Review: Free Fall by Carolyn Jewel

Pity the poor novella that is meant to hook readers into a series. It's judged not only on it's own merits, but also on it's ability to reduce a complex world into an appetizing bite. One misstep on either side and the reader is ready to bury it. With that in mind, pour one out for Carolyn Jewel's Free Fall. Having a vague impression of liking Carolyn Jewel I picked up Free Fall sometime in 2012. As I only read books that are piping fresh or carefully aged, it sat in the TBR waiting for the right moment. Free Fall packs plenty of story into a decent sized length. (Let me pause to say I appreciate how Jewel tells her readers up front how long the text is. You won't end up buying a 20 page plot summary disguised as a short novel.) Here Be Spoilers, lassies!

We met Lys Fensic (the heroic characters tend to refer to each other primarily by their last names) in the lobby of her building, waiting for a friend to help her escape an abusive relationship. Her co-worker is trying to aid her but his assistance only increases her stress. At this point I was very interested in the paranormal world Jewel created. Fensic demonstrated some quasi-autistic characteristics that I wanted to explore. (Reluctance to make eye contact, sensory overload, aversion to unsolicited contact, struggle to use visual cues to translate emotional contexts). Then her friend shows up. My paranormal problems kicked into high gear and never settled down.

Khunbish is your basic predator hero. (He's supposed to have a line over the u but I can't locate the alt command for that so just go with it or correct me in the comments and I'll add it.) Although he's a computer specialist by trade, Fensic thinks of him as dangerously powerful because he's tall and frequently calm. She builds up fantasies in her mind of him banging girls who wear glitter when he's not beating up random men. Fensic has issues. But maybe not. Khunbish immediately refers to the coworker as "a pussy." This is based on absolutely nothing. A perfectly nice man is trying to assist a coworker with her belongings. Khunbish instantly dismisses him with a slur of questionable taste. Nice. Let me go ahead and root for him right now. Or not. ANYWAY.

I'm briefly given hope that Jewel is going to call Fensic out on her vaguely fetishized reading of Khunbish's character. When Fensic explains that she needs someone like Khunbish he does challenge her on her assumption that he's physically adept and or violent based solely on his size and potentially his Mongolian ethnicity. Both of them hand wave it and move on. Of course Khunbish is violent! He's a demon who could, if he so chose, utterly control her and... (Oh god, really?) There's something about how witches are super sexy hot to demons (who are all male, as presented in this short) and they could enslave them but on the other hand mages (who are all men) can enslave the demons and that's worse than actually dying because... I can't even.

Fensic isn't helpless in the ex-boyfriend showdown. (She's equal in power to the other characters but set up as untutored and therefore exploitable.) They go to get something it turns out they don't need and then it's sexy time. I appreciated how Jewel set up the sexual interaction between the characters as freeing for both of them. Fensic has been held back by the domination of others and the fear of herself. Khunbish has been required to suppress aspects of himself to fit into the normalized human culture. (Vanilla is, of course, used as a dismissive descriptor. Because why not hit most all my peeves?) The concept that honesty enhances their sexuality is well presented and well conceived. Until it's not. (This was my Free Fall reading experience, things were great, then really not great, then kind of great... oh no not great.)

Early in their encounter Fensic asks about condoms. Khunbish explains that demon / human sex is free from disease due to incompatibly. She says that's cool and all, but she doesn't use birth control. He says no problem because in his human form he's sterile. He can only impregnate her if he's in his demon form. Fensic wistfully reveals she's always wanted a baby (because OF COURSE) and even in his demon form it wouldn't matter because she's unable to conceive. WAIT! FULL STOP! If she's unable to conceive why is she asking about condoms in a birth control context? Talk about your mixed messages there, Cookie! Is this a passive aggressive conversation? "Well, I could get PREGNANT!" "No, babe, you can't unless I change" "JOKE IS ON YOU! Even if you change I can't get pregnant, HA!" Of course, she totally CAN get pregnant because his magic demon sperm knows no human infertility. So let's make this hybrid baby and get back to the guys trying to kill us.

Fight scene, drama, ex boyfriend, discover your true powers, blah blah blah. Now we're wrapping things up with another bait and switch moment. Khunbish has been forced to call in the local warlords, who are apparently the main couple of the book series. At the close of the fight, the female half of the partnership asks if they're ok with meeting the male half and they agree. Suddenly it's baby-louge time and they're meeting with the male half several weeks after the female half asked if it was cool to do it now. Fine, ok, something changed, we can go with that. We head over to the mansion where the various demon underlings are hanging out and they're doing fist bumps and hand jives and trash talking and we discover some are Indian, some are not described and here's the big dude and.... oh hell to the no.

The big dude is a sandy haired boy next door type who is deceptively un-powerful in his physical presentation. My paranormal problems are having a five alarm fire in my head as he lays down the law for Fensic and Khunbish. Mr. Big Dude condescendingly tells Khunbish to "use his words" (no kidding) to figure out his relationship with Fensic because they can't be together unless both of them swear loyalty (or not) to Mr. Big Dude's gang. If they swear loyalty there is money and safety in it for them as long as they comply with whatever Mr. Big Dude desires. If they don't then they are "a problem" for him and might end up getting killed or something. Furthermore, while their fealty is of their own free will, once sworn any failure of loyalty could result in their death. Khunbish is fine with this because apparently demons are totally used to being in gangs. They kind of like it. He's been a free agent for so long because... some kind of reason... but he knew it probably couldn't last with all the turf wars heating up. Fensic agrees because love and pregnant and all, and because she isn't sure how to control herself without Mr. Big Dude's group teaching her. Mr. Big Dude welcomes them and the baby into his gang. And. The. Baby. AND THE BABY. Wow.

Your experience with Free Fall will depend completely on if we have the same paranomal problems. If I'd been able to set aside my aversion to ethnic based personality traits and alpha hole heroes pretending to be beta and street gang culture as paranormal normality, I'd probably have given Free Fall a pretty high rating. Because I wasn't I ended up with a C read. I still like Jewel, but I think I'll stick to her historical stories instead.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins.

Review: Cemetery Girl Book One by Charlaine Harris and Christopher Golden

My curiosity for how Charlaine Harris would translate into this new medium was strong. After all, from the necrophilia and furry-fetish loving of Sookie Stackhouse to the quasi incest is best life of Harper Connelly, Harris can be trusted to dish out WTF action in a page turning fashion. 

As graphic novels go this is a definite C read. The art is fine, the pace is numbingly slow, the storyline is hardly original yet still intriguing enough. Issuing this first chapter in hardcover is a blatant money grab as the content better suits a $3.99 rack title, but you've got to pay your marquee name somehow. We open with Calexa waking up in the cemetery with only a vague memory of having been killed and dumped. She takes her name from the tombstones and hides in the crypts, afraid whoever wanted her dead will find her if she leaves. Calexa is already off to a perfect Charlaine Harris start because if I ever wake up with no memory and the knowledge that someone might want to finish me off I am absolutely going to do anything except stay where they left me. But our dear Calexa, she… who are we kidding? She doesn't matter at all. Let's spoil this thing and you'll see why I brought this book to you.

Calexa witnesses the murder of a girl named Marla. Because there is a huge empty hole in the house of Calexa's body, Marla takes up residence. Calexa hates having Marla's memories of a loving Hispanic/Black family in her brain and she wants them gone. Marla isn't terribly happy about being trapped in Calexa's white slacker brain, but she doesn't know how to leave. The rest of the book is Calexa leaving Marla's family in agony because reporting the murder doesn't fit into Calexa's plans. She carries around Marla's magic smart phone. It can answer calls, be accessed without a password, and never loses power or leads the police to it's location. (Ah, Charlaine, I love the way you roll.)

