May 12 2012
Dear Ms. Griffin, I’m a big Edgar Allan Poe fan. Any book with a title referencing him is always going to get a second look from me. Combined with a striking cover, it’s almost guaranteed I will pick it up. I initially thought Masque of the Red Death was a debut, but your name sounded [...]
Mar 9 2012
Dear Ms. Grace: This is a two story collection and while the world was intriguing, I felt like I was only given tiny glimpses of what could be instead of a full fledged immersion into a new world. I’m not sure if it was because of the two story structure or whether the teasing reveal [...]
Jan 2 2012
Dear Ms. Gooden, I’ve never read a steampunk book and frankly had doubts that it would be to my taste but since I’m trying to expand my reading of new-to-me authors, I thought why not try a new genre as well. The results weren’t what I was hoping for but the reason for the grade [...]
Nov 30 2011
Dear Authors, Steampunk is that subgenre I want to love, that I think has so much potential. Unfortunately, we have a rocky relationship. I’ve attempted to read too many novels in which the steampunk trappings are superficial — put a pair of goggles on someone, mention an airship, and have someone drink some tea seem [...]
Nov 4 2011
Dear Ms. Brook: I was a bit apprehensive about this book. I guess after reading The Iron Duke, I was sure that this book would be a let down. Archimedes Fox was charming but could I buy him as a male lead? Would he be strong enough for a character like Yasmeen? In order to make Fox [...]
May 17 2011
Dear Ms. Ballantine and Mr. Morris, I have an uneasy relationship with steampunk. I want to like the genre, but I feel like the label has become so dilute as to be useless. It seems like anything featuring corsets, parasols, tea, and goggles gets labelled steampunk these days. Sure, there’s usually a mention of a [...]
Jan 3 2011
Dear Ms. Dee: One of the great things about NetGalley is that reviewers can browse, and while I was browsing through new Romance releases, I came across your novella, "Like Clockwork," which intrigued me because of the interesting cover, the steampunk aspect, and the female inventor heroine. Although some readers dislike novellas, I think they [...]
Dec 18 2010
The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook has captured the attention of thousands of readers. We are big fans of this book here at Dear Author but don’t just take our word for it. 387 Goodreads readers have given the book an average of 4.40 stars and it is a nominee for the best paranormal romance [...]
Nov 9 2010
Don Weise, formerly of Alyson Books, has launched his own press to publish LGBT literature. It sounds like it is a print press and will publish 15 to 20 books per year in both fiction and non fiction. More at Publishers’ Weekly. ***** Lagardere, the parent corporation of Hachette (who owns Grand Central, Forever, and [...]
Oct 5 2010
Because this book is so awesome, it needs more than one review. Dear Ms. Brook, I’ve greatly enjoyed many of your books, yet for some reason I’ve never felt compelled to review one until now. While that may be perceived as rude, it turns out that other reviewers at DA (or other blogs) have gotten [...]
Oct 4 2010
Dear Ms. Brook, The Iron Duke is a steampunk romance and it is very different in setting and genre from most of the romances I've read. It’s not really paranormal, but rather science fiction set in a partly-historical setting. A kind of "what if" world. What if nanotechnology had been invented by the Asian nation [...]
Sep 10 2010
Warning: this review contains spoilers from the last book, which are central to the plot of this one. Dear Ms. Carriger: The cliffhanger to your second Parasol Protectorate book, Changeless, definitely worked its storytelling magic on me, and by the time Blameless was released, I was still dying to find out what happened. It is, [...]
Aug 2 2010
Dear Readers, Burning Up is a new anthology of steamy paranormal novellas from Berkely. I almost never read or review entire anthologies, mainly because it takes me a long, long time to craft four mini-reviews, but in this case I was motivated to do so by my desire to try these stories, all of which [...]
Aug 2 2010
Let's suppose I'm an innocent lamb that somehow ends up at your signing table in a bookshop. After winning me over with a dorky smile, how would you summarise Here There Be the Monsters (a novella from romance anthology Burning Up) and The Iron Duke? You know that times are tough for writers when a [...]
Feb 2 2010
Dear Ms. MacAlister, I was excited to read Steamed, mostly because I haven’t found a lot of romance authors making a foray into the subgenre of steampunk and I’m always curious to see how worlds develop. It’s also nice to take a break from vampires, weres and futuristic worlds that have a general tendency to [...]
Recent Comments