Demon Night, by Meljean Brook

TITLE: Demon Night (excerpt at Sybil's)
AUTHOR: Meljean Brook

COPYRIGHT: 2008 (comes out today!)
PAGES: 448
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Contemporary US West Coast.
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: # 5 in the Guardians series (you can see the reading order here).

REASON FOR READING: Ditto what I said about Nalini Singh's latest: this is one of my favourite ongoing series.

Explore the seductive corners of the dark, as a forbidden attraction tempts danger under the canopy of the demon night...

Charlie Newcomb worked hard to get her life back together. But all that is shaken when she's set upon by three vampires desperate to transform her beauty into something evil. Because Charlie is the vital link to something they want-and need. It's Charlie's flesh and blood sister, a medical scientist whose knowledge could be invaluable to the predators.

But to get to her, they must first get to Charlie, now under the intimate protection of Ethan McCabe. As her Guardian, Ethan is attracted to her vulnerabilities-as well as her strengths. The closer he gets, the more protecting her becomes not just his duty, but his desire. But will it be enough to save Charlie when the demon night falls?

THE PLOT: Well, the story is about one of the Guardians, Drifter, who's charged with protecting a woman and has to convince her to become a vampire. Sorry, sorry, just kidding! *g* It's just that the Harriet Klausner thing was too hilarious!

Ok, seriously now, a very basic outline of the setup, because the summary quoted above is really just fine: vampires have been attacking and forcefully changing the people close to the scientists working at a certain research lab. Drifter (real name: Ethan, one of the Guardians), who made a huge impression on me when he first showed up in Demon Moon (IIRC), is given the task of keeping an eye on Charlie Newcomb, sister of one of those scientists.

MY THOUGHTS: I was lucky enough to get this as an ARC, and I read it as my first book of the year. Well, 2008 really started with a bang! Demon Night clearly shows how Meljean Brook keeps growing as an author. It's got all the elements I loved in her earlier books (the complex, fully-realized characters, the heart-stopping romance, the fascinating world and plot), but this time there wasn't even one second when I was confused in the slightest about what was going on. The plotting is still intrincate, but not overintrincate, if this makes any sense. And although you do appreciate everything more if you've read the whole series, I'd even say things were clear enough here that a reader could conceivably start here and not be lost.

Ethan was a lovely hero. At the risk of having Wendy and Sybil come after me with rotten tomatos, I confess not to be the biggest fan of Westerns. Cowboys, sheriffs, outlaws... eh. Boring, and usually not attractive in the least. But for some strange reason, I actually really liked how Ethan's past and personality gave the novel an almost-Western-in-the-present-day feel. I even found his Western-flavoured way of speaking unbearably sexy.

And on a less shallow note, what I found most amazing about this character was the complexity in what he feels and needs from Charlie. It was excellent how Brook managed to convey things like first his ambivalence about getting involved with someone like Charlie (remember this is a Guardian we're talking about, so he had some insights about Charlie's internal make-up that a regular man wouldn't have had), and then his need to be needed by her, but not in a "mine, mine, mine" way.

This ties in to a very intriguing issue which is explored in their relationship, which is that of what kinds of needing and wanting are healthy and which are not. It's an issue that's given the space and attention it deserves, and the conclusions are entirely satisfying. It's not just Ethan who has to deal with this. Charlie is a woman who in the past gave in to the neediness and weakness in her and as a result, pretty much destroyed her whole life. As the book starts, things are starting to come together again for her, after a lot of hard work, both internal and external. When she and Ethan get involved, Charlie must get over her very understandable reluctance to do anything that even looks like neediness again.

Charlie's a phenomenal heroine. She's not actually my favourite MB heroine, but that's because this is the author who wrote Lilith, and no one can beat Lilith! I thought she was fantastic, and admired her enormous strength. It's quite different from the more evident brand of kickassery that, say, Lilith and Savi displayed, but once I got to really understand her, it was just as impressive. And I most loved that, that there was so much more to her than was evident at first sight, and that as a reader I had a very similar reaction to Ethan's. She was very definitely not perfect and very, very flawed, but that's what made her all the stronger.

What goes on outside of the Ethan/ Charlie romance, is fantastic, too. As I said above, the plot is interesting and easily graspable, and the secondary characters are great. Characters from previous books play important roles (these are not just drop-ins to show how deliriously and smugly happy they are, as too many romance authors are so keen on), and the new ones are great, too. I was especially interested in Charlie's sister, Jane. Their relationship was a very believable rendering of sisterly love, with no idealization. I was also intrigued by Jane's own romance. The other day I was chatting with a friend about opening lines and she mentioned one from (I think) a Marcela Serrano book which went something like this: "Aunt Clara fell in love how all intelligent women do: like an utter idiot". That would SO be Jane here. I hope we see more of her later on in the series.

MY GRADE: A, A, A!

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Mine to Possess, by Nalini Singh

TITLE: Mine to Possess (excerpt 1, excerpt 2)
AUTHOR: Nalini Singh

COPYRIGHT: 2008 (comes out next Tuesday, February 5th)
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Near future alternate-reality version of the US
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: Book 4 in the Psy/Changeling series. I'm not going to go into details about the universe set-up in my review, so if you want to know more, read the first few paragraph of my post about Slave to Sensation, the first book in the series.

REASON FOR READING: This is one of my favourite ongoing series.

Nalini Singh pulls away another dark layer of sheer desire, revealing passions unknown, in her latest novel about the world of the Psy. A ghost returns from a leopard changeling’s past, making him question everything—even his base animal instincts…

Clay Bennett is a powerful DarkRiver sentinel, but he grew up in the slums with his human mother, never knowing his changeling father. As a young boy without the bonds of Pack, he tried to stifle his animal nature. He failed...and committed the most extreme act of violence, killing a man and losing his best friend, Talin, in the bloody aftermath. Everything good in him died the day he was told that she, too, was dead.

Talin McKade barely survived a childhood drenched in bloodshed and terror. Now a new nightmare is stalking her life--the street children she works to protect are disappearing and turning up dead. Determined to keep them safe, she unlocks the darkest secret in her heart and returns to ask the help of the strongest man she knows...

Clay lost Talin once. He will not let her go again, his hunger to possess her, a clawing need born of the leopard within. As they race to save the innocent, Clay and Talin must face the violent truths of their past...or lose everything that ever mattered.

THE PLOT Clay Bennet was one of the most intriguing secondary characters in the previous books in the series, a DarkRiver leopard whose beast was very close to the surface, probably closer than anyone else's. At the beginning of MTP, Clay is shocked to discover that his childhood best friend, Tallin, is not dead, as he had been told. And he feels even more surprised -and betrayed- when he realizes it was her decision to stay away from him all these years.

It wasn't an easy decision for Tallin to abandon Clay, but she believed it was crucial for her survival. After the shattering violence of their last encounter, a violence not directed at her, but which still almost pushed her over the edge, Tallin decided to stay away. There had been more than enough fear and violence in her childhood already.

But now someone is kidnapping and killing the street children who are her responsibility, and she sees no other choice but to ask Clay for his help...

MY THOUGHTS: Ahhh! Reading Nalini Singh's books is always a treat, and this was no exception. With MTP we continue to go deeper into this world she's created and discover aspects we hadn't seen before. So far in the series we'd basically concentrated on the Psy and the changelings, but here we start to catch a glimpse of the human world and how all three races interact (and mix), especially how humans fare in a world where the other two races are so clearly more powerful than them.

But Tallin and Clay are so much more than simply a human and a changeling. What makes this story so compelling is that each of them is completely individual, while still being shaped and influenced by their nature. And the intimacy between them, that was amazing. This closeness is something that has been between them forever, since they met as children, but I never felt that Singh substituted showing us why and how these two fall in love with an easy way out. They are mates, and they were very close as children, but they still need to fall in love as adults, and we do get to see that.

Nowhere is this more clear than in what it takes for Clay to get over the betrayal of what he feels Tallin has "done to him". He needs to go a long way to see that as much as he thought he knew her completely, he didn't wholly understand her. It takes him a lot of time and insight into the character of Tallin the woman to understand why she felt staying away from him was so crucial to her survival.

To my mind, their relationship was all the stronger because there were things about the other that each had trouble accepting. For instance, Clay's beast is nearer the surface than we've seen before and Tallin's initially not at all comfortable with this. Or another one: take Tallin's sexual past. The obvious, easy way out would have been for Clay to immediately understand and nurture, but no, his first reaction is to see it as another betrayal, as Tallin having, in a sense, made his sacrifice be for nothing. The thing is, they overcome all these things, and this made their happy ending all the sweeter.

As always in the books in this series (I feel as if I'm repeating myself here!), hero and heroine fall in love before a backdrop where some very fascinating things are happening. They don't upstage the romance in the least, but they are intriguing in their own right. As I've said before, this world of Singh's is not a static one, it's clearly evolving, and we're starting to get some indications as to the direction in which things are going. The characters from the earlier books play very relevant roles (this is clearly a universe, that Singh has created), and while we get more than enough closure for this particular story, it's clear that things are nowhere near done yet!