Eventually Calexa realizes that Marla videotaped her own murder. I'm not sure how, what with lying on the ground and then being dead and buried and all, but Marla got some damn good camera angles. Calexa realizes that Marla has solved her own murder while giving Calexa a way to report the crime without involving herself. Eventually Marla's murderers come looking for the phone, endangering Calexa. This is the kick she needs. Calexa sends the video of the murder to Marla's entire contact list, including Marla's parents. (Hey Mom & Dad! Know you're sick with worry - but here's a cool video of my murder and a few snapshots of where my body is buried! XOXO!) Cops round up the villainous brown kids, as the mentally ill white kid (Calexa, in case I lost you) finds safe haven.

That's the entire book. $24.95 worth of action, right? But wait! You also get a snippet of the script for Book Two revealing that Calexa was experimented on in a mysterious laboratory and that Marla won't be the only dead person to invade her empty brain!

*This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins.

Review: The Last Kiss Goodbye by Karen Robards

* This review first appeared at Love In The Margins.

Sometimes I self harm. Mostly with books.

I really hated everything about the first Dr. Charlotte Stone book. I wasn't planning on reading another but Suleikha Snyder wouldn't stop talking about ghost sex. (Wait, is it still self harming if I can blame someone else?) The Last Kiss Goodbye is so much worse than The Last Victim. I am completely cured of my Karen Robards fandom. We had some good times together but they are o-v-e-r. Capital O. Underlined. Exclamation points. Freezer full of ice cream. If I could go back to 1981 I'd tell myself to put the book on the shelf and walk away, because this isn't a forever love.

In The Last Victim Robards rolled out a love triangle between a living FBI agent, a dead serial killer and the lovely yet self destructive psychiatrist in peril, Charlie Stone. Although she alludes to his potential innocence, our serial killer (Garland) is still far from a prize. He's crude, thoughtless, dismissive and consigned to hell for unknown reasons. (Assuming he didn't really slice and dice all those women). Charlie falls for him hard on the basis of nothing but his appearance. The Last Kiss Goodbye picks up seconds after The Last Victim's end, launching the team on the trail of another killer.

I will give Robards one piece of credit. She doesn't dwell in terror porn. Robards largely keeps her focus on the investigative team. I wish they were a more interesting group. (Charlie is toxic.) 

Where The Last Victim reminded me of Darynda Jones The Last Kiss Goodbye reminds me of fan fiction. Charlie's entire inner life consists of "He's probably a dead crazy psycho killer but omg he's so hot and I want him he can't leave me omg what if he is in pain?" Because she knows her kink is destructive she leads the barely-there living love interest along in a really distasteful forced triangle of dishonesty. It's not pretty. "You can't control me, dead psycho lover! I will show you!"  Of course, her psycho dead lover totally can control her. So he cockblocks the FBI agent and gets sent (yay!) to hell. Charlie is codependent so she panics and begs him to come back.

If you only do what he can do, you won’t be doing much, she told herself severely. But then she thought, By now, the coffee’s probably cold. So she didn’t want to drink it anyway, and that had nothing to do with Michael at all. - Robards, Karen. “The Last Kiss Goodbye.”

This thought happens during a team meeting on the serial killer who invaded her home a few hours prior. Because what's most important to Charlie is that Garland might miss drinking coffee. This won't be the only time Charlie actively ignores her own self interest  to climb the cross. Besides thinking he's hot and trying to save him from hell, Charlie also stands up for herself.

“You’d want to drive, too, you—you man,” she mouthed, piling a fair degree of venom on that last word. - Robards, Karen. “The Last Kiss Goodbye.”

I mean, wow. You tell him, Dr. Stone. Slow clap for sure. In addition to Charlie's inexplicable obsession with a man who agrees hell is the proper destination for the life he lived, Charlie has to find the second serial killer to target her in so many weeks. (Maybe she needs a new perfume?) Luckily she has a secret psychic friend to phone for vital yet obscure plot clues. Between talking to dead people and phoning a friend Charlie has this investigation on lock! We are also treated to the only other major female character in the book continuing to resent Charlie for incomprehensible reasons. (Because bitches?) After Charlie is inevitably placed in peril at the hands of the killer (gosh, who could have seen THAT coming) it is revealed that her taste in men has always been tragic. Well, there's also a bit in the middle of the book involving a college affair with a predatory professor. That Charlie. She just can't help herself!

Double Review: The Sweetest Dark and The Deepest Night by Shana Abe

*If you haven't read Abé's earlier Drakon books there will be mild spoilers in this review. Read on with that in mind.

Shana Abé moved her Drakon series to young adult and it's taken me time to catch up. While book two is stronger than book one (and neither is free of all the issues I had with her romance series) overall I prefer this take on her girls who turn to smoke and dragons. We left the Drakon rebuilding their ruined world in an attempt to curb extinction. In The Sweetest Dark that appears to have been a futile endeavor. Jumping forward to WW1, Abé focuses on a young orphan whisked away from London and into an exclusive boarding school. Here our Littlest Princess meets the requisite young lord and the silent groundskeeper.

Eleanore (Lora), Armand (Mandy) and Jesse begin an uneasy relationship (cue dramatic drum roll) destined to change all their lives! The Sweetest Dark is a languid read. It hits all the notes of the orphan amongst the privileged as it slowly acclimates readers to the world of the Drakon and the place these three hold within it. (The companion novel, The Deepest Night is a much more action driven read.) Abé has made multiple adjustments to the Drakon universe to fit the YA market. Both books hint at sexuality more than they explore it. Jesse is almost ridiculously understanding of Lora's age and Mandy's actions. If Jesse was black he'd be the book's Magical Negro as his primary purpose appears to be filling out the triangle and imparting wisdom. It's a shame that Abé leaves him underdeveloped as it's been a long time since a character perceived as mute has been a romantic lead. She has also toned down her Fated Mate fetish. While still drawn to characters who self describe as Alpha and whose actions are excused as beyond their rational reason, the relationships between Jesse, Mandy and Lora do not skirt the edge of abuse as found in Abé's romantic genre series.

Lora is largely passive for The Sweetest Dark. In The Deepest Night she is actively controlling her life. Where the flaw of the former is a lack of action the flaw of the latter might be an excess of it. Events happen at a rapid pace, with barely a breath between them. England is at war and Lora is ready to fight it. This is not a conflict with nuance. Lora is Team England. It's her or them and she consistently chooses them. The brief interactions she has with German soldiers give her no reason to examine if her actions are the right ones. She is the weapon. They are the target. I found the scenes behind enemy lines the weak point of the book. There is a point where Lora's lack of regard for her own life is meant to feel significant but (given her near suicidal state for much of our time together) seems only expedient. As well,  this section of the book includes a quick introduction of a Gay Predator from Mandy's past. I'm incredibly tired of the only representation of a same sex attracted person being negative. The point this blink-and-you'll-miss-him stereotype makes could easily be presented through other means. It's a regrettable flaw in an overall excellent read.

While I tend not to respond to YA as a category, Abé has done an excellent job in taking the best parts of her romance series and molding them into a YA read with a powerful female lead. The characters read age appropriate overall. Late in The Deepest Night they seem matured beyond their years, but not their experiences. The reader is surprised to realize Lora has a year of schooling left to complete. Although the events of the war and her past make us ready to launch her fully into adulthood, the demands of the series require that she remain a schoolgirl. Depending on your tolerance for alcohol as a casual beverage this series could be read anywhere from fourth grade up. I'm looking forward to the next book.

Review: Fifth Grave Past The Light by Darynda Jones

I'm as surprised as y'all that I read book five of this series. Truly. I'm even more surprised I was given an ARC.

Fifth Grave repairs a lot of what was going wrong with the Charley Davidson series before magnifying new flaws. I find Jones so frustrating as an author. There is a great series here, with a strong point of view and a compelling frame, but it doesn't quite hit the page. She constantly uses one pound of story for a five pound bag. The Charley Davidson series is part Charlaine Harris, part Jenny Lawson, part Janet Evonavich. This should be an adorable cracktastic thrill ride, not a misaligned wooden coaster.

