daughter” finally answers that question.

At some point after “Family,” Surreal became Daemon’s second-in-command. She’s also taken on the unofficial role of scaring off women who’ve come to harass Daemon, especially in Jaenelle’s later years because what could Daemon — still in the prime of his life — possibly want with an old woman like that. And so, as should be no surprise to anyone who’s read a Harlequin Presents, Surreal is also in love with her boss, Daemon.

Surreal being in love with Daemon is actually not a surprise. Like I said, when that was explicitly stated in the text, so many pieces fell into place. We already had a hint of this in the very first Black Jewels book, when we first meet Surreal and learn about the awkward state of her relationship with Daemon. Readers may recall that she’d wanted to know what it’d be like to sleep with him (as the Sadist) and of course, he obliged in all his cold rage. (This was pre-Jaenelle.) Time, and Jaenelle’s presence, healed that rift but it’s something that’s always lurked in the background.

Before she died, Jaenelle made Daemon promise that he’d mourn for only a year and then would go on living again (including finding love again). He does obey this final command from his Queen but only to a certain extent. He never lets another woman into his heart. Surreal is willing to go along with this, and they probably would have continued on doing so but then Saetan dies. And after his father’s death, Daemon assumes the mantle of the High Lord of Hell. And in their shared grief, Daemon and Surreal have a one night stand. After which Surreal becomes pregnant.

Yes, that is correct. The “daughter” in the title does not refer to a daughter of Daemon and Jaenelle. They never had any children. The “daughter” refers to the child of Daemon and Surreal. And I think it was at this point that my already-taxed suspension of disbelief snapped and catapulted straight into WTF-land. I say this well-aware of the fact that I probably left many readers behind on the page where Jaenelle died.

This is a very tricky narrative. I actually like the idea of this narrative. It’s a storyline I would like to read elsewhere: two people have known each other forever but one married someone else, and then when that someone else dies, they find love again with the person they’ve known forever. Unfortunately, the characters involved are Daemon and Surreal and a part of me recoils at the thought, even though I like Surreal and the idea of Daemon and Surreal as a couple makes sense once you stop and think about it (and pretend Daemon and Jaenelle never happened).

However, the Black Jewels series is centered around Jaenelle. Jaenelle is dreams made flesh. She may never have had a narrative role in the novels but without her, there would never have been a story to drive these novels. Even when I thought the books should have moved on to other characters and stories, she was still there and ever-present in her influence (the Lady Cassidy books, for example). Because of everything we’ve seen before, I cannot imagine a Black Jewels story without Jaenelle and I don’t even like her.

And for Daemon to find love again with Surreal is upsetting in two ways. First, it bluntly reminds us that HEAs don’t last forever, even in fantasy worlds featuring near-immortals. If HEAs can’t happen there, then where can they happen? Secondly, Surreal still doesn’t really find her grand romance! She plays the role of the second wife who Daemon will never love as much as his first. And while I think the narrative was trying to show that Daemon’s two loves for Jaenelle and Surreal were different but equal, I was never 100% convinced. And I know part of that is because we saw Daemon’s love for Jaenelle shown over the course of several books and novellas while Daemon’s love for Surreal is depicted in a single 100-page novella through the lens of raising their daughter. That’s a tall order and it falls short here.

If “The High Lord’s Daughter” is meant to provide closure to the Black Jewels series, it does do that. I’m not talking about the general WTF reaction to the premise to the novella but in terms of the narrative itself. Daemon and Surreal’s daughter is also dreams made flesh but a different set of dreams than the ones that gave rise to Jaenelle Angelline. I suppose you could say it brings the series full circle. Some people don’t like that sort of thing but I’ve always been fond of that kind of indulgence, even if the execution ends up being twee here. Of course, this is the Black Jewels world we’re talking about so accusing something of being twee is silly. The main problem, however, is that this closure is overshadowed by the premise.

I’m very conflicted about “The High Lord’s Daughter.” It has many aspects I like, many ideas I normally love, and a core concept I would be all over if it’d been executed well. Weighing all those things against each other, I would probably have given this novella a C.

But the premise still leaves me speechless even now. I would not at all be surprised to see many Black Jewels fans swear off any and all future Anne Bishop books because of this novella, especially if they go into it unaware. (The cover copy does hint at what’s to come but I don’t think it encompasses the full WTF factor.) To be honest, there’s still a part of me that wonders if I had read bad fanfiction because Daemon and Surreal read like caricatures of themselves, even accounting for their ridiculously long lives and a love that developed over decades.

