Into the Darkness by Delilah Devlin

This book needed about five more runs through the editor before making it out into the light of day. The storyline is convoluted and sketchy, and yet… I enjoyed it. It’s like watching a B horror movies; you know it’s not top grade cinema by any means, but you can’t help having fun.

I’ll admit, I bought this book because the main male character is a Cajun detective in New Orleans. My lizard brain screeched, “GAMBIT!!!” and really, who am I to ignore my primal urges? Gambit! Whee!

Well, Rene isn’t Gambit, but he could be a carbon copy, and that kept me entertained while reading this book. Natalie, the heroine, accepts her new vampy lot in life a bit too quickly for my tastes; I’m not asking for a giant angst-fest, but yeesh, give me more than just “Well, I have a tingle of intuition that says this is AWESOME.” The vampire mythos of this book is as convoluted as the plot; I actually didn’t realize I’d picked up a vampire book until Natalie chomps down on poor Rene. The book’s ending left me scratching my head and muttering, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” for a while. I won’t spoil it, but it’s a big dose of WTF.

Now, to the good part. The smut. After the first sex scene, I nearly gave up the book. See, I have this pet peeve about sex scenes involving virgins. I like to read scenes written by someone who I think has a decent grasp of human anatomy. Case in point: the hymen is located on the outside of the vulva. It is not a couple of inches up inside your vajayjay. In Rene and Natalie’s first sex scene, she is a virgin, and he pops his wang in and runs into the hymen a couple of inches in.

[facepalm]

That drives me bonkers. Anatomy! At least have a basic grasp of it before writing incredibly detailed sex scenes!

Aside from that, the sex was pretty damned hot, though some of the scenes run the gauntlet of dubious consent (on the man’s part, surprisingly enough). My favorite surprise? Vampire lesbian sex, interrupted by a Cajun cop wearing a towel! Woo!

So… would I recommend this book if you’re looking for a thoughtful, original vampire story? No. But if you want some hot sex, a sexy Cajun, and a bit of guilty giggling, this book is for you.

Buy Into The Darkness

Warrior & Witch by Marie Brennan

This is the sequel to Brennan’s Doppelganger, and it does a fantastic job of expanding the world and the characters within it. This chapter of the overall story deals with the very fundamentals of magic, politics within the witches’ kingdom as well as other realms in their world, and mirroring the main character’s own internal struggle, conflict and cooperation between the witches and the Hunters, highly trained mercenaries.

I don’t want to say much about the plot of the book, because it would spoil Doppelganger for those who haven’t read it, but I was very impressed by how Brennan has improved her craft. The world is fleshed out satisfyingly, and I love how she’s veered away from the more traditional medieval European ideal that many fantasies are based upon. Her world is based more on Asian culture, with the witches’ names obviously inspired by Japan. Other touches in the world, such as characters writing on rice paper and the food that they eat, are also very Asian in feel, which brings a fresh perspective to high fantasy.

There’s a bit of a deus ex machina at the end, but it didn’t ruin the story for me, thank goodness. Now… when’s the third book going to come out?

Valiant by Holly Black

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I did the first in Black’s series, Tithe. It fell victim to what the first book threatened; dark drama for the sake of darkity darkness. Sex, drugs, homeless kids, head shaving! It… toed the edge of being appropriate for the main character, but honestly, it felt more like Black was deliberately trying to be edgy and cool rather than to write a good, well-developed character. Even the main character, Valerie, seemed to lack motivation, for not for lack of trying. Her teammates think she’s a lesbian (oh noes!), her mom’s screwing Valerie’s teenage boyfriend, and… well, life sucks. I just had trouble relating to Valerie, and the plot seemed to have been cast aside in favor of Black’s admittedly creative integration of the faerie world and drug culture.

But Black’s ability to construct an incredibly rich, macabre world saves the book from being completely eyeroll-worthy. I absolutely love her descriptions, and she brings the melded city alive. This book makes me want to go to New York and look for gargoyles that move.