When we meet Charley this time her PTSD has died down and so have the abuse dynamics of her relationship with Reyes. He still tries to kill those close to her but Charley finds it endearing instead of traumatic. He's working on his communication skills while still keeping Charley in the dark as often as possible. (No, that wasn't a play on words.) His position of manipulation is absolute. He knows the answers to all of Charley's questions but refuses to tell them. He insists she make choices without being fully informed of the outcomes. Jones moves Reyes out of the Bad Boy mold and into the Benevolent Billionaire a little more in this chapter. Reyes is still the guy all the girls want, who only wants Charley. He is a trophy mate with a taste for terror.

Also disturbing me is an uptick in ghost children. Charley is attracting dead children who don't want to leave. Her assistant, Angel, has shadowed his mother for longer than he was alive. Her (special needs?) assistant Rocket lives in an abandoned building with his traumatized sister Blue and the somewhat disturbed sister of a living cop. In book four a formerly possessed living deaf boy was added and in this volume we meet a murdered elementary school girl. I find a child ghost far less charming than Charley does. There is a horror in early death. There is a horror in children trying to comfort parents who cannot see or respond to them. It it no mystery that most of Charley's young ghosts are disturbed, they are trapped in a cycle of perpetual neglect. It is an interesting choice, this army of dead children, but it's not necessarily a good one.

The weight of the mythology this series wants to hold is pushing the Ghosts Du Jour to the side. With deliberate ADD pacing, action pinballs from terrorized female ghosts to a new therapist, to her sister's side story, to Reyes sister's side story, to Garrett, and so on. At this point Jones needs to drop the mythology or the crime of the day and get serious about one of them. (She also might want to ease up some on the whimsical humor. It's reading like a lack of ideas instead of a style choice.)  I've got that 50 volume series feeling happening and there isn't enough at stake to hang in that long. Add in Surprise Bondage plus Pointless Heroine Assault and you've got why I wasn't going to buy Fifth Grave. I'd probably read Sixth Grave if it was free, but I can't promise I'd finish it.

Review: Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

I pushed Dead Ever After up the TBR list to answer one question and one question only. "Can 437 one star reviews be wrong?" The answer is yes, yes they can. I liked Dead Ever After as much as any chapter in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Harris is the nickelodeon of popular authors. You drop your penny in and she slowly starts moving. You know what you're going to hear. It's not the smoothest or most polished rendition, but it's reliable and recognizable. Before you're ready she's ground to a halt and everything is silent.

So yes, I think Dead Ever After is not only a fitting end to the Sookie Stackhouse saga but also the only ending (short of Sookie's death) that fits the trajectory of the series. I worried Sookie would never get here, I worried Harris was taking so many side roads she'd get lost, but eventually she worked it out. I could review the book properly, but Robin/Janet has covered most of the points I'd make. I am far more interested in those 437 (and counting) one star reviews, as well as the passion driving down votes of positive reviews.

"To be honest, I would have been more satisfied had Eric kidnapped Sookie determined to turn her against her will"

"He is left emasculated and victimized."

"Like Harris' main character, Sookie Stackhouse, I, as a reader, feel raped, abused, and betrayed."

"I think you got personally offended by your fans LOVE OF ERIC. So you don't want them to be a couple instead you want Sookie to be a narrow minded racist"

"He was the knight on the white horse, always there to protect her."

"but coouldn't she be artificially inseminated and still be Eric's wife???"

"Charlaine Harris KNEW the majority of her fans read this book series because WE ALL LOVED ERIC AND SOOKIE!!! KNEW IT!!! And did she care? No. She just wrote what she wanted. "

Within the series Sookie frequently showed contempt for the Fangbangers. These are humans who hang around vampires hoping to be turned, hoping to be fed upon, hoping that the vampires will fleetingly notice them. Sookie herself is a Fangbanger, something she doesn't initially realize. Her relationships with Bill and Eric are abusive. They pass her around like a party favor. They save her from situations they created. (These situations often benefited them.) Because Eric is written as attractive (George Wickham in The Lizzie Bennett Diaries?) and says pretty things when he needs to, Sookie gives him a pass. On the page Eric is ruthless and power hungry. Other vampires fear him. He sets up multiple controls over Sookie's emotions and person while assuring her he respects her agency. He withholds information. He expects to be her priority while keeping her his option. Eric's power grab is presented to Sookie as out of his control, yet he not only does nothing to stop it he negotiates multiple benefits to himself. Eric ends the book in a position of expanding power while Sookie ends the book having refused to be his piece on the side. She has come to understand which of her relationships are toxic and which are truly supportive. Sookie places a value on herself that she long denied. In doing so she sees the esteem others hold her in. It's a classic coming of age story.

Sookie was never a good match for a vampire. She loves the sun. She wants to do the right thing, even when she doesn't know what that is. She craves family and tradition and shuns political power games. She is a Christian down to her toes. While she is attracted to the novelty of the vampire world it's daily reality repels her. When Sookie takes stock of what makes her happy, where she finds contentment, it becomes clear that the undead can't provide it. Many readers are reacting to this rejection as a rejection of them by the writer. ("She just wrote what she wanted.") I am pleased that what Harris wanted to write was a woman recognizing her own value.

The abusive (but loving) hero is a popular narrative in romance. Readers who respond to it emotionally will excuse away any action by the hero. "He did it for her own good. He was protecting her. He had no choice. He really loves her, though. In the end, he saved her. She is different from those other girls. He just had to find the right person." It is a rare book that examines the psychology and structure of domestic abuse. The common fictional answer is that if the heroine will just love him enough then he will change. Because love is magic. I appreciate that for all her structural flaws (and Harris will admit she has them) she loved Sookie more than Team Eric did. Harris has shown the predator in Eric and Bill all along, it is Sookie and the reader who refused to see it.

Review: The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn

Sharon Shinn has been all about confusing her readers since her career started. Is she chicken, or is she fish? Taken as a whole, her career makes perfect sense. She writes fairly standard romances with strong science fiction elements and extremely real human interaction. Shinn understands power dynamics in a way that sets her apart. She breaks your heart by loading her implausible worlds with plausibility. In that sense, The Shape of Desire is anything but a departure. Taken on it's own, I can see why it confused readers in it's hardcover release.

The Shape of Desire is a rumination on human relationships. What we are willing to trade away to have specific people in our lives and what we are not. In the case of Maria, she has given up stability. Her lover claims to be a shape shifter. Maria has never seen Dante change out of his human form. She has never seen anyone change from a human form. What Maria knows is that when she is with Dante she is blissfully happy and when she is not she falls apart. Much of the book focuses on her relationships with other people. Although forced to keep Dante a secret, Maria is close to her family. Her coworkers are involved in each other's lives, including that of a woman in an abusive relationship. While trying to befriend her Maria is forced to consider harder questions about both their lives. When is concern misplaced? What does an outsider know of the risks and rewards inside a relationship?

Shinn is successful in creating a memorable tale with important questions at it's heart. She's less successful in making me care about Dante and Maria. I never connected with Dante, despite the evolution of his character. I sometimes grew impatient with Maria. I was more interested in some of the coworkers and I was frankly disappointed to have all of Maria's questions so neatly answered. The book would be more powerful as an open ended single title than as a start of a new series. That said, there is an unanswered question at the end of the book that neatly underlines the theme of the whole. What will we allow ourselves to believe or accept to have the thing we love? Late in the book Maria, who hungers for a child, has the opportunity to raise one. Does she have a right to this child? Has this child been stolen? For the reader, as for Maria, the question hangs as something that cannot be examined too closely. Maria has what she longed for. Is that enough?