MY GRADE: An A-. It's a pleasure to report that this series is still going strong :-)

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Blue Skies, by Robyn Carr

TITLE: Blue Skies
AUTHOR: Robyn Carr

COPYRIGHT: 2004
PAGES: 377
PUBLISHER: Mira

SETTING: Contemporary Las Vegas, mostly
TYPE: Straight romance
SERIES: No

REASON FOR READING: I've been hearing good things about Carr (about her Virgin River series, mostly), and I wanted to give her a try. Blue Skies was the only one of her books that my library had.

Nikki Burgess has survived a terrible marriage and an even worse divorce. And she's just about given up hope of every finding love and happiness. But when her ex-husband suddenly dies, she gets custody of her kids again and a chance to start over and do it right.

Dixie McPherson, on the other hand, has had way too much love. She has eleven tennis bracelets, dozens of trinkets, piles of sexy lingerie and a tarnished reputation when all she ever wanted was true love, a partner and a family.

Carlisle Bartlett is loyal, generous, kindhearted and the funniest guy slinging drinks in the back of an airplane. But he has an ugly little secret. The only kind of love he's used to comes with bruises.

They are three people who could seriously use a break. A fresh start. A shot of success and a chance to shine. Maybe a little romance—the kind that sticks. And some adventure wouldn't hurt. So when they're presented with the challenge of joining a team starting a new airline in Las Vegas, they don't hesitate. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, these three friends are going in search of their own blue skies.

THE PLOT: The book follows three friends, coworkers in the airline industry, as they get a new start in Las Vegas, where a new airline is getting off the ground. Nikki is a pilot who's all but given up on being a woman. Her friend Dixie, a flight attendant, has been looking for love and marriage all her life, but all she's found is men who lie to her and quickly leave her. Her colleague, Carlisle, is in an abusive relationship with his partner. The opening of New Century Air, in Vegas, is an opportunity for them to start again.

MY THOUGHTS: In a nutshell? Interesting story, but the authorial voice was much too intrusive.

Mainly, I thought Carr was too in love with her subject matter. Her infatuation with everyone and everything related to the air travel industry brought her book into preach-fest territory. And although her subject matter is interesting, and I appreciate reading a story by an author who clearly knows her stuff, the level of unnecessary detail about EXACTLY what starting a new airline involves bogged the story down a lot. We don't really need to know the details of exactly which manuals they need to write and exactly how many meetings they need to have and exactly with whom. After a certain point, this kind of thing doesn't add to the flavour of the book, it just bores.

Also on the authorial voice front, I felt there was too much tell rather than show. Carr's got a way of including a lot of omniscient narration that kept taking me out of the story.

As for the romances, I thought I was getting three, from what I read in the back cover and from the initial set-up, but I really got two. Poor Carlisle did get his HEA ending, but he got really shortchanged in terms of the development of a romance. There was absolutely none, and I wish there had, because it could have been very interesting. Nikki's romance was pretty boring, as her love interest never really came alive. The only one I really liked was Dixie's. That was really sweet. She falls in love with this ordinary-looking, unexciting, shy, totally nice guy, who is completely in love with her, but can't believe someone so beautiful can be interested in him. Awwwww!

Even though her romance didn't much interest me, I really liked Nikki. I feared at the beginning she would be a mess of neuroses and self-esteem issues, but I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah, she's not that confident in her personal life, but it's not something exageratedly bad. And in the workplace? The woman kicks butt and takes no shit from anyone. Every time someone tried to screw with her and she just calmly and firmly set them straight, I practically cheered.

Though... I had some problems with the ethics of two things Nikki did. The first was this guy Rocky, who's a kind of running joke through the book (well, not really, he shows up only three times, but still). This guy keeps pretending to be someone impressive to pick up women, and the first time, he's sitting next to Nikki in a plane and tells her that he's there undercover as an air marshal. Well, she gets him arrested for it! Huh? Arrested? He's not seriously impersonating an air marshal, in the sense of... I don't know, strutting around the cockpit giving orders, or something. He's just being smarmy. And she thinks it's just right that he gets arrested? It wasn't very funny at all.

And then there was the thing with Bob Riddle, which might be a bit of a spoiler. Riddle is her boss at the new airline, who it soon becomes clear, is wholly incompetent. Nikki gets the goods on him near the end of the book, more than enough to get his ass fired, but rather than exposing him, she just engineers his hiring by another company. So the book ends with this guy making three times as much as Nikki and the poor people at his new airline bearing the damage. So wrong! And not least because one of the things I was looking forward towards the most in the whole book was seeing Riddle get his comeuppance, maybe by being publicly humiliated!

And speaking of Riddle, he didn't really work very well as the "villain" of the piece, which is what I suspect he was supposed to be. He was just so incredibly bumbling that there was never any sense of threat from him.

MY GRADE: A B-.

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The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, Mike Ashley, ed

TITLE: The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits
AUTHOR: edited by Mike Ashley

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 564
PUBLISHER: Robinson

SETTING: Varies wildly. From Ancient times to 1912, and the settings range from Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa to North America. I think the only ones not represented are Latin America and Antarctica (and doesn't that say a lot about how important we are to the world?)
TYPE: Historical mysteries.
SERIES: Some of the stories are.

REASON FOR READING: I saw it in the library and it looked interesting.

MY THOUGHTS: Just as the locales and the time periods vary wildly, so does the quality of the stories.

At the beginning, I got worried because I noticed that in every single one of the stories the crime-solving seemed unbelievable and forced, especially the introduction of the detectives. Say, someone was asked to solve a crime because they were foreigners and therefore either impartial (His Master's Servant, by Philip Boast) or trained in logic (The Judgement of the Gods, by Rob Reginald). Hmmm, really? In all of these the setting was fascinating and well done, but I wasn't that impressed by the stories themselves.

Things got better when I got to Ancient Rome. I loved Cupid's Arrow, by Marilyn Todd. This story is part of an ongoing series about Claudia Seferius, a former prostitute who married a rich old man and is now herself very rich and a widow. Claudia is a fantastic character, and the references to past events, as well as a relationship with an aristocratic "policeman" (sorry, can't remember the term used for him here, but that's what he was), with whom she seems to have quite a bit of history, left me wild to read the rest of her books.

I also liked The Spiteful Shadow, by Peter Tremayne. It's set in Celtic Ireland, and features Sister Fidelma, who I understand has had quite a few other adventures. It was a neat little mystery, with a young woman who hears voices and is accused of having murdered someone because those voices told her to.

Which other stories were good? I liked The Witching Hour, by Martin Edwards, about a trial for witchcraft and a clerk determined to prove the accused's innocence. And I also enjoyed The Abolitionist, by Lynda S. Robinson, set in Virginia at the eve of the American Civil War. It's about the murder of the son of a socially prominent family, a man who's an abolitionist and insists on confronting slave owners about the evil of their ways. This was one of the very few stories in which I felt a true sense of tragedy, and the ending was fantastic.

And that was it, the rest were either bad or mediocre. For some, the setting compensated for mysteries that were not quite good enough, like The Serpent's Back, exploring the underbelly of 18th century Edinburgh, or Botanist at Bay, in Australia at the time Botany Bay was a penal colony.

A few I couldn't finish. For instance, The Dutchman and the Wrongful Heir, by Maan Meyers. In this case, the fascinating setting, in 17th century New Amsterdam (now New York), right after it passed from Dutch to English control, didn't compensate for a majorly boring story. Also Footprints, by Jeffery Farnol, which I abandoned as unreadable after a couple of pages in which I cringed every time the main character opened his mouth because the dialect was just painful to read.

Quite a lot of stories I didn't like at all, like If Serpents Envious, by Clayton Emery. This one's set in Colonial America and concerns two slaves accused of murdering their master. Every single character in the story was evil and unpleasant and horrible, except for the detective.

And there were a few bad stories right after this one, so maybe I should conclude that historical American settings don't do much for me. The Uninvited Guest, by Edward Hoch and Benjamin's Trap, by Richard Moquist were mysteries so humdrum that I felt I'd completely wasted the time I spent reading them. As for the story by Melville Davisson Post featuring Uncle Abner, I intensely disliked the judgemental bent of the detective. The Abolitionist is the only exception. I also disliked The Gentleman on the Titanic, by John Lutz, where the intrigues and counterintrigues of British and German agents become mind-numbingly boring.

Something I noticed and that I don't like at all is having real historical characters as detectives. Mary Reed and Eric Mayer use Herodotus, Cherith Baldry has Geoffrey Chaucer, Sarah Hoyt features Henry the Navigator (a Portuguese prince) and Benjamin Franklin detects in Richard Moquist's story. And in each of those stories, having this particular historical figure as the detective added absolutely nothing. It was just a gimmick, and gimmicks piss me off.