Because of this, my grade changes from a C to a Do Not Read At All. That’s not a proper grade but it’s the only way I know to express my feelings. I cannot send any reader, let alone a Black Jewels fan, towards this collection and especially the final novella without any warning. If a reader loved the Daemon and Jaenelle romance, never wanted to see it split apart on-page, never wanted to see Jaenelle die, never wanted to see Daemon find love again (and especially not after only twenty years instead of something properly over the top like five thousand), then I hope that reader does herself a favor and skips this book. Maybe they can pretend the original trilogy (and maybe The Invisible Ring) is the only thing that exists. I’m sure it will prevent heartache and book rage. Because I am still boggling. I suspect I will be boggling for a very long time.

My regards,
Jia

The digital links won’t work until closer to the release date.

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

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Tangled Webs by Anne Bishop
2. REVIEW: The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop
3. REVIEW: Love and Lore by Gia Dawn, Sela Carsen and Carolan Ivey

“In this captivating tale of adventure and timeless romance, novelist Camille DeAngelis blends World War II heroics with witchcraft and wit, conjuring a fabulously rich world where beldames and mortal men dare to fall in love.”

Dear Ms. DeAngelis,

As people who follow this blog know, I’m not usually the one to read paranormal books. It takes something special to grab my attention and make me put aside my usual reluctance for things non-human. The combination of WWII, which is a favorite time period of mine, plus the witch who just wants to have fun did.

Eve Harbinger and her clan sound like a blast to go partying with and I’d certainly love to sit in on one of their Christmas celebrations. I might end up warily watching things from the corner of my eye while fighting to maintain a happy smile but it would be something to remember. The present day sections of the book are steeped in atmosphere from the B&B run by Eve’s sister to the various antiquities stores which I’d adore having a chance to poke around in. You include lots of details that set the mood and give me great visuals. I have to say, however, that the WWII parts don’t seem as evocative. Going back and forth was like watching grainy B&W TV compared to lush HDTV.

The magic practiced by the Harbinger family is well thought out and precise limits and abilities are spelled out as the story goes along. The world building stays fairly consistent without noticeable-to-me sudden explanations or changes to suit the plot. I think it makes sense for Eve to not be all powerful or else why wouldn’t she have just zapped herself to Berlin and eliminated Hitler and his cronies? The actions she can take and do make use of her abilities without begging the question of why the world got into such a mess in the first place.

The flow of the story from past to present is easy to follow and we know from the start that there will be bitter moments to temper the ultimately sweet ending. Eve, the one who’s never had children or a man for most of her life, ends up (re)finding the right guy at the right time in her life. I had wondered how you would pull off the romance and it’s done with a neat trick even if Justin suffers years without her.

I finished reading the book a few days ago and am still not sure about
the whole subplot of Helena and her husband. Is it just that people aren’t always what they seem? That even the closest of families can have issues and hidden problems? Or is it another warning to Eve to avoid latching onto a mortal man so much younger than she is?

The war stuff seemed almost too effortless for Eve and Jonah once he was with her. Yeah his past was bad but they looked to be breezing though their assignments up until that last one. Then the suspense began to build and the dread to grow. But the fact that Eve doesn’t witness the final showdown dilutes it somewhat for me though her grief at the final outcome is palpable.

Eve is fairly selfish person and I agree with her assessment of herself as someone who hadn’t faced aging and matured well. She finally appears to have done so by the end of the book but takes the second romantic loss to finally bring home to her that her prowling days are over.

I like that the story isn’t overwrought or melodramatic despite the moments when it certainly could have gone that way. It’s got wit and fun and a heroine who isn’t perfect by any means but she’d be a cool person to sit and chat with for a long afternoon. I did find the British terms a tad jarring given that Eve is American born and raised but that’s a minor issue. I enjoyed getting to know Eve and watching her mature to a person who finally finds that which she’s been searching for so many years. B-

~Jayne

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This review is testimony to the strength of the second half of Scoundrel. A strong beginning plus a strong ending almost eclipses a somewhat muddled middle of this romantic adventure. Still, the unique and well-described setting (Greece), likeable characters, enjoyable and fun adventure tale, and the interesting fantasy aspects of the book made it a relatively strong read for me.