Review: Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

It's rare I'm actually angry when I finish a book. Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet seriously pissed me off. Not only am I done with the series, I'm done with Darynda Jones as an author. She's on my don't-for-the-love-of-self-ever-read-this list. While I suspected it in Third Grave Dead Ahead, Fourth Grave underlines it, wraps it in a pretty package and sticks a bow on the top. Jones has taken what was an irreverent and interesting world with a strong voiced heroine and reduced it to an abuse fetish. If women who love dysfunctional abusive jerks are your thing, Darynda Jones is writing for you.

In the last book Charley was beaten and left for bait by her lover, Reyes. Her father also set her up as bait in order to protect his other daughter and the bitch stepmother that made Charley's childhood hell. In both cases Charley is physically harmed by a man who is supposed to love her, then left for dead. As Fourth Grave opens Charley is suffering from PTSD (for about a minute) and dealing with the emotional fallout of the previous events. Mostly by chasing after Reyes and being totally up for it. She shows some token anger at her father (who also spends part of this book shooting her) but quickly forgives him as well. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Bar. Be. Que.

No, Jones is not foxtrot kidding me, she's completely serious. Reyes controls Charley, misleads her, withholds vital information from her, threatens to kill her family (again!) becomes furiously angry at her when she asks questions or doesn't act on knowledge she doesn't have, gives her the silent treatment and deceives her. Charley cries and apologizes for not understanding him enough. I don't know why. Almost all of the book is Charley trying to understand poor, poor Reyes or wanting to have sex with super hot sexy Reyes. Reyes is an abusive homicidal ass. He leaves Charley high and dry over and over. She can't talk to his friends or his family. He doesn't even want her to know where he lives. He wishes Charley would just man up and quit sniveling because if she did she'd be so special.

Screw that. If I want to read about a woman being gaslit by an abuser with a savior complex I'll read the paper. I simply don't believe that if Charley takes enough physical and emotional abuse from Reyes and others she will become a better person. I no longer care about the heaven versus hell underpinnings of the story. The interesting characters have been sidelined in favor of more abuse dynamics. Charley is abducted by a bank robber and fantasizes about sex with him after he duct tapes her to a chair in an abandoned building. Charley mistreats a man who has (literally) been to hell for her and is always there for her. She treats with the most contempt the man who is the most considerate. Charley is ill. I can't watch the train wreck any longer.

Adding to my discontent is the inconsistent components of the other characters. Amber is 12. we are supposed to believe that this 12 year old girl kept a traumatizing and life threatening experience secret from her mother, whom she is close to. We are also asked to believe she finds Reyes attractive and finds overhearing relations between Charley and Reyes stimulating instead of embarrassing, disgusting or appalling. Like Charley, anything female of any age surrounding this abusive ass must be up for it, despite the unlikely age component involved. Cookie, her mother, places fighting demons above her child's safety. I can't even address Charley's father in this limited space so let's move on to her neighbor, Peri. Demons are possessing people who can see auras. Peri sees auras. Demons are surrounding Charley's life and looking for access points. Peri has access to Charley and is in her life. Demons never possess Peri, choosing bodies from other states instead. There is no longer any logic to Charley's world. People make choices to serve the story and for no other reason. Even seeing the dead has been shuttled to the side as an afterthought and a page filler instead of a way to drive the narrative forward. Jones gives every appearance of dragging the main points of the story through as many books as the market will bear. There is no end in sight for the reader. I'm disappointed that a series of such promise has devolved into an unpleasant experience.

Review: Haven by Kay Hooper

Let's face it, the Bishop / SCU series is played out. I think Hooper knows it too, which explains why Haven reads like a reboot. From the cover art to the content, the series is positioned as light horror / suspense instead of light paranormal romantic suspense. I kind of enjoyed Haven, it was an easy read. There was some third wall stuff going on when one character remarks that they seem to spend a surprising amount of time in small towns with sordid serial killer secrets at their heart. (As a city girl I've never found small towns anything but forebodingly creepy but I too must acknowledge the concept is getting tiresome.)

There's something unfinished about Haven, a feeling that it's still in progress. When you get to the final pages Hooper offers a cast of characters listing abilities and earlier book appearances. Except the previous book appearances are listed for only one character. This is the sort of meticulous (non) attention to detail that sends Haven skidding off the rails for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the TSTL characters are, um, TSTL and therefore die. I appreciate Hooper trying to set up something fresh with her popular paranormal FBI crew but it feels a little Friends of Superdog to me. I don't want to cut back and forth between characters I've liked to establish that these characters belong with them. If the romantic element is removed then I want to read about core characters solving crimes. Develop their lives, move them forward. Don't relegate them to side roles where they act concerned and offer explanatory speeches to new readers. (This is what derailed Iris Johansen's Eve Duncan series long before the atrocity of Bonnie.)

Haven has twin sisters who aren't twins. They're just identical siblings. One is the light, one is the dark, both are low level psychics with something very bad in their past. I found the hidden event completely plausible but everything stemming from it irritatingly absurd. (Without spoiling the book, we will just say my buy in on that aspect was 0%.) There's a bad guy preying on the town and with only three main male characters figuring out who it is isn't exactly a challenge. Your choices are Red Herring or Absurdly Easy To Spot. What isn't clear is why AETS is the freak he is. Either Hooper is planning on breaking out her undying evil force plot from an earlier book (I dearly hope not) or she forgot that most suspense books end up giving the killer's motivations. Generally, it goes beyond I Hate Chicks. Sure, not always. Most of the time, though.

So, there's no romance. There's no suspense. There is light horror and a body count, plus a large dose of victimized girls in abject terror. The psychics are pretty useless, except when they need a sudden burst moving the plot along. The complacency of AETS is inexplicable, as is his agitation when the missing sister returns home. There's no payoff in the long lost family angle either. Emma greets Jesse back like she went out for milk but had to go to the store across town. There's no heat in Haven, not of anger or of love. It's a smooth ride to the finish, enjoyable and easily forgotten. As a library read, a waiting room book or a beach burner it's fine. Haven is truly average. Which makes me sad. I like Kay Hooper. I like her way with paranormals. I wish she'd either get over this series or rethink the light horror focus. I am bone tired of reading about mutilated women, I need something else to hang my hat on if we're going to insist on writing about them.

Review: Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

Harris is not a gifted writer. Her skill lies in her plotting and her ability to keep you interested in the next twist her road will take. Unfortunately Sookie spends large portions of Deadlocked driving in circles.This isn't to say you should skip Deadlocked, but there are some larger-than-Harris flaws in this one. Can we open with the big one?

Harris has always had a somewhat complicated racial world view - in fact this blogger has already summed that up nicely. Harris goes for broke in Deadlock. Alongside her usual quiet bigotry she highlights the character of Palomino - a vampire with "caramel" skin and "cornsilk" hair. Later in the book she has a character toss out the phrase jungle-bunny in an attempt to emotionally affect KeShawn Johnson. He (of course) is above such things. In a world where a black woman of superhuman strength and experience would permit herself to be named after a pony, I suppose we can allow for KeShawn's tolerance.

Deadlocked sums up some of the troubling aspects of the series. While Sookie doesn't dump vampires for their abusive ways, she does begin to examine her choices. Unfortunately Deadlocked is a character dump. The time spent with vampires isn't the engaging run through their soap opera ways that we're used to. Vampires come and go through Deadlocked without really capturing your attention. High stakes vampire drama seems like an afterthought to the real focus. Fairies. Ok, not really, but the addition of her fairy heritage is where (in my opinion) Sookie's story went to pieces. Deadlocked is full up to here with fairy. (I think we're fairly clear of them for the final book as Deadlocked seems to set the stage for their removal.) But vampires and fairies and werewolves, oh my. Everyone and everything makes an appearance in Deadlocked. If a character isn't included, they're contemplated. Relationships we don't care at all about are lingered over and remarked on. People take her to brunch. Sookie cooks half a dozen times for half a dozen occasions. She describes everything about her days in mind-numbing detail. She wonders what a flash drive is and understands a Reader's Digest reference. By the end of Deadlocked Sookie has closed the door on most of her past. She's walked away from most of the distractions the first eleven books brought her to refocus on the things that mattered to her in the first one. I think it may be a misdirection. My money for book 13 finds Sookie dead and sleeping with the angels, all of whom will undoubtedly be hard bodied sex machines who can't resist her small town ways.