How about having a real historical figure in the story, but not as the detective? Well, I can like it or not, depends on the story and on whether it adds something. In Jean Davidson's Death in the Desert, we had the Queen of Sheba, and that was key to constructing the background of the story. In The Jester and the Mathematician, by Alan R. Gordon, OTOH, having mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci there was pointless, and it made the story feel silly.

MY GRADE: A C+, but I appreciated discovering a few authors I'll be reading again.

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Never Lie to a Lady, by Liz Carlyle

TITLE: Never Lie to a Lady
AUTHOR: Liz Carlyle

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 432
PUBLISHER: Pocket

SETTING: Victorian England
TYPE: Straight romance
SERIES: First in Carlyle's latest trilogy (what is it called? The Never trilogy? The Neville trilogy?). Though there's a short story in the School for Heiresses anthology which introduces the characters.

REASON FOR READING: Autobuy author.

In her dazzling new historical trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Liz Carlyle plunges readers into the steamy underworld of nineteenth-century London. Among the swirling glitter of English high society, a scandalous rogue gets more than he bargained for in the lady of his desires.

Lord Nash is a creature of the night -- his wealth and title provide but a tenuous entrée into polite society. Notorious for his sophisticated manners and a dark, dashing elegance, rumors abound of the men he has bankrupted and the women he's left heartbroken. But when Nash leaves his lair for a rare foray into the ton, he faces a lure of temptation all his own -- an extraordinary moment of passion with a mysterious lady in the moonlight -- and an obsession that will lead him into a hellish world of smugglers, spies, and intrigue. And as for his damsel in disguise, the witty and beautiful Miss Xanthia Neville, he soon learns, is as unattainable as she is tempting. And now Nash must decide if she is also dangerous...

THE PLOT: Xanthia Neville and her brother own a very succesful shipping business, which they started when they were living in the West Indies. Xanthia has been involved in it from the beginning, and she isn't about to let those strict English rules about ladies not working keep her away. She's not particularly interested in marriage, anyway, so what does she care?

When she meets the Marquess of Nash in a ball and an unexpectedly steamy encounter takes place between them in a balcony, Xanthia is tempted, but makes herself strong and determines to keep away from him. But she'll soon have the perfect excuse to come close to him, when she's asked to help her country. She's to befriend Nash and investigate whether he's involved (on behalf of his mother's motherland) in some operations in Greece which threaten British interests in the region.

Sounds strange, but the reasoning on the part of the powers that be (which include our old friends Max Rohan and George Kemble, from many past Carlyle novels) is that as the owner of a shipping company, she can dangle the possibility of using her ships in front of him, and see if he'll take it. Makes sense, I suppose.

So anyway, now that she can tell herself she has a reason to be near Nash, Xanthia keeps close and she's quickly convinced that the man is innocent of any wrongdoing. And of course, their relationship soon turns into more than she would have expected.

MY THOUGHTS: I liked many things about NLTAL, but it just didn't have the absorbing quality Carlyle's books usually have for me. I suspect it might have been because I started reading it on the plane on the way here to England (the original flight from Uruguay... yes, it's been months since I read it and I'm only now getting to the review) and finished it while worried about my luggage, not the circumstances most conducive to being able to sink into a book. Maybe if I'd tried it again it would be better, because thinking back about particular elements of the book, none of my memories are negative.

Xanthia is a very interesting heroine... a woman for whom her business and her role in running it is intimately tied to her image of herself. This might have been hard to accept in a historical heroine, but Carlyle pulls it off, by helping us understand the way her past shaped this aspect of her personality. Now, whether it's believable or not that a woman would have been able to do this at the time, with as little trouble as Xanthia seemed to have had... doubtful. I was willing to suspend disbelief, but really, doubtful.

She's also someone who actually has a sexual past, no less! I thought her relationship with her former lover, Gareth (hero of the second book in the series) was very intriguing, and I enjoyed the kinda-triangle when Gareth first became aware of Nash's and Xanthia's involvement. Strange, really, since jealous exes usually make me groan.

I enjoyed Nash, too. What I found most interesting there was that when we first see him, he seems to be just like any other romance hero... a nobleman, a rake, etc., etc. But he's still very much an outsider, and not just because of his ancestry. This gave him much in common with Xanthia, and I thought it was a solid foundation for their relationship.

The actual suspense plot, with Xanthia's investigation and Kemble and Max running around? Meh. Not too interesting, but not bad, either. Still, this is one to read for the romance, not the plot.

MY GRADE: A B.

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Chill Factor, by Sandra Brown

TITLE: Chill Factor (excerpt)
AUTHOR: Sandra Brown

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 389
PUBLISHER: Hodder & Stoughton in the UK

SETTING: Contemporary North Carolina
TYPE: Romantic Suspense
SERIES: None

REASON FOR READING: Because I haven't read SB in ages. She used to be among my faves back when I started reading romance, but she lost me when she started heading more into suspense and neglecting the romance. I was curious to see how I'd like her these days.

Suspense abounds in this gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown, in which a successful magazine editor is trapped in her remote cabin with a man believed to be a serial killer.

Cleary, North Carolina, is a sleepy mountain town -- the kind of place where criminal activity is usually limited to parking violations. Not so, lately. Four women have disappeared from Cleary over the past two years. And there's always a blue ribbon left near the spot where each of the women was last seen. There are no bodies, no other clues, and no suspicion as to who their abductor might be. And now, another woman has disappeared without a trace.

It is to this backdrop that Lilly Martin returns to close the sale of her mountain cabin, marking the end of her turbulent eight-year marriage to Dutch Burton, Cleary's chief of police. Dutch's reluctance to let her go isn't Lilly's only obstacle. As she's trying to outrun a snowstorm, her car skids on the icy road and strikes a man who emerges from the woods on foot. She recognizes the injured man as Ben Tierney, whom she'd met the previous summer. They're forced to wait out the storm in the cabin, but as the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly begins to wonder if the greatest danger to her safety isn't the blizzard outside, but the mysterious man right beside her.

Is Ben Tierney the feared abductor? Or is he who he claims to be...her rescuer from harm and from the tragedy that haunts her?

THE PLOT: The summary quoted above is quite good, it really gives you a good idea of the setup and feel of the book. So if it's ok with you guys, I'll just skip doing one for this one.

MY THOUGHTS: The good: How Brown kept me second-guessing myself through a lot of the book. Is he or isn't he a serial killer? Should Lilly trust him or shouldn't she? For a long time, I just didn't know. And Lilly was a good heroine, someone whose reactions felt sensible to me. No silly "I know this man is innocent because he's got kind eyes" nonsense from our Lilly. When in the slightest doubt, she's careful, just like anyone with two braincells to rub together would, and applies the better safe than sorry rule.

The meh: The romance. I didn't feel much of a connection there. I didn't feel like I knew a great deal about the man she ends up with, so I found it hard to get excited about a relationship between them. Actually, I didn't feel I knew a great deal about Lilly, either. I knew more about certain nasty secondary characters than about her. Which brings me to...

The bad: A big (and I mean BIG) part of the book is spent with the townspeople trying to get to Lilly and Ben, and such a disgusting bunch of repulsive bigots, most of them were! I hated every paragraph I had to spend with them and even the characters which were portrayed sympathetically (like that sanctimonious FBI agent) annoyed me. This just didn't make for a book I enjoyed reading.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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Death by gimmick

Here are my reviews of two Harlequin Blaze titles I read on my ebook reader on my way to and from Portugal. They're quite different in tone and plot, and each have their strong and weak points, but what struck me the most was how overpoweringly gimmicky they felt.

TITLE: Underneath It All
AUTHOR: Lori Borrill

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 256
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Blaze

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Series Romance
SERIES: Part of the "Million Dollar Secrets" continuity

REASON FOR READING: The review at AAR made it sound interesting.

TV producer Nicole Reavis intends to use her millions to sort out a top secret personal hiccup. In the meantime, her show must go on. And Nicole has to entice mega-rich Devon Bradshaw to appear as one of Atlanta's sexiest eligible bachelors. But will he bite?

Devon's biting if it means spending more time with beautiful blue-eyed Nicole. But when he discovers that, underneath it all, they've got more in common than six-figure finances and shocking family revelations, he's determined to find out everything about her.

MY THOUGHTS: The central plot is quite simple: Nicole and Devon meet, are very attracted to each other and start dating. Devon falls quite hard from the very beginning and instantly recognizes Nicole as the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, but she refuses to even consider something serious. She's dealing with recently finding out she's adopted, and doesn't feel it's the right time for such big decisions.

This, what was at the heart of the book, was nice enough. I love plots about the hero falling hard right from the beginning and knowing she's the one, while she thinks she's just having a fling, and Devon was quite adorable. However, I did have some problems with things like Nicole's motivation for backing off so completely when it becomes clear Devon wants much more, because her reasoning felt a bit iffy. I never really saw the how her adoption was related to her current relationship with Devon.