Wired by Liz Maverick

This book was… interesting. Convoluted, confusing, but definitely interesting.

L. Roxanne Zaborovsky finds herself in the middle of a very dangerous situation, one that could alter the course of history, and she also finds herself between two very dangerous men. Mason Merrick is the all-American boy next door with whom Roxanne shares a past; Leonardo Kaysar is a dark stranger. Both men want something from Roxanne: code that she will write in the future. And Roxanne has no idea who to trust.

Maverick brings an interesting twist to the idea of time travel in romances. No one falls through a stone circle and ends up in medieval Scotland here. There are wire-crossers, people who can rewire time in order to change something that happened in the past in order to affect the future, and Roxanne, poor Roxanne, gets caught up in the middle of their intrigues.

The story structure is confusing in and of itself, but considering what Roxanne is going through, it works. She jumps between realities without warning, so that one moment she might fall from a building, but land in her bed instead of on the pavement far below. I spent half of the book trying to wrap my mind around the shifting realities, and I like that. It kept me on my toes. The book’s ending, however, felt like the author was trying to wrap things up with a happy romance novel ending that just didn’t quite ring true to me. The book is a very non-standard romance, and I’d have preferred it ended without the storybook love.

Doppelganger introduces an intriguing, thankfully fresh fantasy world. Mirage is a Hunter, a mercenary-for-hire with almost superhuman reflexes and brilliant red hair–something very unusual, for only the witches in this world have red hair. She and her year-mate, another Hunter with whom she trained, are hired to track down the assassin who killed a high-ranking witch, and they find themselves in an extremely dangerous situation, one that could change their entire world. Namely, they meet Miryo, a young witch who looks remarkably like Mirage, and who must kill the Hunter.

To say that the events in Doppelganger are just the setup for what happens in the sequel, Warrior and Witch, would be unfair. You must read Doppelganger first, but the two stories blend together almost seamlessly, as if it was one book split into two (which is particularly apt, considering the subject matter).

This book begins to introduce Brennan’s fascinating world. Unlike most high fantasy, this world is not based on the generic “back then,” which so often draws on medieval Europe. Instead, the world seems more inspired by Asia, but not obviously so; in other words, this isn’t a world akin to something you’d see in anime fanfic. It’s well-built and well-thought-out (not that anime fanfic isn’t… oh, I’ll stop digging my own grave now) and exceptionally creative.

The characters are interesting and easy to empathize with. I liked both Mirage and Miryo and kept finding myself hoping they’d find a really creative way to work out their… ahem, differences. Fortunately, I wasn’t disappointed in the end.

I particularly like the way Brennan constructs magic in her world. It is a religious concept–magic comes from their goddess–but yet magic and religion are also removed from and often at odds with each other. Magic is also based on sound; witches sing their spells, which is an idea that’s somewhat familiar to me (though I can’t for the life of me remember if I’ve read that in another book or what) but is also at the same time a little difficult to imagine in my head. It seems odd to burst into song in the middle of a battle (okay, they don’t exactly burst into song, but still.).

Definitely check this book out, if you get a chance. It’s well-written, creative, and involving.

So, it’s Friday morning. I’m sitting at work with a cup of tea and work that needs to be done. So, what am I doing instead? Playing catch up with my book reviews. ;) Expect another review at some point today (I hate it when I leave drafts sitting around and forget about them). For poops and giggles, I’ve read 54 books so far this year.

A Hunger Like No Other (The Immortals After Dark Series, Book 1) by Kresley Cole

Oh, dear lord. I couldn’t make it halfway through this book. I was told that it gets better toward the end, but I just couldn’t stomach the “heroine,” a half-vampire, half-Valkyrie, simpering and whimpering and being an all-around wimp. And the love interest? Oh GOD. He’s a Scottish werewolf (so many clichés!) with a horrible brogue. I have this pet peeve about writing out accents anyway; the only character I can stand to have the accent written out for is Gambit. The others irritate the piss out of me, and it’s especially true of Scottish accents. This guy says “doona” instead of “don’t.” It’s like Scottie! I just cannae read it, Cap’n! I dinnae have the power!

Maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe I’ll give this book another chance some day. But the fact that the love interest practically rapes the heroine and she swoons and enjoys it? UGH. DO NOT WANT.

7 Days Of Magic: Spells, Charms & Correspondences for the Bewitching Week by Ellen Dugan

I like Ellen Dugan’s witchy books. They are very folksy and eclectic, and they do not seem to be tuned into any particular tradition, which makes them very useful. 7 Days of Magic is a book of correspondences peppered with a few simple spells. Each day of the week has deities, colors, stones, herbs, metals, and more listed, along with spells using these lists. This is a good book for building your own spells and rituals, and it includes interesting (if not particularly historically accurate) information about the various deities and corresponding objects. If you’re not cool with eclectic witchcraft, this probably isn’t the book for you, but I found it incredibly useful.

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Ah, this is more like it! I’d consider this book an urban fantasy, even though quite a bit of it is set in the wilderness of Montana. The main setting is the Tri-Cities area of Washington, a very unusual and interesting place to set this kind of novel (I like it SO much better than the usual New York City or Los Angeles settings). Mercy, the main character, is a skinwalker, a shapeshifter who changes into a coyote. She’s not a werewolf, but there are plenty of those to go around, along with vampires and fae creatures. The creatures are familiar, but there’s something in the way Briggs puts it all together that is fresh and interesting.

Mercy runs a garage (ah, the joys of history degrees, heh) and lives next door to the local werewolf pack’s alpha, Adam. She enjoys a comfortable (if slightly tenuous) tolerance by the local werewolf pack and is even friends with a member of the local group of vampires. Her former boss? A rare and powerful metalworking fae. She was even fostered by the main pack of North American werewolves. All of this feels completely normal and natural, though, which I greatly appreciate.

The story’s mystery seems a bit stilted and rushed toward the end, and I had to flip back to figure out exactly who the bad guy was once he was revealed, but overall, I really loved this story. I lost quite a bit of sleep because I couldn’t put the book down, heh. I can’t wait to get my hands on the sequel.

Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody, Book 1) by Elizabeth Peters

I have this weird, deep love for Egyptian mysteries. I’m not usually a mystery reader, but if you set it in the Victorian era in Egypt, I’m there. I’ve had a handful of the Amelia Peabody mysteries sitting on my shelf for a while, but I just now picked up the first in the series and started reading.

HEE! I love it! Amelia is delightfully sarcastic, a brilliant and interesting character. I love her habit of planning out scathing retorts, particularly toward Emerson (whom I pictured as a somewhat burlier Richard Armitage, ha!). I like how Peters uses the older spellings of places, names, and objects; it adds more to the feel of the time period.

I lost sleep over this book, too. Not only did I stay up late reading, I also dreamed about excavating Egyptian tombs. Yeesh.

Next review: Doppelganger by Marie Brennan
Currently reading: The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters

Listening to: “Telluric Waves” by Maitreya (on SomaFM’s Drone Zone station)
Wearing: BPAL’s Loviatar (for those days when you just need to smell like a dominatrix)

I don’t even remember what made me put this book on my BookMooch wishlist. I think I might have been browsing around Amazon.com and found it through a link. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I picked it up.

Tithe by Holly Black is described as a modern faerie tale, and… well, that’s pretty damned accurate. It’s a modern, urban faerie tale set in the wilds of New Jersey’s coast. Kaye is a wild sixteen year old girl; her mother drifts from rock band to rock band, and Kaye drifts along with her. She smokes, she drinks, she shoplifts, and is generally a weird girl, or at least other people her age think so. When Kaye was a child, she used to create the wildest stories about faerie creatures, and had three imaginary best friends: Gristle, Lutie-Loo, and Spike.