Review: Third Grave Dead Ahead by Darynda Jones

I didn't like it.

I'm so incredibly disappointed by this that I can't think how to begin. I've been cheerleading the Charley Davidson series as the best thing to happen to light and ridiculous paranormal since Sookie Stackhouse. Third Grave Dead Ahead has me wondering if I will ever read another volume. Remember that moment in the Harper Connelly series where you realized Harris really was going all in on the pseudo incest? It's sort of like that. The abuse dynamics in Third Grave are turned way, way up. Intolerably hot. It's not even the sort of abuse dynamic where you can say "But he doesn't hit her!" because he does. He absolutely does. Then there's the painful info dumping. (If you want to hear 23 times that Charley bound Reyes into his corporeal form, then be my guest. Walk right past this review and get to reading.)

Everything you'd need to know for a book four can be extracted from book three and summarized into two sentences. The overall plot gets two sentences of advancement. Possibly one if I chose my words carefully. From the opening chapter to the last third of the book the story drags it's heels. Opening with a clown named Ronald (classic Charley but not an attention grabber) the reader is bogged down in multiple and lengthy asides recapping the prior two books. This is not an author who has grasped the delicate art of giving just enough to keep the new reader engaged without destroying the very soul of the established fan. Not even a little bit. So, strike one for Holy Info Dump, strike two for plodding pace (for the first 2/3) and strike three for abuse dynamics. Adding insult to injury is the final plot reveal.

Charley gets off on Reyes being the super bad boy son of Satan guy. Attempts are made at establishing triangles but it's always been clear that Charley is as hung up on Reyes as Bella is on Edward. He is the one boy in all the world for her. While Reyes was in a coma all the dire warnings from people that knew him better fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, Charley had crazy incorporeal sex or was saved from imminent harm by her dark lover. (Can we take a second here for a PSA? I don't care how great the guy is in the sack, if people are telling you that you don't know him, that he isn't the guy you think he is, that he is bad news and the ultimate destroyer you better wake up to face some reality. Every damn time the news story starts with "She thought she understood his soul" and ends with caskets.) Ok, so Charley, banging Reyes. Reyes so misunderstood. Reyes so damaged. In this book Reyes is awake and angry at Charley. If she tries to sleep for even a second, she is instantly having "angry sex" or as I like to call it, rape. Her enjoyment is not her consent. If she was consenting, she'd be sleeping. Mainlining coffee for 14 days is not consent. Reyes claims she is raping him, as he cannot stop his actions. According to Reyes, Charley is totally asking for it, controlling his actions, and forcing him to come to her when she slumbers. He is angry at her for her actions in waking life, for her lack of knowledge of her supernatural side and her having nonconsensual sex with him. All of this is deeply problematic. Then he starts hurting her. Which she punishes him for by kissing someone else. FFS, really? He kidnaps her, threatens to kill her family (oh, but he doesn't MEAN it), knocks her out, blackens her eye, duct tapes her mouth, ties her, handcuffs her,  sets her up to be stalked and tortured by a crazed killer and tells her she brought it on herself. She's too attractive. She's too independent. She forces him to hurt her. The author tries to offset this by showing Reyes being horribly abused in childhood (after coming to earth seeking out Charley) and being badly injured when Charley naps (forcing him asleep as well). So when he is injured, it is her fault. When she is injured, it is her fault. Things are Charley's fault. All the time. How hot is that?

Right. Not at all.

Charley's response is to get angry and ... not much else. She still cries over him, she still obsesses over him, cusses him out and kisses a biker. She's so independent and self actualized! Charley has gone from interesting character to absolute victim. As always, Jones telegraphs her plot moves. Given that the Davidson books are WTF popcorn reads, I can't really fault her for that. I can fault her that one of those moves had me silently begging her to stop. I absolutely never use the phrase "jump the shark". I hate it. I hated the Happy Days episode it's based on, I hate the way it's used like salt on the salad of internet conversations. I loathe it. You know what I loathe more? The spoiler I'm about to reveal. Charley picks up a guardian. The angels of Heaven have sent her a Caretaker for protection against non-living beings. Yes, Charley gets a dead dog. A Rottweiler to be precise. Consider that shark well and truly jumped.

Review: The Lure of Song and Magic by Patricia Rice

I like Patricia Rice. I rarely like paranormals. Do you see the problem?

Not having read the Magic series that this book is a contemporary offshoot from, I may have missed most of the point of The Lure of Song and Magic. I decided to give this one a shot as part of my pledge to read more contemporaries and not be such a paranormal snob. Oz (Or whatever his name is - everyone in this book has half a dozen names they never use) is a weird combination - wait. Full stop. This is going to be a spoiler filled review so let me do a quick synopsis for those on the fence.

Oz is a Hollywood producer seeking his lost son. Pippa is a burnt out child starlet he believes has a lead on the boy's whereabouts. By infiltrating her life, Oz discovers there is more at work in his son's repeat kidnapping than he imagined. Drawing Pippa back into the world is the only way for him to discover the truth. This is a light paranormal with an extra sensory focus that has an excellent sense of person and place but requires the reader to buy into the underlying conceit for true appreciation. It's a decent read if you like paranormal but could be stronger with a grounding in the established myth.

Right then, back to me. Where were we? Oh yea, so Oz has apparently no emotional connection with anyone except when he totally has an emotional connection with them. His wife died less than a year ago, his child was kidnapped twice, and he's pretty much fully functional. On the other hand, he's completely empathetic to (and tolerant of) Pippa's off the scale freak outs. He calls her by one of her names and she turns into a hysterical keening mess - so he carries her to her pool and throws her in. (I suppose because she doesn't have a horse trough.) The tossing in the pool and Pippa's fruit based meat free diet become major points in the book. I knew more about her dietary choices than her life by the time the book was done. (While I am at it - enough already with the Very Special Vegans in romance. Yes, Pippa I do want that nasty greasy diner breakfast. No, I don't want your whole wheat waffle with compote. Why does Oz have to announce in such a long suffering manner that he was forced to find you a veggie burger? Do other romance leads announce "She eats the flesh of the animal! I had to procure at great difficulty a portion of carcass!" No. No they do not. Authors, please take note. Your character can be Vegan without being an Example To Us All.) Later we find out Oz is an empath. He is so tuned into the emotions of others that he completely failed to notice his wife was afraid of him and the nanny was barking. Let's move on to Pippa. (Try not to look her in the face. Pippa dresses like a Godspell reject and does so without terrifying children. I'm not sure how, my kids would give her a very wide berth.)

Pippa is a child star who fell apart following the death of her drug abusing spouse. Married in her teens, widowed in her teens, she has retreated to a private enclave where she works with children and authors books for nominal royalties. She is almost as crazy as the nanny. Pippa was taken from her family at a young age and abandoned. After discovering her voice (hereafter called Voice) could control the humans around her, she sonically murdered her husband in her rage. (Pippa also blames herself for his cheating, his drug abuse and his self destructive violent ways. Pippa is convinced she is god and an emasculating one at that.) Oz assures her that her extreme nuttiness doesn't matter to him because he got a text message from a complete stranger called The Librarian revealing Pippa is the clue to finding his son. Pippa is fairly uninterested in Oz's son but would like to find her family, so a deal is struck. (Also a TV pilot developed. Oz's need for that show is suspect at best, but the plot uses it for the finale so there ya go.)