Also I'm usually the one who's asking for more sexually assertive heroines, but here, Nicole made me a bit uncomfortable. Hey, it's great that she's comfortable with her sexuality and goes after Devon in that sense, but I had a few "whoa there!" moments, when she does things that would probably be more believable between two people with some familiarity and comfortableness with each other.

But ok, those were minor blips. What really kept throwing me out of the book was all the external stuff that was happening around them and felt very badly integrated. As I mention above, this is part of a continuity series. Nicole and a group of coworkers have won the lottery, but they're having trouble with the woman who used to work with them and is demanding a share of the money, because she used to play the lottery with them (or something like that). There's quite a bit of space devoted to this (they meet about it and discuss whether they should settle out of court and have endless debates about it), none of which adds anything at all to this particular story. This is what I mean by gimmicky. The book even ends on a scene from the "villainess" of that subplot's point of view, a truly WTF? note.

And there's also other stuff... like Devon and Nicole first meeting when she bids on him in a bachelor auction (again, adds nothing to the story. I could practically see the author thinking "I need a sexy, provocative beginning"). The only external plot I was mildly interested in was what's going on in Devon's business with the embezzlement and his doubts about whether he should quit or not. This felt much more germane to the story , I thought.

MY GRADE: Without the gimmicks, I'd probably go for a B-/B grade, but this ended up not being a particularly satisfying reading experience, so a C+.

---

TITLE: Ghosts and Roses
AUTHOR: Kelley St. John

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 256
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Blaze

SETTING: Contemporary New Orleans
TYPE: Series Romance
SERIES: Second in the awfully titled "The Sexth Sense", which starts with Kiss and Dwell. You can see the rest of the titles here.

REASON FOR READING: Same as the previous one: the AAR review.

He's never touched her but he's made love to her.

He doesn't know her, but he has to find her…

Before a killer does.

Gage Vicknair has been dreaming-incredible erotic visions-about a mysterious brown-eyed beauty.

Makayla Sparks has been dreaming about a strong, sexy man who keeps her safe-- and very, very satisfied.

When a spirit from beyond tells Gage he needs to rescue a stranger named Makayla, he never expects that stranger to be the same sensuous woman he's enjoyed so thoroughly in his nightly fantasies. But Makayla is very real-and she's living a nightmare. A vengeful murderer is determined to get her. And Gage is equally determined to save her.

Because the only way he and Makayla can have the love they've dreamed of is if they're still around to live it…

MY THOUGHTS: Another gimmicky one. And hey, you could say we have two gimmicks for the price of one! We've got the family of mediums, all of whom have unbearably "unique" names, who help spirits cross over in a way that's full of absurdly elaborate rules (this on the side of the hero), and we've got the group of four friends who survived childhood abuse together (this on the side of the heroine). Although I might be being a bit unfair, because this last one wasn't so gimmicky-feeling. I suppose I was just feeling overwhelmed by it all.

Anyway, what happens here is that Gage's latest assignment, the latest ghost he needs to help cross over, is one of these four women, Lillian. She was murdered and needs to warn the other three women that they are in danger, even though they think the guy who abused them as children is safely in jail. To help Lillian cross over, Gage must make sure these women are safe, which means not just warn them, but make sure the man threatening them is captured.

Gage is very surprised when he finds the first of Lillian friends, Makayla, and realizes she's the woman he's been having erotic dreams about for some time. And it turns out she's been having the exact same dreams, the only thing she can remember, because Makayla has amnesia, a reaction to having been attacked by the villain already.

My reaction here was very similar to how I felt about Underneath It All. There's a nice romance at the center of the novel, with a sweet hero and a nice, caring relationship, but what's around it detracts from it. The worst part is that it could be interesting stuff, but it's just not very well done. My main problem was that the abuse plot and the "sexy, sexy, sexy!" plot didn't really go very well together. Each was good on its own, but the former was extremely dark and traumatic, so juxtaposing it with the other stuff "cheapened" it.

I was also very frustrated by the way they go about trying to discover what's going on and getting the villain, because it's so totally bumbling. There were some very obvious steps that no one thougth of taking, and what they did do felt fake. The author doesn't seem to be very familiar with how googling something would work, for instance. At one point they're googling to try to find out what's going on with the girls former abuser, whether he's still in jail, and they google his name and come up with only one match (even though there was a big trial all those years ago, when they sent him to jail). And the guy's name is something not particularly uncommon or strange: Wayne Romero. Yeah, right. (Quick cursory search: 481,000 matches, and 688 if I put it in quote marks). It was all so glaringly OBVIOUS, too, that these people came across as incredibly dim for not realizing the truth much sooner. And the dénouement... *groan*.

What I found most distracting, though, was all the sequel-baiting for the next books in the series and the constant references to the completely irrelevant plot of the first book. This element, plus the silly rules of the Vicknair family tradition, with their assignments popping up and written like email memos, and so on, was quite preposterous.

MY GRADE: Another C+.

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Two Sara Cravens, and the difference between nostalgia and dated

I can't not read, not even when I'm studying like crazy for my exams. I usually start really early in the morning and by 6 my brain can't absorb one more fact, one more mathematical proof. What it wants is to read some romance, but nothing too long or complex. So I just went to the library and grabbed some Harlequin Presents (Mills & Boon Modern Romance, here).

The first batch I grabbed included a Sara Craven (because I remembered Jane saying she'd liked her books), and I really liked it. It was exactly the kind of book I used to read as a teen, only better. Yay, I thought, I've found another HP author I like! Susan Napier isn't alone anymore! So the next time I went by the library I looked for all the Sara Cravens I could find, and that night I started the next one. And it was terrible *sigh*. It was also just like those books I read as a teen, only worse. Much, much worse.

TITLE:The Count's Blackmail Bargain
AUTHOR: Sara Craven

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 187
PUBLISHER: Mills and Boon (Modern Romance line)

SETTING: Contemporary Italy
TYPE: Series Romance
SERIES: No, I don't believe it is

For handsome Italian count Alessio Ramontella, seducing women comes as naturally as breathing. Alessio lives his life based on two criteria: first that success and satisfaction are guaranteed, and second that all his dealings are discreet and conducted between mutually consenting parties.

Then he meets innocent English beauty Laura Mason. She’s sweet, tempting…and off–limits. Alessio must decide: should he ruthlessly pursue Laura until she gives in?

MY THOUGHTS: Ok, so this one was the one that was a blast from the past, but in a good way. Some... hmm, I'd say between 10 and 15 years ago (man, I'm getting OLD!), before I discovered online shopping, I fed my romance craving with translated Harlequins I'd buy in a bookstore near my house. I'd go every couple of months and choose a huge pile, just by skimming the back-cover blurbs. Authors? Who cared who the author was? There were two I knew I disliked, so before paying I weeded out anything by Betty Neels and Lass Small, but other than that, it was all about plot. And my favourites were 1) secret babies (*blushes*) and 2) the very plot of The Count's Blackmail Bargain: the heroine is pretending to be some guy's girlfriend so he can make some kind of point to his family. They're horrified by her, and the head of the family, usually an older cousin or an uncle, is determined to separate the young couple. And of course, the heroine and this guy fall in love.

In this case Laura is helping out the slimy Paolo, whose mother is pressuring him to marry this young woman who's been intended for him practically since they were born. She barely knows the guy, but he's paying good money, which she wants to help her little brother (of course she's selfless, this is a HP!). The batshit crazy mother won't be thwarted, so she then blackmails her nephew, Alessio (who's head of the family business and Paolo's boss) to seduce Laura so Paolo can see what kind of woman he's with.

The beginning is pretty bad. That Zia Lucrezia is waaaay over the top, and not in a good way. Plus, I never bought that Alessio, the way he's otherwise characterized, would give in to her blackmail as he did in the first scene. Seduce this girl or I'll expose your affair with this married woman and it will be such a scandal! Ohhhhhhhh, scary! He looked like a total wimp for not telling his aunt to go to hell. I think Craven realized that, because she tried other explanations later on... he likes the woman's husband, so he was protecting him (eh? Just don't sleep with the man's wife then. Very heroic of you), etc., but none really fly.

But.... things soon improve, and quite a lot. I especially liked Alessio. Yeah, he's suitably macho and dominating, but he's alright, this guy. He has a sense of humour, for starters, and he falls for Laura straight away. And a huge difference from the older books, which made this one so much, much better, is that we get into his head quite a lot, so even when he behaves like an asshole to Laura, we kind of see why he's doing it, and that he's not, in fact, really such a cruel bastard.

Laura was pretty cool, too. Ok, so she's like no 20-something British woman I've ever met, from her attitudes to her wardrobe, but there were some glimmers of modernity there. I liked that she was nobody's doormat. When things started going weird, she very sensibly decided to get the hell out and forcefully demanded to leave.