At sixteen, Kaye and her mother must go back to her childhood home in New Jersey, and discovers that she still has the power to make strange things happen. She nearly brings a broken carousel horse to life. She somehow enchants her friend’s boyfriend. And walking back to her grandmother’s house one night, she saves the life of a knight of the Unseelie Court.

The story deals with changelings, children that were switched with faeries as babies, which has always fascinated me. I picked up the World of Darkness Changeling roleplaying game books when I was in high school, and though I could never find anyone who would play with me (jerks all wanted to be vampires or werewolves), I always loved the concept of hiding fae nature under a mask of the mundane.

The story also delves into the very dangerous world of faerie politics. The solitary fae, creatures who are not part of the Seelie or Unseelie courts, are bound to the Unseelie by the Tithe, the sacrifice of a mortal girl. Kaye ends up right in the middle of a deadly intrigue surrounding the Tithe, and… damn, I can’t really say any more without spoiling the book for you.

Sometimes the book borders on darkity-darkness-for-the-sake-of-being-dark, but I like the gritty, urban feel of the story. Kaye is not a good little princess who gets swept up by her shining knight; in fact, the knights who shine are often the most dangerous. The story is intriguing and well-written, and the descriptions are to die for. Holly Black is fabulous when describing the dark beauty of Kaye’s worlds, and she can even describe clothing without annoying the crap out of me (explanation: I can’t stand it when most authors describe characters’ clothes. See anything written by Laurell K. Hamilton to understand why.).

If you’re a fan of urban fantasy or modern faerie tales, pick this book up. Now.

Buy Tithe from Amazon!

This isn’t a storyline that does much to advance the Wolverine mythos. It’s not about his past or his returning memories or his eternal fight with Sabretooth or anything like that. It’s a stand-alone storyline in which Wolvie is forced to face the fact that he’s stuck somewhere between being a man and an animal. The story itself is about Logan dealing with the leader of a Mexican gang and being tailed by the DEA agent who made her first appearance in the previous Wolverine story arc, “The Brotherhood”. I won’t go into the story, because a lot of it is meant to surprise you, but I will say that this story does a LOT to establish Logan’s humanity. Even after killing dozens of men in a rage, he is forced to deal with the fact that he’s not all animal… nor is he all man. This is a nicely complex character development story that I enjoyed immensely.

The art is also better, IMO, than Robertson and Palmer’s work on “The Brotherhood.” I know Wolvie’s short and stocky, but I don’t like art that makes him look like he just stumbled out of his cave. The art in “Coyote Crossing” captures his stature, but also conveys the elegance and ease of movement that he’s known for. I’m a bit ambivalent on the fact that his face looks a lot like Hugh Jackman’s; I prefer a bit more separation between the movie and comic ‘verses, but I really like that he’s drawn with long hair. That needs to be done more often, heh.

I’ve wanted to start reading Fables for quite a while. A friend of mine did some of her Master’s work on the series, and I’m all about fairy tales and modern adaptations. So I was overjoyed when my boyfriend gave me Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile as a graduation gift. I finally sat down and read it the other day, and… wow. This is everything I’d hoped it would be.

This volume both sets up the Fables world and draws the reader into a murder mystery. All of the fairy tale creatures were forced from their world centuries ago by the conquering Adversary, and they’ve set up shop in New York City, calling their new settlement Fabletown. The story begins with Jack (of beanstalk fame) dashing across town to find Bigby (of “Huff, puff” fame), Fabletown’s detective. There has apparently been a brutal murder, and Bigby must solve the mystery.

Along with finding out what happened to Rose Red, Bigby must work with her sister, Snow White, who happens to be second-in-command to the mayor of Fabletown. Legends in Exile gives the reader not only a great murder-mystery but also begins building wonderful tension between Bigby and Snow White.