Oz, Pippa, and a side character are compelled to follow The Librarian's every instruction without knowing who or what this potential internet wacko is. It's like he's Charlie and they're the Angels. When it is discovered that The Librarian has been pulling all the strings in their lives (including the catalyst for both kidnappings and both recoveries) there is almost no reaction. I might have bought into this better if there was a decent explanation for The Librarian in this book. This reveal has obviously been saved for later books or is a hold over from earlier books. Either way, without the mythology behind it, the entire house of cards about Pippa's heritage and the evil forces trying to control paranormals falls down in a huff of WTFery. It's a long way to go for almost nothing. In a way, it's like Patricia Rice's other recent contemporary, Evil Genius. Estranged family of odd abilities, kick ass but dorky and oddly dressed female lead, family secrets, etc. But Evil Genius offered more in explanation than The Lure Of Song and Magic does, with a much smaller helping of These People Are All Crazy Cakes served beside it.

In the end I neither liked nor loathed The Lure of Song and Magic. I wanted it to be a better book, maybe with an understanding of the paranormal world it's set in I would have felt it was one. I still like Patricia Rice. I still rarely like paranormals. I'm not sure if I'm in for a second book or not. I may go back and read the volume of the previous series that's been haunting my TBR shelf for quite a while before I decide.

Review: Second Grade On The Left by Darynda Jones

Darynda Jones is my new cracktastic author of choice.

Like I've said before, the Charley Davidson series has some logistical issues but it's hard to nit pick when the delivery is so delicious. If there isn't such a thing as Paranormal Noir, then Darynda Jones is busily inventing it. Smart and smart of mouth Charley is the perfect private detective for complicated cases filled with shadowy figures. Nicely balancing her superhuman skills are all too human family issues that blindside Charley when she least expects it. Even the Grim Reaper needs a hug sometimes.

Jones is also adeptly delivering a demon saga that even a Christian could love. (I got a little nervous when the Jehovah Witnesses showed up, but Jones pulled just short of mocking them. Well, more than Charley mocks anyone.) In this chapter Charley is searching for her missing boyfriend (the actual Son of Satan), a missing person (possibly connected to a major murder) and a decent night's sleep (not anytime soon). Jones keeps the revelations in each story coming fast enough to keep the reader guessing. Resolving enough to satisfy, but leaving a bit on the hook for the next book, she's mastered the compulsive read.

Many paranormal books want to be Buffy The Vampire Slayer. With the Charley Davidson series Jones has captured the essence of that show's appeal without copying any of it's details. Keeping her read hot but not making it explicit, she aims for a wide range of readers. I'm not sure what HBO* is going to do with Charley, since she's a serial flirt but a one demon girl. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure that Charley ends up with Reyes. While he maintains he's a bad boy going good, Charley is too strong and self reliant to offer herself up to the wrong side. He's going to have to work a little harder to convince her that he wants to side with the angels. (Then again, Charley hasn't met any angels. Ouch. I apologize. Spend some time with Charley Davidson and the bad jokes come naturally.)

Charley is officially my good time girl for the duration. She can take the Grim out of Reaper for as long as she wants.

*HBO has not optioned this series, but they should. True Blood wishes it was this fun.

Review: Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris is getting slammed for continuity errors in this one. I say if you haven't learned to give up on Harris and continuity by the time you've reached Dead Reckoning, then Sookie Stackhouse isn't for you. It's a shame, because this is one series where lowering your expectations is absolutely worth it.

I mean it. Hand me another Sookie right now and I will read it. Got five more? That works too. The Sookie Stackhouse series is addictive in the negative sense of the word. I will consume as many Sookie books as I have, ignoring all others and real world concerns like bathing. If I can get more Sookie books I will abdicate my responsibilities and go in search of them. (That said, the short stories are abysmal. Each one is painful, the bad trip of fiction indulgence.) Perhaps Harris is the victim of the HBO series success, perhaps readers are just noticing. (Either way, she is to continuity as television's Dr. Who is to continuity. Timey-wimey and all that.)

I don't think the books and the show can have the same fans. Perhaps they do, but for me they are two completely different universes based around a similar concept. Anna Pacquin is not my Sookie. My Sookie is Harris's creation, the ball of hair I love to hate. Other reviewers are right in pointing out Dead Reckoning's Sookie is a different girl. She's a Sookie who is starting to grow up. When we meet Sookie she's bullied, asexual, clinging to the edges of her life in fear. This Sookie is assured, she's a problem solver, she's beginning to expect more from herself than we do, and Dead Reckoning finds her in a full reexamination of her life. When Sookie runs to a man to save her, she notices. This is huge for Sookie. Instead of hiding behind every back she can find, she throws her friends out when they transgress. This isn't the Sookie that, as I once said, gets passed around at vampire events like a party favor.

If you happen to be Team Eric you won't care for Dead Reckoning much. Sookie begins to realize the effects of a controlling relationship. She decides to look outside it to try and determine her true feelings, her true inclinations. In a beautifully executed moment Sookie realizes how distant she's become from what her life used to be. A Sookie even noticing that is a major change for our girl. Standing between what her life became and what it used to be Sookie has some hard choices to make. Those choices are left for the next book. (If you're looking to Harris for resolution, you're going to live a life of frustration. I could do without a certain character cameo as well - stop suggesting that series to me via their appearance in Sookie's world, please.) Harris also introduces a major out for herself that I won't spoil. Suffice to say she's given herself a game changer.

Reading a Sookie Stackhouse book is like settling into a rollercoaster ride. It won't be smooth, it won't always go where you want, there will be terror. When it's over and your stomach has settled you realize that you really loved it and want to go again right now. And maybe again. When does the park close?

Review: The Vampire Voss by Colleen Gleason

This is a unique case.

It's rare for me not to finish a book that I've taken to review, much less move forward with the review. But this is not your typical DNF. So much is right with The Vampire Voss that I think I could adore it if it didn't hit my particular buttons quite so hard. Right, so here is the solution.

I am not going to review The Vampire Voss. Mostly. I'll explain what kept me from enjoying it, and if those are not things that would keep you from enjoying the book then I think it's worth a look. Gleeson has an easy writing style with a nice eye for characterization and description, her pacing is solid, and her worlds are well realized. There's a lot more to The Vampire Voss than my displeasure. (If my Sony hadn't bricked twice during my third go at the book I might have made it to the end!)

In this world of Vampires and Vampire Hunters there are also rare persons with The Sight. One of those is Angelica. Her ability to see the moment of a person's death brings her to the attention of (say it with me) The Vampire Voss. Voss is the kind of kid his mother might describe as 'intellectual, sensitive, easily bored' and the other kids might describe as 'a serious pain in the ass'. My problem with Voss, and thus my problem with the book, is that he is a date rapist of high order. He sees a woman, he roofies her with his magic eyes, and they can get it on. He admits he doesn't really care how willing she is at first because hey, she'll like it later. Maybe he comes to realize this is wrong. I don't know. I didn't care. He 'thralls' half a dozen women and I just see rapist.

Book two is The Vampire Dimitri.  Dimitri's mom might have described him as 'studious, committed, ethical' while the other kids probably called him 'a serious pain in the ass'. You know that these two men will end up together. Dimitri is the required pigs blood drinker, the vampire with regrets. There's a scene where Voss marvels at the unneeded pain Dimitri puts himself through for his beliefs, since in this universe Lucifer continually sends physical signals of his displeasure to the bodies of his men. Being good hurts, what can Voss tell you. Voss proves he's the good kind of rapist when after a scene that's a little bit Merchant Ivory Slasher Flick, a little bit West Side Story With Fangs he comes upon a defenseless Dimitri and... doesn't hurt him. Ok then.

I understand that the Vampire genre either skirts with or embraces non-consent as a very fact of it's existence. This makes many of the books fail for me, because my bad boys need to be a little less bad than the whole 'She'll want it by the time I'm done' thing. Angelica, of course, is somewhat immune to being enthralled. She can't be the one girl in all the world if she isn't, right? Don't let them have the milk, make them buy the cow.

I like Gleeson's style, I like her mechanics, I will absolutely try her again. For me, the sheer Vampireness of Voss keeps me from falling in love.