There's some very definite chemistry there between Laura and Alessio, and I enjoyed their interactions. I even looked forward to the explosion when she found out about Alessio's deal with his aunt, and it really fulfilled all my expectations. Oh and the setting was just lovely!

Now, for the bad: the whole virginity thing raised my hackles. When Alessio first discovers Laura's a virgin (duh, of course she is, this is a HP!) he backs off at full speed. There were some very dated things said here when he was insisting he couldn't have sex with her now because he'd just realized she had been a virgin (*had been*... the moment of realization was just in the middle of things). The whole "Ah, your innocence is a precious gift which you should give your husband" (dude, you've just taken her virginity already, just get on with it.) and "I want you to be able to go with him without shame" Shame?? You sexist little hypocrite!

MY GRADE: In spite of the virginity stupidity, I liked this. A B-.

---

TITLE: The Forced Bride
AUTHOR: Sara Craven

COPYRIGHT:2006
PAGES: 184
PUBLISHER: Mills and Boon (Modern Romance line)

SETTING: Contemporary England, Scotland and Italy
TYPE: Series romance
SERIES: I'm not sure... there were two secondary characters there who seemed to have a story of their own (Rafaele's friend Marcello and his wife Fiona).

When Emily Blake innocently kissed formidable Italian count Rafael Di Salis, she didn’t know that she was bound by her late father’s wishes to marry him. Emily agreed to be the count’s wife until she reached twenty–one….

Count Rafael has bided his time. He’s kept his passions under iron control for two years—his bride was young and he did not want to claim her until she was woman enough to handle him. But now she has come of age, she will be his!

MY THOUGHTS: Have you read Candy's recent post at SBTB about how one should embrace one's bad taste? (If you haven't, go read it, she's so right.) I read it while I was in the middle of TFB, and one particular paragraph caught my attention:

Those old Mills and Boon novels, in which the hero (who’s usually about 35) at some point grabs the heroine (who’s usually about 19) and gives her a punishing kiss? So. Bad. They’re clumsily written, and awful in all sorts of ways—the repugnant gender politics alone made me seethe with rage, and this was back when I was 11, mind you, when all I could articulate about what I didn’t like about those books was that “they weren’t fair to the heroine and the hero got to win way too often.” You know what? I still found them compelling, and I read them by the boatload.

Indeed. TFB could be poster book for "repugnant gender politics", and it's the kind of book I didn't think was still being published.

We've got a much older hero (we don't get his age, but I'd put him in his early 30s) who lusts after a 17-year-old. But we're told it's ok, because he waits until she's 20 before he jumps her... until she's "woman enough to handle him", as the back cover so elegantly puts it.

We've got a heroine who constantly lets herself be bullied, and whose entire purpose in life is being her husband's hostess.

We've got Emily's demands for an annulment rather than a divorce, because she intends to wear white when she remarries "so that my bridegroom will know that he isn't getting damaged goods" (damaged goods, for crap's sake!!),.

We've got Raf's demands that Emily cook for him, because that's what a wife should do, and we've got her acceptance of this. She obediently goes to the kitchen and cooks for him. And cleans for him. Obediently, too.

We've got Rafe sleeping with other women all throughout the first years of their marriage, even though he claims he was in love with Emily from the start.

And the worst of all: we've got Emily's resignation to the fact that being her legal husband gives Raf the right to "take her" whenever and however he wants, even if she's screaming no. Never heard of marital rape, you little twit? What universe is this book taking place in? Because it was rape, and it made me seethe. The first scene, especially, turned my stomach. As did the fact that these constant rapes are portrayed as positive, what Emily needs to realize she loves him, and that she actually feels guilty because he's trying his best to seduce her and she's not letting him. WTF??

The word that summarizes this book is "Blergh!". "Disgusting" and "ghastly" would also do.

And you know, the only reason I didn't tear up this book and flush it down the toilet (even though it belongs to the library and I would have had to pay 3 full pounds for it), was that I couldn't decide which one of them, Emily or Rafaele, disgusted me the most. So the happy ending was a HEA after all, because these two deserved each other.

MY GRADE: A big, fat F.

---

Has anyone got any recs for Sara Craven books that are like the first one and nothing like the second one? I've got Mistress at a Price here with me, how about it? Any good?

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Yep, I'm alive!

One full month without blogging. God, how I've missed it!

Right after my last post was my birthday, on December 13th. I haven't celebrated in years, but this was The Big Three-Oh, after all, so it deserved to be noticed. So... huge party the following day, Friday the 14th, at my friend Cit's place. So huge (and wild *g*) that I spent a big part of Saturday helping Cit clean up. The rest of Saturday I spent packing, because Sunday morning I left for....


London!

I spent three days there, doing touristy stuff (and freezing my ass off; first time I've felt real cold since I got here, in fact). By the time those three days were over, I was really glad to travel to Liverpool, to catch a flight to....


Sunny, wonderful Portugal!

I went to visit the equally sunny and wonderful Ana, and I had a fantastic time. Ana took me to visit EVERYWHERE (photos coming up on my photoblog soon, now that I have time), and I spent Christmas with her and her family, who are just as lovely as she is.


I wish I could have stayed longer than the measly one week I was there, but duty was calling. Duty in the name of exams, that is. Since December 27th I've been pretty much locked up in my room studying, and I thought it would never end. But it did, earlier today (Econometric Theory, bleargh!), and I'm finally free! So coming up... book posts again!

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A Breach of Promise, by Anne Perry

TITLE: A Breach of Promise
AUTHOR: Anne Perry

COPYRIGHT:1998
PAGES: 373
PUBLISHER: Ivy

SETTING: 1860 London
TYPE: Historical Mystery
SERIES: 9th in the William Monk series.

REASON FOR READING: I'm rereading the whole series in order.

In a sensational breach of promise suit, two wealthy social climbers are suing on behalf of their beautiful daughter, Zillah. The defendant is Zillah's alleged fiancé, brilliant young architect Killian Melville, who adamantly declares that he will not, cannot, marry her. Utterly baffled by his client's refusal, Melville's counsel, Sir Oliver Rathbone, turns to his old comrades in crime--investigator William Monk and nurse Hester Latterly. But even as they scout London for clues, the case suddenly and tragically ends. An outcome that no one--except a ruthless murderer--could have foreseen.

THE PLOT: The summary above can stand, although I'd correct the "social climbers" description of Zillah's parents. They are people from outside high society trying to fit in, but their charactertization is much more subtle than that.

MY THOUGHTS: With this one, I reach the end of my collection. The next one, The Twisted Root, will be a first-time read for me, and I think that will be a relief. It seems these books made a huge impression on me when I first read them, because after over a decade, I still remember too many details. In ABOP, the one big detail that explains it all, that one big detail Rathbone is certain Melville is withholding, it flashed in my mind during the very first scene. It couldn't have been a brilliant guess, because there just hadn't been enough clues for that, so the inescapable conclusion is that I remembered it.

Surprisingly, though, knowing this didn't make reading the book frustrating, because it made sense neither Monk nor Rathbone would guess. The book was a bit frustrating, though, but for a completely different reason. Usually, I find the way Rathbone builds his cases flawless and brilliant, but here, I wanted to shake him for bungling it. This was a breach of promise case, but he allowed the opposing side to completely misdirect the case instead of focusing on the very clear point that there hadn't been a promise made, so it couldn't have been breached. He paid absolutely no attention to his client's arguments.

While Monk and Rathbone investigate their case, Hester's nursing a young man who was one of the very few survivors of a particularly savage and brutal siege during the Indian mutiny. He survived and came back to England with horrifying injuries and even more horrifying memories, and his young wife has no idea of how to deal with that. This was all completely unrelated to the main case (both Monk and Rathbone come ask Hester for advice, but there are no secret links here), but I really liked what it added to the book: a positive note, hard as it may be to belive. It adds an optimistic air to an otherwise very tragic book.

MY GRADE: A B.

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Powers of Detection, by Dana Stabenow, ed.

TITLE: Powers of Detection
AUTHORS: Donna Andrews / Simon R. Green / John Straley / Anne Bishop / Charlaine Harris / Anne Perry / Sharon Shinn / Michael Armstrong / Laura Anne Gilman / Mike Doogan / Jay Caselberg / Dana Stabenow. The latter is also the editor of the anthology.

COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 304
PUBLISHER: Ace

SETTING: Varies
TYPE: Fantasy Mystery
SERIES: A few of the stories are part of ongoing series. That I know of: those by Anne Bishop, Charlaine Harris and Laura Anne Gilman, but there could be more.

REASON FOR READING: I liked the idea of the premise (mysteries in fantasy settings) and I was interested in reading the stories by Sharon Shinn and Anne Perry, two favourite authors of mine.

This one-of-a-kind collection features stories from some of the biggest names in mystery and fantasy-blending the genres into a unique hybrid where PIs may wear wizard's robes and criminals may really be monsters.