Bennett Day is, undeniably, a scoundrel. When we first meet him, he is careening through the narrow streets of Athens, trying to dodge an angry husband. As a Blade of the Rose, Bennett spends his life working to defeat the Heirs of Albion, an organization of men that seeks out and uses magic to preserve the international dominance of England and the English. The Heirs pursue magical "Sources" around the world with which they can subjugate non-English peoples and countries, while the Blades try to keep these Sources safe from the Heirs.

The Blades might be characterized as the humanitarians, and Bennett took seriously his love for fellow humans, especially female humans. Bedding the wife of an Heir while searching for a hidden document was, as far as Bennett was concerned, a benefit of an otherwise dangerous job. Although once the husband barged after him, Bennett indulged in another carnal pleasure, that of showing off his athletic prowess. For as a Blade, Bennett could use no magic not gifted to him or possessed by him naturally, so he had to rely on his agility, intelligence, and, sometimes, brute strength, to keep him and the Blades' work safe.

London Edgeworth Harcourt could certainly appreciate Bennett's charms, even though as a proper English lady and a widow just coming out of mourning, she could only look on as Bennett defended her against a dishonest vendor of fake Greek antiquities. London knew the pottery shards were fake because she had mastered, in her solitary life as an unhappy wife and a restless widow, numerous ancient dialects, some of which were known to only a handful of men and her. While her father views her as largely ornamental and groomed for life as a noble wife, London is not so keen on going back to an unsatisfying existence as some man's accessory. For the first time London feels a vitality that makes her yearn for more, even if she cannot conceptualize or articulate what that might be.

The reader, of course, knows that "more" is partially embodied in Bennett Day, who is instantly impressed not only with London's exquisite beauty, but also with the spark of intelligence and independence he perceives in her, not to mention "an air of untapped carnal potential." Between them is a "hot current" of energy that becomes absolutely explosive once Bennett realizes that London is the daughter of one of the most powerful Heirs – as well as the widow of a man Bennett killed. Is London a tool of the Heirs planted to trick and seduce Bennett, or is she an innocent victim of her father and late husband's nationalist obsessions? There is only one way to find out, if only Bennett can get London away from her father for a short while.

Before London's abduction, she knew nothing of her father's life as an Heir, never suspected such an organization – or its counter-force – existed. The shock of hearing everything Bennett had to tell her, and her natural resistance to anything this lying stranger tried to tell her, forces her to find out for herself what her father is about. And much to her chagrin, she finds out far more than she ever wanted to know about who Joseph Edgeworth really was and how he viewed London, namely not as an intelligent woman of burgeoning independence. Edgeworth's obvious plans to marry London off to another one of his boorish Heir cronies force London to make a terrible choice – remain the possession of a man who has no respect for London as a person or team up with her captor and his cronies, whose promises of safety and humanity London has no impersonal way of confirming.

Roughly the first half of Scoundrel is adventurous romance. The Heirs seek the magical Source of "Greek Fire," which would serve as a powerful weapon in their agenda to preserve England's world domination. Bennett, along with Greek witch Athena Galanos and veteran seaman/ship's captain Nikos Kallas, must unlock the mystery of Greek Fire's location on a remote island before the Heirs can do the same. London is, understandably, dazed, confused, and almost disbelieving of her father's true identity and occupation. But she is also deeply attracted to Bennett and hesitantly optimistic that she will not have to go back to an isolated domestic life where she would be, once again, "like a specter haunting her own marriage." The thought of being able to use her language skills and live a fuller life buoys her up against the clinging fear of what will happen to her once her voyage with Bennett and the Blades is over.

Bennett does not share London's ambivalence, but he is shocked at the strength of his attraction to her. Bennett understands himself as a somewhat cynical man who is nevertheless able to love "'every woman [he's] with. Some of them [he] doesn't even take to bed.'" In other words, he's the classic rogue:

"You know women, that I'll allow," Athena said, "However, even you can be played false by a pretty face and a lovely bosom, Day."

"No doubt I've been lied to," he agreed cheerfully. "'You're only the second man I've been with, Bennett,' "My husband's not at all jealous, Bennett,' "I like it gentle, Bennett' – the usual games and tricks. Sometimes, I even believe them. But London Edgeworth is as beautiful as she is innocent."

"No woman is truly innocent," Athena said, "Especially not the beautiful ones."

"That's why I love them."