Review: First Grave On The Right by Darynda Jones

Here's the problem. I want to discuss this book with you in such rant-tastical depth that I would absolutely spoil it for everyone. Plus, it's in hardcover, which means I have to wait a ridiculous amount of time to be certain everyone has had a chance to read it. (You're going to read it, trust me on that.)

First Grave on the Right has it's issues. There's some serious info dumping going on as Darynda Jones sets up her world. It doesn't read as pages of boring exposition, it reads like you walked into the middle of a series. Eve Dallas can get away with saying "Yes, it's just like in the Icove case" because the reader has either read that book or can google it quickly enough. When Charley says "Hoo boy, and let's not forget that day!" the reader is missing the context. It works well enough since it's pretty smoothly introduced, but it could certainly be streamlined.

Charley is the Grim Reaper. Not a Grim Reaper, but THE Grim Reaper. This is a step up from the conventional I-See-Dead-People, but it brings it's own problems. I'm going to assume there are other Reapers in the world, because otherwise the math just blows the whole book out. I mean, the dead have to pass through Charlie, she's the actual light, right? Worldwide, about 62 million people die yearly. Since there are only 1,440 minutes in a day... ok that is as much math as I am willing to do. It just doesn't work, right? Right. So no matter what Charley says, there's got to be other options for dead folks. Charley impressed me in her ability to take more physical abuse than even my girl Sookie Stackhouse. Girl keeps ticking. She's got a cop uncle, an ex cop father, a wicked stepmother, a non beloved sister, a bunch of men interested in her, a dead assistant, a live assistant and at least three jobs. This girl does not have time to sit about. (She also has awesome shoes, but that's my cover envy talking.)

Charley likes sex, but this is not a LKH read, it's pretty mild as far as the actual action goes while still having a heat meter. Unlike most books, I read all the sex scenes. They furthered the plot. I know, I couldn't believe it either. But they did. Charley's been having some pretty vivid dreams at night which may or may not be connected to her paranormal leanings. She's also got an entity that's been shadowing her since the day she was born and a fellow PI looking her way. I don't know if the love triangle (Quadrangle? Hexagonal?) is going to work or is even intended, because it's pretty clear pretty quickly who rings Charley's chimes. Too bad he's in jail. (I know! Daddy issues and inmates and tigers and lions and monkeys and bears!!) I actually have some real problems with Charley's boyfriend. Which is the spoiler-ish bits. I think some aspects (ok, most aspects) of Charley's relationship are going to cause heated debate about their appropriateness and her mental health. I mean, just his pick-up lines alone could light up the average message board. But the world Jones is building captivated me immediately. It's rooted in Christian Myth (if you prefer, Christian Fact - see what I mean? Debate!) but is in no way a "Christian Romance." I respect that. Paranormals that attempt to be areligious (irreligious? Double debate!)  annoy me. You can't have your demons and eat them too. (Wait...)


First Grave ties up 90% of the plot it introduces while only answering 10% of the world building questions, but not in an annoying way. In a sense, coming in to the middle of the story works, after all that is what happens to Charley every time she encounters a dead person.  I rather expect Charlie's BFF to drop dead any moment and leave Charlie as a custodial parent. This is what I mean about a dense world - she's not just Charlie's BFF, she's also her assistant, a single mother, a cancer survivor and in the middle of a potential recurrence. None of which is relevant to this particular story, but would obviously come into play later. Charlie's dad isn't just an ex-cop, he's an ex-cop who runs a bar, has a cop brother, is a widower (remarried) with another daughter and.... it's a very Southern way of meeting characters. "This here is Velma, she's Pearl's sister. You know how Pearl and Velma married brothers? Those brothers happened to be the siblings of my grandmother and it's a funny thing but they're also related these other two ways..." (True sentence. It was used to start off an approximately three hour story from one of my cousins. I'm not sure he ever finished.)

Read it so we can fight about it. It's full of Team Character opportunities and What Is She Thinking vs OMG SO HOT debatery.

Review: Night Betrayed by Joss Ware

Jayne Ann Krentz just got totally served. Your heroine is super sensitive, psychic, won't eat anything with a face, and tries to do good for others? Joss Ware will see that and raise you with single motherhood, a deep need to save the souls of zombies, and surviving the apocalypse. As an infant. Let's go.

I should hate this book, it has almost everything I dislike in romance thrown into a blender. But I really enjoyed it. Joss Ware may have converted me to paranormals with stupidly stubborn heroines all by herself. Let's see - take one part Internet Pioneer, one part Old Guy That Hangs Out On His Porch, one part Lightning Lad and you've got Theo. He's 80ish (he looks 30ish) and is looking for love or the return of MMO gaming. Maybe even both. Oh, and he's dead. But not a vampire. Or a zombie. There are no vampires here, so move along if that's your thing.

He's dead, then he's not dead, and in the process of not actually dying he meets Serena. (Hereafter the Krentz-Heroine-Slayer to me) Serena is 50ish, looks 30ish, and enjoys long walks out past the protective gates of the compound to save the souls of the misunderstood zombies. You might know zombies as smelly, nasty, undead creatures out to rip anything human to shreds and eat it, but Serena can see inside them to their human soul. It's kind of a mystery where all these zombies are coming from. Apparently, a few books ago, there was this group of loonies who decided to become immortal. Becoming immortal required the rising of the Island of Atlantis, which killed 90% of the world's population and knocked the earth off it's axis. I guess they succeeded, although why you'd want to be immortal in a world without pizza delivery is beyond me.

Theo and his pals are trying to restore the internet to bring the Immortal Ones to justice some 50 years after the big kill. At night, zombies wander the land to drag off blondes and munch on brunettes (really) while searching for some dude named Remington Truth. Bounty hunters destroy computers, people live in tightly isolated and guarded settlements, and some select people manage to find gas for Hummers. And old jeans. 50 year old jeans. I started to do the math on gas in reserve tanks, times number of Hummers used, times conveyance of same, and I just gave up. Some lucky people have Hummers with gas. Got it. (Plus, light bulbs! No, I need to stop thinking about that.)

The strongest thing going for Night Betrayed is the recognition that a guy who's been around for a hundred or so years and a girl who is in her twenties aren't going to have much to talk about. When Theo meets Serena he realizes that he needed an older woman in his life. Joss Ware does a decent job of setting the mood. (One character, Vonnie, made me think about what my own tween would endure if 90% of the planet died tomorrow.) She's not afraid to kill characters off. She's not afraid to acknowledge that the selfish prevail far more often than the generous. Although Night Betrayed was my first book in this ongoing series it stood on it's own feet well enough. While I don't feel a need to go back and read the prior books I am definitely interested in finding out what happens next.

*If the wait is long enough I might decide to catch up on the series just to find out more about this girl Remy. She shows up in the middle of the book for no apparent reason, gets raped a fair amount and ends unresolved. The rape, however, is not graphic or detailed and the rapists are quickly dealt with. All of the detailed sex in this book is by consent. While I personally don't care about Serena's labia, Theo does. A lot.

Review: Medusa's Folly by Alison Paige

It has been suggested to me that I am a snob. Several books have been presented to me as Worthy Reads that I have rejected because I think they're probably dreadful reads. Unwilling to pay for the Alison Paige book suggested to me, I paid for a short story instead. Erotic elements have been a much larger part of romance over the last decade or so as they get redefined as making the read 'hot' or increasing the emotional connection between the characters.

(It is interesting to me, if I can take a side road for a moment, how the politics of sex and romance change over the years. In the 80's we had the sweet books, the rape books, and the interracial books. Now we have the inspirational books, the hot reads, and the erotic books. Interracial relationships are pretty much gone, even the horrible depictions from the plantation novels.)