Sit in on a modern-day witch's trial, visit the halls of a magical boarding school with murder on the curriculum, spend some time with Sookie Stackhouse, visit London's hidden world of the Nightside, and become spellbound with eight more tales of magical mystery.

THE STORIES:

1. Cold Spell, by Donna Andrews: This was a cute story about a wizard apprentice helping her boss investigate a seemingly impossible murder. Neither the world nor the characters were too developed, but it was nice and yes, cute.


2. The Nightside, Needless to Say, by Simon R. Green: I disliked it intensely. The protagonist wakes up and realizes he's dead, and has to investigate his own murder. The whole thing felt pointless and silly to me, and why use this Nightside setting if it's not going to play any part whatsoever in the story? Plus, the author's attempts at humour fell completely flat to me.


3. Lovely, by John Straley: Quite ingenious, this one. It's narrated from the point of view of a raven, and the voice is really unique and believable. The story itself is nothing special, but it was an interesting read, anyway.


4. The Price, by Anne Bishop: This story's part of the Black Jewels series, and it's very clear here that there's a lot of backstory to everything we see. However, Bishop succeeded in making me intrigued by it all rather than irritated by what I was missing.


5. Fairy Dust, by Charlaine Harris: Another one that's part of an ongoing series, Sookie Stackhouse this time. Even though I haven't continued on, I have read the first book, so I knew Sookie and her powers already. Here she's asked by two faeries to help interrogate the people they suspect of murdering their sister. It's an interesting mystery, and Sookie was very smart figuring it out.


6. The Judgment, by Anne Perry: Confession time: I think I didn't quite understand the ending. The story is about a trial for witchcraft of a woman accused of using it to murder someone. There's a twist there at the end, but I'm not sure what exactly the implications were. Man, I feel like an idiot!


7. The Sorcerer's Assassin, by Sharon Shinn: A story about a magic school where professors start getting murdered. It's narrated by the grumpy headmistress, who investigates, and her dry, sharp humour really made the story for me. The office politics in this surreal environment were fun to read, too.


8. The Boy Who Chased Seagulls, by Michael Armstrong: Boring. There's not much of a mystery here, just an old man telling a strange story that didn't make much sense to me.


9. Palimpsest, by Laura Anne Gilman: I didn't even finish this one. Will she or will she not succeed in stealing whatever it was she wanted to steal? I never got why I was supposed to care. I actually meant to read Staying Dead, which is the first story in this series, but I don't think I will now.


10. The Death of Clickclickwhistle, by Mike Doogan: I kind of liked it. This one's sci-fi (the only one in the anthology), and the spaceship setting was cool. The final twist in what happened was well done, too. But... the humour just didn't work for me. It reminded me a bit of that in the Simon R. Green story in that it felt really forced and just fell flat. Serial killer names as swear words? Oh, come on! Though it did elicit a smile when one of the characters cursed "George W Bush!"


11. Cairene Dawn, by Jay Caselberg: Another blah one. The detective needs to find a woman's dead husband so that she and her family can bring him back to life. I'm all for atmospheric tales, but Caselberg didn't succeed in creating a compelling one for me, here, and the story itself wasn't too interesting.


12. Justice Is a Two-Edged Sword, by Dana Stabenow: I think this was my favourite of the whole anthology. It was the best at bringing to life a whole world and mythology without bogging the reader down in the details and at the same time telling a full story. I'd be very willing to continue reading stories in this universe, if Stabenow were to write them.

MY GRADE: A C+. Just not enough good stories here to raise it much above average.

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Harlequin / Mills & Boon Round-up

TITLE: Mr. Family
AUTHOR: Margot Early

COPYRIGHT: 1996
PAGES: 296
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Superromance

SETTING: Contemporary Hawaii
TYPE: Straight Romance
SERIES: I couldn't confirm it with a cursory google search, but it felt here as if Erika's brother and his wife have had their own book.

REASON FOR READING: I bought it because of the AAR review, but I've had it for years in the TBR. I dug it out after Rachel, who originally wrote that review, reposted it in her blog and reminded me of why I'd bought the book in the first place.

Kal Johnson is a still-grieving widower with a young child. He can't imagine marrying again - not for love, anyway. But it's becoming increasingly clear that his daughter needs someone besides him. A mother. Kal's solution is to place an ad in the local magazine...

Wanted: Woman to enter celibate marriage and be stepmother to four-year-old girl. Send child-rearing philosophies to Mr. Family...

Erika Blade is a woman who's afraid of love. And sex. She answers the ad, figuring she's probably the only person in the whole world to whom a "celibate marriage" would appeal. After all, she does want children but she doesn't want to acquire them in the usual way. As it turns out, Kal likes her letter - and soon discovers that he likes her. More than likes. He's attracted to her. The one thing that wasn't supposed to happen.

MY THOUGHTS: This was a pleasant, heart-warming book, a modern marriage-of-convenience story that didn't feel dated, but believable. Early made me really understand Kal and Erika and thus totally see why each would feel that a sex-free marriage is exactly what is needed in their lives (that is, I saw why they would think so, but it was so obvious that it was not, lol!).

Their romance is slow and gradual and not trouble-free. There's plenty of baggage in each of them, plus, the story doesn't take place in a vacuum. Their families play an important part, especially Kal's little daughter, Hiialo, who was very well done as a character. She's cute, but she has plenty of moments when she's a little nightmare.

Just as much as their families, the Hawaiian setting and culture play a big role in the book, and this was an element I loved.

Negatives? Well, I did have a stylistic issue: headhopping. This isn't something I usually mind, and I actually love it when it's skillfully done, but here I had to stop quite a few times to try to figure out in whose head we were.

MY GRADE: A B. It was a very enjoyable book, but I didn't love it.

---

TITLE: The Norman's Bride
AUTHOR: Terri Brisbin

COPYRIGHT: 2004
PAGES: 289
PUBLISHER: Mills & Boon Historical Romance

SETTING: Medieval England
TYPE: Straight Romance
SERIES: Comes after The Dumont Bride, which I read last month.

REASON FOR READING: I was very doubtful, but I wanted to see if Brisbin would succeed in redeeming the hero.

SHE HAD NO PAST. HE COULD OFFER HER NO FUTURE.

Though recalling nothing of her own identity, Isabel was certain her rescuer, Royce, had been a knight.Every fiber of his being bespoke a chivalry simple seclusion could not hide. And every sinew of his body bestirred a passion that would rouse her to her true self as Royce's heart-sworn lady!

Yet William Royce de Severin could not quell the waves of desire threatening to engulf him whenever he looked upon Isabel. Battered by life, she remained unbroken in spirit, making him yearn for the impossible-a life unfettered by his own dark secrets, with her forever by his side!

MY THOUGHTS: Those who've read The Dumont Bride will understand why I was so doubtful about Brisbin being able to redeem William de Severin. In the previous book, he did some horrible things. He was being basically blackmailed into it by Prince John, who was holding his sister's life over William's head, but still.

In this, his book, William (who now calls himself Royce) has been living incognito for a few years in the keep of the protagonists of a previous Brisbin book, The King's Mistress. Everyone thinks he's dead, and he feels this is just what he deserves. But one day he finds a woman who's been beaten up and left for dead not too far from his house, and that changes everything.

TDB was just very lukewarm. I didn't see much attraction between Royce and Isabel, and I spent most of the book feeling quite bored with it. The main problem might have been that I think I was supposed to believe Royce deserved to forgive himself and be happy, and so on, but I just wasn't completely convinced of this at all. This was not really because of his actions in the other book, because as I said, he was under duress at the time, but because of all the other things he did before that, things I thought were much worse and which were only very lightly mentioned here.

MY GRADE: Like the first book in the series, a C-.

---

TITLE: A Reputable Rake
AUTHOR: Diane Gaston

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 298
PUBLISHER: Mills & Boon Historical Romance

SETTING: Early 19th century London
TYPE: Straight Romance
SERIES: Seems to be related to a couple of the author's other books.

REASON FOR READING: She was Author of the Month in my favourite yahoo discussion group.

After spending the last few years as a gambler, smuggler, and rogue, Cyprian Sloane is ready for a new life of respectability. As part of his plan to reform, Cyprian has moved into a proper new home and begun courting the eminently suitable Hannah Cowdlin. The only roadblock on Cyprian's new path is Morgana Hart, Hannah's cousin and Cyprian's new neighbor. To help out her maid's sister, Lucy, and three other young ladies who have escaped from a ruthless madam, Morgana has been secretly running a "school for courtesans." If the ton finds out, the potential scandal will ruin not only Morgana but Cyprian as well. Unless, of course, Cyprian reverts to the rake he once was to help the lovely and vexing lady with her daring and dangerous scheme.

MY THOUGHTS: I abandoned this one around the mid-point. As pleasant and readable as it was (and most of it was, quite), my suspension of disbelief was feeling too strained and I was muttering "are you fucking kidding me?" to myself a bit too frequently.