There are too many retellings of fairy tales to count, from Marvel’s Fairy Tale miniseries to Robin McKinley’s novels. Some of those adaptations are good, many are crappy, and some make you wish you could bleach your eyeballs (Anne Rice’s The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty comes to mind). Fables rises to the top of this pile; it blends the familiar fairy tales with modern sensibilities, often with sharply funny results. Snow White runs to Bigby’s rescue in a business suit, heels, and toting a gigantic sword, Beauty and the Beast find that centuries of togetherness do not a happy marriage make, and so on. The artwork is simple but gorgeous, and the covers are particularly lovely.

I’ve promptly added all of the other Fables collections to my Amazon wishlist. This stuff is addictive.

I have a confession. I love Nathan Fillion. The first time I saw him as Captain Malcolm Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s Firefly, I fell head over heels. My love for Fillion even made me watch Slither, despite my overwhelming hatred of gross-out horror movies (the laughs completely outweighed the gross-outs, and trust me, there were a lot of gross-outs).

So I was looking forward to seeing Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress if only for my beloved Nathan. I never watched Felicity, star Keri Russell’s most famous project; it kind of seems like a crime for a woman in her mid-late twenties to have never watched that show, doesn’t it? I went into this film with a pretty open mind, expecting only another good performance from Fillion.

I was impressed. It’s not the jump-up-in-my-seat kind of impressed; more like a quiet, contemplative kind of feeling. It’s pretty much impossible not to empathize with Russell’s Jenna, an abused waitress saddled with a pathetic husband and an unwanted pregnancy. Jenna’s joy in life is baking; she creates the most amazing, creatively-named pies as a form of escapism. Her other form of escapism is the affair she begins with her slightly-neurotic OB-GYN, Dr. Pomatter (played to the stammering, charming T by Fillion). The supporting actors are all subtle and believable, from Jeremy Sisto as Jenna’s asshole of a husband to director Shelly as the love-starved Dawn.

Despite Jenna’s sweet pies, the film is suffused with bittersweetness. Jenna, Dr. Pomatter, Jenna’s fellow waitresses, and Old Joe, the cranky owner of the diner, are all likable, but there’s so much that’s screwed up in each of their lives, from affairs to unwanted babies to broken down bodies. I went through the entire film dreading the next moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Waitress sits in your chest as an ache. It’s a tearjerker without being cloying or contrived, and I couldn’t help thinking while watching about Shelly’s untimely death. My only complaint is the neatness of the ending; it’s meant to be empowering for women, but it’s a little too transparent for my tastes. I like to feel empowered while watching a film without metaphorical flashing neon lights.

The Discriminating Fangirl’s Grade: B+

If there’s one thing I hate in the world, it’s not finishing a book. I hate starting a book and not being able to make it all the way through. It drives me nuts.

But Forbidden Magic is making me nuttier.

It started out interestingly enough. Spiffy concept, Irish mythology, blah blah blah. But it’s just… poorly written. I’m a grammar psycho; grammatical errors will throw me out of a book faster than you can blink. This book is littered with sentence fragments. Now, I understand that the author is probably sticking them in there for dramatic purposes or for emphasis, but on every third page? Ugh. It’s just as easy, just as emphatic, and more grammatically sound to just stick those fragments after a comma, dammit.

Dear readers, you should know that I have a… thing about character names in romance novels. I hate hate hate the “creative” names that many romance protagonists are given. Lady Winter Raventhorpe? Ambrianna Windsweptmoors? Make me want to stab myself in the eye. So, keeping this tic in mind, I can’t figure out why I picked this book up in the first place. The protagonist’s name is Silver Ashcroft. She has a sister named Copper. Other witches in her coven are named Rhiannon and Cassia. *groans* The manly faerie warrior’s name is Hawk. He has a daughter named Shayla. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there a pr0n star named Shayla? It’s funny how the most “normal” name throws me out more than the froofy, fluffy names. Shayla. Jesus. I suppose I should thank my lucky stars that there aren’t randomly apostrophed names in here, but really, with the D’Anu coven and the D’Danann warriors…

I made it about halfway through this one, and I’m giving up. It’s just not entertaining enough to keep torturing myself.