You know the classic definition of pornography, right? I know it when I see it? I am not sure why it is unacceptable to call something porn. If romance cannot be labeled 'porn for women' (and I agree, it should not be) then what should porn for women be called if not, well, porn for women? Erotica is a different animal - it is something that rises above it's primary goal of sexual titillation to successfully portray deeper dynamics of human relationships. While I don't care for Megan Hart, I do think she clears that bar. Anne Desclos clears that bar with both her work The Story of O and it's repudiation, Return to Roissy.  (There is some controversy over the author of the second work. I find it brilliant in it's splintering of the fairy tale O has sold herself in the first.) Mr. Benson clears the bar for John Preston. Alison Paige takes the bar in the gut.

I don't know why that has to be a pejorative judgement. As porn, individual taste is individual taste. I am certain there are people who are perfectly content to read about greek goddesses leaving snail trails of 'cream' on acid rain bathed gargoyles without needing it to say anything more than that. Porn is where the money is. As a story, judged as more than a temporary shelter for a sexual offering, Medusa's Folly completely failed me. The initial explanation, that Medusa is so hungry for gratification that she must cling with desperation to whatever she can find makes no sense to me. If she has (as she suggests) been sexually involved with men she then met the gaze of (turning them to stone) mid act, one would think she has quite a collection of stone partners. With about five minutes consideration, she could easily create a way to have sex with human men without meeting their gaze. Her desperate hunger for human contact falls flat.

We will grant that she has run about checking to see if any of the gargoyles are up for it. So now we have Medusa, created to seek the destruction of all men because of her anger at her long ago rapist, and this stone dude who suddenly comes to life because.... that's not important. He was created by another goddess for failing to grant her sexual favors when he was obviously a man-whore and totally up for it with everyone else. Pissed her off. (Nobody seeks his consent, isn't that rape?) Turns out she's Medusa's mother. (Figures.) With one meeting of the eyes, Medusa and Uphir have fallen in love. Because they do, whatever, it's an eternal and devoted love. Mom doesn't understand. So she makes a deal. If they revoke their god status, they can be together. Of course they do. Because otherwise neither of them can ever have human sex again.

(Another side note - yesterday Amazon was selling this title. Today it disappeared from title search results, but was still on the author's search results. This evening it is no longer for sale to US customers. Is Amazon feeling some Kindle article heat? I don't know. Amazon has been good to me, we're cool.)

Anyway, I'll take a pass on the more expensive book. I know what I like and I'm just not interested in porn. Erotica I'll consider, but I prefer books about human relationships in their emotional and psychological complexity. Maybe one day we will understand why, as women, we can't just have porn. Maybe we'd spend less time defending conventional romance if we stopped trying to make the umbrella big enough to encompass every possible description. Maybe not. People do love to hate books where woman are respected or valued. Almost as much as they love to award ones where they are abused and thrown aside with the trash.

Review: Insatiable by Meg Cabot

Insatiable is a perfectly inoffensive read that can't decide exactly what it wants to be. Is it a spoof? Is it homage? Is it book one of a vampire series? There are a lot of great concepts here but some mixed executions. By the end of the book aspects of it that seemed fun and original wear out their welcome. Thankfully, and I hope you won't consider this a spoiler, there isn't a single werewolf to be found. (Because really, if werewolves and vampires keep hanging out sharing chicks, people are going to talk.) For just over the first half of the book I was absolutely in love with it. Then a spoof character takes a sudden turn toward the path of serious male romantic lead and the book begins to fall apart. 

Initially, Meena appeared to be on my side. She loves handbags, she is completely annoyed with women in vampire lore falling for guys who are obviously abusive and she appreciates a good daytime drama. Meena and I were really getting along. Ok, so she can tell people when they're going to die, but that's just a twist on Sookie Stackhouse and this is a spoof story, right? Suddenly, Meena is perfectly ok with having a much, much, much older lover who talks her into things she had previously refused to consent to. She finds a man who has to fight the impulse to kill her charming, and discovers some of her best friends (well ok more like neighbors) are vampires. The love triangle kicks off, vampire nightclubs appear and vampire showdowns start rolling. Just when you think things can't go farther over the top (or become more conventional) they do. And to reveal how would be a serious spoiler. But it's a bit much, even for a book that leaves absolutely no vampire icon untouched. 

From Love at First Bite to Dead Until Dark: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel, and of course Dracula itself, Insatiable tips it's hat to all of them. Using Stoker's character names to set up the multi-generational star crossed soul mate concept, Meg Cabot takes what started as a promising spoof and ends up with the first chapter of more of the same. It doesn't help that one side of her triangle starts the book as comic relief nor that when Meena's brother begs her not to become one of those women who excuse their abuser you know Meena is already on that path. There is nothing wrong with Insatiable from the stand point of an easy chick lit vampire read, but it disappoints a reader looking for a send up of the vampire craze. (And I don't buy the triangle.)

Review: Bespelling Jane Austen by Mary Balogh, Colleen Gleason, Susan Krinard & Janet Mullany

I suppose, if Jane Austen had to choose between Will Shakespeare's posthumous life or her own, she'd be happy enough with zombies and vampires and sea serpents (oh my).  Shakespeare has to constantly contend with people doubting his authorship, sexuality and existence. Austen has largely enjoyed life on a pedestal as the mother of all things Regency. Much like Mary Balogh. So my reaction to Mary Balogh writing a paranormal was akin to an undiscovered Austen  revealing a sparkly vampire of it's very own. The problem is that while I adore Mary Balogh, I'm not a fan of current paranormal romance. I began Bespelling Jane Austen with some concern.

As it happens, Balogh didn't see herself writing a vampire story either. Her Almost Persuaded deals with reincarnation. It's an interesting experiment that steers clear of paranormal pitfalls other established Regencyland writers have fallen victim to. Instead of changing her style working with reincarnation allows Balogh to progress her characters past their initial discovery phase into a developed relationship. It is a love at first glance tale a bit more physical than Balogh usually tells. My quibbles are minor and rooted more in my opinion of reincarnation itself than the story as told. If certain aspects were developed further, Almost Persuaded could have become a full length novel. It is the second best story in the anthology. 

The best, perhaps most fittingly given it's creator was the most motivated, is Susan Krinard's Blood and Prejudice. Krinard is comfortable with paranormal romance and presents it without hitting any of my aversions. Embracing vampires, she creates a world where skeptical Liz Bennett is surrounded by vampires without a guide to telling the good from the evil. It is perhaps the closest to what we think of when we think of an Austen tale, and it is the most realized world in the anthology. Trying to save her father's company, her sister's heart, and her own equilibrium, Liz Bennett is a heroine worthy of a Mr. Darcy. For these two stories alone I'd read Bespelling Jane Austen.

Colleen Gleason's charming Northanger Castle would have been a fitting close for a shorter anthology. Her overly imaginative heroine sees vampires behind every door, gothic plots at every party, and holds a Nancy Drew disdain for her own safety. Her personal Ned emerges as a man who can use her vampire detection skills. The weight of what seems to be a mythology carried over from other books drags the story down for me. If I were an established fan of Gleason's books I would probably have adored Northanger Castle but without that grounding I simply liked it. 

All good times must come to an end. Unfortunately the book ends as well in Little to Hex Her by Janet Mullany. I am generally a fan of Mullany so it pains me to say that (for me) this tale is a complete miss. If you enjoy paranormal romance then Little to Hex Her will probably be the highlight of the book.  It encapsulated everything I dislike about paranormal romance. Our heroine is a witch babysitting her sister's business in the midst of vampires, warlocks, elves, werewolves, ogres and who knows what else. She has to navigate the social world of Washington D.C. while dealing with a college boyfriend, a saboteur, and a party hook up that left her a bit used. From the 'time of the month' werewolf jokes to the racial profiling (all elves are glamourous, all vampires are cutthroat, you can't trust a.... you get the idea) my buttons were firmly pressed. Without truly resolving the various threads of the plot, the story lurches to it's predestined conclusion leaving the non paranormal reader a bit worse for wear. Which makes this a collection with something for everyone.