The funny thing is that it was not having the gently bred, innocent heroine found a school for courtesans that had me going. Oh, no, that was actually done in a way that it felt downright plausible. What baffled me was the hero's firm conviction that if Morgana's little school was discovered, the scandal would ruin his plans for respectability, because -wait for it!- he lived next door to her! Give. Me. A. Break.

MY GRADE: DNF for this one, although I would give this author another shot.

---

TITLE: The Roman's Virgin Mistress (heinous title, isn't it?)
AUTHOR: Michelle Styles

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 296
PUBLISHER: Mills & Boon Historical Romance

SETTING: Baiae, 69 BC
TYPE: Straight Romance
SERIES: No

REASON FOR READING: The setting.

Scandalous!

Silvana Junia knows what the gossips say about her - and doesn't care! Until a mysterious, dangerous stranger rescues her from the sea, and she's instantly drawn to him.

Notorious!

Lucius Aurelius Fortis is rich and respected. But his playboy past could come back to haunt him if he cannot resist his attraction to beautiful Silvana. And in the hot sun of Baiae their every move is watched…

Outrageous!

Tempted beyond endurance, Silvana will become his mistress. But she has one last shocking secret…which will change everything between them!

MY THOUGHTS: You know, I've had this same problem with many of the "exotic setting" books I've bought. Great atmosphere, great research, a setting that feels and tastes real and is quite fascinating... but a blah story and characters.

Baiae was fantastic and I loved to visit there (even if at times the writing was of the "I've researched this and I'm going to cram every fact I've discovered into my story, whether it's necessary or not!" variety), but I wish I'd visited with other characters. I cannot stand the martyr heroine who sacrifices herself for her undeserving little brother who treats her like shit. I cannot stand her in a Regency setting, and I cannot stand her in ancient Rome, either. Fortis was nice enough, and Silvana did get her head out of her ass in the end, but... eh.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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TITLE: The Greek's Bought Wife
AUTHOR: Helen Bianchin

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 185
PUBLISHER: Mills & Boon Modern

SETTING: Contemporary Australia
TYPE: Straight Romance
SERIES: I don't think so

REASON FOR READING: An experiment. Pick one of those horribly-titled books at random and see if what's inside matches the quality of the title.

Made to marry-for her baby's sake!

Nic Leandros knows that most people want only his money. So when he finds out beautiful Tina Matheson is pregnant with his late brother's child, he's certain her price will be high...However, Tina must agree to his terms: no Leandros heir has ever been born out of wedlock; they will marry for the baby's sake...

.

MY THOUGHTS: There's one word for what I read of this book (about 50 pages, that is), and that's "bad". Bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD. An overbearing jerk of a hero, a doormat heroine whose character motivations had me scratching my head, awkward writing and my favourite: a crazy skank of an ex-mistress who's obsessed with the hero. I just couldn't subject myself to this, even for the sake of experimentation.

MY GRADE: A DNF, but it was heading towards low-D territory, maybe even the dreaded F.

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Lord of the Fading Lands & Lady of Light and Shadow, by C.L. Wilson

TITLE: Lord of the Fading Lands & Lady of Light and Shadow
AUTHOR: C.L. Wilson

COPYRIGHT:2007
PAGES: 384 for each.
PUBLISHER: Leisure

SETTING: City of Celieria
TYPE: Fantasy Romance
SERIES: Books 1 & 2 in the Tairen Soul series. From what I can see in Wilson's website, there will be four books in all, with the titles of the last two being King of Sword and Sky and Queen of Song and Souls. Those two will also be about Rain Tairen Soul and Ellysetta Baristani, and they're coming out in October and November 2008.

REASON FOR READING: Buzz, buzz, buzz, all over the place!

Long ago, in the magical holocaust known as the Mage Wars, the immortal Fey and their allies fought to defeat the grasping evil of the Elden Mages and their dark-gifted supporters. During those wars, in a fit of grief-induced madness caused by the death of his mate, Fey shapeshifter Rain Tairen Soul nearly destroyed the world in a blaze of tairen fire.

Now, a thousand years later, the fierce Fey king must fight to save his race from the brink of extinction and once again stop the evil rising in the homeland of his enemies, the Eld. The key to his success lies in the mortal city of Celieria, where the Mage Wars began, and with a young woman whose soul sings to him in ways no woman's ever has, whose presence reawakens the primal fury of the tairen within his soul, and whose vast, untapped power can either save or destroy him and his people.


Since her earliest memories, Ellysetta Baristani has feared magic, even as she has been inexorably drawn to all things Fey, especially the poetry and legends of Rain Tairen Soul. Now claimed as Rain's truemate and no longer able to deny her own magic, Ellysetta is swept into the very center of a struggle filled with the magic and darkness she has always feared. The High Mage of Eld wants to capture her. The most murderous dahl'reisen who ever lived wants her dead. And her enemies will corrupt even the people she loves most in their quest to claim her magic for themselves.

I've made two or three attempts to write a plot description of these books, and it's hopeless. I've tried to keep them simple, but I always end up going on about the Fey this and the Tairen that and the Mage Wars and the Eld and the Celierians and Rain touching the Tairen Soul and blah, blah. Someone who hasn't read the books yet will be completely lost reading such a summary, and someone who's already read them won't need it. Given this, I think it would be better if I just gave you a very, very basic idea of what the books are about, and don't get bogged down in the details.

Our hero is Rain Tairen Soul, an immortal being, part of a magical race called the Fey. His race is dying, and he finds out from a powerful magical object that the key to its survival is in the nearby mortal kingdom of Celieria.

Arriving there as head of a huge delegation, he immediately gets an inkling of what this key might be when he senses his truemate is near. Now, finding a truemate is a huge deal for the Fey, as the link between them is immensely powerful. Rain had actually already had a mate 1000 years earlier (remember, immortal being here) and went completely mad when she died, so mad that he literally scorched the world with his great powers. And this wasn't even a truemate, but a regular mate, so believe me: huge deal.

The truemate in question is tradesman's daughter Ellysetta Baristani, at first sight a regular gal. Ellysetta is initially half-terrified, half-intimidated by this legendary being who's suddenly intent on claiming her as his, but soon becomes convinced of the rightness of it. And as their courtship proceeds, facing seemingly everyone's disapproval, she'll come to see him more as a person she can actually love than as an almost-god.

As I hinted above, their courtship doesn't run smoothly. Part of it is that Ellysetta needs to trust and accept Rain completely for the bond to actually happen on her side, and this is hard for her, and not just because of her initial awe. Ellysetta isn't at all a regular gal, it turns out. There's powerful magic deep inside her, a magic she's been pressured into suppressing for years, and letting go of that fear will depend on her going against the conditioning of a lifetime -and against her family.

And in addition to this, the external opposition against them is fierce... from the plots of a scummy Celierian young man who is obsessed with having Elly (and her magic) all to himself, to Elly's mother honest fear that becoming mated with a Fey will mean Elly's moral ruin, from Celierian noblemen's distrust of the Fey, to the Eld, the Fey's longtime enemies who have a very mysterious interest in Ellysetta.

As I mentioned above, this whole big, big story will take a full four books. Ordinarily I'd say wait until all four are out, but I'll make an exception here and say go read these two. While the overarching storyline of the fate of the Fey and the battle against the evil Eld will only find closure by the end of the whole series (I asssume!), I think there's enough emotional resolution in Elly and Rain's story by the end of book 2, enough for me to not feel dissatisfied when I finished it. Just don't start reading book 1 without having book 2 close at hand, because you'll be desperate to read the latter when you finish the former!

So what did I like about these books? I think Wilson's story is probably the best balanced combination of epic fantasy and romance I've ever read. I've read excellent, strong epic fantasy with some romance and I've read excellent, strong romance with a bit of epic(-ish) fantasy mixed in, but this is the first time I've read something where the epic fantasy was so much in the forefront and yet, the book was recognizably and quintessentially a romance novel. This is a big, big story, with complex and fascinating worldbuilding and with a half-dozen different threads intertwining, and yet it's perfectly accessible and satisfying for the romance reader; perfectly balanced and integrated.

As a fantasy, it's top-notch (not that I'm exactly a connoisseur of fantasy, but as Jane pointed out when I mentioned this in a chat, what I've read of it has been the very cream of the genre), and as a romance (where I am pretty confident of my knowledgeability!) it's fantastic.

Yes, this is a "mate, mate, mine, mine, mine" story (and I'm sure quite a few of you groaned when I mentioned this in my summary), but it's done the right way. Wilson doesn't substitute the process of falling in love with a simple and immediate "we're mates, so that's it, we're in love". The truemate bond as she writes it is way more complicated than this. In fact, not only does it not immediately imply love, it actually complicates the love relationship quite a bit, as both Rain and Elly have to come to terms with how this involuntary link might affect a more willing and fragile bond like love.