What seems to set London apart in Bennett's mind and heart is her bravery and intelligence, her plucky determination to leave everything she knows and that keeps her safe to accompany Day on such a dangerous journey. More than a few times I was reminded of the way Rupert Carsington admires Daphne in Loretta Chase's Mr. Impossible, and indeed, the bluestocking/rogue match is a venerable Romance tradition. If you’re one of those readers who still enjoys watching the hero discover that he’s deeper than he thought, while the heroine discovers she’s stronger than she thought, you will likely enjoy Bennett and London, who are somewhat classic but still well-drawn examples of those genre archetypes.

I have to say, though, that despite a very entertaining and fast-paced beginning scene, the romantic build-up in the novel presented several issues for me. First, I really, really, really have grown frustrated with the instant lust device. As a reader, I can completely trust the happy romantic union of a couple who do not have all sorts of burgeoning, tightening, slickening body parts upon first sight of each other, and that includes Bennett and London. Related to that is the way their romance is chronicled through what must be nearly every lusty thought they have about each other, at every moment they have it. Yes, I'm exaggerating (probably), but I felt there was a great deal of telling during this section of the novel, which competed frustratingly with the pace of the adventure plot.

I think I was even more sensitive to this because of London's previously untroubled relationship with her father. Within a matter of hours, London went from clueless but protected and wealthy woman with an illicit linguistics hobby to a refugee with an uncertain future and revelations of familial evil to absorb. And while there are several moments where London does demonstrate awareness of this disconnect and worry expectedly about where her life is going and how confusing her relationship with her father now is, I felt that London was just a bit too resilient for her circumstances. And the mutual lust she shared with Bennett threatened to minimize the trauma even more.

Fortunately, once the initial romantic bond is forged between Bennett and London, the adventure plot can proceed more prominently and smoothly, and it is at that point the novel really takes off. While it took me days to get through the first half, it took me mere hours to get through the second half. All of the things I liked most about the book – the Greek setting, the cultural and mythological references, the nationalistic v. humanitarian conflict, the way the magic blended with Greek history and myth – started to sync together nicely as Bennett and London struggle to find and save Greek Fire from the always-on-their-heels Heirs. And while I have not said a lot about Athena and Nikos, they are actively engaged with Bennett and London in figuring out and facilitating the Source’s location and safety, helping to keep the story and action dynamic.

Despite the plethora of paranormals, good, rollicking adventure-themed Romance seems to me in somewhat short supply. Scoundrel is sort of “Indiana Jones” meets the The Odyssey meets pirate Romance, and one of the book's real strengths is that is makes good use of Greek literary history and myth, from the massive Colossus of Rhodes to the Nereids to the whole concept of the mythical quest. The magic, contextualized in this way (as well as a vaguely steampunk science way), does not come across as corny or forced, and there were a number of sections that were quite cinematic. One of the other things I appreciated was the self-conscious humor injected into some of the more swashbuckling scenes. For example, when Bennett and London enter a hidden temple in pursuit of the Source, Bennett reminds London to be careful because there's "'[n]othing the ancients love more than booby traps.'" Of course there's nothing adventurists and adventure books and movies love more than booby traps, as well, which is wryly acknowledged in Bennett's observation that touching the source could trigger just such a trap, because that "'[h]appens a lot in this situation.'" That indication that the author is winking just a little as her characters are working out the puzzle she's created for them is one of the nice touches in the book.

In fact, for me it was the adventure aspects of the book that worked best for me and seemed most fluidly written. The humor was both sharper and lighter, the romance more naturally expressed, and the political issues between the Heirs and the Blades more meaningfully contextualized. The whole "women are fragile flowers or ruined whores' mantra of the Heirs, especially London's father, was pretty heavy-handed, as was the "the Blades are democratic – we let women into our club' counter-message. The political conflict was actually very interesting and I would have loved a bit more nuance in the way it was developed.

Still, the buoyancy of the adventure plot, the ways in which London was an integral member of the Blades team and an essential component in obtaining the source (hint: she's an Oracle based on her own language skills), the nice way the romance and quest arcs dovetail, and one of the most fun declaration of love scenes I've read in Romance novel in a very long time, Scoundrel ended as a solid B read for me. I especially look forward to the next two books, one of which features a Native American hero (Rebel), and the other a Black hero (Stranger). Hopefully there will be a lot more adventure ahead.

~ Janet

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

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