Ah, I loved single-minded Rain. He's a total alpha, but the protective kind of alpha, and Elly is the perfect kind of heroine for someone like him, since she's more than strong enough in her own right. She doesn't seem so at first, but she really comes into her own during the story, and the shocking revelations about her past make complete and total sense. And it's not just the main characters who were three-dimensional and well-realized... all the different secondary characters are subtly drawn and play very real roles in the plot, giving the story a lot of depth.

MY GRADE: I can't really grade these two books separately: an A- for them, then!

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Robin Hood, Stonehenge and Bath

I just realized I forgot to mention here that I've posted loads of new photos at my photoblog. There's a Robin Hood pageant (complete with videos of jousting), a visit to Stonehenge and two posts with photos of a visit to Bath (Part 1 and Part 2).

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Bloodring, by Faith Hunter

TITLE: Bloodring
AUTHOR: Faith Hunter

COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Roc

SETTING: Post-apocalyptic Earth
TYPE: Fantasy
SERIES: Starts one. Followed by Seraphs and Host

REASON FOR READING: I heard about it in one of the yahoo groups I'm in, and what I heard, especially about the world it was set in, sounded interesting.

In a novel filled with lush imagery and exhilarating action, Faith Hunter creates a near-future world caught in the throes of an ambiguous apocalypse-where a woman with everything to hide finds her true destiny revealed.

As humanity struggles with religious strife and seraphs and demons fight a never-ending battle, a new species has arisen. "Neomages" are human in appearance, but able to twist left-over creation energy to their will. A threat to both humans and seraphs, they are confined in luxurious Enclaves.

Thorn St. Croix is no ordinary neomage. Nearly driven insane by her powers, she is smuggled out of an Enclave and now lives among humans, channeling her gift of stone-magery into jewelry making. But when Thaddeus Bartholomew, a dangerously attractive policeman, tells her that her ex-husband has been kidnapped, Thorn risks revealing her identity to find him. And for Thorn, the punishment for revelation is death.

THE PLOT: The summary I quote above is actually really good, so I won't bother with my own.

MY THOUGHTS: I'm afraid this book was a bit of a disappointment. On the positive side, the world Hunter created showed much promise. I thought the premise and many of the details were fascinating and fresh. I mean, the action takes place about a hundred years after Earth suffered an apocalypsis, almost right out of the Bible visions. The people in this story are the descendants of the few survivors of the catastrophes, and it's a world with a very close and immediate relationship with the formerly intangible mysteries of religion, which are now right there. In that sense, it reminded me of parts of Sharon Shinn's Samaria series. And even more intriguing, there are some hints that things might not be quite as clearly-cut Biblical as most people assume. This doesn't really go anywhere in this book, but I would imagine there will be more developments later. With this basic premise, Hunter managed to create an atmosphere I could almost taste, it felt so real.

But... I started out the book feeling like I had some catching up to do, and never managed to succeed. It's obvious that this is not a world the author is making up as she goes along. Everything here indicates that has a detailed universe in her mind and that it has its own rules and its own complex history. And that's great, that's just as it should be with fantasy. The thing is, what's probably really obvious in her mind wasn't always as obvious to me, the reader, and I spent much of the book feeling a bit lost, for all that I was reading slowly and carefully. There are things that still don't make sense to me now, like why exactly the neomages are so hated, or the exact nature of the kylen and what happened between Thorn and the seraphs all those years before. As for the ending and the final confrontation, with that seraph intervention, I'm still scratching my head over it. I can't make up my mind if this is all something I should have understood completely or if it's some kind of cliffhanger-ish ending.

In addition to this, though the characters were interesting, they all felt distant to me, including the narrator, Thorn. There was a detatched feel to her reactions; even when we were told she was terrified, I just couldn't feel it. Hunter told us this kind of thing, rather than show us. I just thought Thorn was a bit dull and never particularly cared about the whole thing with her ex-husband being kidnapped. What's more, I never truly got why she would care, either. That's the kind of thing I mean, even after reading the whole book, the narrator is still a mystery to me.

MY GRADE: I'm regretfully going to have to go with a C-. I would be interested in seeing in what direction Hunter takes her world, but actually reading this book was too frustrating for me to continue with the series.

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Die For Me, by Karen Rose

TITLE: Die For Me (excerpt)
AUTHOR: Karen Rose

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 500
PUBLISHER: Headline in the UK (the edition I read) and Warner Vision in the US

SETTING: Contemporary Philadelphia
TYPE: Romantic Suspense
SERIES: Linked to a couple of Rose's earlier books (she has a very helpful diagram in her website, here), but stands alone perfectly.

REASON FOR READING: I've been hearing a lot about Rose from my fellow bloggers, and the buzz has been overwhelmingly positive. I meant to try her months ago, but only got around to it now.

COME TO ME

The first victim is found in a snow-covered Philadelphia field. Detective Vito Ciccotelli enlists the aid of archaeologist Sophie Johannsen to determine exactly what lies beneath the frozen ground. Despite years of unearthing things long buried, nothing can prepare Sophie for the matrix of graves dug with chilling precision. The victims buried there haunt her. But the empty graves terrify her – the killer isn’t done yet.

SCREAM FOR ME

He is cold and calculating, the master of a twisted game. Even with Vito and Sophie hot on his trail, he will not stop. One more empty grave must be filled, and one last scream must be heard – the scream of an archaeologist who is too close for comfort and too near to resist…

THE PLOT: When a body is dug up from a field and it seems likely that there are others nearby, the Philadelphia police asks archeologist Sophie Johannsen for help mapping the area. When it turns out some of the bodies she helps them find went through tortures straight out of the Inquisition before they died, Sophie's knowledge of such matters really comes in handy to Det. Vito Ciccotelli and his team.

And they'll really need all the help they can get, because this is a particularly cold and dangerous killer, and one who won't allow them to distract him from his plans. As the police gets closer and closer to him, the danger to Sophie, for whom Vito has started to have some serious feelings, grows and grows.

MY THOUGHTS: Before Die For Me, I'd been going through a bit of a dry spell with romantic suspense. Except for Nora Roberts', the ones I've tried so far this year have been pretty mediocre. I think I read the last good one back in April, Gayle Wilson's Bogeyman, and even that one had a pretty weak romance, for all that I liked the suspense. Well, Karen Rose has restored my faith in the subgenre. This is what I want my romantic suspense to be... strong, interesting suspense and a romance that's just as strong and just as interesting. I want balance, I want no element to overshadow the others, and this was what I got here.

I was actually a bit scared of this book before I started it, because the suspense plot sounded like something that could give me nightmares for weeks on end. But for what it's about, it was actually surprisingly non-graphical. I mean, you do find out exactly what the villain did to his victims (and man, this guy was seriously screwed), so it's not THAT harmless, but at least there were no actual scenes of torture. I don't think I would have been able to tolerate those. As this was written, I didn't get any queasy feelings that Rose was trying to titillate her readers with the violence. Everything we saw was necessary to the story and made it stronger.

Something I loved, loved, LOVED was that the police here were smart, much smarter than the villain thought they would be, so it was fascinating to follow their progress. I get really frustrated when I'm reading a romantic suspense and the investigators just won't take the obvious steps and make the obvious deductions (what are the obvious steps and deductions? Well, anything I can think of that they should be doing, really. If I can think of it, they should, too). Here it was perfect. The investigation was smartly conducted and felt realistic, and I loved that they kept getting closer and closer.

And not just them, the villain was being circled from many directions, which was something else I enjoyed. What I see most often is this kind of thing in reverse... hero and heroine doing their thing, thinking they're safe, but danger is approaching without them knowing. Here it's the villain who's being "stalked" without his knowledge, and it works to keep the tension and suspense high, even though we're privy to the villain's intentions from the first and it becomes pretty obvious who he is about halfway through the book.

Rose doesn't just write great suspense, she writes great characters, too, and great romance. Sophie was fantastic. She was a really smart, strong woman, and I liked the way Rose wrote her involvement in the case. Initially she jumps at the chance of getting involved, but then when Vito explains that he'd prefer that her connection to the case wasn't in a way that could become public, because it might put her in danger, she actually sees his point immediately and agrees that she won't get involved in that way. And she doesn't. All her participation is in things that won't represent any danger to her and to her family, as any reasonable person would prefer.

She's just a very well-rounded, three-dimensional character, with a fully realized past and a complex relationship with her family and a just as complex attitude to her work at the museum.

Vito is also a lovely, interesting guy. His relationship with his family was as complex as Sophie's, but very different, and it gave his character great depth.

In spite of the very strong suspense plot, the romance wasn't at all eclipsed by it, and I never got the feeling I sometimes get in books like this that the very presence of a romance was inappropriate. There was real chemistry between Vito and Sophie and their relationship flowed well. I loved that it didn't feel just like danger-induced lust; there was some real tenderness there. By the end of the book, I fully believed they were in love.

MY GRADE: A strong B+. There was a little extra zing missing to push it into A territory, but I have no problem seeing another of her books making it.

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